Dungeon Help

[Dusk Raven]

My current game consists of a a field, 2 towns (3 if you count the aqueduct), possibly a hut, and a castle which, aside from it's castle town and the aforementioned aqueduct; is comprised of several different dungeons connected by warp points.

Now, I currently have 12 dungeons (there's 2 story paths so the player will end up going through 2/3s of them) and counting, and I need a way to make it so that the game doesn't just consist of one boring hack-and-slash after another. In other words, I need to make my dungeons interesting.

I'm open to suggestions here. Ideas for puzzles, minigames, even odds and ends to add variety are welcome. I have a few ideas so far:

In an early dungeon, you need to get a key to access the boss room. You can get it through one of two ways: you can go downstairs and make your way through a small maze filled with enemies and traps. Or you can head upstairs and go through a series of rooms where you will be confronted with a riddle (I'll have to use multiple choice options for this). Get it wrong and you must fight a tough enemy.

In another dungeon, I intend to place fake save/heal points scattered throughout the dungeon. Step on a fake save point, and the party will be poisoned. The fake heal points will damage both HP and MP.

Any other suggestions?

[Crythania]

Re: Dungeon Help

Well, here's what I did with the dungeon crawling in "Raiders Of Lekunder".

Battling
No random encounters. All battles are non-repeating events. Example: You open a door, step into a room, and some monsters who were hanging out there see you and come after you. Battle. After you clear it, it never happens again. Also, there aren't all that many battles in the game. I think there's something like 53, total. Something like that. Each battle is a unique group of monsters. i.e. You encounter goblin, orc, and big bat in a forest cave. That's the only time that particular combination of monsters shows up. We see more goblins, more orcs, and more big bats later on, but we only see them together once. Same goes for each other combination of monsters.

This makes for a more exploration-heavy game. You can clear out an entire dungeon and then safely walk back through it without being attacked. The gameplay design is pretty linear and streamlined, though. There aren't any opportunities for power-leveling. With a couple exceptions, the battles will happen at the same locations if you play through it a second time.

Dungeon Floorplan Design
Very nonlinear, exploration-heavy. Because the player isn't getting ambushed every five steps or so, I could generate what one player described as "insanely complicated" layouts. Labyrinthine dungeons that span many floors. This also reduces (in many cases eliminates) slowdown. Large labyrinth on one floor = slowdown. Large labyrinth spanning many floors = better.

The dungeons themselves are puzzles of a sort. I used locked doors and keys liberally, and each key has a name that characterizes the room or location it unlocks. "Wine Cellar Key". "Blacksmith Shop Key". "Library Key". "Dining Hall Key". And so forth. First you need to get the "Wine Cellar Key" so you can get into the wine cellar. The "Blacksmith Key" is found there. Then you need to get the "Library Key", and so forth. Each dungeon has a sequence of keys you need to find to open up new areas. Each new area you gain access to has a key that unlocks another area. (I know that sounds linear, but the dungeons are also very nonlinear at the same time.) This also helps to characterize the dungeons. There's an underground mining town (sort of like a wild west town except underground) with inn, saloon, bank, blacksmith shop, winery, and all manner of buildings you'd expect to see in a town. There's a monastery with library, dining hall, sanctuary, chapel, bedrooms with closets. There's a large palace with ballrooms, dining halls, bedrooms on the upper floors, guard barracks, armory, and dungeon (complete with rows of barred cells). I try to characterize the environments as much as I can.

Decorations
This goes along with characterizing the dungeon. The dining hall has tables and chairs, potted plants, and other stuff to see. Some of it is interactive. There are tables with drinks on them in the saloon, and you can grab the drinks. The library has tables with books. Storage rooms have boxes and barrels. The wine cellar has wine barrels. I think every room has at least a couple decorations and a couple interactive elements, if not more.

