Intelligent dungeon design

[WouldBeCreator]

Unfair surprise, they can suck it up and take it. If the system is worth pursuing, it is worth pursuing. You shouldn't avoid something just because it is new or different.

It really depends on the circumstance. A player should never die because the game functions in an unforeseeable way. So if the player starts with a torch, enters a dungeon, and it says, "It is dark. You should light a torch or a grue will eat you.", the player says, "Light torch," and it says, "It's to light your torch. A grue comes and eats you. You are dead.", that strikes me as a failed feature and the player shouldn't have to "suck it up and take it." It would be even worse if the game said, "You don't have anything to light the torch with! A grue comes and eats you."

Another would be if the player were told, "This dungeon is full of undead. I suggest you buy a weapon suitable to the situation.", and then when the player buys a mace and goes in, the weapon does no damage because in this game, undead can only be killed by having their heads cut off or being stabbed through the heart.

Players bring a set of expectations to the table and designers need to be cognizant of that. You can defy expectations if there is a good reason to, but that can't just be a 51/49 kind of thing, b/c the cost of changing is sufficiently high. That means WADS for shooters, the Warcraft 3x3 unit interface for RTS games, etc., unless there's a really good reason not to.

--EDIT--

Obviously, games where light is a central mechanic, you shouldn't take out light effects. Duh. Just like in games where dysentery is a central mechanic, you shouldn't take out shitting effects, as Galsiah noted.

 

[galsiah]

Again, please look beyond the obvious "realism" connection between shitting and X, and think about where they might be different. The chances are you'll usually find something.

Being able to see without a light source in a dungeon makes no sense - it is incoherent (I'm particularly thinking of 1st person games here, where it is possible to look around and establish beyond doubt that there is no light source). Nonsense does not immerse me. Third person games can get away with more, since you can't be sure there aren't light sources where you can't see them - ambient light in third person is not nonsense.

Particularly annoying is Morrowind's "you can almost see, but not quite, without a torch". Either a designer should stick to a you-need-a-torch-to-see, or you don't. Having ambient light give just enough light to see by if you strain your eyes and get annoyed is bad design.

I'm fine with a third person game making lighting a non-issue, or with first person games that always have light sources. I'm less fine with first person games with a load of ambient light and no light sources, since it makes the world seem nonsensical (I'll put up with it though). I'm absolutely not fine with a load of nonsense ambient light in a first person game with torches and lanterns (e.g. Morrowind - The Lighting Mod fixes this quite well by the way).

Where lighting is an issue, it should make sense. Where shitting is an issue it should make sense. Lighting is frequently an issue in games - particularly in first person games. Shitting is not. Show me a game where it is, and I'll be the first to argue against a bad / nonsense implementation.

In any case, Excrement was comparing shitting to creature placement, not lighting. He doesn't have any kind of argument.

 

[kingcomrade]

@WBC-
Well yeah, that's an issue of transparency to the player. If you tell the player, though whatever means you like (manual, tutorials, dialogue, whatever you want) that the undead have to be decapitated to die, then it's perfectly reasonable. Probably a good way to approach things is the same way Fallout did: Assume your character is ignorant. There's no reason why the thing should say, "you will be fighting zombies, find an appropriate weapon" instead of "to kill zombies you have to decapitate them, so find an appropraite weapon"

Like I said, I didn't discover the way the light mechanic works in Fallout until my third or fourth time through, just because it wasn't apparent to me. That's an issue of transparency. That happens a lot in games, the "you have to put the ring on first" mechanics. There's one from a game for Genesis called Shining Force 2, there's a couple treasure chests that you have to open using the C menu instead of the A menu or something like that. Pain in the ass.

-edit I remember what it was. You have to put this wooden board into a tree, but you couldn't do it the normal way you interact with objects.

 

[Collden]

Azarkon nailed it with the flow/backstory points. A memorable dungeon crawl needs to be designed, both in content and structure, to be a mini-narrative itself. This is why, for instance, Oblivion dungeons are mostly dogshit (well, besides bland overall structure design), because with the randomly generated and PC level-tied monster and treasure spawns, there's no coherency in the content of the dungeon, nor any correlation with the structure design.

 

[galsiah]

It really depends on the circumstance. A player should never die because the game functions in an unforeseeable way.

