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Design / What is the impact of nonsensical dungeon layouts (topological impossibilities)?
« on: March 17, 2019, 05:31:21 PM »
Newby here, so please be gentle 
I was wondering, does sense-making in dungeon layout matter much for a roguelike?
I was working on a design document and came across an interesting idea. I typically design experiences centralized around the player. How does X influence player autonomy? How does Y satisfy the player?
Well, I was extending this to AI and thinking of where AI might be useful to give the player a better experience. I started thinking about using an AI director (ala L4D) to coordinate the behavior of AIs, then realized that really the AI director could be used for all sorts of things. Like dungeon generation.
Typically, I believe most roguelikes (certainly brogue) build an "interesting" dungeon using a generic algorithmic approach (L-Systems, Cellular Automata, Binary Space Partitions, etc) that's divorced from player feel. Sure, some constraints are put into the generator, like don't put the exit next to entrance, and reject a map that's too small or too large, etc, but it's all in an indirect attempt to create opportunities for interesting experiences. Why not turn that on its head?
Why not have each room generated by an AI director every time you open a new door? That would allow certain guarantees that are almost impossible in the indirect approach. You could use the Suite/Theme/Flavor system from that old GDC talk to give dungeons a general "feel" and then feed that into the AI director to generate rooms that provide an experience suited to that feel combined with a certain "narrative" aspect. For example: "This dungeon is themed around Exploration and Dread. There will be many branches, loops, key-and-door "puzzles" and dead ends. When a sufficient number of rooms have been Explored, spawn a Dread room that spikes up the combat intensity until Dread is satisfied, then go back into Explorer mode."
The problem is, doing all that with a map that fits onto a world topology like a 2D grid is very, very hard. If instead all the rooms are treated more like separate floors are in the conventional roguelike, then it doesn't matter if there's no physical way to fit room #204 adjacent to room #002 - if the AI director says there should be a back-loop here, it can just link the two rooms assuming they have suitable unopened doors to link.
It does mean only displaying each room in isolation instead of letting the dungeon sprawl out in front of you. And it means trying to hand draw a map of the place is impossible (I grew up watching my mother spend hours hand mapping Might and Magic games so I know how important that can be to players). What are your thoughts?
TLDR: How would a topologically nonsensical map effect the roguelike experience in general? How important is a topologically sound map to the game play of a traditional roguelike?
I was wondering, does sense-making in dungeon layout matter much for a roguelike?
I was working on a design document and came across an interesting idea. I typically design experiences centralized around the player. How does X influence player autonomy? How does Y satisfy the player?
Well, I was extending this to AI and thinking of where AI might be useful to give the player a better experience. I started thinking about using an AI director (ala L4D) to coordinate the behavior of AIs, then realized that really the AI director could be used for all sorts of things. Like dungeon generation.
Typically, I believe most roguelikes (certainly brogue) build an "interesting" dungeon using a generic algorithmic approach (L-Systems, Cellular Automata, Binary Space Partitions, etc) that's divorced from player feel. Sure, some constraints are put into the generator, like don't put the exit next to entrance, and reject a map that's too small or too large, etc, but it's all in an indirect attempt to create opportunities for interesting experiences. Why not turn that on its head?
Why not have each room generated by an AI director every time you open a new door? That would allow certain guarantees that are almost impossible in the indirect approach. You could use the Suite/Theme/Flavor system from that old GDC talk to give dungeons a general "feel" and then feed that into the AI director to generate rooms that provide an experience suited to that feel combined with a certain "narrative" aspect. For example: "This dungeon is themed around Exploration and Dread. There will be many branches, loops, key-and-door "puzzles" and dead ends. When a sufficient number of rooms have been Explored, spawn a Dread room that spikes up the combat intensity until Dread is satisfied, then go back into Explorer mode."
The problem is, doing all that with a map that fits onto a world topology like a 2D grid is very, very hard. If instead all the rooms are treated more like separate floors are in the conventional roguelike, then it doesn't matter if there's no physical way to fit room #204 adjacent to room #002 - if the AI director says there should be a back-loop here, it can just link the two rooms assuming they have suitable unopened doors to link.
It does mean only displaying each room in isolation instead of letting the dungeon sprawl out in front of you. And it means trying to hand draw a map of the place is impossible (I grew up watching my mother spend hours hand mapping Might and Magic games so I know how important that can be to players). What are your thoughts?
TLDR: How would a topologically nonsensical map effect the roguelike experience in general? How important is a topologically sound map to the game play of a traditional roguelike?