Interactive Elements
They're everywhere. As you explore the nonlinear environment, you're always coming across something new to interact with, be it a treasure chest with gold, a restorative item, some other useful item, a collectable item, a secret item, or just an old tool box full of rusty old tools. The game has numerous collectable items. Potion ingredients that can be used to make elixirs, valuable treasures you can find and sell to a guy in town, special coins that are used for a vending machine. New magic spells are acquired from a book on a table. You find a book, the characters read the book's title and discuss who's going to open it (in a storyteller scene), then someone opens it, gains a new spell, and the book disappears. These events are scattered about the dungeons. There's always something to be on the lookout for, and every room has something you can interact with, even if it's something extraneous or useless (such as a box full of old mining tools or a book entitled "Tourist's Guide To The Land Of Dunzar").

Traps
I didn't start using them until I provided the player with an easy way to circumvent them. Traps annoy me. But maybe that's just me. If you like traps, you don't have to use that easy way to get around 'em.

Bottom Line
It's an interactive environment, and I think the more interactive it is, the better. There should be things to see, things to do, beyond just fighting monsters. I'll be the first to admit I don't have the best of ideas. I kind of have a bias toward collectable items and locked doors/keys. I'm hoping to build on these ideas and expand on them in the sequel, and come up with interesting puzzles for future projects.

[Vonwert]

Re: Dungeon Help

As for puzzles, you can go with a few types.

Combination puzzles, that have you clicking on a series on numbers. Either arranged out like a number pad, or have 3 to 5 objects that give multiple choice numbers.

You could have a simple multiple choice answer to a question deal, that opens the way.

You could do a pattern one, where you see a quick pattern of say coins appearing and disspearing, and then you have to click on the ones in the right order.

You could do a multipath area, where going down the wrong path will trigger a trap or end in a dead end.

[MagusMartovich]

Re: Dungeon Help

...OR, write a better storyline! I mean, I know its not a very popular idea or anything, but if you have a good story backing your RPG, then even if you have poor gameplay (hack-n-slash) people will enjoy it.

My favorite RPGs of all time are FF7 and Chrono Trigger. FF because the story behind the game is astounding! And CT because its very exploration heavy (and has a fair story too).

If you're the type of person who like the Zelda games, then by all means, go ahead and make a game with 4 "real" batles and drive the player crazy with backtracking through a miriad of rooms trying to find the next key so that they can go all the way back from where they came to get the next one... rinse, repeat, etc...

But IMHO the storyline is what makes or breaks a game. ...Well, that and not being required to walk for 45 mins back and forth just to get into the next room...

[sonichero10]

Re: Dungeon Help

Final fantasy VII is my favorite game too =)

[ErikaFuzzbottom]

Re: Dungeon Help

But that's irrelevant to the topic at hand.

[MagusMartovich]

Re: Dungeon Help

To be perfectly honest, I believe that the original topic and the topic at hand are very much related:

FF7 IS a very good game for many reasons, and Dusk RAven wants to make a very good game. Now, while my advice is not to emulate FF7 and/or remake it (or any other of countless good games out there) it couldn't hurt to think back to the RPGs that you played/enjoyed the most and see if you can tweak your game so that it too becomes more enjoyable.

Don't get me wrong, I love D&D too, and although RM3 is more than capable of making a "classic" style D&D game, I would advize against someone doing because of (again) having a plyer "being required to walk for 45 mins back and forth just to get into the next room..." or the next puzzle or whatever.

In closing, it seems like you have a lot of great ideas but are either looking of someone to tell you that or you know that something is missing but you don't know what it is.

[Dusk Raven]

Re: Dungeon Help

I could make a dungeon that would be something like Luigi's Mansion, where you have a battle when you first enter the room, but no more than that, and in the meantime you get keys and work on puzzles in a specific pattern.

[infared1982]

Re: Dungeon Help

I could make a dungeon that would be something like Luigi's Mansion, where you have a battle when you first enter the room, but no more than that, and in the meantime you get keys and work on puzzles in a specific pattern.