I agree with that, but I don't see it as a reason for not including some feature in your game. It just means that you need to be aware of the expectations a player will bring to the game, and make sure to prepare him for situations where you are going to break those expectations.
So long as you change the player's expectations before you start killing him with your novel features, then everything is fine.

 

[WouldBeCreator]

I think we agree, we're just coming at it from different angles. I don't think I've ever had less fun in a game because something was "unrealistic," except in cases where the unrealism prevented me from doing something that it looked like I ought to be able to do -- like when a game blocks your progress with a low, low barrier and doesn't let you step over it or anything.

Obviously, the reason the shitting example is, well, shitty is that shitting simply detracts from a game (it's gross, a waste of time, etc.). But in my opinion, shlepping torches and casting light spells never added anything to any RPG I ever played, either, although I haven't played every RPG out there and I may be forgetting many. Indeed, torches more or less just took away from the RPGs I can think of, by forcing me to engage in tedious monitoring, stockpiling, etc. I'm not saying torches couldn't be used in a way that would make the game more fun, just that they seemed to be in there as a conventional element that might've had its roots in D&D "realism" but never made much gameplay sense, anyway.

I feel more or less the same about monster placement. I could care less about the "realism" of a dungeon, except insofar as the unrealism gets glaring or makes things boring. I'd rather not fight bats, rats, sleeping bears, and giant insects exclusively in every cave; even if it's less realistic to put, say, golems, goblins, trolls, etc. in. Would I prefer if every dungeon had a coherent story and a tailored feel but still had diverse enemies (i.e., by making the trolls prey on goblins, having everyone avoid the golems, having the goblins ride spiders and raise rats for food)? Absolutely. But as between a "logical" but homogenous dungeon and an "illogical" but diverse one, I might go with the latter, though of course I have my threshold, too (if I were fighting birds, elk, merchant caravans, and beggars in a deep cavern, I'd probably be turned off by the unrealistic feel).

Again, I'm not sure that the problem in that case is *realism*, though, rather than simply that the game is too different from what we've come to expect from fantasy settings. For the most part, gamers don't bat an eye when they're attacked routinely by wolves, despite the fact that wolf attacks on groups of humans are extremely rare, or when they face giant insects, despite the fact that insects could not get that large given their physiology, etc., etc. Heck, players tend not to care that there are oodles of monsters all over the place and that they're the only one fighting against them.

So I'd say it's mostly a probably of *unconvential* monster placement, rather than *unrealistic* monster placement, and trolls not eating goblins isn't unconventional in the least. (Since LOTR "invented" trolls and goblins in their modern incarnation [though trolls have drifted a bit since], and LOTR had them coexisting as a team, I don't see any reason why RPGs can't.)

Again -- I would *prefer* a game where the dungeons were dynamic and alive and full of stories and backstories and compex relationships, but I don't think that's because of realism so much as because that kind of complexity tends to make for more interesting gameplay.

--EDIT--

@ KC / Galsiah: Yes, transparency is a big part of it, but there's also a degree to which asking players to learn a new ruleset just doesn't make sense, no matter how transparent, unless the benefits are significant. That means that if Rule A is the accepted standard, it is not enough that B > A to justify the switch. Rather, B > A+X, where X is determined by how well established A is and how much of a hassle it is to learn something new. Learning that swords kill undead violates a well-established rule, but requires almost no effort to learn. Switching from WASD to IKJL, on the other hand, is a royal pain in the ass. That's why we're still using QWERTY even though it's less efficient than Dvorak.

Also, I remember that part of SF2. So annoying. That game was a mix of very fun and very annoying; ultimately, I suspect more of the latter. I doubt it would be very playable today, though maybe I'm wrong. Loved the "traitors die by fire" reversal bit at the time . . . .

 

[galsiah]

I only used the word "realistic" in the first place to say that was the only (pointless) connection between shitting and X.

I'd rather not use the word "realisitc", since it is rather vague. I don't need realism, but I do need coherence - a game world should make sense according to its own rules, whatever those rules are.

For example, there's nothing incoherent about huge insects (perhaps the game world has properties making that reasonable). There's nothing incoherent about aggressive wolves - perhaps in this land they are aggressive. These things are just unusual (or never present) in our world, but a game world is supposed to be different, so a bit of unusual stuff probably helps to give the setting a unique feel (not that giant insects and aggressive wolves are that unique, but anyway ).

