Curious about kanokarob's method to generate random paths

[lilac tiger]

Hi,

I am trying to figure out how @devout trail does his magic to generate his structures with a random path to the end portal room. In one of his videos, he said that he generates the jigsaws first and then generates the structure on top, but I have a hard time seeing how that works without overwriting the jigsaws with the structure. Can someone explain how it works?

[devout trail]

Well the jigsaws first and then structure on top doesn't have anything specifically to do with generating the path to the portal room, it's just a convenient way to help make that path a little less deterministic

So is your question more about the overlaying of structures or the guaranteed path?

[lilac tiger]

I think I get the guaranteed path, you do it by using an unique template pool for each path, right? Which you mark with the different colour blocks.

I would like to know how you superimpose the structure on top of it. Do you have an extra jigsaw that is just responsible for spawning the actual blocks? How do you make sure that it fits snugly within the bounding box of the jigsaw structure (seeing as you cannot overlap bounding boxes IIRC)?

[devout trail]

For most of them I use a list_pool_element type in the template pools. It lets you list several structures, which it will then place one after the other in the same space, even if the ones that aren't first don't have jigsaw blocks inside (and in fact, they shouldn't). If all the structures in the list pool element are the same dimensions they'll get rotated the same way, too.

Main thing to note with that is that only the jigsaw blocks in the first element of the list will generate additional pieces, which is why those jigsaw block structures look so busy, and the actual build structures don't have any jigsaw blocks in them

But, you can just do a separate jigsaw block in the first structure that places the build piece inside it; that's what I did for the Jungle Stronghold, so its complexes are made of a variety of rooms.

Also you can overlap bounding boxes, especially inside of an axisting bounding box. You just can't intersect them

[lilac tiger]

Ooh thats amazing, I didn't realise list_pools were a thing. Definitely going to play around with that!

Curiosity satisfied, thank you!