Deciding enemies

[jasonpickering]

How do you guys decide which enemies are on a floor?

do you set each floor specificially?
do you use a weighted array?
do you just let it be random and just add more enemies?

[Pueo]

In my project, each floor has an integer value that relates to the "strength" of the creatures on that floor.  So for example, level 1 has a value of 0.  So, you will get creatures with a relative "difficulty" of 0.  Creatures can roam up to one value up or down, so you may find a level 1 creature in a level 0 floor, or a level 1 creature in a level 2 floor.  The fine mechanics are a little more complex, but that's the general idea. I'm hoping it's balanced.

[kraflab]

In my game, I completely separate each floor with a different pool of enemies.  So enemy F only appears on floor 4 for instance.  But part of the reason is that each floor is much more powerful in the last in my game, such that including "out of depth" monsters would be a serious challenge.  To make sure that there are still tough monsters that can show up though, I have more powerful versions of each monster, as well as rare mini-boss type creatures that can show up to keep things interesting.

[jasonpickering]

thanks. these have both been helpful. I have also been looking at tips for building magic the gathering decks and the one idea I keep seeing is selecting a theme. I think that could be cool and would give you better floor to floor atmosphere. some examples

- Poison: these are guys that poison the player

- slow down: guys that hinder the players movement whether it be wizards with slow, or spiders.

or we can just go theme and say

- tomb: spider, rats, and skeletons.

[kraflab]

Going with a floor theme is definitely a good plan.  Another nice thing that I don't see a lot of games doing is random themed floor occurrences.  For example, sometimes in spelunky you get down to a floor and there are way more snakes than usual, or you find that all the enemies are of the undead variety.  I themed the enemies on the floors in my game, although it might not be apparent to players that don't know the plot =P.  But definitely a cohesive theme helps create a good atmosphere in my opinion.

[jasonpickering]

yeah Spelunky is a great example. with the snake pit, darkness, or water.  I think there is at least one for each area too. snakes, undead, aliens, cultists.

[Krice]

The game world in my game has locations (group of levels) with different themes and theme monsters, but it's sometimes good to change things so you don't always get same bunch of monsters in those areas. I'm also deciding monsters by climate conditions. Could also use plants to determine some monster types to live next to them (they depend on plants).

[kraflab]

I think this brings up a good point.  You can have areas that smooth the transition.  In Krice's example you could have the boundaries of climate regions have some kind of split, or gradual transition to the new group of enemies.  In a dungeon floor system, maybe you switch up which themes the player sees, but if they see a poison enemy on an ice floor (just as an example) they might know they should prepare for a poison floor later.