A collection of ideas

[Corran Horn]

As I was working through my sprite redesign I wrote down a number of ideas. Here they are in a roughly organized manner. If any of these stick, great! Otherwise, perhaps they could inspire the developers.

  

World Map

I propose an overhaul of the world map system that creates a better sense of moving through the world, exploring new areas and discovering hidden enemies. The first change is that the player no longer chooses a starting tile on the world map. Instead, the start tile is in the center of the map, but they can still reroll the map to fine one they like. However, they will not be able to see every enemy or ally position on the map. Instead, the map will have a fog of war. As the game progresses they will be able to explore out from the starting tile to reveal the fog of war.

This is how I would propose the world map would function. The starting tile would have a portal that would function as the origin of the keeper (lore wise). The player could settle on that tile, or venture out into the surrounding area and settle specific tiles (the caves with flags denote settled dungeons). This brings me to another large change. Instead of simply clicking on a tile to move to that part of the world, the player must navigate around the world map, from tile to tile. They can then select to enter a specific part of the world. For instance, when the character moves to the bandit tile they can choose to attack the bandits or ignore them.

This navigation will also reveal more of the map, removing the fog of war. As the player moves further from the portal, the more powerful the enemies they can find. However, they will also meet more powerful allies. Additionally, by discovering more powerful enemies, those enemies can attack your settlements.

This brings me back to the idea of settling tiles. In this system the player would be able to settle multiple tiles, however at a high cost. They would initially have the materials to settle one tile, but have to build up specific resources, or unlock tiers of skills, to allow additional settlements.Defeating an enemy tile could allow the player to settle in that tile as well, potentially giving them access to rare resources. These additional settlements could be restricted in some way, or specialized to certain functions. They would also provide the player the ability to retreat if their dungeon is overrun, regroup, then assault to retake their dungeon.

As far as housekeeping goes (simulating mobs, minions, etc.), only the tile that is currently active (where the player is) will carry out specific tasks such as digging, building, etc. Settlements may have a production rate that is tied to their production queue and current goblin population, allowing production to continue when the player is not actively in that tile. Construction orders can only be placed if the keeper is currently in the tile, and each settlement will have its own maximum imp population.

  

Production

I would also simplify the resource system for crafting materials. Instead of storing wood, stone and iron on the ground, a single stockpile for each could be created in the dungeon. These could then be used as part of the efficiency calculation for the manufactories. The advantage of this system of management is that it can reduce the tiles collected resources to a single variable. Then, from the world map (or other UI) the player could view their settlements at a glance and know what resources were available, without the system having to keep track of everything on the ground. (This may not be required, but it was a potential problem that I considered).

A mechanism could also be utilized to transfer these resources between settlements (trading posts). At the same time, production could be streamlined by allowing each settlement a limited production queue in their manufactory (~5-10 items at a time) across all types of production. However, it would remove trap resetting from the queue. They would only have to be created once, then resetting would be done by imps if the required materials are available. However, traps should take specific items to create. Poison traps should take a potion of poison, boulder traps should take a very large amount of stone, etc. Resetting could take lesser ingredients, such as a small to moderate amount of wood or stone.

Along with this simplification, stone would no longer be tied to geology. Instead, every tile that is dug out will produce a small amount of stone. Essentially, the value of stone and wood would be equalized, to some extent. Iron, on the other would be made more rare. Geology could be moved from the spell training queue to the workshop. Each settlement could have a level of production which levels up through constructing in the workshop, as well as producing furniture within the dungeon. At each level (limit 3) the ability to prospect becomes available, which triggers geology. This can find Iron at level 1, Iron and steel at level 2, and steel and gold at level 3. This allows different settlements to prospect independently.

Item costs should also be increased for iron and steel. They should be an investment, difficult to obtain and a valuable consideration as to who should equip them. Trading posts could be established with allied settlements as well, opening up trade for powerful items and weapons. Gold would likely be the primary currency. Potions could also require specific reagents, like mushrooms or specific body parts. Maybe poison takes an ant thorax.

  

Enemies

Now, for enemy mobs I would propose a tiered system (similar to the current lesser, greater villains) with four tiers of enemy mobs. The first tier would consist of bandits, zombies, etc. These mobs would only wear leather armor and carry the lowest tier weapons, if any. They would spawn closest to the starting portal on the world map. They would be accompanied by one “boss” at the second tier, who would generally wear leather armor, with one piece of iron. They would also carry low tier weapons, though better than their minions. They could have a chance of carrying a mid tier weapon.

