That is pretty nice idea.

Have you already made a mapmaking algorithm? I could think of a few choices which you can use:

Modified Perlin Noise Algorithm: http://freespace.virgin.net/hugo.eli...s/m_perlin.htm
With Perlin Noise Algorithm you could easily generate sort of heightmap image
First of all, thanks for an insightful post. Unfortunately perlin noise has no business here. This is text adventure game. It does have no graphics. It's not even an ascii art. It's something like this:

Code:
You are waking up on a cave floor. To your left there is a water pool. To the north there's a meadow. What do you do?
>_
So any kind of heightmap won't do a trick here, if anything it'll slow down generation. I'll use probably something like your second idea though heavily modified. And yes, in my idea there can be cells that don't have direct connection, but my algorithm makes sure there are always path. Also it generates cells only in direction room has exits (unless one is already generated like one player came from), so if room has only exit to the north, it'll only generate new room in that direction, of course making sure generated room has exit at the south, so player can go back if necessary.

And no, I haven't start coding yet (just done interface, game's is LCL-based as I don't like DOS prompt which may or may not work on new Windows version some time in future and has very small font by default on higher resolutions.

Getting back to the topic, I haven't started it because I first need to build big enough db of rooms so testing can be done properly. After I finish base code, it'll be just matter of adding new content to the db.