Od Nua and mini-game (Roguelike?)

[Hormalakh]

So an idea:

 

The endless dungeon, Od Nua, is going to be a pre-designed dungeon featuring 15 levels of dungeon crawling.

 

I was wondering whether (either in this game or in the expansion) it would be possible to consider leaving a "secret entrance" to levels below 15 that are randomly generated with increasing difficult monsters and sort of act like a "rogue-like" mini-game?

 

a few thoughts:

 

1- this will probably require a lot of design work, so I don't want this being part of this game but maybe for an expansion, it would be nice to continue down Od Nua forever?

 

2- Obviously the balacing would have to work so that you don't really gain too much treasure and experience to unbalance the game. maybe you can use what you find down there and the experience helps you to gain levels, but whne you leave you get level drained back to what you started with. (just an idea)

 

3- this also requires randomly generated tile-sets which isn't what this game is. Hence more design work. Obviously a rogue-like only works with infinitely procedurely generated tile-sets.

 

Anyway... think about this for a future expansion or a mini-game type thing. It'd be fun!

 

Now destroy my idea everyone! Pile on!

Edited December 23, 2012 by Hormalakh

[Sacred_Path]

I want to dislike this post.

 

Except for the 'leave it to the expansion' part. If they decide to **** things up in an expansion, that's fine by me.

[Monte Carlo]

Even I, Dungeoneer Extraordinary and tunnel warrior par excellence, am satisfied with fifteen levels. Your idea, although not without some merit, would involve using assets that could be used for making more loot, monsters and animating elf chicks in chainmail bikinis.

[PrimeJunta]

^

What he said. It's not a horrible idea by any means, but very much in the "...and the kitchen sink" category, right with a dynamic world economy and Dwarf Fortress type free-form stronghold management.

 

I.e., if you've done the best combat AI evar, the richest, most varied, most engaging quests in any game hitherto seen, the most beautiful, exotic, exciting, and amazing environments, the deepest, richest, most varied companion interactions, and the most perfectly animated chainmail-bikinied elf chicks, and wrung every last bug out of the thing for good measure, then yeah, sure, knock yerself out. But as it is, please use those assets for making the core game better.

[Osvir]

Why am I thinking about one of the dungeon levels being less graphically appealing than the rest of the levels? I'm talking about one of the levels being an illusion and the perspective becomes completely different, suddenly the world transforms to something like this:

 

This is a great game by the way <3

 

I can totally see something like this as a random gem in the game, suddenly appearing without much lore to it except some "Wtf??" from your companions and then unraveling the mystery of "The World Suddenly Changing" when finishing the level (Fighting/Solving the illusion at the end of the level). Some Illusionist playing tricks or whatever.

[Rostere]

Why am I thinking about one of the dungeon levels being less graphically appealing than the rest of the levels? I'm talking about one of the levels being an illusion and the perspective becomes completely different, suddenly the world transforms to something like this:

 

This is a great game by the way <3

 

I can totally see something like this as a random gem in the game, suddenly appearing without much lore to it except some "Wtf??" from your companions and then unraveling the mystery of "The World Suddenly Changing" when finishing the level (Fighting/Solving the illusion at the end of the level). Some Illusionist playing tricks or whatever.

Great idea

[Archmage Silver]

They don't necessarily have to be retro when it comes to the graphics - you can just drop the quests and other content in favor of tougher monsters. There's absolutely no need for imbalanced loot either, just add a piece or two with unique histories and a few bonus references to let the player feel good about solving the easter egg. Modern easter egg dungeons with a wireframe overlay worked in Wizardry 8 (link to Jay Barnson's blog).

[cyberarmy]

Why am I thinking about one of the dungeon levels being less graphically appealing than the rest of the levels? I'm talking about one of the levels being an illusion and the perspective becomes completely different, suddenly the world transforms to something like this:

 

 

This is a great game by the way <3

 

I can totally see something like this as a random gem in the game, suddenly appearing without much lore to it except some "Wtf??" from your companions and then unraveling the mystery of "The World Suddenly Changing" when finishing the level (Fighting/Solving the illusion at the end of the level). Some Illusionist playing tricks or whatever.

 

They don't really need to change anything at all tbh. Spirit Warrior sequance in BG 2ToB's Watchers Keep is a well done example of this kind of stuff.

[Merlkir]

Roquelike are made from ASCI code which is easy to generate a random level. In PE is an isometric game with premade backgrounds. You cannot made a random level with predrawn background, you would end with the same level over and over again. The only thing you could change would be monsters I think. Not even traps as they would end up on a wall or something if they would appear random.

 

This is not true. Some of the nicer Roguelikes actually have graphics tiles. There's no reason why those tiles couldn't be tileable prerendered assets. Hey, Diablo was made that way.

 

It's an interesting idea, one that I'd see being done by a mod, or an expansion. Why not.

[Amberion]

You realise saying IT CANNOT BE DONE is just asking for someone to go ahead and do it just to prove you wrong, right?

[Karkarov]

Uh bad idea for a bunch of reasons, many of them already stated.

 

That said.

 

I think if they wanted to do a cool pre release promo for their game before it hits doing something like releasing a basic roguelike called "The Endless Paths" and giving it some basic back story, making it about the P:E world and running leader boards for it would be really cool. It wouldn't take too much effort on their part either. Then when the final game ships they could put a spot in the final level of Od Nua where you discover the corpses of an adventuring party and you could leave a diary there and all of them are named after the top leaders from the roguelike with little anecdotes from people who played it written in.

[JWestfall]

I think if they wanted to do a cool pre release promo for their game before it hits doing something like releasing a basic roguelike called "The Endless Paths" and giving it some basic back story, making it about the P:E world and running leader boards for it would be really cool.