Further from the portal, second tier enemies will spawn with third tier bosses. Their armor and weapons would scale up as well, such that iron armor is uncommon on the minions, and steel weapons are rarely found on the bosses. The final tier of enemies will be found at the farthest edges of the world. This is where you’ll find dragons and vampire lords. They will be very powerful and take large armies to defeat. I would suggest that dragons will not come to attack the player’s settlements, but are much more difficult to defeat. Attacking them should be a high risk/high reward scenario. Also, the world map should not tell the player what kind of enemy they are going to encounter if they enter the tile. This could encourage scouting. Perhaps, however, if a dragon is alerted to your presence in this way, they will attack your settlement. This tier should also be where player dungeons can spawn.

Enemies could also attack different settlements. This could require you to set up defenses to slow down an attack so that your forces have time to reach the settlement under attack, or you could garrison some forces in each settlement. If a settlement is attacked you could have a prompt display the relevant information, as well as ask if the player wishes to mount a defense (think Rome: Total War). If the player ignores the attack a simple calculation could run to determine the outcome of the assault (with some degree of randomness/dice roll).

My intent with these changes is to encourage exploration and provide a more uncertain starting experience. Additionally, the crafting and enemy drop changes would (I believe) shift the armaments of minions toward lower tier armor and weapons for the most part, giving the more powerful armor and weapons more value. This way finding or crafting a steel sword is an achievement and rewarding.

  

Recruitment and Slavery

Ok, I’m not done with settlements. Settlements could also be used to unlock certain minions or production capabilities. For instance, before being able to recruit harpies, the player would have to find a suitable encampment of harpies and settle that tile. They could then recruit harpies in that tile to send back to their main settlement. This would require additional UI system to manage which minions are where. Again, the further from the portal, the more powerful the allies.

Meanwhile, the player could go out and defeat a tile full of dwarves. But, instead of murdering all of the dwarves and pillaging their dungeons, the player could enslave them. This could open up specific crafting capabilities. Perhaps dwarves are particularly good at crafting tier two or three weapons. They wouldn’t fight for you in battle, and you would have to maintain a military presence in their tile, but it could be a source of valuable arms.

  

The Portal

This brings me back to the starting tile and the portal that brought you to this world. Say, the Keeper found himself thrown out of his homelands into this strange land. Upon arrival he (or sh) vows revenge on the great monster that forced him into this land. However, he knows one thing. If he can retrieve enough powerful artifacts, the keeper can summon his enemy through the portal and defeat him, allowing the keeper to return home.

This is the driving motivation behind exploration. There are five powerful artifacts at the edges of this world (the keeper senses this or there are pedestals around the portal with instructions) that must be found and returned to the initial tile. They are in the possession of tier four bosses (dragons, vampire lords, kraken, etc).

Once the keeper retrieves all five items they can trigger the summoning. This final boss is unlike any other. It takes up 2×2 tiles and creates a moat of fire in a large circle around the portal. (It would need to be a large enough area to contain the keepers army, but clearly not allow retreat. Being outside can ensure that the boss will not get stuck in any space because of it’s size.) At this point the keeper cannot leave the battlefield. He is locked in mortal combat and must defeat the boss.

Upon defeating the boss, the keeper receives an orb of darkness. They may then install this item in one of their settlements, establishing it as their primary dungeon. This will also allow them to pass through the portal, retiring the keeper. The dungeon with the orb is then used as the retired dungeon.

Now, if a player has retired dungeons in their world they can find these orbs. They then act as currency, or can provide boosts to training if installed in a dungeon. As currency, they can be traded with allied settlements for the most powerful weapons and armor.

  

Random Tidbits

Finally, there are some additional small ideas that could go along with all of this. First, libraries could use tiered furniture as well. Currently training dummies have tiers, but libraries don’t. Perhaps have bookshelves, orbs of knowledge, and obelisks of power.

