Fixed Dungeon | Randomly Generated Dungeon

[Baconlabs]

The only familiarity I have with random dungeons comes from Pikmin 2, which used a sort of "hybrid" method. Some dungeons, particularly the easier ones, would be fixed in place. Most of them are randomly generated with each floor you go, with some exceptions, like boss rooms.
The enemies and items in the dungeon are pre-determined, the only thing that changes is their location, which is mostly unnoticeable, but occasionally you'll end up with rooms that have a large cluster of bomb-chucking bugs near each other, or Blowhogs flanking your starting location, or a vital treasure-bearing enemy landing in the middle of a bunch of electric beetles.
These are challenging and fun to work with - with each descent, I find myself rapidly scanning the area to see what I'm up against, coming up with split-second strategies to clear out an area and collect stuff. Sometimes I may find the situation too threatening, and rather than risk completing everything at once (and ignoring the fact that you can save-scum in dungeons), I look for the most direct path to the exit and try to avoid everything.

This works for Pikmin because all dungeons are independent of each other and the levels they're connected to, so consistency with the setting hardly matters at all. This is not applicable to every game. When it comes to RPGs, I'm most comfortable with a dungeon I only need to explore once. After that, I know where all the treasures (and, with games like Mother 3, all the enemies) are beforehand, and I don't need to waste any time getting to my next plot-appointed destination, because that's what I'm most interested in - proceeding with the story.

EXAMPLE: I would hate hate hate having to play through a randomly-generated Tower of Bab-il from Final Fantasy IV. (This probably has something to do with the random battles)

[Twinconclusive]

Persona 3 random tower floors vs Persona 4 fixed dungeon layouts?

I liked that Persona 3 had those random event floors, but every floor had the same essential layout.

Persona 4 kept things refreshing with their fixed dungeons of varying layouts, and they were generally short enough that you could finish before getting too bored.

[NeoSpade]

Persona 4 kept things refreshing with their fixed dungeons of varying layouts, and they were generally short enough that you could finish before getting too bored.

I've found playing it from the start again, that the dungeons aren't nearly as long as they seemed on the first go.

Also, Kanji's dungeon is still the most awkward and awesome thing ever, and that music cue that happens at the start was just Fab-u-lous.

:P If you hadn't guessed I really love Persona 4.

As for randomly generated dungeons (and back on topic, sorry for the derail) I've always felt that the Dark Cloud games where very thrilling to play due to the variety of enemies and likable characters, but I always felt the need to give the first one a week between dungeons to keep things fresh, otherwise I'd end up grinding for the sake of it or dying repeatedly on the same floor (because of rushing).
Dark Cloud 2 (Dark Chronicle here in the UK) gave the feeling that much more was going on and kept things very fresh, I think a part of the charm was the system improvements and the vast amounts of extra stuff to be getting on with (Fishing on a fishing game = dull, fishing in Dark Chronicle = somehow very fulfilling).

I think the key to keeping random dungeons interesting is to create interesting themes and/or lots of environments to keep visuals fresh and engaging.

EDIT: also on the poll question, I lean more towards the random side, even if I do like to know where I am.

[JSH357]

Depends on the genre, but in general I hate randomized content. The fact that it's winning the poll is more reflective of this community that general game players, I think. If a game is story focused, I would stay far away from this kind of thing outside wacky post game content.

[Mogri]

Depends on the genre, but in general I hate randomized content. The fact that it's winning the poll is more reflective of this community that general game players, I think. If a game is story focused, I would stay far away from this kind of thing outside wacky post game content.

I think it's the novelty factor. Sounds like people in this thread are saying, "Oh, yeah, random! That sounds cool."

Learn to design fixed levels really well, THEN start thinking about random.

(I am apparently one of two people who voted for fixed )

[NeoSpade]

Depends on the genre, but in general I hate randomized content. The fact that it's winning the poll is more reflective of this community that general game players, I think. If a game is story focused, I would stay far away from this kind of thing outside wacky post game content.

I do agree with you to a point, and I really would hate total randomness. It works if used as a believable narrative tool, for example in Crimson Tears the reason for the dungeons was the way space time had distorted. And in Persona 4 the TV world reflects the nature of the people within, and with them being turbulent teens the random nature of the dungeons makes sense.

Some games it just wouldn't work for, I couldn't imagine Dragon Quest or Final Fantasy doing it while keeping a strong narrative.

I'd also like to agree that it's a feature that sometimes can feel a tad tacked-on, even lazy (can't be imaginative and create environments that will make you want to revisit? Randomly generate and it'll never be the same twice!) but for the most part they can be fun, even unjustified in relation to the plot, which admittedly usually cripples the plot due to the lack of consistent/meaningful set pieces.