The designers of a game have the freedom to create a world with whatever rules they like. All I ask is that, taken together, these make some sense.

For instance a world with dungeons full of glowing rocks is fine. A world where most NPCs walk around with torches, torches and lanterns are freely available, but dungeons glow in the dark almost enough to see well by is not fine - it is nonsense and annoying at the same time.

Low level enemies can easily be programmed to attack the player only when they think they have a reasonable chance of victory. Rats don't need to disappear at high player level - they can just not attack, or run away and become a background detail. Similarly, harder opposition can be something to avoid at low level, and a reasonable challenge at higher level.

I think it is more rewarding for the player to be in a world which adapts to him (animals attacking when he is weak, running away when he is strong etc.), and which he needs to adapt to (not confronting powerful opposition too early, then taking them on later).
The world doesn't need to be magically reconstructed according to the player's capabilities. It just needs to respond to the player and allow him to vary his tactics accordingly.

Also, it's not that hard to make things reasonably coherent. A designer doesn't need to explain every detail - he just needs to allow the situation to be believable. The player doesn't need to be provided with an explanation as to why things are as they are, so long as the player thinks what he sees could be explained. I don't expect or require each dungeon I visit to have a complex, well thought out back-story. I just require it not to be transparent nonsense.

Usually all that's required to eliminate utter nonsense is to think about things for five minutes - how do the occupants of dungeon X get food? Water? How do they defend themselves? Do they have any goals, or are they just surviving? What are they doing to pursure these goals? Could creature X on the random encounter list reasonably turn up here? Where might it have come from? etc. etc.

Most such questions can be answered simply enough without much design compromise at all. The time taken to answer them is tiny compared to the time spent designing and building the dungeon. A few reasonable answers to the sort of questions above will almost certainly make things feel more alive - perhaps it might even give a little inspiration towards a quest / challenge or two.

 

[WouldBeCreator]

Yeah, I agree almost entirely. But I think that it's okay for games to have rules that apply to NPCs and not to the player. For example, you could have NPCs on a day / night cycle that involves sleep, but have the player use sleeping only for healing / restoring MP. You could have NPCs require food for story purposes -- "The bandits have stolen all the grain we had stored up for winter! If we don't recover it, we'll all starve!" -- while not requiring the player to eat.

Anyway, I can't help but think back to the RPGs I played growing up -- console ones from Japan and the PC mainstays -- which I by and large enjoyed and which had dungeons that were totally devoid of logic, coherence, realism, whatever you want to call it. I think the main fun of a dungeon comes from novel challenges, interesting layout, visual distinctiveness, etc. Or, at least that's what used to determine whether I enjoyed them. In a story-heavy RPG, I might want a little more plot to the dungeons, but that's in large part because (good) modern RPGs have merged dungeons and towns in many cases. That is, dungeons and towns are no longer totally distinct (dungeons being full of fighting and nothing else, towns full of trading and nothing else) in the way they used to be. Now they're on a continuum. In PS:T, you'd have lots of NPC interactions in a dungeon and lots of fights in town. The result is that dungeons required a meatier plot role.

But if you're going to have hundreds of dungeons and you can just go hacking around, I don't know that you need as much story. But then, I don't play RPGs that much any more, so it's somewhat hard for me to gauge. I found the TES model (hundreds of plot-less dungeons) unplayable back in the day.

 

[Slylandro]

Oh yeah, and this is a personal petpeeve, but make sure there's enough light. I don't expect a dungeon to be flooded with light , but if I have to actually adjust the brightness of my screen in some areas so I can see what items are lying on the ground, it's just not fun and ruins the experience.

All good - apart from your last point. Some creatures have natural night vision, some don't need to see. Others may keep certain areas dark to dissuade people from going there. To have the dungeon lit fully seems at odds with the concept of a dark dungeon.

Uh, as I already said, I don't expect a dungeon to be flooded with light , eg fully lit. That would indeed totally destroy the experience. Rather, I remember a few dungeons in Arcanum that were so dark in *some areas* (emphasis so that nobody mistakes this as "All dungeons in Arcanum" ) that light sources didn't do much good. You practically had to be right next to an object to see it clearly. This became annoying when your weapon got knocked out of your hand (due to critical miss) in a dungeon and you had to backtrack later to find it. Maybe this is arguably more of a problem with the implementation of mobile light sources (whose radiuses IMO were exaggeratedly short) rather than the dungeons.

