3 replies to this topic

[JetBox]

Alright, if your having a hard time making a dungeon, the there is a cool thing you can do easy and quick for your dungeons. As some of you may no, In the Steam game the Binding of Isaac, you travel randomly generated Zelda 1 type dungeons. What you can do is to find one with curse of the labyrinth, and explore all of the dungeon. You then have a decent template of your dungeon screens along with the passages. You can connect multiple of these by stacking them for a multi-floor dungeon. You can change where locked doors are and boss rooms and treasure rooms, but It's pretty good when wanting a dungeon done quick if your not wanting a planned, sophisticated dungeon.

[Timelord]

I'm not sure that playing a randomly generated game to rip maps is an optimal way to save time in designing a dungeon layout. Would it not be better to attempt making a random dungeon script, that you can use indefinitely?

 

Aside from that, the trickier parts of dungeon design are in finding creative ways to make dungeons, with enemy, item, trap, and puzzle placement. I could make 30 floors of Overworld DMAPs worth of rooms without breaking a sweat, but making it interesting and creative is another matter.

 

Making a set of default rooms, then copying and pasting them, and editing door types is pretty much my standard fare, and then I modify the rooms to make them feel more natural, and to present the player with problems to solve. You could make six or seven main room designs, and copy and paste them together at random, and make passages as you see fit to design a quick dungeon with the same result of using a random generator, although it is by design; if you want truly random dungeons, a blindfold helps.

 

You could also make six room types and roll 1d6 for each screen of a DMAP, or if you have a full set of dice, roll 1d8, and use 7 and 8 as 'no room' for each position on a map.

[JetBox]

Ya, well, I meant more of if your playing the game, and you get to fill one of them, you can take a screenshot for your dungeon layout. Now, if your trying to make an incredible story-driven awesome game, than this isn't the best thing to do. If your making a laid back quest just for the enjoyment of making quests, then this could be good. Also, you can have fun playing a fun game while also making your quest. This isn't an ultra time saver, but a way I have used to just put random screens down in some laid back quests of mine. Also, some good ideas for random dungeon making.

[Timelord]

I suppose if you are already in the midst of playing BoI, then it can't hurt to use it to plot a layout, but as I said, you could achieve similar results by rolling dice to plot rooms based off a standard template.

 

One of the big concerns with a RDG (by script, design, dice, or using BoI as a basis) is enemy placement, and door placement.

 

While door placement is easy to fix in a hand0made dungeon, a script needs to know what rooms may connect to each-other, and must be able to place enemies based on set parameters. While these can certainly be overcome (e.g., using current MaxHP for Rands on enemy selection), it will take some effort to achieve good and usable results.

 

Even with using BoI for layout, you will still be left with e-placement, and item placement,and need to decide if you want any special triggers or puzzles of any kind. A maze is also a possibility, but having random mazes with no clues is mostly a tactic to draw out gameplay with random path selection, and can become old. (I would suggest using this sparingly.)

 

I don't have a link to that thread handy, but it's on the forum somewhere. If I wasn't about to retire for the day with a terrible migraine, I'd sift through my posts for it, but a few searches should call it up. I think the keywords 'random' and 'BoI' might help to locate it, as I recall using both in one of my posts.