Wilderness Maps
Malorzean
However, I would argue that it is bad for the game. So, here goes:
1 - It produces very ugly terrains. Most people use wilderness map
generation and then create the local maps after. This is ugly. It
makes things look blocky.
2 - It stops continuity and destroys the possibility for *real*
exploration. If the player is constantly moving through the wilderness
map, then there are only a few areas which warrant exploration.
However, if the player travels through a local map, they can find
things like a farm or a cottage or even a hidden dungeon. This could
make a game very enjoyable.
3 - It limits sites to the local map size. Towns are smaller than they
could be etc. On the flipside, it forces certain sites to be *too*
large, to fill up a screen.
4 - It makes handling effects in far away places harder.
Some people will argue that it takes up too much in terms of
resources. Now: a wilderness map if it was turned into local map cells
might be 1000x1000. A wilderness map can be (e.g. ADOM) 25x80. Say
only 1 byte per cell and we find that to represent it, it takes 2 GB.
But, given the rate that RAM is getting bigger (doubling every 2
years), while this may represent 50% of todays ram, in 4 years it will
be 10%. And we can serialise it. We only need to load areas where
people are.
The next argument is it is too boring to walk around. However, an
innovative response can reduce that boredom immensely. Take
Incursion's run system. It allows you to zoom out on the map. Say you
were to apply that to this system, you could zoom out to any level you
wished and attempt to move somewhere, assuming you could see it. Thus
people would not be bored but would still have the chance to discover
things.
Thoughts?
Malorzean
I Own The Letter O
I haven't implemented this yet so it's only an idea. (I'm learning my
skills with a coffee-break sized Rogue then will attempt a more epic
one). I intend to have one tile of the large overworld map represent a
wide area of land. You can reach the locations within that tile in
several ways. You can explore the tile thoroughly (even this may not
guarantee finding all the locations), you can visit a specific site
whose location you've gained through research (either by speaking to
locals, researching in a library, a specific scroll you find or a
major divination spell), or you can go straight to a location from the
world map if you've already been there (and the 'puter works out how
long this take based on which direction you entered the tile and where
the site is).
This will be acheived by a legend to the side of the map which tells
you what is currently in the tile, with the option to explore or
attempt to find a specific site based on knowledge gained (as above).
This, I believe, would allow both ease of movement through a large
wilderness and allow you to explore vast swathes of open terrain if
you desire as who knows what ruins might lie forgotten by even the
locals.
I Own The Letter O
>
> - Show quoted text -
I should have added that most of the exploring will probably be done
in randomly generated, non-persistant maps generated accordiny to the
'climate' of the tile otherwise you'd have GBs of hard-drive eaten up
by maps you'll probably not want to visit twice (oh how'd like to go
back to that map where the trees randomly spelt my name - it might
happen!).
Krice
> resources. Now: a wilderness map if it was turned into local map cells
> might be 1000x1000. A wilderness map can be (e.g. ADOM) 25x80. Say
> only 1 byte per cell and we find that to represent it, it takes 2 GB.
2 gigabytes? I think you miscalculated something. 1000x1000 is
1 000 000 bytes (1Mb).
> Thoughts?
In other words you want to have a 1:1 wilderness map with entire towns
and even dungeons in the same scale? I don't know.. it might work.
Brog
> Malorzean kirjoitti:
>
> > resources. Now: a wilderness map if it was turned into local map cells
> > might be 1000x1000. A wilderness map can be (e.g. ADOM) 25x80. Say
> > only 1 byte per cell and we find that to represent it, it takes 2 GB.
>
> 2 gigabytes? I think you miscalculated something. 1000x1000 is
> 1 000 000 bytes (1Mb).
>
Try 1000*1000*25*80.
He is wrong of course, because generally you'd just save a seed to
generate a map from each wilderness tile (or not even that), but the
arithmetic is fine.
An alternative wilderness map could show key locations and the
connections between them, but not have you actually walking around on
the map. Either you move through all the terrain manually (boring) or
you select where you want to go and jump there instantly (for the
player, perhaps many days of travel for the character). You are in
the town of Axe, it is three days travel east across barren desert to
Generic Evil Wizard Dungeon, with a high chance of random encounters
on the way, and a week's travel north along the safe and civilised
highway to the holy City of Travelling Salesmen.
I Own The Letter O
Exactly, that is what I'm hoping to do when I make my 'epic' Roguelike
(although I'm several months from starting that yet the ideas are
flooding in, more so now that I'm coding coffee-break style ones to
get my skills down). You can either explore (with the majority of the
content generated on the spur with little to no persistance) or select
something from the list of nearby areas and go there instantly with
the 'puter working out how long it would take, how much of your food
you consume, chance of being ambushed (maybe rolled once every four
hours of journey time, with a higher chance during night hours and a
modifier based on the civility/safety of the areas you pass through)
and whatever other gumph is appropriate based on the mechanics of the
game.
Perdurabo
I like that idea. Something like Oblivion, where once you've visited a
location, you can "fast-travel" there?
> how much of your food
> you consume, chance of being ambushed (maybe rolled once every four
> hours of journey time, with a higher chance during night hours and a
> modifier based on the civility/safety of the areas you pass through)
> and whatever other gumph is appropriate based on the mechanics of the
> game.- Hide quoted text -
I think that could get boring quite quickly though. The ambush
mechanic worked well in Baldur's Gate, for example, the first couple
of times, but after that, it got annoying. I would personally only use
the ambush mechanic if it advances the plot..
Best,
P.
