Fixed Dungeon | Randomly Generated Dungeon

They can both better and worse than the other in certain circumstances, but which ones are generally more fun?

Or perhaps a balanced mix would be optimal?

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♪♪♪ Du du duuuu ♪♪♪

In a game that emphasizes exploration, I like a random dungeon.
In a game that emphasizes any kind of story I like a fixed dungeon.

Anything that does a good job of hybridizing the two of those sounds like something I would enjoy playing :)

If you figure out how to make a random dungeon that would be awesome. I'd implement it in my game for sure.

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I think Mogri and/or Camdog have already figured that out.

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♪♪♪ Du du duuuu ♪♪♪

i say a little mix of both is great. of course, you can't forget about randomly generatING dungeons. having a dungeon that constantly shifts and changes has always piqued my interest since playing Dark Cloud. although, i also think it depends on it's presentation. why and how is the dungeon randomly generated? is it to keep gameplay fresh by having countless possible dungeon crawls? or is it something supernatural, like a living cave (baconthuluesque!), a castle under a wizard's spell (stairways in hogwarts, anybody?), maybe even residing on a chaotic ethereal plane of existence that cause it to constantly change and shift? who knows! it's up to the author to decide and create.

of course, there's nothing wrong with only one of the three, but i think this also depends on it's presentation. take Fallout, for example. you could see finding a random or fixed dungeon in this game making sense, but it's hard to imagine how a shifting dungeon could exist in a much more real and believable environment. on the other hand, take a game like Final Fantasy. it already says "fantasy" in the name. they could pretty much get away with any explanation as to how and why a dungeon constantly changes. however, you would also see heavy emphasis on fixed dungeons, because every detail in these dungeons are meant to illustrate the story and make a "real" world out of a fantastical environment. this includes everything from the architecture, puzzles, traps, and even the monsters.

for my own personal opinion: mix it up a bit!

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Hey, I just met you, and this is crazy... So here's some lunchmeat... Sandwich, maybe?

The devil with random dungeons is that they're difficult to design effectively. The easiest solution for this actually is hybridization: including some fixed events or areas within an otherwise random dungeon. Spelunky does this really well. Torchlight does this, too, but it's more subtle.

Fixed versus random comes down to what you're using it for. In the majority of cases, it's easier, quicker, and more effective to use fixed dungeons. Random dungeons are mostly preferable when you expect the player to go through the same area many times.

See ADOM for an example of a game that uses a fixed overworld with random dungeons.

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Mega Tact v1.1
Super Penguin Chef
Wizard Blocks

I've been playing Undercroft far too much, but I really like what's going on in it.

Dungeons and puzzles are essentially fixed. Layout, enemies, always the same. The only thing that ever changes between playthroughs is items found in dungeons and shops.

This alone seems to make every playthrough feel like a different experience (In addition to reforming your starting party).

However, the same old dungeon layout gets pretty old pretty quickly.

Random loot generation is something I would definitely like to have.

I'm afraid of entirely randomly generated dungeons in that I'm afraid of having a player thrown into some strange isolated room with no way out.

My current idea is to have a core layout to dungeon floors and then some supplemental random branches and paths that appear around/through it.

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♪♪♪ Du du duuuu ♪♪♪

I'm brainstorming outloud I guess, which might not be good. But your idea gave me an idea Moogs. Have an autoload script for the map, and have X amount of paths to go in said dungeon blocked by a obstacles. The autoload script randomly chooses a set of tags to turn on that could be a working dungeon. So effectively, it's like designing as many dungeons as you want options of. You could even rig it so each room in the dungeon triggers different tags to be set on. I love this idea, maybe for an optional area rather than a story area, but it's a great idea.

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Check out Red Triangle Games!

If this is all that's stopping you, there are ways to check for that.

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Mega Tact v1.1
Super Penguin Chef
Wizard Blocks

Could you guys post links to game examples that have been done of games like this? I'm really excited about the prospects of this.

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Check out Red Triangle Games!

The scripts that Baconthulhu uses to generate its random mazes are relevant. Even though there are no open rooms, just tunnels, I had to make sure that no tunnel sections could ever be closed-off traps. Every passage is reachable.

The Dungeon of Burlap Bags tech demo creates a random dungeon.

The big problem with trying to do this is persistence. Saving the map state takes up a lot of variable space, which means you can't store very many maps. On top of that, I'm not certain the map state is stored in save files.

Bottom line: if you want persistent maps, you don't want to do this in the OHRRPGCE.

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Mega Tact v1.1
Super Penguin Chef
Wizard Blocks

This thread interests me. A long while ago I had a thread to discuss 'random' elements in RPG battles, and many people seemed to feel that randomness of things like aiming, and enemy actions, is a necessary evil because it just wouldn't be worth it to take into account actual deterministic factors to account for things like missing, or an enemy choosing what to do reasonably.

There seemed to be an underlying assumption that randomness in the gameplay hurts the game. It takes away from tactical elements in battle, because the player cannot reason through what actions might take place.

Here we have randomized dungeons, and people seem fairly positive about the idea. And I must admit I don't know if I agree yet. It seems that a randomized dungeon has the chance to take away from strategic elements of gameplay - if the dungeon is random, how can you reason out how to use your resources effectively?

Consider the following. Imagine if in Super Mario Bros, the stages were randomly generated. How frustrating would it be to die in a level, and then have no knowledge to show for it? The key is that when you die the first time, the 2nd time you know a little more about the level and can plan better how to complete it.

Dying in, or retreating from, an RPG dungeon can be similar. You enter the dungeon a 2nd time knowing which way to go, or about how long it is, and can thus make better use of your resources. But if dungeons are randomized, this element of gameplay would seem to be lost.

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I am Srime

The playstyle you're describing is getting better at a single dungeon. Games like Nethack make you get good at the entire game.

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<TheGiz> oh hai doggy, oh no that's the straw that broke tjhe came baclsb

Have you played Spelunky? Because that's the same way, except when you die, you have to start all over from the beginning. But knowledge is the one thing you DO have to show for it: you learn enemy patterns and game interactions so that you can avoid a similar situation in the future.

Some amount of constancy is necessary for you to be able to carry knowledge over between sessions. If enemy stats and weaknesses are also randomly generated, it's trial and error. However, if you know that red dragons start showing up on level 6, then you can plan for that and get some fire protection before you go there.

I also feel compelled to point out that in persistent dungeons, you still know which way to go should you need to retreat. Non-persistent dungeons do suffer from the problems you mention more strongly and can also be gamed by "stairhopping" (transitioning from one level to another in order to generate a more ideal map).

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Mega Tact v1.1
Super Penguin Chef
Wizard Blocks