7 replies to this topic

[Limebeer]

I was thinking that it would be a good idea to post a database of excess dungeon ideas that people have (or any that you want to share) that people can look through, add to, and generally get inspired by!
It's a place to show off your creativity on ideas, or to have your extra dungeon ideas that you can't fit anywhere in your quest and don't want to see go to waste!

A simple template would be:

Dungeon Size : Is it intended to be a Mini-dungeon or a Full Sized dungeon?
Dungeon Theme : Quite explanitory, this would be if it's a Fire Theme, Ice, Water, or just a General/Classic/None theme. Try to keep it easy and the same terms for people using the search function. (I.e. don't use "Wood" theme if everyone else is using "Forest", or "Wind" theme if everyone is using "Air) Granted, there's some that are hard to know if it should be it's own theme, such as Lava and Fire, or Electric and Lightning... I think a general consensus would be needed for the less obvious themes. Maybe have a "Unique" theme tag followed by the theme (I.e : Unique - Clockwork)
Dungeon Description : This would be if it's an interior style (dungeon) or exterior (outdoor area), as well if it's underground, above ground, tower, ect.
Open or Closed : Again, quite explanitory. Is the dungeon layout open, or is it closed? (Or a better way to think of this is is it like Z1 dungeons with 4 walls in each room with doors leading to the next room, or more like the later games such as Link's Awakening or the Oracle games where walls can lead along to other rooms)
Gimmick : Any specific gimmick your idea has (such as, for a water dungeon, water levels rising and falling, or a night and day dungeon where certain areas are available depending on if it's night or day, which you can change via a special item.
Details : Your general ideas and how the dungeon would be. This is the hard part as you want to be as discriptive as possible yet keeping it open enough for people to put their own interpretations on it and not feel stifled. You can put in layout specific ideas here too, like if you think the boss room should be seen from the entrance or near the beginning, or if it's a tower (or multiple floors) and need to trigger things on different floors to open ways on the main floor and such as that.

You can add anything else you feel is needed, but I thought it would be a good thing to have

Edit:
Also, if you do use anyone elses dungeon idea, be sure to credit them!

Edit #1 :
Try not to double post, but if you have two separate dungeon ideas which will be quite lengthy or vastly different in themes and gimmicks (etc), then I think it should be allowed so long as you aren't just spamming. If you have a comment on someone elses and a dungeon idea, then double posting is not needed and thus should remain as one. If anyone or the mods have objections to this then it will be changed to how other topics are where double posting is dicouraged unless someone replies between posts or enough time has passed.

Edited by Limebeer, 23 January 2015 - 03:21 PM.

[KingPridenia]

Dungeon Size : Mini-dungeon
Dungeon Theme : It's a shrine located on a hill in a wasteland area with bloody water that's infested by mutated Zoras that belch fire at those that dare traverse the wasteland's water.
Dungeon Description : This is a shrine located on a hill overlooking an area called the Barren Wastes. It is a small shrine built into a cave on the hill. Like with most of the wasteland area, the bloody water/muck is infested with fire-breathing Zoras. However, that's the least of your worries.
Open or Closed : Closed NES-styled
Gimmick : The gimmick revolves around a hint you can buy that tells you that you need to "think outside the box". More below.
Details : The dungeon appears to be a 4x4 square when you get the map, which is available early on. There are a few rooms with one-way doors and some rooms that are there just to tease you with a key that you can't get from the direction you came from, so you have to go around it, often having to pass through a wall or bomb a wall. Using the spacebar map can be very useful. Anyway, you're expected to use NES dungeon trial and error to get through, although so you're not bombing walls aimlessly, you can use the Spin Attack poke (which you start the quest with). You have to find four keys that often have to be obtained going in a roundabout way. Partway through the dungeon, you see the prize of the dungeon, but it's blocked off by a bunch of blocks that won't move.