I Own The Letter O
>
> - Show quoted text -
Sorry by ambushed I meant unexpected encounters (typing quickly at
work so nobody sees I'm not working means there is probably a high
percentage of errors in my text, just spitting ideas).
The encounter rate would be a low percentage to start with and would
be depend entirely upon the area in which you where travelling. It
could just be peasants with some rumours, it could be a small randomly
determined side-quest, it could be travelling merchant who is only
found randomly on the roads and has a bag full of wicked gizmos for
sale, a tax collector/waypoint/tolling station that you could either
pay-up/rob/convince that you don't need to pay giving a reward for
each based on your alignment, or it could be a group of bandits who
attempt to basheth you upon the noggin.
I wouldn't want to turn the game the other way and make it like Final
Fantasy 12's endgame where you basically let your little dudes/
dudettes/bizarrely-sexy-bunny-girls do what you've programmed and take
very little part yourself but you could set a preference/tactic to
look out for and evade encounters. If an encounter looks hostile you
could try and avoid it. Or if you are particularly stealthy, you could
sneak past the ambush, possibly getting some non-combat XP for doing
so. The XP would have to modified by several factors or you could
simply grind away by walking between locations with a cloak of
invisibilty and boots of silent step.
This could also mean that you might miss out on some good encounters
that might look hostile from a distance, a burly group of warriors
with big stabby swords and shields might look scary but when you get
closer one of them might be injured and their cleric/healer died thus
starting a possibly rewarding side-quest which you would miss by auto-
evading.
Christophe
> Thoughts?
Have a try at the Dwarf Fortress adventure mode to see a real life
example of a huge world with a random AND persistent wilderness.
I made that post on a purely technical ground, I make no attempt to
endorse that game roguelike mode or pretend it is fun or that you'll
find it fun or anything like that.
I DO like it though for what it is: a sandbox roguelike with a huge
world to explore and a kind of persistence that can probably be hugely
exploitable but is refreshing compared to all the roguelikes with
absolutly no persistence at all.
That and the funny combat messages (and deaths) one gets.
oeb
The fallout games did this quite well.
I Own The Letter O
ideas (which as I mentioned above won't happen for several months at
least) I cannot say whether I think they will get boring for me or
not. I can see how a good idea on paper can rapidly become repetitive
and rote. I think the main judge will be whether or not I enjoy the
game, if I don't then there is little point of doing this (it is
afterall only a hobby and not like I'll make any money). Other peoples
enjoyment would be nice but not essential. I totally agree with you
about it in Baldurs' Gate especially when you trying to get from the
top of the map to the bottom and if you wanted to flee the encounter
area you had to wait for everybody to get to the edge of the map
whilst getting biffed.
Christophe - I never got very far with Dwarf Fortress, my PC is far to
archaic to cope. My laptop froze during world generation and by the
time it's loaded on my desktop I'm bored and have picked up a book/
comic/etc and would rather finish that. When I finally got past world
generation I didn't know what to do, the commands baffled me and the
amount of options was overwhelming. I may revisit it once I get a
better PC (it on my purchase list but not quite at the top) and give
it the justice that I'm sure it's due.
oeb - I am not familiar with the Fallout games, but god bless
wikipedia for setting me right. Looks like something I might look up
for research (cough cough yes just for research, that's my excuse to
my girlfriend for playing computer games, they're 'research' for my
Roguelike, to which she normally replies 'what that silly thing with
the e-mail symbol that has no graphics or sounds', and I hang my head
in shame and say 'yes', nobody else understands).
oeb
> oeb - I am not familiar with the Fallout games, but god bless
> wikipedia for setting me right. Looks like something I might look up
> for research (cough cough yes just for research, that's my excuse to
> my girlfriend for playing computer games, they're 'research' for my
> Roguelike, to which she normally replies 'what that silly thing with
> the e-mail symbol that has no graphics or sounds', and I hang my head
> in shame and say 'yes', nobody else understands).
For shame, let me tell you though, you are in for a treat. The fallout
games are amongst the best ever created.
Perdurabo
Planescape: Torment was better though *grins*
Perdurabo
> Perdurabo - Without actually getting to the stage of playtesting these
> ideas (which as I mentioned above won't happen for several months at
> least) I cannot say whether I think they will get boring for me or
> not. I can see how a good idea on paper can rapidly become repetitive
> and rote. I think the main judge will be whether or not I enjoy the
> game, if I don't then there is little point of doing this (it is
> afterall only a hobby and not like I'll make any money). Other peoples
> enjoyment would be nice but not essential. I totally agree with you
> about it in Baldurs' Gate especially when you trying to get from the
> top of the map to the bottom and if you wanted to flee the encounter
> area you had to wait for everybody to get to the edge of the map
> whilst getting biffed.
>
*nods* Fair enough. Sorry if I came across a bit harshly. There's a
lot of pitfalls and traps in RL development (as I'm finding out at the
moment) and its easy to fall into them.
Good luck with it and I hope to play a demo or alpha version as soon
as possible!
Best,
P.
Gerry Quinn
18f289...@w5g2000prd.googlegroups.com>, malo...@gmail.com says...
> Many roguelikes nowadays seem to take wilderness maps as given.
> However, I would argue that it is bad for the game. So, here goes:
I think taking anything as given is the biggest mistake. There are no
'must haves" in a roguelike IMO. Putting in things just because they
are found in a lot of roguelikes, be they armour, or light sources, or
wilderness maps, is a bad idea.
> 1 - It produces very ugly terrains. Most people use wilderness map
> generation and then create the local maps after. This is ugly. It
> makes things look blocky.