Second, allow keepers to hire adventurers. This could switch the player into adventure mode to assault a retired dungeon. You could provide the adventurer with items, weapons, armor and send them to a retired dungeon that you have already discovered. This would require a few considerations. First, you would have to find an adventurer. Perhaps in an allied settlement. Second, you’d have to pay the adventurer (handsomely). However, the adventurer would be able to sneak into a dungeon with their own unique skills. They would be able to disable defenses, undetected, and loot items that would be inaccessible in a full assault (perhaps by having locked areas only accessible with an adventurer). You would also be unable to hire an adventurer to infiltrate a dungeon that had already been assaulted.

Between this and the ability to create and specify a specific dungeon to retire, players could create unique experiences for adventurers separate from the necessities of the standard game. This allows narratives to be created with creative use of the building tools. Special doors could be crafted that can only be accessed by adventurers, possibly by meeting specific criteria as well. Perhaps even allowing the creation of puzzles.

Essentially, it would be really cool to be able to go into a tile after the world has been defeated and create a dungeon specifically for the purpose of retirement. It would require the dark orb at a minimum, but could have any other amount of loot placed in any way the player wished. This would be particularly great if there were a system to rate dungeons that you’ve had in your world and defeated (or perhaps even if you didn’t defeat it).

I would love to be able to create keepers with different specialties. This could be selected at character creation, or through leveling up specific skills (though it should limit you to a specific path if it’s in game). What I would like to have is a beastmaster build that gets bonuses to creatures. I’ve tried doing this in the game as-is and haven’t been able to have a successful dungeon using primarily beasts. I would also like something similar along the lines of a necromancer. Perhaps some kind of brawler/fighter as well. The idea is to have a variety of viable paths to success.

 
Last, but not least, some very small changes I would suggest include:

• Adding icons to the activity feed to make it easier to see what is going on at a glance. Perhaps even color coding them. Clicking on them could even move the camera to the event, or open an appropriate UI.
   
• Allow players to set default actions for a class of minions. For instance, allow me to set goblins to never train by default.
   
• Add subtle animations to some elements. In particular I’m thinking of torches. The intent being to add a bit of atmosphere.
   
• Along these lines, slowing down the fire animation. As it is, it looks a bit spastic on my screen. It could possibly even use a third frame to smooth out the animation.
   
• Currently the keeper will level up four times from combat. However, he is als capped to level 17 through training dummies. These are not independent, however, so a keeper who levels up before he’s maxed out training will be limited. That is to say, if a keeper levels up through combat before level 17, they will not be able to go any higher. However, if they avoid combat until after training to 17, they can get to level 21. This discourages the use of the keeper in combat in the early game. (may be intended)

  

Conclusion

Well, that’s some of the ideas I’ve had while playing through the game and redrawing all of the sprites. My apologies for the wall of text. I really enjoy the game and appreciate all of the work that goes into it. Many of these ideas, I’m sure, are well outside of the intended direction and scope of the game. My intent is just to put them out there, to see if anything sticks. I would also love any feedback on these ideas.

-Z

• This topic was modified 7 years, 2 months ago by Corran Horn.
• This topic was modified 7 years, 2 months ago by Corran Horn.

[Michal Brzozowski]

Cool! Those are some novel ideas. I’ll try to comment on most of them, forgive me if I skip some.

Corran Horn wrote:

I propose an overhaul of the world map system that creates a better sense of moving through the world, exploring new areas and discovering hidden enemies.

Definitely. I would love to reimplement the world map as a normal (although small) level through which you normally move, and have the option or are sometimes forced to enter a map that you’re standing on.

The first change is that the player no longer chooses a starting tile on the world map. Instead, the start tile is in the center of the map, but they can still reroll the map to fine one they like. However, they will not be able to see every enemy or ally position on the map. Instead, the map will have a fog of war. As the game progresses they will be able to explore out from the starting tile to reveal the fog of war.

This sounds like the new campaign mode in Alpha21, minus the fog of war. I might implement that too at some point.

This brings me back to the idea of settling tiles. In this system the player would be able to settle multiple tiles, however at a high cost.

Sorry, nope :P, this would open a huge can of worms in terms of implementation and game design. And I don’t like the idea of building multiple bases simultaneously.

I would also simplify the resource system for crafting materials. Instead of storing wood, stone and iron on the ground, a single stockpile for each could be created in the dungeon.

I’m not sure how this would work. Does the player place the stockpile on the map or is it an abstract thing? What’s the gain of having only one?

