vylycyn
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What is "Lively Rooms of Life"?

I thought of the idea of Lively Rooms of Life more than a year ago, back when I had barely started playing DROD.
It came to me when I was trying to think of a name for my first hold.
Although the hold went on to earn another name, this old title has been haunting me for some time.

In the back of my head for the past year, the idea of Lively Rooms of Life (LROL) has been sitting quietly.
It has now reawakened, this time in the form of something completely different.

What it is is a complete mystery, even to me, but perhaps, with the combination of the skills of the many, the secrets of Lively Rooms of Life could be found.
LROL seems like it could be something good, but first we must discover what it is.
We all (except those looking for kittens or Insaniquarium help) know what Deadly Rooms of Death is, but what exactly would LROL be?


This thread is to come up with any crazy idea that you think is worthy of the title LROL, all of which will be pitted against each other in an attempt to find the truth.

Here is some speculation to get started:


Would it be a hold in which no killing takes place, or perhaps a graphical mod that makes DROD look like a completely different game?
Is it a game where instead of killing monsters, Beethro goes around and brings them back to life, and not until all monsters have been resurrected do the green doors open?
Is there another game that seems to fit this description, or something in the real world that is deserving of this title?
Is it the archenemy of DROD, or can the two coexist peacefully?
Is it a strange side effect of having too much mothingness in a room, or perhaps not enough?



Any of these explanations could be potential answers to the mystery of Lively Rooms of Life, but it is likelily some other explanation.

Now it is your turn to try to come up with explanations.
Remember, this is in the anything thread, so you can think of any ideas you want in here, whether or not they are DROD related.

Good Luck!

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Mattcrampy
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I see trees of green, and clouds of white in this game, so full of life.

I'd envisage it's something along the lines of those simulation games, where you have creatures with different growth stages and you have to coax them into each stage. I'd guess you'd have a few different species.

When you start, the room's pretty barren. It would be rock with patches of soil, maybe squares with water, maybe some wood, maybe some metal, and some eggs. Each egg would correspond to a different species, and you have to give them a good environment and hatch them. If you get water flowing in (the water flow may be blocked by something) you can promote plant growth. Filling the room with plant growth will drop the green door, giving you access to a new room. Plants can grow into new rooms, but they need a water source to thrive.

Each species is a semi-autonomous agent. They love your avatar and will follow you around, but if they get close to something they can use, they'll use it. These species will stick to the room they hatched in, however. You can evolve them using 'fruits', which grow when plant life grows into a 'fertile' square. These are limited. An evolved creature can do more than regular creatures, so often you'll need to evolve your creatures in order to do tasks.

There are a few different kinds of tasks - shifting soil, starting fires, moving blockages.

And I think to myself, "What a wonderful game. Although it still needs some work."

Matt

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b0rsuk
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http://www.the-underdogs.org/game.php?id=522 Horde
http://www.the-underdogs.org/game.php?id=5103 Dungeon Keeper
http://www.the-underdogs.org/game.php?gameid=4966 UFO:Enemy Unknown/X-COM1

All downloadable... but good luck with running it on modern system. Dosbox didn't help me much.

For those of you who don't know, Lively Rooms Of Life is a game. It plays like reversed DROD - instead of Beethro, you play the 'Neather. It takes best parts of Horde and Dungeon Keeper - like in Horde, you carefully design your rooms with limited resources (gold etc), placing both defenses, monsters, as well as "civilian" buildings, dwellings and recreation facilities in general. Then, after some time, bunch of city guards comes down to your rooms and starts spreading death and decay in your fertile utopia. That's when the game switches to realtime mode, and you control 'Neather himself to make sure everything works right. You open and close doors by using orbs, do all kinds of malicious things in order to defend your room. But ultimately each rooms is bound to fall, because there are more adn more guards/adventurers coming. Eventually you have to run away. Your objective is to buy as much time as possible for your research division, and your workers who are busy placing traps in your other rooms. And remember - once you see short stocky figure entirely covered with blood, carrying a sword bigger than himself - run for your life.
You have to wisely spend your gold, so that rooms closest to the dungeon entrance are reasonably guarded, to avoid falling to blitzkrieg. You need time to develop more deadly traps/obstacles like orbs, trapdoors, breed/attract nastier monsters. And once made available, it takes additional time for defence to be set up. (think about UFO). You don't want being caught unprepared.
Finally, if you manage things right and survive long enough to develop most devious tricks, your objective is to design your ultimate hideout, which should be tricky enough to fool and defeat Beethro, who should be alone at this point because all of his helpers died or ran away(if you do well). If you succeed, your Lively Rooms Of Life will repopulate some day, and this time no one can stop you.

[Edited by b0rsuk at Local Time:03-31-2005 at 04:50 PM]

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stigant
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hmmm, there's an awful lot of dying in borsuk's game. That sounds more like DORD than LROL.

I like Matt's ideas, though. Would it still be puzzle-based like DROD?

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b0rsuk
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stigant wrote:
hmmm, there's an awful lot of dying in borsuk's game. That sounds more like DORD than LROL.

That's the point ! You have to save your Lively Rooms Of Life from damnation in form of vile Beethro !

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Mattcrampy
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Yeah, mine would be puzzle-based, although I see it as being more along the lines of Pikmin puzzles than DROD puzzles - each of your critters has particular skills, and you have to ensure that one critter doing something doesn't stop another critter from doing what they need to.

Matt

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