>
> 2 - It stops continuity and destroys the possibility for *real*
> exploration. If the player is constantly moving through the wilderness
> map, then there are only a few areas which warrant exploration.
> However, if the player travels through a local map, they can find
> things like a farm or a cottage or even a hidden dungeon. This could
> make a game very enjoyable.
I think what you are saying here is "large scale" wilderness maps, where
one square on the map represents a whole zone (80x25 or whatever).
These can work IMO, it's all a matter of how they fit into the gameplay.
I think the biggest risk is that they will provide a boring experience
that takes you away from the core dungeon gameplay. (Shopping in towns
is a bit like this too, though.)
A full-sized wilderness has possible issues too, in that it is likely to
be too easy but still slow to traverse once you reach a certain level.
- Gerry Quinn
--
Lair of the Demon Ape (a coffee-break roguelike)
<http://indigo.ie/~gerryq/lair/lair.htm>
Pfhoenix
a "normal" sized map, is so difficulty to handle well. Do you really
want players having to trudge across multiple normal maps?
- Pfhoenix
http://adeo.pfhoenix.com
Jeff Lait
> Many roguelikes nowadays seem to take wilderness maps as given.
> However, I would argue that it is bad for the game. So, here goes:
>
> 1 - It produces very ugly terrains. Most people use wilderness map
> generation and then create the local maps after. This is ugly. It
> makes things look blocky.
The snide answer is: "Then don't do that"
I think it is most fair to compare well-done wilderness maps with well-
done single-scale maps. Compare Ultima V with Ultima 6, for example.
> 2 - It stops continuity and destroys the possibility for *real*
> exploration. If the player is constantly moving through the wilderness
> map, then there are only a few areas which warrant exploration.
> However, if the player travels through a local map, they can find
> things like a farm or a cottage or even a hidden dungeon. This could
> make a game very enjoyable.
There was a lot of real exploration in Ultima V. In some ways, I'd
argue the opposite. A wilderness map lets you shrink special features
down to a single square regardless of their actual size. This makes
it possible to hide a city inside a forest - with same-scale maps, you
end up having to so greatly compress the intermediate space (so you
don't have to walk forever) that you will just be bumping into the
supposedly hidden city.
> 3 - It limits sites to the local map size. Towns are smaller than they
> could be etc. On the flipside, it forces certain sites to be *too*
> large, to fill up a screen.
Purely a implementation choice. There is no reason why you can't have
scrolling towns. I would have thought Crawl killed forever the idea
of roguelikes not being centered on the @ rather than exposing some ad-
hoc fixed map size.
> 4 - It makes handling effects in far away places harder.
I think it makes it easier. You can easily choose to compute only
what you need to. The same is true with U6 style maps, but it
requires more work.
> Some people will argue that it takes up too much in terms of
> resources. Now: a wilderness map if it was turned into local map cells
> might be 1000x1000. A wilderness map can be (e.g. ADOM) 25x80. Say
> only 1 byte per cell and we find that to represent it, it takes 2 GB.
> But, given the rate that RAM is getting bigger (doubling every 2
> years), while this may represent 50% of todays ram, in 4 years it will
> be 10%. And we can serialise it. We only need to load areas where
> people are.
As mentioned elsethread, I don't know where you get these numbers
from. 1k by 1k is a mere 1mb. Unless you mean a 1000x1000 wilderness
map consisting of 80x25 submaps? Ah, that would be it - 2Gb then.
To put it frankly, giving me 1000 screens to traverse is utterly
unacceptable. You have no where near that amount of content!
> The next argument is it is too boring to walk around. However, an
> innovative response can reduce that boredom immensely. Take
> Incursion's run system. It allows you to zoom out on the map. Say you
> were to apply that to this system, you could zoom out to any level you
> wished and attempt to move somewhere, assuming you could see it. Thus
> people would not be bored but would still have the chance to discover
> things.
>
> Thoughts?
I have a better idea.
1) Pack your content closer together so it isn't boring to travel. Do
not say: "How *BIG* will my world be?" Instead, say "How small can my
world be?" Start your roguelike in a small world and grow as you have
legitimate content, not the opposite.
2) Include mark/recall instant travel spells so you can deal with
getting back to neat stuff you explored.
3) Support multiple zoom levels. Minimaps are a must, I think.
Include on-screen display of directions to quests. Chrysalis I think
should be mined for what works with huge maps all at one scale.
--
Jeff Lait
(POWDER: http://www.zincland.com/powder)
dominik...@gmail.com
> > could be etc. On the flipside, it forces certain sites to be *too*
> > large, to fill up a screen.
>
> Purely a implementation choice. There is no reason why you can't have
> scrolling towns. I would have thought Crawl killed forever the idea
> of roguelikes not being centered on the @ rather than exposing some ad-
> hoc fixed map size.
It hasn't. The thing is, a typical console is 80x25 (or 80x50) tiles,
which severely limits *some* locations like towns. It's OK for
dungeons, though.
> > 4 - It makes handling effects in far away places harder.
>
> I think it makes it easier. You can easily choose to compute only
> what you need to. The same is true with U6 style maps, but it
> requires more work.
Well, some effects should be difficult to handle, others certainly
not. It's an advantage/disadvantage only from a certain point of view.
> 1) Pack your content closer together so it isn't boring to travel. Do
> not say: "How *BIG* will my world be?" Instead, say "How small can my
> world be?" Start your roguelike in a small world and grow as you have
> legitimate content, not the opposite.
Agreed and confirmed in practice. UR wilderness is 200x200 (40
thousand tiles) and has only 49 locations, little more than 0.12% of
the map! Sure, there will be more, but still, a relatively small
overworld I use seems a bit too large to guarantee gameplay
satisfaction, at the moment at least.