These could then be used as part of the efficiency calculation for the manufactories.

How?

The advantage of this system of management is that it can reduce the tiles collected resources to a single variable. Then, from the world map (or other UI) the player could view their settlements at a glance and know what resources were available, without the system having to keep track of everything on the ground. (This may not be required, but it was a potential problem that I considered).

Tracking resources on the ground is not that hard (although it does eat some CPU, but there are ways to deal with that without changing the gameplay).

Along with this simplification, stone would no longer be tied to geology. Instead, every tile that is dug out will produce a small amount of stone.

I’ve thought about it before, but wouldn’t it make stone kind of useless in terms of gameplay? Why not just remove it then?

Now, for enemy mobs I would propose a tiered system (similar to the current lesser, greater villains) with four tiers of enemy mobs.

Why such a change? Is it to add more structure to the game, and give the player a better guide on the difficulties on the enemies? Mob difficulties are not explicitly defined in the game right now, so there would have to be a lot of guesswork about which enemy is which tier.

I would suggest that dragons will not come to attack the player’s settlements, but are much more difficult to defeat.
Attacking them should be a high risk/high reward scenario.

That might be a good idea. There will come a time to make the dragons more interesting, as opposed to simple buffed up enemies.

Also, the world map should not tell the player what kind of enemy they are going to encounter if they enter the tile. This could encourage scouting.

I don’t know, it stops the player from doing strategic thinking, if they can’t see the enemies in advance. I’d like to cover up some enemies/allies that are further out though, to add some unknowns to the game. Perhaps a simple fog of war would do.

My intent with these changes is to encourage exploration and provide a more uncertain starting experience. Additionally, the crafting and enemy drop changes would (I believe) shift the armaments of minions toward lower tier armor and weapons for the most part, giving the more powerful armor and weapons more value. This way finding or crafting a steel sword is an achievement and rewarding.

I also had the intention to force players to use more low level equipment (clubs, leather armor, etc), and reserve better equipment for a few chosen minions. This is why the high prices in workshops. But a lot of players seems to want to max out all equipment of all their minions, and they get frustrated about the lack of resources. Maybe there is something about the game that encourages this maxing-out behavior.

Meanwhile, the player could go out and defeat a tile full of dwarves. But, instead of murdering all of the dwarves and pillaging their dungeons, the player could enslave them. This could open up specific crafting capabilities. Perhaps dwarves are particularly good at crafting tier two or three weapons. They wouldn’t fight for you in battle, and you would have to maintain a military presence in their tile, but it could be a source of valuable arms.

Hmm, so prisoners would work in workshops. That’s possible.

The Portal

I like the idea a lot, it gives the game more story, and ads some tension to the end game. I don’t think I could add a 2×2 enemy to the game at this point, but I could think of something really powerful. Would it be a monster or some kind of ultra strong white knight? Perhaps another keeper / his former master?

I’m not sure if we should force the player to control the keeper in that battle? He might not have planned for this, and not leveled up and equipped his keeper.

libraries could use tiered furniture as well. Currently training dummies have tiers, but libraries don’t. Perhaps have bookshelves, orbs of knowledge, and obelisks of power.

Sure. Would the other tiers have different totally usages or just generate mana / teach spells faster?

allow keepers to hire adventurers. This could switch the player into adventure mode to assault a retired dungeon. You could provide the adventurer with items, weapons, armor and send them to a retired dungeon that you have already discovered.

I’m not sure if this adds much over simply using your own minions to raid enemies?

Between this and the ability to create and specify a specific dungeon to retire, players could create unique experiences for adventurers separate from the necessities of the standard game. This allows narratives to be created with creative use of the building tools. Special doors could be crafted that can only be accessed by adventurers, possibly by meeting specific criteria as well. Perhaps even allowing the creation of puzzles.

I would add a separate game mode for this, it does sound pretty interesting.

I would love to be able to create keepers with different specialties. This could be selected at character creation, or through leveling up specific skills (though it should limit you to a specific path if it’s in game). What I would like to have is a beastmaster build that gets bonuses to creatures. I’ve tried doing this in the game as-is and haven’t been able to have a successful dungeon using primarily beasts. I would also like something similar along the lines of a necromancer. Perhaps some kind of brawler/fighter as well. The idea is to have a variety of viable paths to success.

