Dungeon Design Fun.

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.

Have you seen cube?

Anyway, you could make it more frustrating by adding mirrors and glass. They'd still be breakable, but you'd get confused and stuff. Mabye the walls could keep shifting around until they've built themselves into a big..rock monster? I dunno.

Have you read Pages of Pain by Troy Denning? It's a novel set in the Planescape setting and is, in my opinion, better than any other D&D novel. It's much more of an existential book than a classic 'adventure' so I would have to recommend it to you - it's a pretty good read.

The book is pretty much set in a maze - one of the Lady's creations, and is a lot like what you just described.

Wow, that is a great idea. I liked it when you first mentioned it briefly in the other thread, and was pleasantly surprised to find a well-developed idea here. It's very, very good.

The concept of constantly shifting environment is filled with possibilities.

Imagine, you went through a dungeon, killed all incompetent guards, took what you came for, and started to go back without paying much attention when *surprise* you end up in room with a much more competent thingy while you are wounded and overloaded with junk. It makes sense too, from dungeon keeping point of view, you let the easily replacable guards deal with adventureres killing the stupid ones and wearing down the tough ones. You can even observe their style and shift the maze accordingly. All fighters? Put them in a narrow passage forcing them to fight one at a time. Like to cast fireballs? I think we have a couple of fire elementals in aisle 7

I like that you mentioned maintenance. It could open up bypasses, tunnels, switches, etc, if you know where to look and have skills to handle. That was the thing I liked from DM where you could find a maintenance access to mechanical traps in a passage and disarm them. It adds realism to the maze as one of the things that a smart character should look into first is how does it work and what I can do about it.

There should be more flavour things like running in circles (imagine players' surprise when they take different passages, follow different routes and still end up in the main hall), decoys (already looted throne rooms), true and false maps (obviously, true maps would show only a small area and could show all paths, the current path, or maintenance access and passages), powerful illusions (you see an earthquake filling the passage with rubble, but if you come back later the passage is fine), etc.

I agree such a maze could easily become an entire game setting much like the temple is the focus of ToEE. I like your idea on the lost people ignored by the maze starting up stores and trying to make a living by selling maps, acting as guides in the known parts of the maze, etc. Throw in mad engineers who forgot the original purpose and act as local lords controlling the denizens and fighting against other local barons and chieftans, conscripting everyone who passes through into an army.

As for the reason of being there, surely such a wondrous thing as the Maze must contain untold riches, ancient knowledge, artifacts forged when the world was created, and power, pure and true power, the real deal :twisted: Of course, nobody has ever returned to confirm these rumors just as nobody from the Maze has ever tried to communicate with the rest of the world. Every passing decade brings forth the rumors that the Maze's lord and his servants are dead, and eventually bands of adventurers and various expeditions enter the dark halls and vanish never to be seen again. The rumors are out there again, fighting common sense, and pushing brave, foolish, and desperate together, driving them into a frenzy with a simpe question "What is out there?"

Would the floor move?

I like the idea of a community inside the maze. Mabye some merchants have tried to chain walls together and he can keep track of his room in case he turns around? Unless they travel. If the walls moved on rails, perhaps there could be some from of vechile travelling along for maintenance?

I don't see why it couldn't be multi-floored, mabye the floors could fold around each other too? Might be intresting to fall from one level to another then fall again back on your original level. Would be a bit confusing though, but if you're going to have moving walls, why not floors?

You could have low corridors usable only by halflings and ewoks.
Maybe also different patterns on the walls, pretending to give clues about the rules governing the walls' movement. Or maybe really giving them, if the movement isn't random.
There could be a sect awaiting the Coming of the Scarlet Wall. A madman predicts that according to his complicated calculations a certain wall section is due to reveal itself in a certain place. Of course, it is to open a path to eternal happiness / salvation etc., if only the right words are spoken... and the formula is lost.

I also read "Pages of Pain". I liked the idea very much, but the language of the Polish translation was horrible.

EDT: OMG, I wrote "Pages of Pane"

Elwro said:

Maybe also different patterns on the walls, pretending to give clues about the rules governing the walls' movement.

Click to expand...