 

Actually, as one who dabbles in RL development, I think this might be a fun fan project, after more lore and mechanics info are revealed.

[Hormalakh]

cant wait for the RL mods.

[Dream]

Couldn't you have just said Diablo?

[Merlkir]

Couldn't you have just said Diablo?

 

No, Diablo is not really a Roguelike.

[Dream]

Couldn't you have just said Diablo?

 

No, Diablo is not really a Roguelike.

 

The roguelike is a sub-genre of role-playing video games, characterized by level randomization, permanent death, and turn-based movement.

 

Oh hey, Diablo.

[Amberion]

you crossed out the important bits. and diablo is only semi-random.

[Merlkir]

Dream, dude. Stop trolling, go play a Roguelike and then come back telling us Diablo is exactly like that.

[Dream]

you crossed out the important bits. and diablo is only semi-random.

 

Actually I crossed out the bits that aren't in P:E (unless you're on Ironman, but in that case Diablo has Hardcore).

 

Dream, dude. Stop trolling, go play a Roguelike and then come back telling us Diablo is exactly like that.

 

Like Nethack?

 

On my recent visit to Blizzard North to preview the game company’s wildly anticipated sequel to its hit role-playing game “Diablo,” Blizzard’s designers readily acknowledged their debt to Nethack and other “Roguelikes” — games of single-player dungeon questing.

 

Also it's irrelevant if you think Diablo is roguelike or not (it is) because what Hormalakh described was textbook Diablo.

 

that are randomly generated with increasing difficult monsters

[PrimeJunta]

Dream, dude. Stop trolling, go play a Roguelike and then come back telling us Diablo is exactly like that.

 

Erm. Merikir. I remember when Diablo came out. The buzz was all about "Dude, this is NetHack with cool graphics 'n shiznit." I played it. It was, sort of. I was a little disappointed because in terms of gameplay I thought it was actually closer to rogue than NetHack. It had scads of items, of course, but none of the really intricate and deep interactions with and between items, monsters, and the environment that make NetHack still one hell of a cool game to play.

[rjshae]

I'm not sure that an endless dungeon would be worth the effort. The game developers have enough on their plate.

[Merlkir]

Erm. Merikir. I remember when Diablo came out. The buzz was all about "Dude, this is NetHack with cool graphics 'n shiznit." I played it. It was, sort of. I was a little disappointed because in terms of gameplay I thought it was actually closer to rogue than NetHack. It had scads of items, of course, but none of the really intricate and deep interactions with and between items, monsters, and the environment that make NetHack still one hell of a cool game to play.

 

The guy said "like Roguelikes". Which pretty much sums up what he described in the longer post. Randomness, procedural generation, increasing difficulty towards infinity. Like Roguelikes.

 

Dream came in, being his usual self, and posted "Couldn't you have just said Diablo? ".

 

The thing is, even if the people at Blizzard were inspired by Roguelikes, Diablo isn't a typical Roguelike. As someone else pointed out - Diablo is only semi-random, it has a finite set of levels containing constant objects and quests.

 

There is no reason why he should've likened it to Diablo rather than Roguelikes. Then again, Dream knows better, as always.

[Merlkir]

Can you continue the game after PC dies in Diablo? Yes. Then it's not a roquelike. Simple as that. It has some features that are used in roquelike but that's it. Diablo doesn't have the essential parts to be caled roquelike.

 

You can choose to play in Hardcore mode, which does that. So it's like a Roguelike for pussies.

[PrimeJunta]

Hur. Semantics. Fun.

 

NetHack is also only semirandom, has a finite number of levels, and has lots of constant locations, some constant objects, and two constant quests. Yet I don't think I've ever heard anyone dispute its status as roguelike.

 

And yeah, I agree that not having permadeath is a significant point against its roguelikeness, which is why they put in Hardcore mode, I suppose. (Also, lots of people save-scum when playing roguelikes. I certainly did before I got the hang of it. Haven't in years though.)

[Dream]

The guy said "like Roguelikes". Which pretty much sums up what he described in the longer post. Randomness, procedural generation, increasing difficulty towards infinity. Like Roguelikes.

 

Dream came in, being his usual self, and posted "Couldn't you have just said Diablo? ".

 

The thing is, even if the people at Blizzard were inspired by Roguelikes, Diablo isn't a typical Roguelike. As someone else pointed out - Diablo is only semi-random, it has a finite set of levels containing constant objects and quests.

 

There is no reason why he should've likened it to Diablo rather than Roguelikes. Then again, Dream knows better, as always.

 

NetHack's dungeon spans about 50 primary levels, of which most are randomly generated when the player character first encounters them. A typical level contains a way "up" and a way "down" (these may be stairways, ladders, trapdoors etc.), along with several "rooms" joined by corridors. The "rooms" are randomly generated rectangles (as opposed to the linear corridors) and may contain features such as altars, shops, fountains, traps, thrones, pools of water, and sinks based upon the randomly generated features of the room . Some "special" levels are of fixed design in every game session.

 

So I say again.

Oh hey, Diablo.

 

Maybe, MAYBE, you can argue that Diablo isn't roguelike, but no one who knows what the term means is going to agree with you if you said Nethack wasn't roguelike and Nethack manages to hit the same criteria for "not really being roguelike" that you used against Diablo.

 

Also do you honestly think that Obsidian (who couldn't even make a Diablo clone right) can make on a budget of 4 and some change million an optional addon to a game that accomplishes something Blizzard couldn't do with their budgets of hundreds of millions (while having a graphical style that allows for near zero randomness)?

 

There's a reason why Diablo is only "semi-random" and it's not because Blizz is lazy.