I’ve been thinking of this for a long time, and I think that at this point the game needs a bit more content and more interesting paths of advancement before I add this kind of specialization. I also don’t know if players would prefer to play as specialist keepers, as opposed to a generalist that can access all paths.

Adding icons to the activity feed to make it easier to see what is going on at a glance. Perhaps even color coding them. Clicking on them could even move the camera to the event, or open an appropriate UI.

They already do move the camera (at least the ones with the ➚ icon).

Allow players to set default actions for a class of minions. For instance, allow me to set goblins to never train by default.

Yeah, this is planned, I just need to design and implement a good UI for this.

Currently the keeper will level up four times from combat. However, he is als capped to level 17 through training dummies. These are not independent, however, so a keeper who levels up before he’s maxed out training will be limited. That is to say, if a keeper levels up through combat before level 17, they will not be able to go any higher. However, if they avoid combat until after training to 17, they can get to level 21. This discourages the use of the keeper in combat in the early game. (may be intended)

I think you got this wrong. The leveling paths are independent, so you can level up first through training and the by combat, or vice versa. The effect will be the same.

Well, that’s some of the ideas I’ve had while playing through the game and redrawing all of the sprites. My apologies for the wall of text. I really enjoy the game and appreciate all of the work that goes into it. Many of these ideas, I’m sure, are well outside of the intended direction and scope of the game. My intent is just to put them out there, to see if anything sticks. I would also love any feedback on these ideas.

Thanks a lot for writing this! The ideas are good, and even if I don’t use them, they encouraged some creative and critical thinking on my side, which is sometimes hard after so many years of working on the game.

[Corran Horn]

Thanks for the response. As I said, my intent was just to put out some potential ideas to spark new pathways.

 

Sorry, nope :P, this would open a huge can of worms in terms of implementation and game design.

That was my feeling as well as this would greatly increase the meta-strategy of the game. I think that it’s an overly complicated solution to a problem that I encountered in the game. That problem being, at times I find myself under attack from a force that I know will defeat me. However, recognizing and understanding that I’m strategically outmatched does not provide me any pathway to success. This is, in a very complicated way, an attempt to create a pathway to retreat, regroup, and retake a position that has been overrun.

 

Does the player place the stockpile on the map or is it an abstract thing? What’s the gain of having only one?

What I was thinking was that the stockpile would be a piece of furniture placed by the player. Each resource (wood, stone, iron) would have it’s own stockpile. The proximity of the stockpile to the workbench would effect the efficiency of production. One of the reasons I like this approach is that currently the most efficient layout for workbenches (as well as libraries and training dummies) requires floors on all four sides. This limits the way that they can be placed in a room. It’s inefficient to create interesting layouts with workbenches against walls in a way that may make sense in the real world.

 

I’ve thought about it before, but wouldn’t it make stone kind of useless in terms of gameplay? Why not just remove it then?

I can see this argument, but I think that the same can be said of wood. Currently, wood is more of a chore that eats up imps time. You will run out of things to build long before you exhaust the supply of wood on a map. Perhaps the problem is that wood is used for too many things that become trivial to make. For instance, I’ve found that cranking out leather gloves is good because they cost nearly nothing and have no upgraded variant in iron or steel. I think that this could be addressed, to some extent by requiring specific reagents for crafting some items. For instance, using mushrooms in potion crafting and potions or scrolls in traps. Then, the base components of wood and stone could be abundant without allowing for run away production. As far as leather armor goes, I think that a leather resource could easily be implemented as a drop from killing certain non-hostile and hostile mobs. Additionally (and I’m not sure if this is how it works now) the home zone would likely need to regenerate non-hostile mobs from time to time.

I can see this bringing us back to “why not just get rid of wood and stone?” I admit that it’s a difficult question. The answer, I believe is in providing goals that require large amounts of these materials to achieve. Essentially sinks that can be worked towards and will deplete large stockpiles. Boulder traps are a good example of this. If you are getting stone from digging, a boulder trap should cost the equivalent of clearing a large portion of a normal dungeon. More of these traps should require specific consideration to expansion for the purpose of generating stone. Wood could have an equivalent sink. Currently wood is used in so many things, but no one thing is a large investment (to the point that it’s even a consideration). Perhaps limiting the supply of wood, or increasing the price of producing some items could help with this.

