How to approach making a dungeon crawler?

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eon
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How to approach making a dungeon crawler?

Post by eon »

I would like to make simple dungeon crawler in Unreal engine.
Could you tell me how to start scripting procedural dungeon?
What do I need to know to make this happen?
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Komag
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Re: How to approach making a dungeon crawler?

Post by Komag »

Start by trying to do something more simple, like a randomly generated one level Rogue-like. Learn to program some basic random stuff with various rules/strictures
Finished Dungeons - complete mods to play
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Halluinoid
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Re: How to approach making a dungeon crawler?

Post by Halluinoid »

eon have you seen the video ? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lXv1YXGMaj8 :D
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eon
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Re: How to approach making a dungeon crawler?

Post by eon »

Halluinoid wrote:eon have you seen the video ? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lXv1YXGMaj8 :D
Thanks, I didn't expect this to be on YT.
kingius
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Re: How to approach making a dungeon crawler?

Post by kingius »

It's not easy, I made the game The Dungeons of Castle Madness (see here: http://store.steampowered.com/app/506840/) which is a dungeon crawler with a twist (or two!).

You need to start by making a basic indoor dungeon and either some code that can read the level file containing the dungeon information or create the level wholesale. If you're using an engine like UE or Unity you might be able to just prebuild the levels in that. I went down the first route. But you need to start simply, so you begin with just a room and a door or portcullis and then a trigger to open the door. Get that set up and working first. Then move to a second room, place an enemy in it and start working on some basic combat code. How do you want fights to work? Will they be in the first person, as in Legend of Grimrock, Dungeon Master, Ruzar, Eye of the Beholder, etc... or will there be another combat engine that gets triggered entirely, as in the original Bards Tale, the Goldbox series of games, and my own game The Dungeons of Castle Madness? You'll need to think about this and make a decision fairly early on. Will it be real time or turn based?

Once you have that hanging together you can iteratively start adding other systems to it, but combat is important and it needs to feel satisfying. Then you can start thinking about dialogue and NPCs (will you have none, like Grimrock, or branching conversations like in Cold Keep, Pool of Radiance or my game), inventory system, spells & magic and so forth. And it will take some time to put together. My game took me a year to build, on my own. And you'll need some luck too, so good luck with it and I hope this has helped.
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