couple suggestions

[owen]

1. Worker recall button / spell. Could we have a button that automatically recalls workers into the library, throne or some other location?

2. I like the addition of hard and soft stone. I’m wondering if you could experiment with even more intricate, labrynthine patterns in the mountain, including maybe even some un-diggable stone. I feel like dungeon construction is still a strategic avenue that hasn’t been explored much.

[Michal Brzozowski]

1. Sure, noted down.

2. I’ve been thinking about this a lot, and I’ve looked at maps in other games like Dungeon Keeper but I don’t have any solid ideas on how to do it using procedural generation. There is also a problem with fog of war. For example underground bodies of water would add nice variation and allow more interesting designs, but only if you could see them in advance instead of bumping into them randomly. Same thing if there were more complicated stone patterns.

Do you know any games with PG that I could look at?

[owen]

I don’t know of any games, but I think that a simple cellular automata based generator would produce cave-like veins. For example, in the picture below, the white could be empty or soft stone and the black could be hard stone or undiggable stone.

I think that a perlin noise generator would work, too, as they often are used for natural-looking patterns.

In either case, this phase would just generate the veins in the rock. The rest of the features of the mountain (lava, water, lairs with existing tribes, etc) would just be dug out from whatever this cave-vein-generation phase creates using the existing algorithms you have.

Reason behind this is that I don’t think it’s interesting to dig a dungeon from a blank canvas every single game, it’s too easy. There was a good post on the Steam forums a few months back by some other guy that echoed a similar sentiment.

As for seeing stuff in advance, the system that exists now, seeing two or three squares into the blackness, seems to work well enough.

[Michal Brzozowski]

If that’s just soft vs hard rock, then this wouldn’t add much to the gameplay. I think something that could work would be patches or other shapes of undiggable rock not covered by fog of war. Same with bodies of water. Then you could really have some fun with planning your dungeon. If obstacles are visible only from 2-3 squares away then you’ll get lots of frustration trying to lay out your rooms.

[owen]

Yeah, that’s true. I just want something that adds more strategy to digging and dungeon design. More undiggable rocks and cave-rivers would help in that regard.

[Honfo]

I would like to start by saying, excellent idea and excellent game! The artwork is also incredibly nostalgic.

For the most part I’m not a big fan of Rogue-like games because of their linearity and they’re usually all the same, but your game brings a bit more depth into it and I am quite impressed.

There are some fairly quick ceilings to be reached though.

A way to make the game endless is to have the ability to expand your base and create multiple dungeons in the same “world” choosing new locations to create different dungeons. You would have your main dungeon then ancillary dungeons in different instances; basically making the entire map truly conquerable.

Very much enjoyed the first few playthroughs, looking forward to new content!

[Michal Brzozowski]

Hi Honfo, I’m glad you like the game 🙂

Your idea has been floating around for a long time, but I never figured out how to implement it meaningfully, so that you don’t end up just building a similar dungeon on every map.

In any case, that ship has sailed, I’m not going to make such drastic changes to the game at this point.

Sorry for the late reply.

[ColdEnd]

Michal Brzozowski wrote:

2. I’ve been thinking about this a lot, and I’ve looked at maps in other games like Dungeon Keeper but I don’t have any solid ideas on how to do it using procedural generation. There is also a problem with fog of war. For example underground bodies of water would add nice variation and allow more interesting designs, but only if you could see them in advance instead of bumping into them randomly. Same thing if there were more complicated stone patterns.

Do you know any games with PG that I could look at?

Have you looked at Terraria? Side scroll vs. top down shouldn’t make much difference. There appear to be rules surrounding the way differing blocks transition between one another naturally.

[Author]

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