 

Why such a change? Is it to add more structure to the game, and give the player a better guide on the difficulties on the enemies? Mob difficulties are not explicitly defined in the game right now, so there would have to be a lot of guesswork about which enemy is which tier.

Part of the idea here is to smooth out the difficulty curve when facing enemies while also providing more information to the player about what they should expect from enemies without necessarily spelling everything out. By placing low difficulty enemies in close proximity and high difficulty enemies at the outer reaches, the player is able to control their progression in an intuitive way. I do think that obscuring the most difficult enemies would make the end-game more interesting because you would have to prepare for anything. For the most part, choosing a map is more about setting up a good starting location than determining an end point.

 

Would the other tiers have different totally usages or just generate mana / teach spells faster?

The tiered libraries could unlock different levels of spells, similar to how workshops work, as well as speed up mana generation.

 

I’m not sure if this adds much over simply using your own minions to raid enemies?

Yeah, this would be a departure from the regular flow of gameplay. I’m not sure that it would work very well in that sense. My thinking is that this could create unique ways of infiltrating enemy keepers dungeons while rewarding that with items only obtainable by using strategy and subterfuge instead of just assaulting everything with a more powerful force. I’m sure that the same thing could be accomplished with minions. Perhaps some minions could have unique abilities that open up this kind of gameplay.

 

They already do move the camera (at least the ones with the ➚ icon).

Yes, I may have misstated what I meant here. This idea comes in two parts. First, by providing iconographic cues, the player can quickly assess what is going on. This is similar to games like Counter Strike where kill notifications simply, and quickly, inform the player of important events. The second part is an extension of the ➚ function, in that clicking on certain events could trigger appropriate UI responses. For instance, if a goblin produces a new weapon, clicking on the notification could open the production queue or perhaps an equipment screen showing which minions are assigned which weapons/armor, where the player can manage who has what.

 

I think you got this wrong. The leveling paths are independent, so you can level up first through training and the by combat, or vice versa. The effect will be the same.

I may have this wrong. I’ll test this again.

 
-Z

[Corran Horn]

Currently the keeper will level up four times from combat. However, he is als capped to level 17 through training dummies. These are not independent, however, so a keeper who levels up before he’s maxed out training will be limited. That is to say, if a keeper levels up through combat before level 17, they will not be able to go any higher. However, if they avoid combat until after training to 17, they can get to level 21. This discourages the use of the keeper in combat in the early game. (may be intended)

I think you got this wrong. The leveling paths are independent, so you can level up first through training and the by combat, or vice versa. The effect will be the same.

I ran a test of this and you are correct. I’m not sure where I got the idea that it was working differently. I could have sworn I’d had keepers capping out at level 19 and 20. I ran a test where I leveled up my keeper through combat only to level 9, then up to 21 through training without any problem. Just wanted to let you know that this definitely isn’t an issue. My bad.

[Michal Brzozowski]

Well actually there is a small issue here, if you want to do the opposite: first level by training, and then by combat, because a highly trained creature will not gain much experience from killing a low level monster, which it would get if it had done combat training first.

[Corran Horn]

I’m just wondering, have you considered making the keeper have to train spells the same way minions have to? Currently just getting access to all of the spells when you unlock the next tier seems a bit odd to me.

[Keeperman]

I was thinking that perhaps instant spell access would be a trait of the warlock character. So if we get warrior keepers they won’t get spells at all. There could be a werewolf keeper character that gets spells but has to learn them like everyone else. His night vision is good though and stealth.

[owen]

I like the idea of progressing through the world map to unlock a portal. It gives the campaign more structure than what exists now, and a portal to the netherworlds fits the game thematically.

[owen]

I also like the idea of mining stone from the mountain instead of from little patches. Corran is right when he says that harvesting wood consumes imp time more than anything else. But I don’t think that this is a bad thing, because time is a resource, too. So, I don’t think this would make stone “useless in terms of gameplay,” if the amount that one stone tile yields is made proportionately small.

Also, regarding imp time, I think that imps could collect more efficiently than they currently do. If they can carry infinite amounts of stuff, then they shouldn’t make a trip back for each thing they pick up.

• This reply was modified 7 years, 1 month ago by owen.

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