Edit:
I don't know how liberal the term "dungeon" is around here, but if you just refer to it as any area with a large number of hostiles, I'd say Avernum is a good example of well implemented dungeons. Crappy graphics for sure, but it made up for it with a strong sense of realism, eg one of the nephar/nephilim fortresses in Avernum 1 that had a kitchen (styled similarly to the kitchen in human forts), store rooms, rooms set apart specifically for higher ranking Nephar, a primitive Nephilim alchemy lab, apparently a room for a visiting Ogre mage, etc.

 

[Licaon_Kter]

...ok so now i know what i grue is..i did not see this word in the last 5 years, since the days i was playing ADOM :D

i like the way Morrowind handled transparency, you're getting a "You're weapon is useless" message that might be confusing at start (i did not know what that meant while foolishly adventuring in that dwemer ruin where the box is, i've missed the box, and i was clearing the ruins when i encountered some ghosts ), but after that you might be inclined to look up some informations, i think you usually need to know your enemy, right? in ADOM you get a Monster memory, that remembers the monsters that you've encountered, thats automatic, and very useful.
since the torches do exists and NPCs use them, the PC should have enough brains to see them as something useful.
"plot less dungeons" - thats in the lines of "Who build the elven ruins?"
caves are natural, dungeons are ruins, a plot about the a ruin does not sound that fun...maybe one about the times before it was abandoned, like the "Elven prison" where you have prison rooms,torture tools, or a "Elven Magic school" filled with half broken phials and bottles, filled by a magic light, but some ghouls have a weakness to the magic light and they stay away while you're sorrounded by it...ect

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

Boss would be a lich or vampire, the whole area would be pitch black.

Well, pitch black can go by the way side in order to moderately facilitate the player's need to see. If you must have that total realism or rationale for there being light in a dungeon, just put some books around for the lich or vampires to read, preferably eeeeeeeeeevil books like anything written by Al Franken or Michael Moore.

Yes, I would assume that liches and vampires can't totally see in the dark, at least not well enough to read Tomes of Great Doom and Gloom. Even with concepts like D&D's infravision, ink doesn't radiate any more heat than the rest of the page. So, you'd still need torches or magical lighting of some sort.

Personally, my opinion is that if you have to err on either side, err on the side that won't piss off the player too much. Make it challenging, sure. Make some kind of logic behind everything as well. Just give them some lights. After all, if you want to go totally realistic dungeon, then the player probably wouldn't be able to breath in a dank crypt due to all the mold, methane, and other gases. Oh yeah, and torches would most likely cause those gases to go BOOOOOOOM.

 

[Excrément]

The fact dungeons are not realists because otherwise trolls will eat each others doesn't ruin immersion for me.
In the same way, it doesn't disturb me we don't have to poo in any RPGs.

Please leave the following "argument" in Oblivion General, where it belongs:
X is realistic.
Shitting is realistic.
Therefore we don't need X more than shitting.

It's an utterly stupid, vacuous argument, unless the only reason for including X was that it was realistic. Is this the only reason here? No. Is it ever? Not really.
Do stop being an idiot.

that's why I put a "for me".

I understand some people would like to get this feature but me not, it is FOR ME not necessary like pooing in an RPG.

why?

sorry but I don't have any arguments, it is just an opinion, I just don't feel this feature necessary, that's it.

so please try to be less idiot next time and see the difference between an argument and an opinion.

 

[dongle]

Welp, from a realistic standpoint your eyes adapt to darkness pretty quickly. Go outside at midnight in the woods and you can still see enough to walk around. Even in an underground cavern if there are torches or lights anywhere at -all- you'll get enough ambient light to see by. These pools of torch light around the evil alter or whatever, and total blackness in the corners for monsters to jump out at you seems unrealistic to me.

