Grimrock

Sometimes I just like to derp around a random dungeon .... What is wrong with that?
Sometimes I'm not in a mood to puzzle things out and just want to stab a few monsters and go to bed.


It is not like the addition of a random dungeon creator would stop mods or hand made dungeons.

Saice wrote:Sometimes I'm not in a mood to puzzle things out and just want to stab a few monsters and go to bed.
It is not like the addition of a random dungeon creator would stop mods or hand made dungeons.

Kind of what I was thinking. Randomized dungeons are great for number of things! Either a quick spelunking to take the edge off, a way to challenge your post-game team, challenges thought up by the community, etc. A great example would be the ironman challenges from games like A.D.O.M or Diablo, where you take a fresh toon, and see how far you can progress. Many did simple Ironman challenges, whereas people would put limits on what you can and can't do, to up the difficulty.

King Semos wrote:I think it could work. The only thing that would need to be randomized is maybe the tile-sets, obviously consistent style throughout the level but different styles on different levels in each play through.

King Semos wrote:The way to do this would be, take a dungeon level and chop it into 4 quarters, each quarter would have a few variants of itself maintaining the puzzles but just changing the layout. It would create a lot of variants.

Yeah, I would agree with the tile-sets, considering it would be strange to have the concrete cut tiles mesh with the ivy/earth laden ones from the very first few floors. And the puzzles could work. Like I said, it may be possible to script it so that so and so level will always have 1 puzzle out of a plethora that was either player made or dev made, to appear on certain floors.

Of course, to those who say Player made dungeons are random, I somewhat disagree. In a sense, it is random because it is made through a creative process, but then, once it has been mapped, it is not so random anymore. It is a concrete dungeon that isn't random at all afterwards. It'll only offer replayability up to when you manage to get all the secrets, and have it fully mapped. Hence, my strong desire for randomized dungeons.

BitterAlmond wrote:Yes. This is exactly what I was about to say. I've loved ADOM for years . . .

To a fellow A.D.O.M player, I say this: Look for strange items!

One way to randomize dungeons is to use a method similiar to Dungeons of Dredmor. Basically you have an xml text file that describes all the rooms that can be randomly generated. The game then reads this file and randomly applies these room to create a whole level.

The upside is that you can create good puzzles but then the downside (a big downside) that you can get the same room more than once. You can specify if the room can be used more than once on a level or even on a certain level or not. Here is an example room I created using the code from the dredmor room.xml file. Dredmor stitches these rooms together with passages. You can have hundreds of rooms in this file or even thousands if the community got together.

ZZ

Just wanted to add my two cents, as a dungeon generator was the main thing i was really hoping for when i first learned of LoG. Although I think AH have done a wonderful job with their hand made dungeon. So here are my a few of my thoughts, which i should mention are strongly influenced by my experience with playing Dungeon Hack.

The main complaint i've noticed against this idea is that the puzzles wont nearly be the same quality, and while I agree that is true, I don't really think puzzles are the main point of a random dungeon generator to begin with. A few people have suggested implementing pre made puzzles, that have variations, in to the generator might be one solution but I realise that might be asking a bit too much.

I think for a random dungeon generator type level, lock and key type puzzles would suffice. A few other variations are available too, such as walls that move when a hidden button is pressed, but by no means do these need to be complicated, well thought out puzzles like in LoG. They just need to be enough to encourage some exploration outside of "find the stair case down" and to break up killing monsters.

But rather than counter the few other points people have against the idea, i'd aslo like to make a few points myself on why a random dungeon generator can be a really good thing. First of all the nature of randomizing items (having both positive and negative attributes) within a random dungeon makes things interesting because constant exploration is not always rewarded but sometimes even penalised. What I mean is, in LoG i noticed it has ALWAYS been worth my while to explore more and find items, there is no trade off in terms of risking failure.

While on the other hand in a random dungeon, exploration could mean encountering monsters that I have no chance of defeating or finding an interesting item which is actually cursed or in some other way negative for my character. I find these sorts of gambles exciting and immersive, so while people might complain that these sort of dungeons don't make sense in the same way as a hand crafted ones, i find that's what makes them interesting

Hand crafted maps after a while start to become predictable and when they're not, it's because you're not following the designers 'sense' for the map and they can become quite frustrating. If we're talking about this being done in a "rogue like" fashion, there is no point where ones entire ability to enjoy the game can grind to a halt because they can't beat a monster or pass a puzzle, you can always start a new game and have a different adventure.

So while LoG is very much about solving puzzles and utilizing the items you do come across to the best of your advantage, a rogue like random dungeon would be more about taking risks and just fighting monsters untill you're either lucky enough to get to the end or you die, and this can be done over and over because the point isn't really to beat the game but to see how long you can survive (i'm imagining perma death with a random dungeon generator).

To sum it up, a random dungeon generator can't give the same experience as when you first played LoG over and over and it can't give you the same quality puzzles but it can make for an exciting game with massive replayability.

P.S.
It seems a lot of the people against this idea, are just more excited by the idea of hand crafted maps, which is fine, but i'm excited by random maps, random items and knowing i'm up against a challenge my characters probably wont survive. I really hope we get both

or to let us make our own dungeons and share them

earthyearth wrote:or to let us make our own dungeons and share them

Actually there has already been a lot of discussion about a level editing tool being created and I think the devs said that a basic one is in the works that they're going to slowly improve upon over time, so user made dungeons is almost a given at this point. I have to disagree with you though, I don't think they're mutually exclusive, I don't see why it would be problematic to implement both a level editor and a level generator.

So don't worry, i think it would be unlikely that they would add level generator before the release a level editor. Personally i'd prefer the generator but to each their own.

The only doubt I have about random dungeon generation is, is it fun? It works great in roguelikes, e.g. ADOM, because you can see the whole explored map all the time, but what about when you only see a tiny sliver of the randomly generated level (the viewpoint in LoG)?

Approaching the issue from another angle:
Because there is no intelligent design in randomly generated levels you become easily lost. Therefore the next logical step would be to add an automap that is always visible on the screen. And then suddenly you're moving around on the map, and the 3D view becomes more or less a gimmick. So why not get rid of the 3D first person view and make the auto map really pretty with a topdown/isometric view, with animated player character, etc.? Hmm, this reminds me of some pretty famous diabolical game...

To hell with random.
Once the editor is released, there will be TONS of awesome dungeons with challenging puzzles.

Mark my words


PSY


And now...get back to work already

Well.. I think people should be able to design floors and submit them to a central database. When you start a new dungeon it will select floors random from this database. This way the dungeon is always random but still hand made..

Hariolor wrote:A rouguelike-style sprawling RNG-driven dungeon with a series of fixed/required/scripted encounters can make for a fun game. It won't be the same as the main game, but it could still be fun....

i would love this, i will play this game for the next 90 years