 

The rest will be in a spoiler:

Spoiler

Once you have all four keys, you have to take the pay for info guy literally and go into one of the rooms you got a key in and walk through a wall to "get outside of the box". I think I do give a good hint about this, since if you come from the right side of the room, you're pretty much forced to go straight ahead. Anyway, you then use up the four keys you've found and fight the boss. The boss isn't too hard or at least shouldn't be Once you beat it, you get an obvious hint to bomb down and as soon as you go down, you pick up the dungeon prize immediately. Going back up takes you back to the entrance room (kind of weird, but saves you from having to F6).

 

In short, this is meant to be one of those "intermediate" dungeons between main levels. In this case, this is required to access the area of the overworld that houses level 5. In addition, getting that dungeon item is required to enter three 100% optional dungeons that are based off dungeons from quests I never finished. You don't have to do them, but they have decent rewards and both are great for Rupee grinding, since you can leave each one a few hundred richer apiece.

 

EDIT: Here's another one.

 

Sorry this one isn't in a template, but here was one I thought of. It would be a classic NES style dungeon, but have many passageways that don't lead back where you came from. For example, Room 45's passageway leads to Room 23, but going back down Room 23's staircase leads to Room 31. In short, the whole dungeon revolves around that gimmick. Not only that, to confuse the player even more, some stairs would even lead back to previously explored rooms, but on different sides. Then to be even more of a troll, have one you go down a staircase and actually have to go right back up it to get to the other side, which is otherwise inaccessible. Actually, nah to that last one. That's just guide dang it and fake difficulty combined. Throw in Wizzrobes galore and prepare for the flaming.

Edited by RedmageAdam, 23 January 2015 - 02:07 AM.

[Avaro]

Sounds like a good idea. I actually remember a dungeon I have once planned for one of my cancelled project and I thought it was a good idea, but I never made it. Here you go:

 

Dungeon Size: Full sized dungeon.

Dungeon Theme: Time.

Dungeon Description: It's a tower located in a forest. From the inside it would feel a lot like the Temple of Time from OoT and TP.

Open or closed: Open.

Gimmick: Blasting away entire floors from the outside and manipulate time to reset the tower.

Dungeon Details: As a tower, this dungeon has multiple small floors that all have the same size and shape. From time to time it's required to leave the dungeon and blast away the lowest floor of the dungeon (using a super bomb or whatever?). This will make the entire tower fall down one floor. The player can enter the upper floors through the windows this way.

It's also possible to reset the tower from the outside by manipulating the time (using an ocarina?). This will recover the floors that have been destroyed.

 

And that's the idea. It's unusual and unrealistic but I like it xD

[LikeLike on fire]

so is this for extra dungon ideas or "this seems cool idea but I can't do it, because of reasons on my own ineptitude"

[Limebeer]

so is this for extra dungon ideas or "this seems cool idea but I can't do it, because of reasons on my own ineptitude"

Either or, basically if you have an idea that you want to share for any reason, whether you can't do it yourself or it's just an idea you where playing with and never got around to using, or anything other reason that you can post here for use by others.

Really I just envisioned it to be for people to post any dungeon idea that they don't mind others to use as well as be a place people can look through if they don't really have an idea for themselves for making a dungeon for their quest.

EDIT :

 

Sorry this one isn't in a template, but here was one I thought of. It would be a classic NES style dungeon, but have many passageways that don't lead back where you came from. For example, Room 45's passageway leads to Room 23, but going back down Room 23's staircase leads to Room 31. In short, the whole dungeon revolves around that gimmick. Not only that, to confuse the player even more, some stairs would even lead back to previously explored rooms, but on different sides. Then to be even more of a troll, have one you go down a staircase and actually have to go right back up it to get to the other side, which is otherwise inaccessible. Actually, nah to that last one. That's just guide dang it and fake difficulty combined. Throw in Wizzrobes galore and prepare for the flaming.

You are an evil, evil man... but damn if I don't think this would be fun to do!

Edited by Limebeer, 23 January 2015 - 10:27 AM.

