Hi.

Currently I feel (again) a bit uncontent with the wilderness in
LambdaRogue. It looks good, but is very unstructured. I use puzzle tiles
to create the levels in LambdaRogue, and this works great for dungeons
and caves; the more puzzle tiles I have, the more interesting the
levels. But for wilderness it's not enough and I think a need a second
layer above the puzzle tiles to give structure to the wilderness - and
make it, while still being randomly created, not to look arbitrary, but
instead to provide certain fixed spots (like positions of the dungeon
entrance, positions of NPCs etc.)

I already have one layer -- the river. It is created above the
wilderness "background". I am now thinking about using this concept for
creating wider paths and mountains, too -- big enough to work as
landmarks for the player. The currently randomly scattered villages
would be near the path, and the dungeon entrance would be somewhere in
the mountains.

On the other hand, I am considering to throw the whole wilderness away
(not throw away the source code, but simply not use it). The player
would start in the temple where Ahna gives him the main quest (find the
Book of Stars) and then head straight forward to temple's cellar as
entrance to the main dungeon. The current second dungeon level (the one
with the antbees) would become 3rd level.

I really consider this thought.

Which of the two ways would you go?

Mario Donick

On Jun 30, 2:56 pm, Mario Donick <mario.don...@gmail.com> wrote:

If the wilderness has no use but eye candy, axe it until you either
have a use or have better eye candy.
--
Jeff Lait
(POWDER: http://www.zincland.com/powder)

On 30 kesä, 21:56, Mario Donick <mario.don...@gmail.com> wrote:

If you have more than one location then you obviously
need an overworld map to travel between locations.
I have a good experience from semi-random overworld map
which has all the places in "fixed" locations, but the
map is always slightly different so you don't get bored.
I think the overworld should be small and clean (no
mazes) so it's easy to travel between places. If I
remember it correctly the overworld in Lambda is a bit
confusing. I guess that's why you need that stupid
compass:)

Krice schrieb:

That was indeed the reason for me to implement the compass, because I
often had problems to find the way to the dungeon entrance. I never have
this problem in the dungeon itself.

Mario

Jeff Lait schrieb:

Yeah. I think I agree, and I think the game would be more
straightforward if the way to the dungeon was more clear.

Mario

On Jun 30, 8:47 pm, Krice <pau...@mbnet.fi> wrote:

This is not so obvious.
There could simply be a list of locations that you know about, along
with the amount of time to travel to them.  You can still generate
random encounters along the way if you're so inclined.  You could
choose between travelling with a caravan (allies to help with
encounters, but slower) or on your own.  Of course, caravans only go
to towns, not to obscure dungeons.  Perhaps to get to some locations
you must hire a guide.
I'm starting to think that this method might actually be more
interesting than the standard overworld map.

Or you can just have all the different dungeons connected up like in
Nethack.