You know? That's an excellent idea! I never thought of that! Now that you mention it, I might even use that idea in my game. There are several games that use that function (enter room, fight, then search for keys, puzzles, etc.)
It would also take out the element of surprise from random battles (which I guess some players may like and some may not.) I personally don't care too much for random battles (they can get frustrating , especially when your party is low on health or you just want to get to your destination uninterrupted).

Thank you for this awesome idea and I wish you luck on you project!

[Crythania]

Re: Dungeon Help

Don't get me wrong, I love D&D too, and although RM3 is more than capable of making a "classic" style D&D game, I would advize against someone doing because of (again) having a plyer "being required to walk for 45 mins back and forth just to get into the next room..." or the next puzzle or whatever.

So in other words, you prefer a very linear approach to dungeon romping. "Get where we're going, get on with the story, enough with all the stuff that happens in between."

I prefer a nonlinear approach, although I do agree wholeheartedly: It shouldn't be so exhaustive that you have to spend the greater part of an hour traveling to where you need to go.

Perhaps what's needed here isn't interesting dungeons, but rather smaller dungeons. Cut to the chase, get the player where he needs to go, without a huge labyrinth or gauntlet of puzzles and battles to get through.

[Dusk Raven]

Re: Dungeon Help

It's becoming like Fahrenheit 451: it's boiling down to the snap ending, as in, "did you watch that 2-minute romance last night?".

[Dusk Raven]

Re: Dungeon Help

Okay, the dungeon tree of my game goes as follows:

Victory Corridor, the starting area from which you can access some of the other dungeons.

First Stage:
Good Path: Shrine of Havoc (boss: Akmodan, a red Mummy)
Evil path: Watch Spire (boss: Flying Armor, using the Ghost Knight model

Then, in either path, you go to a small puzzle dungeon outside the main castle, Menkon's Hollow.

From there you go to another "access" dungeon, the Haunted Hallways.

Second Stage:
Good Path: Chapel Tower (west wing)
Evil Path: Guest Quarters

Third Stage:
Good Path: Magma Prison
Evil Path: Deep Caverns


There might be more, but I do know the final levels will be:

Good Path: Dark Hall
Evil Path: Chapel Tower (east wing)

There's also 2 optional areas, the Clock Tower and the Silent Arena, and a hidden area, the Ruvanka Vaults.

That's that. Any suggestions for decorations, puzzles, ect.?

[The Dread Lord]

Re: Dungeon Help

In my expirence of making and playing games I found something that I like to break the monotny of a dungeon crawl. Throw in an npc meeting, or stumble into a monster vs monster fight and watch them duke it out. Some of my favorite games I played had a breather section in the hardest dungeons, where I'd meet with either a comedian of an npc or watch a fight I didn't have to perticipate in. And if you want them to perticipate in it have them take controll of one of the monsters for the fight and have it said that weather they win or lose in the fight will affect which monster complains after its over.

As for decorations I couldn't help you out unless your making a RM1 game then I could help here and there, but to get more help on that field tell us about each room and the feel you want for each one, or color schemes.

[Crythania]

Re: Dungeon Help

In my expirence of making and playing games I found something that I like to break the monotny of a dungeon crawl. Throw in an npc meeting, or stumble into a monster vs monster fight and watch them duke it out.

Yeah, that's something I'm gonna try to do in my next game. Have a pointless yet fun story scene where the heroes meet up with some friendly monsters or perhaps an NPC or two. I'll try to throw these scenes into the dungeons at a half-way point or thereabouts. So you'll have a little something more than the boss encounter to look forward to as you're navigating through the environment. I have a couple ideas already for fun scenes. It'll add more character to the environment as well. I try to characterize my environments as much as possible so it doesn't end up being a generic "dungeon".

Great post. Great ideas.

[Dusk Raven]

Re: Dungeon Help

In my expirence of making and playing games I found something that I like to break the monotny of a dungeon crawl. Throw in an npc meeting, or stumble into a monster vs monster fight and watch them duke it out.

That's a good idea. They do that in Castlevania (and my game is kinda based off Castlevania), so I might just add a few more characters for that purpose.