Torchlight Crawlers

[Wizard of Makan]

Thels,

There are various things in EoB1 and especially EoB2 that brought the world alive, that I missed even in LoG, such as being able to recruit NPCs, "cutscenes", some dialogue.

For the most part, this is an aesthetic argument and difficult to deal with objectivly.
What you might not like in a cutscene, I might like and vice versa.
Cut scenes and dialogue is highly controversial, I for one am glad they didn't implement more of it.
The dreams you experience were an interesting idea in so far as they were relatively easy to develop but the emotional impact was there, as is was atmospheric, mysterious and left you with more questions. They also fit the game - a real dialogue can get hard to text right, the whole mood of the dungeon can change etc.
Legend of Lore pulled this off because the whole game was structured around a narrative.
Grimrock goes the Dungeon Master way where most of the emotional action happens in your imagination.

The question is also: on a playthrough, will it get in the way?
The dreams already bugged me a bit, as I knew the whole pointe and basically just skipped 'em.


@new races
Pulling this off might be actually hard. The design is done in a way that new races will find little room to shine.
There is already a race for mages, warriors and rogues along with their corresponding attribute. Humans are versatile and fit everywhere.
And new traits are hard to implement; technically, but also from the POV of game design.
I mean, you might have some nice portraits and effects, but, for instance, an even stronger fighter might feel unimaginative.

[Wizard of Makan]

BloodLust - Shadowhunter is another "Indie" dungeon crawler in development - (it's Vampire themed and sort of looks like a sequel to Masquerade Bloodlines... but actually plays more like a dungeon crawler)
Its not as polished as Grimrock (it's not party-based or gridbased either) but has a couple similar features - such as plenty of secret walls, traps, poison gas spitting snake statues, timed doors, floorswitches,etc.

There's 3 playable classes similar to the standard mage, rogue and warrior types (witch, criminal, thug) but I think there is only going to be 3 races Vampire, Dhampire (half vampire/half human) and human (ShadowHunter)

Its also third person (but can zoom into first person too) and all loot is random.

Not sure if it's going to be as cool as LOG but there is a free playable demo on the BloodLust website that's fun!

Thanks, I'll check it out and add it to the list, if it's a torchlight crawler and also finshed.
The ability to zoom into third person however, is strange, and I mean this not from a dogmatic view (see 'elements of torchlight crawlers').
If you crawl most literally through dungeons, why make it in third person? You get heaps of design problems and practically nothing in return.

[Disasterrific]

I don't really see the distinction. "Torchlight" is also a diablo-clone game, which further muddles the pot.

What I am interested to know is how long the term Dungeon Crawler has been in use. Is that really what they called them in the past or is it a relatively modern coin of phrase?

[Darklord]

They were known as Dungeon Master or DM clones.

Daniel.

[Wizard of Makan]

Personally I'd suggest that DM/EoB/LoG etc are pure Dungeon Crawlers, and are exactly what I think of when I hear the term, Dungeon Crawler.

If you look at the Wiki on the subject,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dungeon_crawl

Here's a quote from it,

Some distinguish "dungeon crawlers" from rogue-likes and RPGs with stories and character-interaction, while others use the term to describe any game which features ample amounts of dungeon exploration (including Zork, Zelda and tabletop RPGs). More recently the term has come to mean 1st person RPGs, particularly ones which are aligned to a grid system and can be mapped on graph paper.

So LoG is a pure Dungeon Crawler by wiki definition as it is grid based and can be mapped on grid paper. It's other games that perhaps shouldn't really be called Dungeon Crawlers.
Daniel.

Well, all I do is to assert to put away with the term dungeon crawler for these games because it is used
a) inflationary - practically all oldschool or classic rpgs are by this definition dungeon crawlers. There weren't a lot of 80s or early 90s rpgs that couldn't be mapped with a grid.
and
b) the vast majority of games declared as such have, from the perspective of game design, nothing in common with Dungeon Master, Eye of the Beholder, Lands of Lore, Stonekeep et al.
You can pin the similarities and the apparent structure down (as I hope I did in my original post) and then it becomes apparent that 'Torchlight Crawlers' are vastly different from 'Dungeon Crawlers'.

If you prefer the term 'Dungeon Crawlers' just because it sounds right, you're in good company - I'd like to use it, too. But since it's been highjacked for all sorts of rpgs I see more sense in creating a more concrete lemma then correcting people for the rest of my life;)
"you are all WRONG, this is not atrue dungeon crawler - arghh!"