> 2) Include mark/recall instant travel spells so you can deal with
> getting back to neat stuff you explored.
And more: sea travel between portuary towns, Betrayal-At-Krondor-
styled temples that allow instant travel between them once visited,
vehicles (a flying broomstick, a horse, a flying carpet, a pair of
winged sandals or whatever that would make the travel faster and
safer), shortcuts (ADoM: quick access from HMV to a tunnel in central
northern part of the map) and so on. No need to traverse vast terrains
in order to reach a desired (distant) location.
Mingos.
Paul Donnelly
> I haven't implemented this yet so it's only an idea. (I'm learning my
> skills with a coffee-break sized Rogue then will attempt a more epic
> one). I intend to have one tile of the large overworld map represent a
> wide area of land. You can reach the locations within that tile in
> several ways. You can explore the tile thoroughly (even this may not
> guarantee finding all the locations), you can visit a specific site
> whose location you've gained through research (either by speaking to
> locals, researching in a library, a specific scroll you find or a
> major divination spell), or you can go straight to a location from the
> world map if you've already been there (and the 'puter works out how
> long this take based on which direction you entered the tile and where
> the site is).
Fallout inspired?*
* In Fallout movement between locations took place on a world map. You
could stop and walk around where you liked, although there wasn't much
point to it. Significant locations were marked on the map when you
found them, and were pre-marked when someone told you where they
were. A given location might have several sub-locations that could be
discovered by exploring that location. Known locations were listed to
the right of the screen for easy travel.
Paul Donnelly
How about generating map locations from a given random seed, such as the
tile number/coordinate of the location? That should give reproducible
results. To make each game different, you can have per-game salt: pick a
number at the start of a new game then add it to the tile number to get
a seed based on the location but different every game (assuming every
game has different salt). Then you just feed the seed to the appropriate
generation function for the climate.
Numeron
that non-instant long travel spells are the way to go for magical
based long distance travel. In CoW, Casting rune of return will take a
random number of turns (about 2 to 10) to kick in once successfully
cast. World of Warcraft also had a similar system with hearthstones,
where any damage incurred over the 10 second cast time intantly failed
the cast. I remember playing diablos 1 & 2 and often keeping a town
portal open during boss fights or other difficult situations simply
because they were an overpowered way to get out of a sticky situation,
and then right back once totally healed.
Numeron
Malorzean
> example of a huge world with a random AND persistent wilderness.
DF was partly what I had in mind when I came up with the idea. There's
the whole issue of co-ordinating world level stuff with local level
stuff (think caravan arc). And DF looks rather blocky because it
generates local maps sepsrate from world maps.
Malorzean
> be too easy but still slow to traverse once you reach a certain level.
Sorry, if I wasn't clear enough, you could have an option (in the move
to place mode) that takes you to places you have already been. Maps
would become important as it would make travel easier as well.
Gelatinous Mutant Coconut
> generates local maps sepsrate from world maps.
My understanding is that this isn't actually the case; I think I have
read that the world and local maps both use the same midpoint
displacement method, and could easily be more smooth. Apparently the
local map boundaries are kept more blocky in order to ensure that the
world map tiles accurately represent their contents.
arant...@gmail.com
> Many roguelikes nowadays seem to take wilderness maps as given.
> However, I would argue that it is bad for the game. So, here goes:
> 2 - It stops continuity and destroys the possibility for *real*
> exploration. If the player is constantly moving through the wilderness
> map, then there are only a few areas which warrant exploration.
> However, if the player travels through a local map, they can find
> things like a farm or a cottage or even a hidden dungeon. This could
> make a game very enjoyable.
This can be very easily implemented in the wilderness using random
encounters. Probably easier than with ultra-large local maps.
> 3 - It limits sites to the local map size. Towns are smaller than they
> could be etc. On the flipside, it forces certain sites to be *too*
> large, to fill up a screen.
You are not limited to 80x25 local maps if you use wilderness. I don't
see how these things are related.
I think of wilderness as a map rather than bird's eye view. A single
cell of the wilderness can represent both a little vilage and a
capital city.
> 4 - It makes handling effects in far away places harder.
This depends on the implementation and doesn't directly related to
whether the game uses wilderness or not. For example, even if you have
wilderness, you can have all local maps in memory simultaneously and
process effects in all of them.
> The next argument is it is too boring to walk around.
That's the main problem as I see it. There was an RL called Avanor,
which had no wilderness but a contiguous local map. It was very boring
to travel from one place to another because there were e.g. a few
dozen screens of forest consisting of nothing but randomly placed
trees.
I Own The Letter O
I like Rogue as I can do pretty much what I want, when I want (but
will probably get a butt-kicking if I do). I want to be able to
explore the wilderness if I want and it would be cool to discover some
ancient ruin that wasn't part of the main quest that local people
forgot about as it would add character and background to a genre that
is (was) pretty devoid of plot and backstory in most of the major
examples.
But I also don't want to have to slog through a dozen maps of
wilderness just to get between locations if I forgot an item in my
house that I might need in a dungeon on the other side of the world.
I think the best system would incorporate both in a user friendly way.
It seems from previous posts that these 'Fallout' style games have a
good system for doing this and I, personally, will probably be doing
this when I make my epic Rogue.
> 3 - It limits sites to the local map size. Towns are smaller than they
> could be etc. On the flipside, it forces certain sites to be *too*
> large, to fill up a screen.
