Blondbeard
Level: Smitemaster

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Registered: 03-31-2005
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It is possible for architects to make maps where you can see all the rooms of a level, regardless if you've been to the or not. I personally like the complete information you have when you play regular DROD, and would like to see more of that in DROD RPG.

What do you think?

bwross
Level: Smiter
Rank Points: 376
Registered: 04-17-2005
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Nuntar wrote:
Complete information in regular DROD? First I heard of it.

Well, there is a DROD is to rooms as DROD:RPG is to levels relationship.

DROD is about solving rooms, level wide puzzles are pretty much discouraged... when you enter a DROD room, you typically do have complete information on where everything is and what it does. The big exception would be spiders... an element which is seldom used because it goes against the full information concept. Another exception would be unexpected scripting... but that's another this that is discouraged in dungeon designs.

DROD:RPG is more about solving levels (getting one's stats up enough to deal with the new level's monsters and working toward an end of level boss checkpoint)... rooms are just a small piece of the puzzle, you're expected to move back and forth between them, doing bits when you're ready, or just avoiding sections altogether. You do have complete information on a room once you see it (like DROD), but that's only a piece of the puzzle... you'll regularly be faced with choices that can only be made optimally after you've seen more of the level.

Personally, the lack of full information on a level doesn't both me so much. Just like in TotS (among other games... including DROD before before Orbs were clickable), I like to do exploratory runs to feel out the place before I get down to business.

CuriousShyRabbit
Level: Smitemaster
Rank Points: 3170
Registered: 10-14-2006
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Hmmm...
Spend a yellow key, let's see what's behind door #1, nope, nothing I need yet. Restore to save. Spend a yellow key, let's see what's behind door #2, nope, nothing I need yet. Restore to save. Spend a whole mess of HP, let's see what's behind door #3, nope, nothing I need yet. Restore to save. And so forth...
For me, that process has just as much joy in it as hunting for trapdoors in a maze under tar in regular DROD - without a transparent tar mod.

For this reason, I really really like the full map given in spitemaster's First Shot.

But maps are not the only way architects can avoid creating guessing games in their RPG holds. It's also possible to allow the player to take a few steps into adjoining rooms without expending the resources to obtain the room contents. I like that too.

bwross
Level: Smiter
Rank Points: 376
Registered: 04-17-2005
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CuriousShyRabbit wrote:
Hmmm...
Spend a yellow key, let's see what's behind door #1, nope, nothing I need yet. Restore to save. Spend a yellow key, let's see what's behind door #2, nope, nothing I need yet. Restore to save. Spend a whole mess of HP, let's see what's behind door #3, nope, nothing I need yet. Restore to save.

You're doing it wrong. You don't just look behind the door... you push to see as much as possible, playing fast and loose, throwing every resource you have at it, grabbing anything you can easily get that might get you one room further, until you literally can't go any further (of course, this can lead to accidentally completing the level or even winning the game).

By the time I've done runs through three "doors" I've typically got a map of most of the level (I take screenshots and have a script that sticks them together... and I'd still have the need to do that even if given a map in the game, because I find one big image is more useful than having a full map in the game (and that's because, even with that full map, the game only lets you see one room in detail at a time... which makes it painful when you want to scan a level for all green keys)).

Even if you don't make a map, playing fast, loose, and deep will give you enough experience and information to simply replay and fix mistakes with the knowledge of what's way down the road. It's simpler to wrap your brain around a map you've had experience playing than to get blocked on trying to figure out where to even start on a huge level map you've never played (because with the experience comes things like a perception of how tough monsters in an area will be when you get there... with just the map and no experience, you'd need to calculate how much you'd boost your stats and how much damage they could do (impossible with custom monsters) in order to get any real impression as to when an area is doable).

Sillyman
Level: Smiter

Rank Points: 339
Registered: 09-08-2006
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Nuntar wrote:

bwross wrote:
Well, there is a DROD is to rooms as DROD:RPG is to levels relationship.

So it's been said.

In practice there's little truth in it...

What you just said does not contradict this. There are level-wide puzzles, just as there are hold-wide puzzles. Okay, yes, there are hold-wide DROD puzzles as well. But one can link two holds! Although one can do that in DROD as well... bah. My point is, your average typical puzzle tends to span more than one room in RPG, but only one room in DROD.

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