Or marks left by those who came before you and tried to figure out correct pattern that opens the way. Whether it was supposed to be the way in or out is unknown.

The really fun part of all of this is that I don't think that it has actually been done in a CRPG before. In answer to your above questions, Exitium and Megatron, I have neither seen Cube no read Pages of Pain, the idea mainly came from as an offshoot from thinking about how destructible walls could be handled as entities, and got itself carried away into the thousand word behemoth that I authored above.

Onto the technical (and less game setting integral) part of this design. I touched upon the maze changing only when you weren't able to see in my earlier post, and I'd like to go into a bit more depth about it here. A possible way to do this would be to seperate the maze into modules. If we're talking a traditional isometric/top-down CRPG, this would probably be the most beneficial, and the character could only see that which is directly around them. Problems with this would be the maze reordering itself as soon as the player leaves one module into the next, and this would possibly allow the player to see the changes.

Instead, I think that the solution lies in the maze changing based on distance from the player. So, basically, this says that the maze will constantly be changing past a certain radius from the player. This isn't entirely optimal either, as it would quite possibly require a monstrous amount of processing power. So how about we stop the maze changing after a certain distance that is greater that the distance from which it starts changing. So, we have this donut shaped area of the maze that is centered on the player, that moves the walls around.

I'm not entirely sure how well this would work, since my programming knowledge is pretty much limited to the boring and basic number crunching that we all(well, some of us, at least) know and love. The algorithim required for changing the walls would likely be fairly complex, as it would have to handle situations such as not trapping the player into a box, and not making the maze look completely stupid ie: huge open spaces. In a sense, the algorithim would work in a similar fashion to the random level generator seen in Diablo and Nethack (although I'm loathe to mention Nethack as the number of times I've ended up with a level with no way down is slighly obscene).

Static locations. Earlier, we mentioned the idea of shops and communities. These would likely to be hand scripted locales, as would be the general idea of random encounters. The question before us now is whether the locales should be static or not. I'm of two minds about this. It is possible to work with these locations being dynamic, but that brings about some game design issues. Going back to town after a long dungeon crawl is a standard element in most CRPG's. In just about every CRPG, you know exactly where town is and how to get there without too much trouble. In the maze, town could be anywhere, behind that next wall there, or over the other side of the maze. Mabye behind you one minute, and in front of you the next, without you having to turn around at all. The issue here is that a player would probably want some degree of certainty that the can find their way back to safety. To save their game, rest, recuperate, and heal. If that place can't be found easily, it's likely to lead to issues of player frustration. With the idea of random encounters such as engineers/caretakers and clues for escape/quests, I would like these to be non-static locations, as to drum into the player that the maze is ever-changing.

For fun, I'd like to clarify a few points on the setting of the maze. Most of you seem to be thinking/assuming that the maze belongs in a fantasy setting. The fun part in that it doesn't necessarily have to be. The maze could just as easily be translated to the lair of some mega rich and evil cyber tycoon as it could refer to the plaything of some ancient wizard/illusionist/sorcerer/magickal bad guy. This is good because, since the idea is so easily adaptable, it could be worked into just about any CRPG. I wonder if I can sue if I see the idea implemented in the fashion that I describe here...

Anyway, one last thing, about multi levels in the maze, or as I'll call it, The Third Dimension... of PAIN! <<insert evil cackling here>>. As a dungeon keeper, I'd absolutely love the idea of the third dimension of pain, especially if it got rid of those pesky heroes more efficiently. As a game designer, I know that even the above average in the mental department have enough trouble with two dimensional mazes, so implementing a third would just cause a shitload more confusion. Hell, my head hurts even thinking about it.

All right, that's all for now. Stay tuned for tomorrows 12AM update, if I can be bothered with it...

I do think that an entire game based on this maze world would be totally sweet. Don't you guys think so too?

Deathy said:

The algorithim required for changing the walls would likely be fairly complex, as it would have to handle situations such as not trapping the player into a box, and not making the maze look completely stupid. In a sense, the algorithim would work in a similar fashion to the random level generator seen in Diablo and Nethack

Click to expand...