[Newbie Newtype]

I voted random dungeons because I simply like them, and there's never going to be a drought of fixed level design.

People seem to be assuming that random dungeons would be used in a normal JRPG like FF for some reason, though.

[msw188]

My arguments against randomized dungeons have nothing to do with storylines at all. But I must admit I DID assume RPG-style dungeons in the context of the question (fighting using commands rather than 'real-time' fighting, and death being a real threat). If this means "normal JRPG like FF", then I'm guilty as charged.

Mogri brings up a good point though. A dungeon that is randomized on first entrance, but is then retained through death/retreat, can be a very interesting trick to keeping a game interesting on multiple playthroughs.

But yeah, I find most of these comments about the narrative somewhat irrelevant. I mean, yeah if the narrative DEMANDS a 'random' dungeon, then of course it's better than a fixed one. Structuring the narrative to allow for a random dungeon is certainly possible, but that doesn't make the random dungeon a good or bad thing.

I do like some randomness on occasion in my gameplay. I like random elements in games like Smash Bros Brawl because it can be funny. Matches are fairly quick, and winning and losing isn't THAT important. If I were playing a Brawl tournament for money, I would want random things like items turned off.

When I play an RPG, I usually care about beating the game (if not, I probably won't keep playing it anyhow). In such a scenario, I don't think I would want something as instrumental to gameplay as dungeon layouts to be random; I want something I can learn and improve at if I am to beat it. Although Mogri points out that there are OTHER things that I can learn from a failed attempt at a random dungeon (the enemies within, for example), on a personal level I like learning the ins and outs of the dungeon as well, and I can put up with randomness forcing unpredictability in single battles before I want to put up with randomness forcing unpredictability in how to effectively explore the dungeon. Time to vote.

[Newbie Newtype]

Games usually just place the story outside of the dungeon crawling. There's nothing to be afraid of.

And dungeon layouts aren't as threatening to the learning process or an extreme element of randomness as you made them out to be because enemy/item design is still consistent as are the rules to the game.

[SDHawk]

Which one's "better" is pretty much intrinsic to the game's rules themselves. Static allows for the generation of more 'interesting' designs, random allows for more 'variation' in designs.

Taking a typical jRPG battle system for instance it wouldn't deliver much value in generating random enemy battle formations. If you have an enemy that can decrease your defense per turn and an enemy that deals high non-piercing damage, then a human designer would immediately recognize the most interesting formation design would have a high damage and a defense decreasing enemy together, creating an obvious optimal strategy of taking out the defense lowering enemy first before they make more of your party vulnerable to the other enemy. Having two of a single kind in a battle might be something a generator would create and would be much more boring to a player so you're not gaining any interest with variation there.

A typical roguelike meanwhile has a lot more to gain with variation since there's a drastically larger pool of actions and reactions attached to every object (not to mention a wider number of objects active in the game at one time). Such a large pool means more possibilities can be generated and therefore you're a lot more likely to hit upon an interesting scenario with simple variation (plus part of the experience is learning what the pool of actions/reactions are so just finding a new one adds to the player's entertainment as well).

[camdog]

I did this in OHRogue:

http://www.slimesalad.com/forum/viewgame.php?t=142

The scripts are included in the download. Looking over it, I kind of cringe at some of the awkward programming decisions I made, but it shouldn't be hard to include in your game if anyone is interested. Feel free to ask any questions about working with it.

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.

Is there any way to seed the RNG via plotscripting? If that were the case, you could get a random number to seed the RNG, create your random dungeon, and just store the seed the next time you wanted to recreate the same dungeon.

[Nathan Karr]

I like fixed-ness. I'm chaotic enough; I find the stability reassuring. As it is, I like removing the luck from stuff like damage done during attacks and things like that.

[Bob the Hamster]

Is there any way to seed the RNG via plotscripting? If that were the case, you could get a random number to seed the RNG, create your random dungeon, and just store the seed the next time you wanted to recreate the same dungeon.

Yes, indeed there is! <a href="http://hamsterrepublic.com/ohrrpgce/doc ... ndom">seed random</a>

[camdog]

Awesome! It seems to me that lots of persistent, randomly generated dungeons are quite possible then.

[Mystic]

I'm with JSH on that one: I'd rather a fixed dungeon throughout the main game, but randomly generated content after the fact is a huge plus to me.

Anybody can work with their strategy until they finish the story - but a real challenge could come with creating a party/strategy that can deal with how chaotic randomness can be.

It's all fun as long as it doesn't cheat too much...