This dialog gives you more control over random generation, at the expense of more work on your part: you specify the Tile Set, Themes, and other parameters for each level you want generated, rather than specifying them once for the entire dungeon. Also, this dialog gives you fine-grained control over level size and item frequency.
The GenMod Random Generation Dialog contains many of the same controls as the main GenMod Dialog. Use these controls to specify what you want your interior to look like for Level 1 of your dungeon, then press the New Level button. A new entry appears in the All Levels To Generate list. Repeat this process for each level you want to generate. (Actually, you don't have to create an entry in the list box for every level. You can set the Number of Levels to Generate to be higher than the number of levels you define. In that case, GenMod reuses the last entry in the list to build the remaining levels.)
You can Save... your custom generation information to a file, then load it back into GenMod later. This is a good idea; if you decide to change some of the parameters later, you won't have to re-enter all of the information.
Warning: If you don't save your custom information to a file, GenMod will not remember it if you exit and come back, or if you generate a non-custom random dungeon.
When you are ready to generate the dungeon, click the Done button, which takes you back to the main GenMod Dialog. Press the Generate button in the main dialog, and your new mod should be ready for inspection. If it passes muster, you can start some hands-on customizing. If not, you can Open... (if you saved it earlier!) your custom information, tweak it, and generate again.
As you define new levels and add them to the All Levels to Generate list, GenMod automatically increases this value to match the number of levels you have defined. However, you can change this value by hand if you want. This can be useful if you only want to customize the first few levels of a dungeon, or if you only want to generate the first few levels from a larger set of defined levels.
If you enter a value here that is larger than the number of levels defined in the All Levels to Generate list, GenMod will use the last level's information to generate the rest of the dungeon. Ex., you define 5 levels in the list, but set Number of Levels to 10. GenMod creates 10 levels. The last 5 levels use the same parameters as level 5 did.
If you enter a value that is smaller than the number of levels defined in the All Levels to Generate list, GenMod will ignore the remaining definitions in the list. Ex., you have 10 levels defined in the list, but set Number of Levels to 5. GenMod creates 5 levels, using the first 5 entries in the list.
Use this button to specify the parameters for a single level of the dungeon. Once you have set the other dialog controls the way you want them, press this button to store the information in the All Levels to Generate list.
Use this button to modify the parameters of an existing level. Select an entry in the All Levels to Generate list. Change the values in the dialog controls the way you want them, then press this button.
Use this button to remove an entry from the All Levels to Generate list.
Use this button to populate the All Levels list with information from a saved file.
Use this button to save your list of levels to a file. This is highly recommended, especially if you are defining a large dungeon. You may want to come back later, tweak the settings, and regenerate. The Save and Open buttons let you do this.
When you have defined your dungeon levels, hopefully saved them to a file, and are ready to generate your dungeon, click this button. Use the main dialog's Generate button to build your ESP file.
The Level Size and Room Spacing combos work the same as they do in the main GenMod dialog. However, you can use the custom level size controls to more tightly control how big each level is.
Enter a value here when you want to specify the exact number of rooms for a level. Note that GenMod considers a user layout to be a single room--even though the layout may contain much more than that. You can set the User Layout Chance value (on the Frequency tab) to zero to prevent GenMod from including a user layout on the level.
You can enter a value of zero here, and GenMod will create a random number of rooms, using the Number of Rooms X and Number of Rooms Y values as an upper limit on the number of rooms. Ex., if you specify X=3, Y=3, Total=0, GenMod creates between 3 and 9 rooms for that level. (GenMod will not create less than 3 rooms on any level unless you explicitly ask for less.)
This controls the width (x dimension) of the level. You can think of this like columns in a grid, where each column is big enough to hold a single room, with some amount of space (controlled via Room Spacing) between each column.
You can enter a value of zero here, and GenMod will calculate the level width from the Total Number of Rooms.
This controls the breadth (y dimension) of the level. You can think of this like rows in a grid, where each row is big enough to hold a single room, with some amount of space (controlled via Room Spacing) between each row.
You can enter a value of zero here, and GenMod will calculate the y dimension from the Total Number of Rooms.
These controls work the same way they do in the main dialog. Use these controls to customize the appearance and contents of a single level.
Frequency lets you control how densely packed a level is with stuff. Frequency is not an absolute value, because levels vary in size, and typically you want to increase or decrease the "density" of creatures or other objects in a level. Also, not all Themes call for the same baseline density. But Frequency gives you a way to "tone down" a Theme that is too aggressive, by setting the Frequency to less than 1.0. A Frequency of 0.5 tells GenMod to place only half of the items called for by the Theme being used.
You can also increase the density above what a Theme calls for, by setting the associated Frequency to something greater than 1.0. If you want a monster in every available tile on the level, set the Creatures frequency to, say, 10.
Note that creatures are placed last by GenMod, following decorators, furniture, and containers. GenMod will not put a creature into a tile that has a piece of furniture in it, so a very high frequency rating only means that creatures will go into every available tile.
Also, GenMod will not place creatures, furniture, or containers into a doorway tile. (Some decorators place rugs into doorway tiles. And a decorator could, theoretically, place some larger object into a doorway tile. None of our standard decorators do this, however.)
If you only want simple rooms in your dungeon, set User Layout Chance to 0.0.
Note: We recommend against setting User Layouts above 0.5. GenMod has trouble connecting rooms together if there are a lot of complex layouts on a level. If the generator fails to connect the rooms on a level, it will pretend that Layout Chance is 0.0, and will try again with no user layouts at all on the level.