Making levels interesting without just adding more loot

[Derakon]

Originally Posted by jens

It just takes time to traverse them, you can't run, lighting does not work. It's just easier to avoid it, or if you have to pass through it to reach the other part of the dungeon, I'll try my luck on teleport first. And no it is not a strategic decision when you do something riskier to avoid doing something boring...

Hm, I didn't find them that tedious to navigate, but oh well. What if there were large numbers of monsters in the destroyed section?

[fizzix]

Originally Posted by Derakon

Hm, I didn't find them that tedious to navigate, but oh well. What if there were large numbers of monsters in the destroyed section?

I would prefer that levels succumb to earthquake like effects rather than full destruction. You can even do a "muted" earthquake that doesn't effect the "room status" of squares so you can still light up the rooms.

[Derakon]

Also an interesting idea, but I still maintain that the destructed levels were great for flavor and interesting to fight in.

[EpicMan]

Perhaps the running/lighting fixes for cavern levels could also be applied to destroyed levels and fix some of the frustration.

[EpicMan]

Another way to change up a level would be to have some levels with double-wide hallways, I.e. two spaces wide, instead of single-width. Or just let that sometimes happen with any level.

[jens]

Originally Posted by EpicMan

Another way to change up a level would be to have some levels with double-wide hallways, I.e. two spaces wide, instead of single-width. Or just let that sometimes happen with any level.

Yes, I'd like this, I have wanted it for a long time... I want more space in the dungeon in general, but people usually say that it gets too dangerous then. Well that's what we want right?

[Antoine]

My strong advice is to simply increase the number of monsters per level. This leads to more interesting situations where the player has to deal with multiple monsters (perhaps with quite different capabilities) at once, and creates a more 'hectic' feel.

I did this in Quickband and it seems to work. It's also an extremely easy change to make

A.

[fizzix]

Originally Posted by EpicMan

Another way to change up a level would be to have some levels with double-wide hallways, I.e. two spaces wide, instead of single-width. Or just let that sometimes happen with any level.

I've actually wanted to add this, but have had some difficulty in figuring out how to put it in the code. We could make double wide hallways for sections of passages, that is somewhat more straightforward.

[Derakon]

Presumably in the current hallway placement there's a bit of code that looks something like this:

For each point p in the desired corridor:
    map[p.x][p.y] = empty space

If you want double-wide corridors, you can just do this:

For each point p in the desired corridor:
    map[p.x][p.y] = empty space
    map[p.x][p.y - 1] = empty space
    map[p.x - 1][p.y - 1] = empty space
    map[p.x - 1][p.y] = empty space

Just remember to check that the additional spaces are not out of bounds.

...hm, or that there's any structure they could overwrite. I don't know exactly where a corridor ends currently, but it should be fairly easy to spot if this change causes problems e.g. by damaging vaults, poking holes in pits, etc.

I'm all for making the player face down multiple enemies at once, as soon as doing so is no longer gambling that both monsters won't use their "Slightly more than half-kill the player" moves on the same turn. This is a bit of a problem with the late game.

[CunningGabe]

Originally Posted by Nomad

I like the stuff that's been done to vary the look of the dungeon levels so far in 3.3, and I think there needs to be more added along those lines. Some ideas:

* More variety in level layouts and the shape and size of rooms in general. Maybe more use of permanent rock outside of vaults?

* More types of monsters found in pits and nests, and variable sizes and shapes for them. Dragon and demon pits could have toned-down varieties on the lower levels, say smaller rooms containing only baby and young dragons or lesser demons. There could be mixed dragon nests as well as pits containing only one variety. Ants, bats, birds, reptiles, snakes, spiders would all work well as lower-level nests; kobolds, dark elves, naga and hydra could appear in small-scale pits.

* How about nests themed by monster abilities rather than species, e.g. a nest full of all cold/fire/poisonous monsters? How about entire levels themed that way?

* More smaller-scale vault type rooms, with traps and/or monsters guarding say a single mildly OOD treasure, a level appropriate chest, or a guaranteed number of in-depth treasures. (How about 3x3 rooms containing a stash of similar items, such as cash, scrolls, potions or mushrooms? How about evil ones with a mimic or two slipped in there among the items?)

It would be cool if layouts for pits/nests and just general room designs could be loaded from edit files like the vaults, so everybody could have a crack at designing new types and share them around.

I'm interested in a lot of these, and d_m has talked about similar things. The contents of monster nests / pits is already pulled out to an edit file (pit.txt), but not the layouts. I am planning in the near future to add some other pit layouts, particularly smaller ones, so that we can make pits more common, especially at lower levels.

I agree that ultimately, it would be nice for as much room design as possible to be pulled out to edit files. d_m has done a lot of work in refactoring the dungeon generation code, which should help make such a thing feasible. Coming up with a good edit file format will probably prove challenging, though.