Of all the Roguelike's I've played that portray a big city like a
capital I have never been happy with them. Even a mediavel capital or
regional centre would be more than 15 buildings huddled in 80X25 or
whatever. Having the rocked the boat in such a way I have say though
that I am not entirely sure what the best method would be to represent
a larger city. I liked how the cities were represented in Darklands,
the wilderness and combat was a tile based system but towns where
operated through a text-based interface with a picture of the relevant
area beneath it. This way you could see all the houses that you
wouldn't want to visit without having them blocking up the view of the
good stuff you did want.
I'm not necessarily advocating this for a Roguelike though, to many
interface systems can confuse a player and part of the appeal of
Roguelikes (to me at least) as mentioned above is that I can do what I
want where I want. Having said that certain Roguelikes do change
interface when you enter a shop so why cannot that be expanded to a
town, include an 'attack shopkeeper' option if that's your bag and
include a few generic shop/market place/town guard battle maps for the
fighting and away you go. As I said I'm not necessarily advocating
this as I haven't gotten this far in my development yet (no need for
towns in the coffee-break's I'm starting with) so I'm just spitting
ideas into the fray. (This disclaimer is primarily to stop people from
biting the newbie i.e. me, I bruise easily).
I Own The Letter O
>
> - Show quoted text -
Obviously I meant Rogues rather than Rogue in the first line (as
blasphemous as it is I've never played Rogue and probably won't for a
while yet).
Brog
You should, it's a very well designed game. Elegant in its
simplicity, having enough features to be very interesting to play,
with no unnecessary cruft like artifacts or sidequests or deities or
or 400 different class/race combinations. Or, y'know, wilderness
maps.
David Damerell
>Many roguelikes nowadays seem to take wilderness maps as given.
I cannot see why this is necessarily the case.
--
David Damerell <dame...@chiark.greenend.org.uk> Kill the tomato!
Today is Leicesterday, May.
David Damerell
>1) Pack your content closer together so it isn't boring to travel. Do
>not say: "How *BIG* will my world be?" Instead, say "How small can my
>world be?" Start your roguelike in a small world and grow as you have
>legitimate content, not the opposite.
Or make wilderness travel and exploration a worthwhile game in and of
itself.
dominik...@gmail.com
mention: initially hidden locations that can be discovered by either
exploring the tiles marked plainly as "Pine forest" or "Snow" or
whatsoever, or at least by performing a 's'earch when standing on
them... I'll think about it when the idea is ripe and ready for
implementing...
Hey, thanks for the suggestion :)
Mingos.
Pfhoenix
Instead, just have locations hidden until the player learns about them
in any way. Once known, list the known locations for the player to
"fast travel" to. What'd be nice would be if traveling the world map
had a probability of coming upon random groups of enemies or things
when changing world map grids.
Yes, I am a huge Fallout fan.
- Pfhoenix
http://adeo.pfhoenix.com
David Damerell
>I'm starting to believe that UR will need something like you guys
>mention: initially hidden locations that can be discovered by either
>exploring the tiles marked plainly as "Pine forest" or "Snow" or
>whatsoever, or at least by performing a 's'earch when standing on
>them...
Don't make the poor player do something for every tile on the world map!
--
David Damerell <dame...@chiark.greenend.org.uk> Distortion Field!
Today is Leicesterday, May.
dominik...@gmail.com
Yes, well, that's a good point. 200x200 is a lot of tiles to
's'earch... Still, I believe it should be one of the possible options,
apart from learning about the location from someone or simply
exploring the map on this tile. Maybe a high Perception or Spotting
skill or something might have a chance of automatically discovering
such a location.
Its discovery may also be completely luck-based, like in Fallout :).
Mingos.
heckr...@yahoo.com
>
> Malorzean
I think you have a very narrow definition of "wilderness map". It's an
idea that lets a player travel "far" distances without having to take
a lot of steps.
The implimentation thereof is not bound by blocky, barren, fixed-sized
areas. Like so many others, I'd suggest you play Dwarf Fortress
adventure mode to see an overland map that solves all your problems
for you.
-HeckRuler
Jakub Debski
> The next argument is it is too boring to walk around. However, an
> innovative response can reduce that boredom immensely. Take
> Incursion's run system. It allows you to zoom out on the map. Say you
> were to apply that to this system, you could zoom out to any level you
> wished and attempt to move somewhere, assuming you could see it. Thus
> people would not be bored but would still have the chance to discover
> things.
First rule of roguelikes: Big open areas are boring.
Not only to travel, but also because of lack of strategy a player can
use there.
regards,
Jakub
David Damerell
>>Don't make the poor player do something for every tile on the world map!
>skill or something might have a chance of automatically discovering
>such a location.
Better watch that that doesn't leave the player endlessly patrolling the
map trying to find the hidden spots.
--
David Damerell <dame...@chiark.greenend.org.uk> Kill the tomato!
Today is Chedday, May.
Numeron
> First rule of roguelikes: Big open areas are boring.
> Not only to travel, but also because of lack of strategy a player can
> use there.
Big open areas are certainly boring to travel, but I dont think their
strategic value is a bad point. Open areas should be strategically
avoided where possible, making them difficult. If a player is forced
into the open they had better be prepared. Perhaps some stronger
baddies (like sandworms in a desert area) would turn an open area into
an even more dangerous place to be, especially since there is no
cover: you have to run and teleport and use whatever you have
available just to reach that little temple entrance in the centre.
This way, these areas arent somewhere you particularly wanto go into
anyway until very prepared for.
Open areas can be good: but remember that open areas are not the same
as big open areas and certainly not the same as open areas without
challenge.
Numeron
Gerry Quinn
dame...@chiark.greenend.org.uk says...
