Regarding the demographics of dungeons....

[Momaw]

Something Julian wrote recently was that an adventurer might spend 75%
of their time fighting things of /preparing/ to fight things, in the
course of their career. Which brought to mind an old brainstorm I
once had about the types of creatures you usually find in the game.
Currently in Incursion, the monsters you find are more or less
completely random, with a slight nudge on each level biased toward the
types of rooms. So if there's an elemental chamber you get more
elementals, which is sensible. The problem is that just down the hall
is a crypt full of undead, and over there is a shrine full of demon
worshippers, and over there a forest full of carnivorous animals.

All of this variety makes it very hard to effectively anticipate what
threats you are about to face in a given area. To make best use of any
special items you have, you're constantly swapping between different
types of protection and bonuses. The hero/ine is forced to be like
some obsessive-compulsive stylist that can only fight certain monsters
in certain outfits, if they want to make best use of the equipment
they have won.

So, I'd like to table a suggestion that would change that. Basically
monster type in a given dungeon should be given an overall type, and
the population should adhere to that type with only transient
excursions into special sub-populations related to the primary type.
A given dungeon might be populated by goblins, with pockets of demon
worshippers. Or it might be filled with undead and pockets of
necromancers.

This would then enable a more "preparation-oriented" style of
equipment use, where once you knew what types of enemies you faced in
a given area you could then equip yourself with the items most likely
to be of use to you in that place. As a related benefit, it allows a
much less generous awarding of special magical equipment, since now
those anti-skid boots have a very obvious role and you'll want to hang
onto them in case you need to visit an ice cavern. Every little ring
and amulet which we currently cast aside as being pretty much
pointless inventory weight in the face of universally applicable items
that given general benefits would now have a reason to accumulate and
be used at some point.

Discuss!

[Frumple]

*waves hand vaguely* As I remember it, you've basically got more or
less what Mistah J's planning for the finished game; maybe even some
implementation in the relatively near development future (Some
discussion of themed side levels and such). So you're on the right
track and all, heh.

I'm looking forward to it, myself, but don't really have anything else
to add beyond that. Considering how much more consistent Inc's
monsters tend to be among critter families than many RLs, it'll make
for an impressive contrast in any case.

[Juho Pohjalainen]

The way I've seen it, what we have right now is nothing more than a
demo, to which Julian has tried to cram as much variety and features
as possible, in order to give an idea of what the full game will have.
Likely, the finished product will be far more consistant.

[Julian Mensch]

To third Frumple and Juho, what Momaw describes is exactly
what I'm planning. I /know/ Incursion currently has the rainbow
kaliedoscope chaos fruit salad dungeon. I don't mind that --
NetHack gets away with it, after all -- but there's definitely going
to be more coherency to settings in the future.

I'm not sure that the final game won't have (at least some degree
of) "fruit salad dungeon" in some locations, just because they're
cool (and because, as I've said before, Incursion simulates D&D in
it's silly as well as serious aspects, with tongue subtly in cheek),
but there will also be a lot of themed locations like whole-level
undead crypts beneath a city, abandoned temples full of cultists
and their summoned monsters, sylvan forests full of elves, centaurs,
etc. and so forth, on the general formula of "one or more intelligent,
allied races in the habitat they belong with thematically linked
beastial monsters as guards/pets/cohabitants/etc."

I don't think I can hide behind the "just a demo" thing in terms of
quality appraisal, though. A flaw is a flaw, and I know Incursion
has more than a handful, and it's been out now long enough that
"just a demo" doesn't really justify them -- which, again, is part of
the reason I started the big refactoring.

[Momaw]

Ha, well, okay. Sorry for being redundant then. :P