IMO one needs to step back from reality and look at how folks play. If I can't see where I'm going, and there's a reasonable chance some baddies are going to jump me, I'm simply going to reach down and crank the brightness up on my monitor. Especially if whatever mechanic the designer dreamed up significantly hurts my ability to fight back. This ends up making the carefully crafted moody dungeon look a washed out gray, and hurts my eyes when I get back to the daylight world. I won't use the "I" word, but the net effect is an ugly game-world and painful eyestrain. Not nearly as much fun to play as a dungeon with decent ambient light, realistic or not.


The real question is; Why do these enigmatic ancient civilizations spend all their time building underground hallways anyway?

 

[Abernathy]

Yes, I would assume that liches and vampires can't totally see in the dark, at least not well enough to read Tomes of Great Doom and Gloom. Even with concepts like D&D's infravision, ink doesn't radiate any more heat than the rest of the page. So, you'd still need torches or magical lighting of some sort.

I'd never actually considered the likes of liches and zombies having literary needs, but I guess that's the kind of stretch of the imagination it would take to allow a player to walk into an area that logically should be totally dark, but is somehow lit for his convenience

I see (haha!!) where you're coming from, but I've just this minute realised that I'm currently bashing my way through Dungeon Siege (again), which co-incidentally has a very sane solution to this very problem - basically, there are unlit sconces around the place that the player can light as he goes!

Now, how fucking sane and simple is that? From a thrasher like DS, no less!! :D

 

[crufty]

I've often wondered why games didn't emulate Hack Master more, with the Pack Ape and Torch Bearers...

 

[sheek]

Boss would be a lich or vampire, the whole area would be pitch black.

Well, pitch black can go by the way side in order to moderately facilitate the player's need to see. If you must have that total realism or rationale for there being light in a dungeon, just put some books around for the lich or vampires to read, preferably eeeeeeeeeevil books like anything written by Al Franken or Michael Moore.

Yes, I would assume that liches and vampires can't totally see in the dark, at least not well enough to read Tomes of Great Doom and Gloom. Even with concepts like D&D's infravision, ink doesn't radiate any more heat than the rest of the page. So, you'd still need torches or magical lighting of some sort.

Personally, my opinion is that if you have to err on either side, err on the side that won't piss off the player too much. Make it challenging, sure. Make some kind of logic behind everything as well. Just give them some lights. After all, if you want to go totally realistic dungeon, then the player probably wouldn't be able to breath in a dank crypt due to all the mold, methane, and other gases. Oh yeah, and torches would most likely cause those gases to go BOOOOOOOM.

Arx Fatalis I remember did darkness pretty well. You had to have a torch to see much of anything and that adds realism and also more to the gameplay. If you are an idiot TES-type gamer and forget to pack torches your level 137 character won't find the loot and also probably get bitten to death by invisible rats.

 

[galsiah]

The fact dungeons are not realists because otherwise trolls will eat each others doesn't ruin immersion for me.
In the same way, it doesn't disturb me we don't have to poo in any RPGs.

Please leave the following "argument" in Oblivion General, where it belongs:
X is realistic.
Shitting is realistic.
Therefore we don't need X more than shitting.

It's an utterly stupid, vacuous argument, unless the only reason for including X was that it was realistic. Is this the only reason here? No. Is it ever? Not really.
Do stop being an idiot.

that's why I put a "for me".
I understand some people would like to get this feature but me not, it is FOR ME not necessary like pooing in an RPG.

Yes, but so what? What point are you making by saying that it's like pooing? The only way you are making any point is if the pooing example gives more useful information than merely saying:
"The fact dungeons are not realists because otherwise trolls will eat each others doesn't ruin immersion for me."

Why bother comparing things to pooing unless you're making some relevant point? If the only connection is that both "don't ruin immersion for you", then making the comparison is totally pointless. If you're trying to imply some other connection - e.g. that moster placement and pooing are in any sense equivalent -, then you are just wrong.

By your reasoning, the following would be a sensible thing to say:
Unrealistic dungeons in games don't bother me.
In the same way eating jam sandwiches doesn't bother me.

Either the above implies some other dungeon-jam sandwich connection, or the second sentence is totally redundant.

Saying:
"The fact dungeons are not realists because otherwise trolls will eat each others doesn't ruin immersion for me."

Is reasonable. The sentence you follow it with is vacuous crap - either it is totally redundant (if it implies nothing), or it is misleading. Thinking that making some senseless comparison to poo validates your opinion / argument puts you squarely in an Oblivion General mentality.