> Quoting <dominik...@gmail.com>:
> >>Don't make the poor player do something for every tile on the world map!
> >exploring the map on this tile. Maybe a high Perception or Spotting
> >skill or something might have a chance of automatically discovering
> >such a location.
>
> Better watch that that doesn't leave the player endlessly patrolling the
> map trying to find the hidden spots.
Alternatively, pseudorandom events / places could be generated any time
the player searches in *any* location.
Each location could have a seed (maybe just its coordinates) and a flag
to say if it was searched before (so good discoveries cannot be
endlessly revisited).
It's up to the designer what percentage of searches yield good or
interesting results.
I Own The Letter O
> In article <HHF*mz...@news.chiark.greenend.org.uk>,
> damer...@chiark.greenend.org.uk says...
>
> > Quoting <dominikmarc...@gmail.com>:
> > >>Don't make the poor player do something for every tile on the world map!
> > >exploring the map on this tile. Maybe a high Perception or Spotting
> > >skill or something might have a chance of automatically discovering
> > >such a location.
>
> > Better watch that that doesn't leave the player endlessly patrolling the
> > map trying to find the hidden spots.
>
> Alternatively, pseudorandom events / places could be generated any time
> the player searches in *any* location.
>
> Each location could have a seed (maybe just its coordinates) and a flag
> to say if it was searched before (so good discoveries cannot be
> endlessly revisited).
>
> It's up to the designer what percentage of searches yield good or
> interesting results.
>
> - Gerry Quinn
> --
> Lair of the Demon Ape (a coffee-break roguelike)
> <http://indigo.ie/~gerryq/lair/lair.htm>
If you have a massive world then the residents are unlikely to
exclusively live a couple of cities. In a medieval setting or fantasy
setting everybody needs food, and lots of it (without modern freezing/
preserving/mass tranport methods local produce is vital). Perhaps in
arable lands there could be a chance of stumbling across a farmstead
or hamlet that has no or very few shops (certainly nothing fancy like
a magic shop perhaps only an inn/church possibly a basic blacksmith/
farrier who can make very basic stuff or repairs) but which allows you
to rest safely, buy some rations etc. The place need not necessarily
be persistant/saved, there could be hundreds of such small locations
in an area. Some might consider you a threat and raise the pitchforks/
burning torches. Others might just be insular and suspicious. Some
might even come with a related quest or two and have a temporary
persistance until the quests are solved (a local robber-baron is
charging to much tax on a highway - bust open the tollgates or a crazy
hermit has cursed the fields - undo the curse at any cost) etc etc.
Just ideas...
Christopher Evenstar
wrote:
> Quoting <dominikmarc...@gmail.com>:
>
> >>Don't make the poor player do something for every tile on the world map!
> >exploring the map on this tile. Maybe a high Perception or Spotting
> >skill or something might have a chance of automatically discovering
> >such a location.
>
> Better watch that that doesn't leave the player endlessly patrolling the
> map trying to find the hidden spots.
> --
> Today is Chedday, May.
This can be stopped by dynamically generating the hidden spots as the
player explores. If a hidden spot is found, the seed should be saved,
and the hidden spot can be preserved. Then the player would have a
similar chance to find a hidden spot each time he/she enters a new
wilderness area, but shouldn't have to feel like he or she should have
to search each and every area in the world. I guess all visited areas
should have a boolean hasHidden or something to that effect to prevent
enter/re-enter scumming similar to ID scumming in ADOM.
Christopher
Christopher Evenstar
David Damerell
>On May 19, 7:13 am, David Damerell <damer...@chiark.greenend.org.uk>
>>map trying to find the hidden spots.
>player explores.
Well, that's also a possibility, but if the supply is not exhaustible it
still encourages a complete patrol of the map. If it _is_ exhaustible, the
player will want to know somehow when they've got them all.
One's also left with the question of what they are _for_.
These might tie in nicely with each other if they are something of
immediate use, but not of a nature that makes it worth trawling around and
finding the lot. Imagine, for example, that in the mountains (when we have
a genuinely interesting and worthwhile game of mountain survival) we can
sometimes find a small settlement to buy supplies. There's no point
obsessively going through the mountains to find them all - we only _need_
them in the mountains.
--
David Damerell <dame...@chiark.greenend.org.uk> Distortion Field!
Today is Gorgonzoladay, May - a weekend.
dominik...@gmail.com
about these...
Mingos.
eyenot
distances are the same as, say what's boring about a boring vacation
versus an exciting one.
Boring: walk a few hours through the desert kicking over stones and
getting stung by a scorpion
Exciting: spend a whole week backcountry camping and hiking through
the forests and mountains, by rivers and campfires
A lot of people want to just get on to the part where they slaughter
and reap the gold, but you don't necessarily have to gear your RL for
them. If you want, you can have a seed generated world map that is
enormous and takes a scale fraction of real time to complete the
journey. The player would have to push their character through the
various terrains for ten minutes to complete an hour's worth of real
journey, for example (1:10 scale), and accumulate 2:40:00 hours of
game clock time to get their character through a day's worth of non-
stop travel.
A lot of players would be like, "wtf, why would I play that", but
think about Oregon Trail, Road Wars, and so on, the older games where
most of what you did was travel around and manage resources. The
player might have to stop off to hunt and gather, or trade, filter and
store water, maybe check the sky for navigation. That'd be an
interesting feature in a roguelike, the ability to look upward. It
wouldn't be hard to make a starfield that gives some clue as to which
way to go, either scientifically or just fudging it and making
pretend. Or the player has to stop and get a wheel out of a rut and
repair it. Or let the horses rest, or charge the solar battery. Or
find the right angle to attack a mountain with the gear they have.