I think that the maze should not respond randomly. All actions should have a reason which could or could not be obvious to players and these actions should respond logically to players' actions and locations, randomizing only the path to a specific location. If the maze is a techno thingy it could have commands set by its original creator, temporary commands used by maintenance crews, commands set by local lords, hacks used by adventurers, etc. Here are some examples of potential responses:

- lead to the entrance
- lead to the entrance (express way – the maze opens up a direct passage, useful after an area is explored and taken under player’s control)
- lead to [insert location]
- run in circles
- split the group
- remove advantage (see my example in the previous post)
- activate/deactivate traps
- grant audience
- set up an ambush, etc
- shift (would create minor changes blocking some passages and opening other ways around)

If these actions are not random but follow some logic, time, and pattern, that would motivate players to understand the maze, time it, learn the patterns and figure out the logic and ultimately predict the maze. It’s always nice being one step ahead. :wink: That would add value to the efforts of those who came before you and spend years and lifetimes to figure the maze out.

Static locations. Earlier, we mentioned the idea of shops and communities. These would likely to be hand scripted locales, as would be the general idea of random encounters. The question before us now is whether the locales should be static or not. I'm of two minds about this. It is possible to work with these locations being dynamic, but that brings about some game design issues.

Click to expand...

I vote for static. Everything should be static but the path. Unless the maze has a reason to seriously mess with you, minor shifts should not be able to keep players from communities’ locations for long. Think in term of driving and making a wrong turn, you are suddenly lost and some streets can be blocked or lead away, but if you know your target's general direction, you would reach it eventually. Problems start when you don't know where to go and what's out there.

With the idea of random encounters such as engineers/caretakers and clues for escape/quests, I would like these to be non-static locations, as to drum into the player that the maze is ever-changing.

Click to expand...

Absolutely.

For fun, I'd like to clarify a few points on the setting of the maze. Most of you seem to be thinking/assuming that the maze belongs in a fantasy setting. The fun part in that it doesn't necessarily have to be.

Click to expand...

I agree, it could be anything. Techno is cool though.

Tonight I think that I'll jot down a few thoughts about quests and encounters in what will henceforth be known as "The Maze of Doom" unless someone can think of a less cliched and more apt name (likely).

An encounter that has the player character / party stumble across a dead engineer. This engineer would have on him a journal and a broken controller device for the maze. Basically, what happened to the engineer was that he was down in the bowels of the maze doing some routine maintenance (resetting traps, greasing the rails on which the doors slide, replacing broken motors etc) and his controller device broke down. Having no way to repair the broken device, as the spare parts he needs are not readily availible, the engineer starves to death, as the big bad boss expects that he was taken and killed by the fearsome natives. The device he left behind is unable to be repaired without certain rare parts, and only after a long and difficult search will the player be able to find them. However, this device will not be able to be restored to its full functionality, and be able to determine what the maze is doing, and once in a while tell the maze to lead to a certain location. In any case, the player has stumbled across an incredibly useful device, even if it is not fully functional.

This and any other engineer related encounter leads to the necessity of explaining the role of the engineer in a clear way.
The engineers are pretty much caretakers. Perhaps they are descended from the builder and designer of the maze, maybe they are a race of supernatural beings that created the maze as a tribute to their trickster God. Could be that they have their own community within some secluded area of the maze, and since they control all of the comings and goings, nobody has ever seen it. Anyway, we don't see any of that (yet). At the moment, all we see is the odd corpse of the engineers, or, if we're incredibly observant, the average living one going about their daily business, which would include keeping the maze, traps and moving walls included, in working order, setting up ambushes for people that they are concerned might stumbe across something they shouldn't and maybe some janitor style work; keeping the maze as clean as they possibly can.

This description of the Engineers can lead to some interesting quests. One that pops to mind easily is where the player in charged with finding out the secret of the Engineers or something similar such as breaking into the Engineer city and stealing their most prized possession: the Escape Device. Another quest that comes to mind is one where a living Engineer has to be captured, so that a scientist or the fantasy equivalent can analyse the creature to see what it really is.

In conclusion of tonights post, I think that this idea would make a really interesting setting for a game, and when I learn a bit more about programming and have enough free time to try it, I definitely will.

