Deathy
Liturgist
- Joined
- Jun 15, 2002
- Messages
- 793
Out of boredom, and prompted by an idea I had concerning moving/destructible walls in CRPG's.
As a convienient and easy way of getting rid of his enemies, the Big Bad Boss(tm) has installed a nice trappy maze to drop his enemies into. At considerable expense, too, since this maze is a feat of engineering and/or magic, depending on the setting and/or the crooks bent.
Guess who gets dropped in there? Yup, thats right. You!
How you got there is pretty unimportant, since our focus today is on how the thing works.
The moving maze. Basically, the walls are on rails or somesuch (could even be a Geneforge-style Shaper creation, for that extra fun). So the walls can move around. This would either be in a random or entirely scripted fashion. One thing though. The player shouldn't see the walls move. If they can see them move, there is a possibility that a crafty/unlucky player could get caught between the moving walls, resulting in much pain. The exceptionally painful side of this would be the player that doesn't understand whats going on. The player that keeps backtracking when they get lost, thus making them even more lost, since the walls have moved into different positions. This kind of reminds me of old school CRPG mental anguish. Where the puzzle is so damn hard that you just want to scream and cry and smash the controller through the monitor. Which brings me to the next point.
Destructible walls. In order to make the maze from hell less daunting, walls will be somewhat destructible (since the big bad boss can't afford anything but drywall for his maze of doom). By somewhat, I mean that the boundary of the maze, and certain other walls, possibly for segmenting the maze, will be made of a material that you trusty sledgehammer/axe/Waraxe of Death +23/cutting torch can't chop/smash/cut their way through. Basically, this would keep the maze from being so easy as to let the player hack their way through to the objective, escape.
Get the foozle? Basically, there'd be some objective in the maze. Something to keep you going rather than just giving up and slitting your wrists in anguish. This could be either to get the foozle, kill the bad guy, save the princess, or simply escape, or maybe any number of these. There'd be a location in the maze, or maybe a number of locations, that would be objectives, and, as the maze is ever changing, these locations could move around as well. Know where the switch is to turn off the maze and open up the exits? Need the key. Trudge around the maze, looking for the key, then maze your way back to the switch, only to find that it's gone and you need to find it at some other seemingly random area of the map. Frustrating huh? Need a clue, you would.
Get a clue. All those interior decorators, engineers, and cronies that put the heads on spikes for your enjoyment and to keep the maze as workable as possible need to not get lost in the maze as they go about their daily business, livening the place up for visitors such as yourself, need a way to get around. Could it be sensory clues built into the maze itself? I can't think of anything that wouldn't be utterly obvious and pretty much ruin the experience. However, what if they had some kind of handheld device that showed them the way. Basically, it'd be possible to run into one of these cronies, and acquire the said device. It'd be good to do this when the player is in the middle of the Lost-O-Meter scale. Maybe as some encounter in a static place that the maze draws itself to in some way. Maybe as a trap that is referenced to by journals on corpses (Yay BioWare!). Not entirely crappy style, but plants to fool you into going for the device and getting your ass kicked by traps and monsters - Almost Head of Vecna style, except that the device is the real deal.
Traps, eh? What self respecting Dungeon Keeper wouldn't riddle their maze with traps to thwart invaders? There could be a variety of damaging but generally non-lethal traps such as arrows shooting from walls, fun acid sprays and all sorts of cliche traps. No collapsing floors, however, since this is a single level maze. Just imagine how agonizing a mulit-level maze is, the multiply it a hundredfold to account for the moving walls and you'll see why. Monsters/Robots every now and then too, just to keep the player interested (ie: not just wandering around in an ever changing deathtrap). No need for the maze to be devoid of life, though, just to keep the player interested and not contemplating suicide.
Non-player-characters. Let's not just leave ourselves with the monsters as the the only living/undead/robotic interaction in the maze. It could be nice to throw in a few NPC's to make things fun and exciting. Maybe the odd caretaker. Another lost soul, a plant from the big bad boss that tries to lead you to your doom, that type of thing. Adds the possibility of extra paths through the maze, ie: following a caretaker to learn about the maze and escape, getting clues of fellow lost souls. Maybe even have some enterprising young lost soul start up a store in an attempt to make a living (ratburger stand) It could be interesting to see an entire society spring up in the depths of this maze. Hell, it could even justify expanding the maze to an entire game setting.
Well, that about covers most of it, except for why you were thrown into the maze from hell, or why the evil overlord/big bad boss was insane enough to build a sprawling metropolis of pain to begin with,
Anyway, If you're still with me, criticize the design. Improve parts of it. Let's start a quality thread. Hell, even design your own dungeon of terror if you have to.