* * * * *
Of course, the scale you make is up to you, but if you don't include
some kind of travel-oriented 'work' in the travel, then the travel
doesn't amount to anything more than pushing the @ around the screen
anyway, which is why it's so unappealing to most players. Just
travelling around and getting ambushed or jumped, or meeting strange
people, that could happen at any town or dungeon, and a lot of players
just wonder what the overworld's really for. Most roguelikes it's not
even needed except to help justify open-world exploration. All most
RLs would really need is a little menu when you leave town; "Go where
people are telling you? Go to the crazy dungeon instead? Go to the
other town nearby to the south? Go to the town near the temple to the
northwest?" Etc. Of course, even that might take a little more
programming, some kind of a script that takes to random generation,
made for each location. But that might beat the heck out of a bunch of
overworld @-sign-pushing and getting jumped and running through
comestibles.
* * * * *
Pfhoenix
> think about Oregon Trail
I played the original Oregon Trail when it came out. You were not
required to spend a solid hour between events (the actual Oregon Trail
took weeks to months to travel). You weren't even required to sit for
a solid 5 minutes between events. If you want a game where you spend a
lot of time doing basically nothing in comparison to the time you
spend actually doing something, then perhaps gaming is not what you
should be focusing your creative energy towards.
- Pfhoenix
http://adeo.pfhoenix.com
Paul Donnelly
>> A lot of players would be like, "wtf, why would I play that", but
>> think about Oregon Trail
>
> I played the original Oregon Trail when it came out. You were not
> required to spend a solid hour between events (the actual Oregon Trail
> took weeks to months to travel). You weren't even required to sit for
> a solid 5 minutes between events.
I don't think that's what he's suggesting. I think he's suggesting
frequent events during travel.
eyenot
Yes that's exactly what I was suggesting, the latter. I'm not sure how
that was missed, I was pretty clear about a whole series of different
types of events that could occur. Odd what people will miss.
Paul Donnelly
Some thoughts:
It's probably not a good idea to have the player press "j" 1500 times to
get to their western destination. If there were highways and trails
between most destinations, there could be a button to follow the one
you're on until you hit another key (for example, to investigate
something not on the trail).
eyenot
> Paul Donnelly <paul-donne...@sbcglobal.net> writes:
The point I was making is that if you're going to be forced to travel
and to overcome obstacles, then either that's an important aspect
to game-play or it isn't. Why would a player not be interested in
having to actually navigate their way through the mountain pass as
opposed to just spending more starvation-points when passing over
mountainous terrain in the overworld?
If you're going to have a highway, what is the point of working all
of that detail into the game without representing it on a par with
how the dungeons are represented? Why not just have the player
choose from a menu "take the highway to the next junction", and
then another choice, then another one? That's all that sort of play
really amounts to, and meanwhile you're using up food points and
so on -- which is why I brought up such as Road Wars and Oregon
Trail.
I think if you're going to put something into a game just to diminish
its existence overall, that sort of nags at your conscience or what
have you. That's why we have so many games with this worthless
feature of "zoom in on the overworld and represent this small
square with a full screen". It doesn't even get used except as a
medium for ambush-style combat. I don't want to pretend to be the
one who defends "what is a roguelike", but why is an author going
to build this elaborate and highly detailed monster/player inter-
action system that goes far above and beyond a mere 'combat
system', if all the implementation it gets on the overworld map is
a throwback to the ambush-style RPG?
I just personally feel that if you are going to build an overworld,
then you should get over this feeling that travelling these huge
distances across the terrain and surviving it, even without political
battles on the way, is still adventurous and entertaining if it's
done right. Granted, you might not want to make it a 1:10 scale
like I was using for an example. But even if you're worried "how
long do my players want to spend going overworld between the
real 'meat', the dungeons'" then maybe you have another question
to ask: how much is this 'overworld' thing here actually diluting
this valuable 'meat' that I'm relying on for entertainment? Am I
fighting my own instincts? Did I put it in just because that seems
to be what everybody does to connect two 'meatier' locations?
I'm just saying, there's a certain level of detail and survival play
you can go into with the overworld that would make the long-
distance travel less monotonous. Hunting and gathering, fire-
building, finding water supplies, defending the camp from wild
animals, fighting giant swamp slugs or the occasional bear,
sleeping in shifts, and so on, to reuse a few suggestions.
If somebody wants to portray their entire overworld on the same
scale as their dungeons and towns, they have endless ways of
making that more than just fifteen hundred presses of the j key.
There's no reason why a person should feel like they're losing
potential entertainment value just by using a huge overworld.
Paul Donnelly
> On Jun 27, 5:14 pm, Paul Donnelly <paul-donne...@sbcglobal.net> wrote:
>> Paul Donnelly <paul-donne...@sbcglobal.net> writes:
>> > Pfhoenix <pfhoe...@gmail.com> writes:
>>
>> >>> A lot of players would be like, "wtf, why would I play that", but
>> >>> think about Oregon Trail
>>
>> >> I played the original Oregon Trail when it came out. You were not
>> >> required to spend a solid hour between events (the actual Oregon Trail
>> >> took weeks to months to travel). You weren't even required to sit for
>> >> a solid 5 minutes between events.
>>
>> > I don't think that's what he's suggesting. I think he's suggesting
>> > frequent events during travel.
>>
>> Some thoughts:
>>
>> It's probably not a good idea to have the player press "j" 1500 times to
>> get to their western destination. If there were highways and trails
>> between most destinations, there could be a button to follow the one
>> you're on until you hit another key (for example, to investigate
>> something not on the trail).