For most people who make this kind of comparison, there is little hope they will ever see sense. Given that this isn't Oblivion General, I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt. The next time you think of bringing pooing into an argument / opinion / illustration / description / comparison... please first ask yourself "Is this at all useful?". The chances are the answer is "No, it's either redundant or misleading".

 

[Solik]

Getting back to the topic at hand...

I'd really like to have dungeons where monsters know how to come at me. If there's giant spiders, they shouldn't be happily wandering around the cave, oblivious to all. They should crawl out of a crack in the ceiling after I've passed under it and come at me from behind, or wait for me to try dealing with one of their webs to attack. If it's an orc fortress, then they should actually have defenses / battlements set up (even if it's tunnel-based; see the Sunless Citadel D&D adventure). Main problem here is that implementing that kind of sophisticated behavior tends to be time-consuming, resulting in fewer total monsters/dungeons. Can be a worthy trade-off, but you gotta be careful.

 

[Excrément]

Why bother comparing things to pooing unless you're making some relevant point?

I didn't know that each post I made needed to be "relevant".
I didn't know in this "free policy and open" forum I am forced to only write posts with solids arguments and that opinion without arguments (yes it exists, you can call that a "taste") were forbidden.

But it is not because I don't have any arguments to back my opinion that my opinion is useless.
some people can think some features are necessary and others not, it's life, it's human, we are not robot.
some people like cheese, others not (a matter of taste) and they are not obliged to accept to eat cheese just because they don't have rationalized arguments to prove they don't like cheese.

please first ask yourself "Is this at all useful?". The chances are the answer is "No, it's either redundant or misleading".

useful? hum, yes. redundant : YES. Misleading : sorry for my English.
please ask yourself if this debate, this forum and all of these threads are useful, redundant or misleading?
if you only read Plato, you may answer No, Yes and Yes.
if you like Nietzsche, you may answer Yes, Yes and No.

 

[galsiah]

My main trouble with the comparison you made is that it is a frequent "argument" against including anything on the basis of realism / coherence / consistency. In that respect it is really very stupid.
If you weren't using it like that, then it's merely useless. Fair enough.

It just irks me when I see anything argued for on the basis of realism / coherence dismissed on the TES forums on the basis of toilet comparisons. I realize that such people are beyond help, but when I'm at the codex I hope to have escaped from all that.

Again, I have zero problem with your expression of an opinion (though I happen to disagree with it); my only problem is with your useless (at best) pooing comparison, and the fact that it's remeniscent of Oblivion General - and no-one wants that .


Anyway...

Solik:
I think that's mostly an AI issue, rather than a dungeon design issue. If you had an AI that would adapt well to different combat situations, and could pathfind and plan well enough to gain tactical advantage, you'd be pretty much there. After that, designing dungeons with the potential for such tactical maneuvers wouldn't be too difficult.

Of course designing a good, general combat AI is not easy, but I think you'd need it. Scripting things for each dungeon would quickly get time consuming and predictable.

I don't think an AI solution would need to result in fewer dungeons, since the only effort from the dungeon design end would be to set things up so that interesting combat or combat initiation could result - this would usually be the case pretty much automatically in a non-linear dungeon.

Also, unless you are just copying and pasting large dungeon sections, I don't think designing dungeons which make sense or which have defenses etc. needs to take longer. It just takes a few minutes planning for each dungeon before you start - not a significant investment in time. Presuming you are trying to make each dungeon interesting, I'd even guess that this sort of planning makes things easier, since it will provide the designer with some ideas.

 

[Keldryn]

I start with the overall concept of the dungeon, and coming up with a few sentences to describe its history and why and how it was built. Once it has a bit of a backstory, the design often just sort of takes on a life of its own.

If any of you have played Ultima V: Lazarus, I built Dungeon Shame. The dungeon was a mine in the original U5, so I had to keep that concept. The overworld region with the dungeon entrance was already built when I joined the team, and the entrance was on top of a mountain. I think because it was in the mountains in the original U5. A mine entrance on the top of the mountain didn't really make sense to me, but I had to go with it.

The way the DS engine streams terrain nodes meant that I didn't have to worry about making sure that the dungeon I was building would fit into the mountain. That didn't stop me from doing so though. I figured out the dimensions of the mountain at different altitudes, and thus the first 3 levels of the dungeon were layed out so that they would fit. Later, Claymore Dragon rebuilt that whole region and made the dungeon entrance at ground level anyway...