As a convienient and easy way of getting rid of his enemies, the Big Bad Boss(tm) has installed a nice trappy maze to drop his enemies into. At considerable expense, too, since this maze is a feat of engineering and/or magic, depending on the setting and/or the crooks bent.
Guess who gets dropped in there? Yup, thats right. You!
How you got there is pretty unimportant, since our focus today is on how the thing works.
The moving maze. Basically, the walls are on rails or somesuch (could even be a Geneforge-style Shaper creation, for that extra fun). So the walls can move around. This would either be in a random or entirely scripted fashion. One thing though. The player shouldn't see the walls move. If they can see them move, there is a possibility that a crafty/unlucky player could get caught between the moving walls, resulting in much pain. The exceptionally painful side of this would be the player that doesn't understand whats going on. The player that keeps backtracking when they get lost, thus making them even more lost, since the walls have moved into different positions. This kind of reminds me of old school CRPG mental anguish. Where the puzzle is so damn hard that you just want to scream and cry and smash the controller through the monitor. Which brings me to the next point.
Destructible walls. In order to make the maze from hell less daunting, walls will be somewhat destructible (since the big bad boss can't afford anything but drywall for his maze of doom). By somewhat, I mean that the boundary of the maze, and certain other walls, possibly for segmenting the maze, will be made of a material that you trusty sledgehammer/axe/Waraxe of Death +23/cutting torch can't chop/smash/cut their way through. Basically, this would keep the maze from being so easy as to let the player hack their way through to the objective, escape.
Get the foozle? Basically, there'd be some objective in the maze. Something to keep you going rather than just giving up and slitting your wrists in anguish. This could be either to get the foozle, kill the bad guy, save the princess, or simply escape, or maybe any number of these. There'd be a location in the maze, or maybe a number of locations, that would be objectives, and, as the maze is ever changing, these locations could move around as well. Know where the switch is to turn off the maze and open up the exits? Need the key. Trudge around the maze, looking for the key, then maze your way back to the switch, only to find that it's gone and you need to find it at some other seemingly random area of the map. Frustrating huh? Need a clue, you would.
Get a clue. All those interior decorators, engineers, and cronies that put the heads on spikes for your enjoyment and to keep the maze as workable as possible need to not get lost in the maze as they go about their daily business, livening the place up for visitors such as yourself, need a way to get around. Could it be sensory clues built into the maze itself? I can't think of anything that wouldn't be utterly obvious and pretty much ruin the experience. However, what if they had some kind of handheld device that showed them the way. Basically, it'd be possible to run into one of these cronies, and acquire the said device. It'd be good to do this when the player is in the middle of the Lost-O-Meter scale. Maybe as some encounter in a static place that the maze draws itself to in some way. Maybe as a trap that is referenced to by journals on corpses (Yay BioWare!). Not entirely crappy style, but plants to fool you into going for the device and getting your ass kicked by traps and monsters - Almost Head of Vecna style, except that the device is the real deal.
Traps, eh? What self respecting Dungeon Keeper wouldn't riddle their maze with traps to thwart invaders? There could be a variety of damaging but generally non-lethal traps such as arrows shooting from walls, fun acid sprays and all sorts of cliche traps. No collapsing floors, however, since this is a single level maze. Just imagine how agonizing a mulit-level maze is, the multiply it a hundredfold to account for the moving walls and you'll see why. Monsters/Robots every now and then too, just to keep the player interested (ie: not just wandering around in an ever changing deathtrap). No need for the maze to be devoid of life, though, just to keep the player interested and not contemplating suicide.
Non-player-characters. Let's not just leave ourselves with the monsters as the the only living/undead/robotic interaction in the maze. It could be nice to throw in a few NPC's to make things fun and exciting. Maybe the odd caretaker. Another lost soul, a plant from the big bad boss that tries to lead you to your doom, that type of thing. Adds the possibility of extra paths through the maze, ie: following a caretaker to learn about the maze and escape, getting clues of fellow lost souls. Maybe even have some enterprising young lost soul start up a store in an attempt to make a living (ratburger stand) It could be interesting to see an entire society spring up in the depths of this maze. Hell, it could even justify expanding the maze to an entire game setting.
Well, that about covers most of it, except for why you were thrown into the maze from hell, or why the evil overlord/big bad boss was insane enough to build a sprawling metropolis of pain to begin with,
Anyway, If you're still with me, criticize the design. Improve parts of it. Let's start a quality thread. Hell, even design your own dungeon of terror if you have to.