VOIDWALKER

ASCII dungeon raycaster. Navigate procedurally generated dungeons in first-person perspective, rendered entirely in colored ASCII characters. Find the exit (◊) to advance to the next level; collect health (♦) and treasure items; fight enemies (☠); survive.

    ╭────────────────────────────────────────╮
    │  ▓▓▓ VOIDWALKER ▓▓▓                   │
    │  ASCII Raycaster Dungeon              │
    │                                        │
    │  ████ wall        ◊ exit              │
    │  ♦ health        ☠ enemy             │
    │  ░ floor         · ceiling           │
    │                                        │
    │  160×50 character resolution           │
    │  160 rays · fish-eye correction        │
    │  Sprite rendering (items, enemies)   │
    │  Procedural dungeon generation         │
    ╰────────────────────────────────────────╯

Features

• Raycasting renderer — 160 rays, fish-eye correction via dist * cos(deltaAngle), wall height derived from perpendicular distance; shade index by distance (9 depth steps from #e8e8e8 to #0a0a0a)
• Procedural dungeon generation — binary space partitioning for room placement; L-shaped corridors connecting room centers; 6–11 rooms per dungeon
• Sprite system — items (♦ health, ♦ treasure), enemies (☠), exit (◊) rendered via raycasting with z-buffer occlusion check
• Enemy AI — enemies track player within 10 units, move toward player every 0.8–1.3s, deal 1 damage on contact (player respawns at 0 HP)
• Minimap — M key toggles 2px-per-cell ASCII minimap in top-left; player shown as cyan @, exit as green ◊
• Progressive difficulty — each level increases dungeon size by +4 width / +3 height; enemies scale with level
• 9-level lighting — WALL_LIGHTS array maps distance to color index; ceiling/floor use 4-step gradient
• CRT flicker — CSS animation opacity: 0.95–1.0 at 100ms gives authentic retro feel

Controls

Key	Action
W / A / S / D	Move forward/back/strafe
Q / E	Turn left/right
F	Interact (collect item / attack enemy in range)
M	Toggle minimap
Tab	Generate new dungeon (next level)

Tech Stack

• Single HTML file — Canvas-free, pure DOM text rendering
• No libraries — vanilla JS, no build step, no dependencies
• Raycasting — DDA (digital differential analyzer) algorithm for wall detection; MAX_DEPTH = 20, step size 0.02
• Collision — slide collision against walls via axis-separated movement checks

Architecture

generateDungeon(w, h)
  └─ Fill map with 1s (walls)
  └─ Place numRooms (6–11) random non-overlapping rectangles
  └─ Carve rooms to 0 (floor)
  └─ Connect room centers with L-shaped corridors
  └─ Place player in first room center
  └─ Place exit in last room center
  └─ Scatter items (health, treasure) in intermediate rooms
  └─ Scatter enemies in rooms after the second

castRay(angle)
  └─ Step along ray at t=0.01 increments
  └─ Check map cell; return { dist, cell, mx, my }
  └─ Fish-eye corrected: adjDist = dist * cos(rayAngle - playerAngle)

render()
  └─ Ceiling gradient (0–halfH, 4 shade levels)
  └─ Floor gradient (halfH–H, 4 shade levels)
  └─ For each ray: compute wall strip, shade by distance
  └─ Render sprites (items, enemies) with z-buffer occlusion
  └─ Build HTML string → innerHTML (flicker animation via CSS)

License

MIT