For those who haven't seen cube (spoilers ahead), it's about these people waking up inside these large rooms with an exit in the middle of each wall, floor and ceiling. Some rooms had traps, some had traps during different enviroments etc. The rooms also changed around, so you're in a room with 6 exits with each exit leading to a new room every 5 minutes. Think of like a rubix cube, except the construction was thousands of cubes wide and long.

Anyway, would the player be able to see the rails? Would the maze be grid based? Would it have a roof? Could the player try and jam something into a rail so engineers come to see what the problem is or something, and the player could follow them?

I like the idea of claustraphobic tunnels. I've been reading a lot of books about Vietnam war vets who would tell these gruesome stories about tunnel rats(that is, soldiers who went down into VC tunnel networks). Something about being in a defensless position in a dim, cramped place has quite a horror appeal to it.

Also, maybe it's just me, but things that haunt you continuosly also seem like a great motivation. I remember that back in the days of Mario 2, nothing would scare the crap out of me faster than having to outrun one of those floating mask things. Not only was it creepy, the fact that it was invincible and chased me even as I jumped rooms seriously made me twitch.

As for the maze, it could be the prison. A really sadistic one, somewhat like the Running Man. It may have an intentional exit, or maybe the warden would just amuse himself by watching his prisoners run around before giving up. The prison would have to be decomisioned, and they just let whoever was still in it stay there. They'd be the guys who make the communities. Time has passed over the prison, and so while some of the traps may still work and the walls still slide, other traps would just make horrid mechanical sounds and every flaw would be exploited by the prisoner-community.

Deathy said:

(although I'm loathe to mention Nethack as the number of times I've ended up with a level with no way down is slighly obscene)

Click to expand...

Are you sure there's no way down? I know it took me a long time before I realized there were hidden doors that you had to 's'earch for.

evil overlord

The person who commisioned or built this labrynth (it really brings to mind the old myths of the minotaur and the maze only more metallic and post modern) could be a political dictator who fashioned it for his opposition. There's also the possibility that a diety of pain and/or suffering crafted it as either a punishment for the unfaithful, a haven and place of worship for the faithful, or maybe a little of both. If my ideas seems silly it's most likely because I'm in need of sleep. goodnight.

Deathy said:

A possible way to do this would be to seperate the maze into modules.
Instead, I think that the solution lies in the maze changing based on distance from the player.

Click to expand...

Myst: Book of D'ni, Part 4:

The entertainment is a game, a three dimensional, life-sized maze through which a contestant must find their way. The player enters a room through a low door and has the choice of other doors either through wall, floor, or ceiling, but they must make their choice within thirty seconds or all the doors close. Marrim is the first to attempt the maze. To complicate things the rooms turn, but beginning to remember where she had been, and choosing the simplest path, Marrim emerges into a domed room full of guests. Ro'Jadre congratulates her for finding her way so quickly and explains that sometimes players are lost for days. After Atrus comes through, Ro'Jadre explains that the maze is never the same way twice. The excitement of the game can be intensified by the shortening of the choosing time. After all have emerged, Marrim indicates her interest in trying the maze again with a ten second choosing time. Ro'Jadre spices up the event further by making it a race between Eedrah and Marrim. Eedrah seems reluctant, but grudgingly concedes to participate. The steward Tuure escorts them to the maze with a set time of 12 seconds for choosing. Surprised by the physical demand of the 12 second limit, Marrim emerges to discover that she has just beat Eedrah, whose face is displaying an expression of sorrow. Silently, he hurries away.

....

Marrim walks into the library to find Eedrah. Ymur's accusations still resonating with him, Eedrah is convinced of his culpability by virtue of simply being one of the Terahnee. Bitterly, he feels he deserves to die, that his great sin of omission was to be silent while the relyimah (slaves) suffered. He reminds Marrim of the maze, and in stunned horror she hears him say that it was run by relyimah (slaves) pulling on great cogs and wheels to turn the rooms in a short time span. Her fun that day may have caused the trampling of those who could not keep up. She has the deaths of those killed during that game on her conscience, while he has a lifetime of dead and suffering relyimah on his.


Make your game more interesting Deathy. Kill people as well!