I kept the concept from the original dungeon of three mine shafts that led to varying depths of the mine. Stairs in the DS engine are a real pain, because they take up a LOT of space. You can't really built a dungeon that is tightly-packed vertically unless you use the "elevators." Thankfully, the fact that Shame was originally a mine meant that it made sense to have mine shafts with lifts.

The top two levels were the main part of the mine, and were built to look the part. The third level had this massive chasm that revealed the lower depths of the dungeon. Basically, I thought it would be rather cool conceptually and visually, so I built it.

I decided that the miners may have taken up permanent residence inside the mine, particularly because when I built it, the entrance was still on the top of a mountain. I built the fourth level using worked stone instead of natural caves to reflect this. There is a narrow tunnel leading away from the miners' residences to a small room with a hole in the floor. That's supposed to be a lavatory. Monsters are likely to crap anywhere, but the human miners would want it removed from their living quarters.

The lower part of Shame revealed an underground river and a rich source of what might be magical crystals. The river constitutes "levels" 5 and 6, but there really aren't any distinct levels as such. The decision to make this area an underground river was driven primarily by a desire to have some variety in the terrain of what would be a very large dungeon. Using natural caves for the entire dungeon would be rather boring visually.

I made sure that I didn't design any long dead-ends, and that there were multiple paths through the dungeon, as the entrance to the Underworld was located at the bottom of Shame. At one point last year, Tiberius asked to have the dungeons edited, as they were all far too large, and took a very long time to play through. And he wanted us to eliminate long dead ends. I didn't actually need to cut any of that from Shame, because they weren't there. However, it was probably the largest of the dungeons that we had, and it took a very long time to traverse, so I cut out one of the mine shafts and the dungeon areas that it led to.

I didn't do the final monster and item placement for the release, but I did have placeholders in there when I built it. There was a camp of gremlins on the third level, and I decided that they moved in once the miners had abandonded it. There is a raised area where their camp is, with a fire pit, sleeping furs, and such. They were the only intelligent inhabitants of the dungeon, so I didn't need to worry so much about how they co-existed with the other critters. The giant spiders had small lairs in little cubbyholes in the caves. I had other ideas for the dungeon, but they wouldn't have fit with the concept, and with the design as it was evolving. There weren't a lot of traps in my original design, as I couldn't think of a really good reason for them to be there. I think that traps may have been added during the game tweaking and balancing phase.

So there you have it. I start with a concept or theme that makes sense in terms of why the dungeon exists. Most design decisions are guided by gameplay concerns, and, in the case of dungeon building for electronic games, a concern for keeping the dungeon visually interesting. I just make sure not to add anything that really clashes with the overall concept or theme, unless there is an explicit reason to do so.

 

[Romanian_Dude2005]

Overall what game has the best dungeon design? Since I didn't play many RPGs, this is a must-know question

 

[kingcomrade]

The dungeons in Doom 2 were pretty cool.

 

[Twinfalls]

I did like the Old Mine in Gothic 1. Always believable, with its mine-crawlers which weren't gratuituous beasties but felt 'right' in the setting, and behaved realistically. Its traders and little quests fit properly, too, with nice touches like the enslaved Orc at the base.

The sloping, vertiginous rampway that led you down, down, down through the various levels also reflected one of the key cool physical design features of that whole game - environments were rarely flat. Most terrain had some gradient to it, which helped give that slight German impressionistic feel type thing.

 

[Section8]

Ultima Underworld, without a doubt. Everything made sense, exploration was amply reward, there were multiple paths to just about everything, and even multiple approaches to puzzle solving. I seem to remember that a prisoner of the goblins could escape by bashing down a door, picking it, stealing a key, or even using a long pole to trigger a switch beyond reach.

When I think about it, it's pretty fucking remarkable considering the technical limitations, AND that it's a complex FPRPG with an incredible depth of interactivity, released around the same time as Wolfenstein 3D.

And it really boggles the mind to think that even with today's incredible tech advances, there's basically nothing else that measures up. In fact, the only thing that's come close have been other Looking Glass and/or Irrational games.

Bring Bioshock the fuck on.