Temple of The Roguelike Forums
Announcements => Other Announcements => Topic started by: benappo on May 22, 2013, 09:10:27 AM
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Hi all,
I have a quick question.
Would a game still be considered roguelike if instead of completely procedurally-generated dungeons/areas, the dungeons/areas were pre-made, but randomly loaded whenever a PC enters a dungeon location? (assuming all other roguelike characteristics are present, such as random mobs, items etc.)
I guess Spelunky has something like this feature, but I'm talking more about a situation where, say, 100 pre-drawn maps are made and any of them could be loaded, at random, when entering a dungeon.
I'm asking as I might want to implement this feature in a roguelike, as I find that procedurally-generated dungeons tend to be, well, boring, after a while, with no neat features.
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Well. I found, experimentally, that the best results come from combination of more then one procedural generators and premade clusters of dungeon.
Because, completely lego-like dungeon would become boring soon, even faster then standard procedural dungeon.
And only one type of procedural generator is boring also.
I think it is better to have few simple procedural generators, then one detailed one.
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Binding of Isaac does this. I find it a bit stale myself. You don't get that sense of something cool and unexpected.
Dredmor stitches pre-made rooms together. Again, this ends up samey after many playthroughs. Vicious Orcs has a similar stitching system, but it has a bit more variety to it so it works better.
Maybe the generators you're using are a bit boring? Or as Jo says maybe trying mixing elements of both approaches?
Don't worry about it not being called a roguelike. Making a fun game takes priority over making a rule-bound roguelike.
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Well, it would be more interesting if they were at least a bit randomised.
It's a lot of work though, getting some good procedural generation going might be easier and more fruitful anyway.
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It's a perfectly valid design choice regardless of whether it's what the "real" roguelikes do.
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Remember too it's not just the architecture that makes them fun and replayable. It's what's inside. The monsters and loots!
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Hi all,
I have a quick question.
Would a game still be considered roguelike if instead of completely procedurally-generated dungeons/areas, the dungeons/areas were pre-made, but randomly loaded whenever a PC enters a dungeon location? (assuming all other roguelike characteristics are present, such as random mobs, items etc.)
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Absolutely yes.
but like Darren said, make a fun game and then let people decide after that what kind of game it is
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MegamanRL does this. Mainly because it's a bit complex to get transversable level for a sidescroller.
ZeldaRL has something similar, it has a high level structure generator which defines the class (and exits) of all rooms in the dungeons, then each room is assigned a detailed generator which varies things a bit into each room.