[KingPridenia]

Thanks Lime! Actually, from another abandoned quest, I had the concept of a dungeon map that wraps around. That is, when you get to the left-most part of the 8x8 grid, you end up in the right-most column of the map. The only problem I had with that though is I gave no indication whatsoever you could do that. You just had to guess and exhaust every possibility until you discovered it by accident. Now I tend to be a bit more clear or at the very least, give a cryptic hint. One hint I gave for the whole one-way passageways in a different abandoned quest was "HE WHO GOES BACK GOES FORWARD." The gimmick was used once to complete level 7 and had to be used twice in level 8; once to get a key and a second time to get near the boss room. I probably would have had that gimmick in level 9 had I finished making it.

[Limebeer]

Thanks Lime! Actually, from another abandoned quest, I had the concept of a dungeon map that wraps around. That is, when you get to the left-most part of the 8x8 grid, you end up in the right-most column of the map. The only problem I had with that though is I gave no indication whatsoever you could do that. You just had to guess and exhaust every possibility until you discovered it by accident. Now I tend to be a bit more clear or at the very least, give a cryptic hint. One hint I gave for the whole one-way passageways in a different abandoned quest was "HE WHO GOES BACK GOES FORWARD." The gimmick was used once to complete level 7 and had to be used twice in level 8; once to get a key and a second time to get near the boss room. I probably would have had that gimmick in level 9 had I finished making it.

Ah, that reminds me of the pacman maze, though not a gimmick that I would personally use in my quest building.

Anyways, here's one from me:

Dungeon Size : Full Size
Dungeon Theme : Light & Dark
Dungeon Description : Interior
Open or Closed : Either
Gimmick : The changing of Light and Dark reveals different pathways and opens different areas
Details : In order to progress through the dungeon, you must find the dungeon item, or atleast find the switches to activate the change between Light and Dark aspects of the dungeon. The proper pathways would only be visible in the Dark, but progression forwards to new areas can only be opened in the Light. However, the switch to change from Dark to Light is different and in different locations than the switch to change from Light to Dark (so no using the same switch to change back and forth). This can be used in almost any layout, though more of an open and exploratory layout would be more benificial rather than a closed and/or linear progression, unless you use a tower which you have to continue going back and forth between floors.
You can also, if desired, use timed warps instead of a switch back and forth, so you can hit a switch to go from Dark to Light (or vice versa) which would only stay for a limited time before automatically warping back to the previous incarnation.


Haha, you know, after writing all of that out, I think I'll use it in either dungeon 6 of my quest, or as a dungeon theme in my next as it came out more appealing when I wrote it down than it initially did when it was just laying in my head But I'll still keep it up for people to use

Edited by Limebeer, 23 January 2015 - 03:16 PM.

[Limebeer]

Dungeon Size : Full Size
Dungeon Theme : Light, Wind
Dungeon Description : Interior & Exterior
Open or Closed : Open
Gimmick : The dungeon slowly starts to fade and blow away
Details : The dungeon works best if you have a Light Realm or a Sky part of your map. Basically, you start out in a temple with a light theme with an outdoor area as well. You have to travel back and forth between them with multiple entrances and exits to get to the two areas. The indoors needs you to manipulate light (or magic if you don't use scripts to reflect light) to traverse, and outside has slowly increasing winds (warping winds work here). However, around the halfway mark the winds outside starts to increase vastly, blowing away parts of the dungeon which then creates fissures of Light. When in the outside part the winds push Link (use invisible conveyer belts to simulate the strong winds). You can have rubble of the collapsing Temple to access new areas as well, or just block things. 
As you continue to explore and progress, the winds destroy more and more of the temple until you are basically in a white void with floating bits of the floor to walk on. You can either have strong winds here as well, or have it eerily calm with no music, until you get to the end of the platforms surrounded by a void of white. I'd have nothing there until you try to leave, which would have a barrier preventing you to progress and warp winds suddenly flying towards you warping you to the boss chamber. I'd have this as a round glass platform with crystal pillars which reflects magic. The boss would always be out of reach and can only be hit by you shooting magic at him, or moving a pushable reflecting crystal to hit him with his own magic. (That's my boss set up for it, because I feel it fits, but you can have almost anything for it really)