The tragedy of a ludologist is that the science of gaming is very weakly researched. Wiki just cites people like game critics, who are often the most clueless bunch in terms of game design and game theory.

[Wizard of Makan]

I don't really see the distinction. "Torchlight" is also a diablo-clone game, which further muddles the pot.

What I am interested to know is how long the term Dungeon Crawler has been in use. Is that really what they called them in the past or is it a relatively modern coin of phrase?

Torchlight may be a game's name.
But what if there's a new game called 'dungeon crawler'? Will old computer rpgs cease to exist?
Seriosuly, if you come up with a better name, I'm all ears and also thankful.

And what do you mean by "no distinction"? It's a huge distinction- just ask and I'll go into detail.

I remember the phrase 'dungeon crawler' in use for a long time, but mainly for "dungeon" heavy paper&pen rpg adventures.

Also, a "dungeon" can be a big metaphor for lots of things.
That's why 'dungeon crawler' is already rather blurred.

[Darklord]

I guess a Dungeon Master clone is the most precise term for this style of game. It's the one label that conveys exactly what type of game it is.

Daniel.

[Merethif]

(...)
@new races
Pulling this off might be actually hard. The design is done in a way that new races will find little room to shine.
There is already a race for mages, warriors and rogues along with their corresponding attribute. Humans are versatile and fit everywhere.
And new traits are hard to implement; technically, but also from the POV of game design.
I mean, you might have some nice portraits and effects, but, for instance, an even stronger fighter might feel unimaginative.

Generally I agree with you, because I usually follow the rule "less is more". If I mentioned Hulines or Thomgogs, that's mostly for sentimental reason, not because any new race is actually needed

Thomgogs are somewhat unique as they seems to be standard "big guys" at first glance, but actually they are skilled with magic, which is rare amongst fantasy - usually "big guys" are anti-magical. Race with bonus to Willpower, but with penalty to Dexterity instead of Strength or even some slight bonus to Strength. Having four arms is also tempting (two arms may be limited only to holding objects, not attacking/using them, still useful for torches, orbs or staves). Probably such race would be OP though.

I imagine Hulines, just like Kieran in LoL, could have reduced recovery time (+5 speed to all weapons), at the cost of penalties to Willpower and Strength. Other traits could include bonus to Dexterity (+2? +4?) and absence of slot for boots.

[Mychaelh]

...But what if there's a new game called 'dungeon crawler'? ...

There already is [an 'old'] one.

'Dungeon Crawl' is a one of the main "rogue-likes" (ASCII or tiles -> = 2d 'overhead' + an overhead pseudo 3d-'iso'-tile-style for a mod).
It's now called 'Linley's Dungeon Crawl' (or 'Dungeon Crawl Ancient') ...

...to distinguish it from it's strongly advanced branch 'Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup' (DCSS),
which is the most developed of all the 'classic' rogue-likes games right now.
[new expanded 'trunk'-versions come out almost daily because of the relatively large dev/contributor/player scene - everybody can try to contribute].
('but', it's 'only' in ASCII or 'really beautiful' tiles -> 2d 'overhead - no iso(metric) "3d"-tiles till now).

Dungeon Crawl Ancient (ASCII-2d 'overhead'-mode):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linley%27s_Dungeon_Crawl

Dungeon Crawl 'Ancient Version' Hompage:
http://www.dungeoncrawl.org/

3d-iso-tiles for DC Ancient (nice, but old code):

http://rltiles.sourceforge.net/


Now for the real stuff (up to date code):
Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup (2d 'overhead' tiles-mode, but also 'hardcore'-ASCII-2d 'overhead'-mode available):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dungeon_Crawl_Stone_Soup

DCSS Homepage (take this one - The Orb of Zot is waiting):
-> http://crawl.develz.org/wordpress/

-------

PS: There is a 'true' 3d-mod for the roguelike IVAN (= Iter Vehemens ad Necem).
-> would match 'torchlight crawler'-definition of this thread (more or less):

(to bored to search out the link for this)

[podbelski]

I tried Lands of Lore a few days ago (never played it before), and surprisingly was disappointed so quit playing it... can't call it "torchlight crawler" or anything like that, instead I had to fight constantly the respawning monsters, and that finally ruined the adventure feel
Also, I was not impressed with game puzzles (stopped playing in the midle of Urbish Mines)

I think my favorite is still EotB. Probably the second part of the trilogy is the best, but first and third parts certainly have their own charm