>
> The point I was making is that if you're going to be forced to travel
> and to overcome obstacles, then either that's an important aspect
> to game-play or it isn't.
> ...
>
> If you're going to have a highway, what is the point of working all
> of that detail into the game without representing it on a par with
> how the dungeons are represented? Why not just have the player
> choose from a menu "take the highway to the next junction", and
> then another choice, then another one?
> ...
>
> ... I don't want to pretend to be the one who defends "what is a
> roguelike", but why is an author going to build this elaborate and
> highly detailed monster/player inter- action system that goes far
> above and beyond a mere 'combat system', if all the implementation it
> gets on the overworld map is a throwback to the ambush-style RPG?
>
> ... But even if you're worried "how long do my players want to spend
> going overworld between the real 'meat', the dungeons'" then maybe you
> have another question to ask: how much is this 'overworld' thing here
> actually diluting this valuable 'meat' that I'm relying on for
> entertainment? Am I fighting my own instincts? Did I put it in just
> because that seems to be what everybody does to connect two 'meatier'
> locations?
>
> I'm just saying, there's a certain level of detail and survival play
> you can go into with the overworld that would make the long-
> distance travel less monotonous.
> ...
>
> If somebody wants to portray their entire overworld on the same
> scale as their dungeons and towns, they have endless ways of
> making that more than just fifteen hundred presses of the j key.
> ...
Of course you're right that there can and should be more to wilderness
travel than "go left", but there's nothing inherently wrong with having
travel between towns be a matter of waiting for events while your
character moves along the path. I actually meant it as an allusion to
Oregon Trail, which was quite a good game despite the gameplay
consisting of nothing but waiting and coping. Think of it like Oregon
Trail with more trails and less Oregon.
My concept is that there would be two sorts of play important to the
game: travel between towns in the Oregon Trail fashion (though probably
without dysentery) and exploration of towns and wilderness locations in
typical RL fashion. Both, however, would take place at the same scale,
and switching between the two would be a matter of following the road or
not.
When Oregon Trail was mentioned here, this was the first thing that
popped into my mind, so please excuse me if I seem to be assuming that
travel between towns would be mostly walking in a straight line -- I'm
only assuming it because I like the idea of fantasy Oregon Trail with
more latitude.
Ray Dillinger
> My concept is that there would be two sorts of play important to the
> game: travel between towns in the Oregon Trail fashion (though probably
> without dysentery) and exploration of towns and wilderness locations in
> typical RL fashion. Both, however, would take place at the same scale,
> and switching between the two would be a matter of following the road or
> not.
My concept is that some of the stairways are just stairs, that take
you up or down, and some of the stairways are teleport gates, that
take you elsewhere. That's why you have "outdoor" levels occasionally,
like grasslands and forests; you're being transported to the surface
level of the next area.
You don't need overworld travel. You just need to separate the dungeon
into "chunks" that have each their own style, top each "chunk" with
a surface layer, and add flavor text for the doorways that lead between
chunks. Maybe you need some backstory or a plot device as well, but
that's within the reach of any good developer.
You can have levels that consist of an "overland travel" adventure.
But if so, include and judge them according to the same criteria as
other levels: Are they fun? Do they contribute to the game? Is the
playstyle and UI consistent? If not, just skip the whole thing.
Bear
Paul Donnelly
> Paul Donnelly wrote:
>
>> My concept is that there would be two sorts of play important to the
>> game: travel between towns in the Oregon Trail fashion (though probably
>> without dysentery) and exploration of towns and wilderness locations in
>> typical RL fashion. Both, however, would take place at the same scale,
>> and switching between the two would be a matter of following the road or
>> not.
>
> My concept is that some of the stairways are just stairs, that take
> you up or down, and some of the stairways are teleport gates, that
> take you elsewhere. That's why you have "outdoor" levels occasionally,
> like grasslands and forests; you're being transported to the surface
> level of the next area.
>
> You don't need overworld travel. You just need to separate the dungeon
> into "chunks" that have each their own style, top each "chunk" with
> a surface layer, and add flavor text for the doorways that lead between
> chunks. Maybe you need some backstory or a plot device as well, but
> that's within the reach of any good developer.
Your concept has little to do with mine, and vice versa. *You* don't
need overworld travel. I don't need dungeons*.
> You can have levels that consist of an "overland travel" adventure.
> But if so, include and judge them according to the same criteria as
> other levels: Are they fun? Do they contribute to the game? Is the
> playstyle and UI consistent? If not, just skip the whole thing.
Of course, and the same for dungeons.
I'm just clarifying here, that when I referred to "pressing j 1500
times" I wasn't missing the point WRT interesting wilderness travel. I
had just gotten an idea and started describing in the middle of it.
* In this particular instance; I'm not swearing off dungeons
forevermore.
Gavin Scott
> I'm just clarifying here, that when I referred to "pressing j 1500
> times" I wasn't missing the point WRT interesting wilderness travel. I
> had just gotten an idea and started describing in the middle of it.
If you have a large outdoor area that has to be traveresed, then you can
always provide options to the player as to how they get across. You
could let them decide whether to walk or perhaps take a stagecoach or
something like that. The vehicle shortcut might allow them to defer
the exploration until later but they might eventually get sent into
the wilderness on a quest. You could have events that require having
done both, for example the stagecoach might have a chance of getting
robbed which could be an important story event, etc.
G.
Paul Donnelly
I'm not sure I'd want to include both a fancy wilderness travel system
and a method for completely bypassing it. Seems kind of
counter-productive.