Giant Enemies?

[jasonpickering]

Alright guys so I am making a graphical roguelike. As opposed to the you fighting a myriad of enemies I have gone with one big enemy that you can not kill, but may only run away from. The entire thing is inspired by At the Mountains of Madness by H.P. Lovecraft. the monster that chases you being a Shoggoth its described as:

It was a terrible, indescribable thing vaster than any subway train—a shapeless congeries of protoplasmic bubbles, faintly self-luminous, and with myriads of temporary eyes forming and un-forming as pustules of greenish light all over the tunnel-filling front that bore down upon us, crushing the frantic penguins and slithering over the glistening floor that it and its kind had swept so evilly free of all litter.



so these were my first interpretation. you can see one to the right and one to the left showing how it blends with the shadow. so here is my main thing. How can I make it Gigantic? I was keeping everything 16 x 16, but this should be much bigger, yet still able to fit down corridors. would it be better to increase the size to 32 x 32 and keep the guy the same size but in the center of the tile, meanign he fills up less of it? should I make all my corridors wider and you are still 16x 16 but the shoggoth is 32 x 32 and it chases you? this would give me the option to make small 16 x 16 paths to cut down to escape the thing, knowing it cant follow you.

[NON]

Maybe shoggoths should be multi-tile monsters?

You could have one centre-cell be the actual creature that the AI cares about, then every turn it calculates its "reach" using flood-fill.
That way it would stretch long through corridors, and be more wide and circular in open areas.

[Darren Grey]

Alright guys so I am making a graphical roguelike. As opposed to the you fighting a myriad of enemies I have gone with one big enemy that you can not kill, but may only run away from.

Hey, that's my idea! 

I suggest making it larger than a regular tile, and make it floating so it can fit across any walkway.  It doesn't have to be an exact replica of the Shoggoth.

[NON]

Pretty much what I just said. 

[jasonpickering]

Thanks Guys. doing the Flood fill to create a monster would be pretty cool. I don't know how I would create it graphically and get everything nice and fit together though. I might just go with a much larger sprite it taking up 32 x 32 and giving the player small alleyways to cut through. Maybe something like this

[Hamish]

I'm liking the look of the explorer and the cave walls, i think the idea of having an amorphous blob that squelches through gaps and swells to fill caverns would not only look bad ass but also make for some interesting gameplay. a but like the goo things in zelda but on a grander and creepier scale

[jasonpickering]

Yeah I think playing with enemy size can add a lot to a rogue like. here are some mockups for a graphical roguelike



not the players dont really fill the entire square, but then that allows you to do this



now the dragon looks huge, but mechanically the game handles them both as a 16x16 monster. Of course this only works in a grapical roguelike, but I think you could do something like this using ASCII at different sizes and jsut centering them.

[Pueo]

I also had an idea like this, were a boss monster would appear as a long snake, represented by strings of ASCII characters.  I think your idea is also pretty awesome, a jelly monster that squelches around.