Modern floorplan generator? [closed]

Question

What I'm looking for is a tool to generate for me floorplans and maps for a wide array of situations. Home and office interiors are foremost, towns, streets, cities, and more are desired.

There are already a lot of great tools on the internet to help gamers (http://donjon.bin.sh/ stands out). And I know there are a lot of great hand crafted ones for sale. But I've not been able to find a tool (or group of tools) that allows me to create the wealth of modern setting maps and other resources I want. Shadowrun is what has really inspired the search, but such tools would be useful for a great number of systems.

I'm planning to use these maps as aids for theater of the mind in-person games, with either printouts (I have access to a decent array of printers) or computer screens (on a large screen laptop).

Are there any tools that do this? Or are there any open source projects that get close? (I'm a web developer professionally and might consider pitching in if someone is chasing this dream.) I'm specifically looking for a tool to create the resources for me, not a visual tool that allows me to create them myself. Procedural generation of some sort (or maybe something that just has a mind boggling archive it draws from?).

Answer 1

I wanted to do something similar (but for fantasy settings) so I came up with a Tavern generator after reading online about PCG. Some time later I added a City generator based on the same principle.

I don't dedicate much time to these tools, so "rough on the edges" is an understatement. But I also maintain a list of other people's tools. Apparently the ones at Inkwell Ideas are very popular (not to mention visually appealing).

If you're willing to develop such a tool yourself, you could start by looking at pcg.wikidot, where you'll find links to many interesting papers such as this one (the main inspiration for my tavern generator mentioned above).

Also, I recommend you to to GameDev.SE and browse the procedural-generation tag. Who knows, chances are, someone over there already has a tool that suits your needs (for example, this question has one answer that includes psudocode).

Finally, I should add that the only reason I haven't open-sourced my generators is because: I haven't decided on a license, the code is still ugly, and nobody has showed interest yet.

Answer 2

Ahh, Shadowrun, there's a bunch of fun memories. Thanks for the reminder!

I probably miss your finer points, but could you please explain what donjon doesn't do for you? It does do random generation (at the press of a button), and you can configure and style it for what might be a floor plan of a shopping mall or office block, so it must be something else. Is it that the descriptions aren't exactly modern but still feature "orcish runes" and such?

There's also Dave's Mapper which also offers random map generation, but no themed textual descriptions. Maybe it's better/easier to write your own than to "modernize" the orcish runes...?

Answer 3

I highly recommend a Windows software called HomePlanPro. It's very detailed and produces high-quality CAD floor plans that reflect real-world modern buildings of all types from homes (its primary use-case) to larger more industrially oriented sites.

In between my sophomore and junior years of university, I interned with a local family-owned and operated alarm company that covered the state of Florida from Jacksonville to Miami. We used floor plans to map the locations of our wiring configurations and alarm panels as well as our sensor placements. This information helped our technicians perform jobs quickly and reliably even if the technician going out to service the install knew nothing about the site. As a company, we were able to negotiate a life-time volume license. However, the software is available with a 30-day free trial and after that a life-time single license is available for a one-time flat fee of $39 at the time of writing this answer.

While there are sample pre-generated example home floor plans available to use with HomePlanPro, this answer primarily intends to challenge the frame of the question. At the time of writing, this question does not have an accepted answer. If the numerous options that have been presented in the other answers are not satisfactory, and you want professional looking detailed floor plans that support modern real-world structures, then there is simply no substitute for a professional CAD product designed to produce them. You may simply have to accept that there is no currently existing automated tool to meet your needs; thus, you will need to design your floor plans by hand.

Answer 4

I'm gonna go on a little bit of a stretch and suggest Frozen Synapse.

Primarily, it's a game. A skirmish simulator. It's about fast paced, close quarter battles in inside environments.

And it generates said environments procedurally.

It would probably take a little creativity to extract the maps from a game, but said maps are probably ideal for your purpose.