Customization of Dungeons

[swooshrp]

I have read about players wanting Turbine to allow people to create their own dunegon and submitting for QA, etc. I can see this taking up alot of resources and unfortunately likely not very efficient than just designing in house.

I have a proposal for a way to allow Turbine use whats already been coded and possibly create random dunegons every time based on the party make up.

There are many rooms that have already been coded, especially the sewer type applications. Typically, Turbine will reuse these rooms and change the lighting effects, shadows, hues and put the party to come in through a different access to make it feel unique. Or change a few minor things for a "different" room.

Why not create a program where upon selecting various options from goals, rooms, traps, level of dungeon, difficulty, length, creature types (undead vs orcs, vs etc) etc, etc that aligns or fits all these coded rooms in a layout. Each room can have up to 3 access points, 4 with the point the party comes from. If you add drop hatches, ladders, its more. If the program can recognize the access points and be able to fit like access points together, why can't a dungeon design be automated?

A party can talk to a NPC, select the options and a random dungeon is generated. Reward and EXP is dealt out based on what was selected. The goals could be varied, but 2 simple ones are "kill X number of mobs or collect X number of items"

It doesn't seem too hard of a programming design and given the greater number of options, each dunegon could be unique every time.

I know alot goes more into this, but its start of an idea that I hope Turbine can run with.

[Raath]

I have read about Turbine allowing players to create their own dunegon and submitting for QA.

Could you please post a link to that? I've been playing for quite some time and this is the first I've heard of that. I've seen players ask for it, but never that you could do it.

As far as the rest of your post, sounds like a good idea, but a pain to add to the game.

[swooshrp]

Could you please post a link to that? I've been playing for quite some time and this is news to me.

Sorry, meant as players wanting Turbine to allow for dungeon programming. Edited.

[Raath]

Sorry, meant as players wanting Turbine to allow for dungeon programming. Edited.

Ahhh Ok . I got all excited for a second, thinking this was something new Turbine was doing.

[swooshrp]

As far as the rest of your post, sounds like a good idea, but a pain to add to the game.

How hard would this be to add? If Turbine can code where room A has 2,3,5 access points (number representing location of access) then rooms X,Y,Z can be adjacent to room A.

I am not a programmer and maybe from a programmer's perspective, is this really too hard to implement?

[Raath]

How hard would this be to add? If Turbine can code where room A has 2,3,5 access points (number representing location of access) then rooms X,Y,Z can be adjacent to room A.

I am not a programmer and maybe from a programmer's perspective, is this really too hard to implement?

Beats me, I'm not a programmer either. So it automaticly sounds hard.

[swooshrp]

Automating generic dungeons would ease the progression of finding groups in the lower levels.

The dungeons could even be set to solo but still contain many of the other options that would increase the xp.

True, the design may not produce a unique dungeon every time, but its a consistent option that could be ran in times of low populations or when all other quests just don't seem fun.

In EQ1, it seemed that this type approach was always popular.

[Laith]

I am not a programmer and maybe from a programmer's perspective, is this really too hard to implement?

If it had been considered as a feature for DDO's release: probably not.

Now though, it's probably a different issue.

For example, the maps you use to find your place/party: they're not necessarily representations of what is in the dungeon. Instead they seem to be an image with an overlay that tracks the coordinates of you and your party and displays their positions on top as well as where you personally have explored.
This is evident in that some secret passages don't show up in the drawing, and that it doesn't support multi-leveled structures.

This feature, for one, would have to be completely rewritten to support random dungeons (if i described it correctly).

Not that i'm against "random" dungeons, but at least a few of the games major features are currently designed around the dungeon layout being a constant.

EDIT: Also, "puzzle" dungeons (which seems to be your suggestion, ie a bunch of set-pieces that are randomly generated to fit together) have a problem of their own: the puzzle pieces are really all independant in their own right. Instead of a flowing set of rooms, you will more often have a series of individual rooms that, while great in themselves, don't really "mesh". similar to what occured often in diablo I & II. Good AI and other methods mitigate this issue.

[oronisi]

I have read about players wanting Turbine to allow people to create their own dunegon and submitting for QA, etc. I can see this taking up alot of resources and unfortunately likely not very efficient than just designing in house.

I have a proposal for a way to allow Turbine use whats already been coded and possibly create random dunegons every time based on the party make up.

There are many rooms that have already been coded, especially the sewer type applications. Typically, Turbine will reuse these rooms and change the lighting effects, shadows, hues and put the party to come in through a different access to make it feel unique. Or change a few minor things for a "different" room.

Why not create a program where upon selecting various options from goals, rooms, traps, level of dungeon, difficulty, length, creature types (undead vs orcs, vs etc) etc, etc that aligns or fits all these coded rooms in a layout. Each room can have up to 3 access points, 4 with the point the party comes from. If you add drop hatches, ladders, its more. If the program can recognize the access points and be able to fit like access points together, why can't a dungeon design be automated?

A party can talk to a NPC, select the options and a random dungeon is generated. Reward and EXP is dealt out based on what was selected. The goals could be varied, but 2 simple ones are "kill X number of mobs or collect X number of items"

It doesn't seem too hard of a programming design and given the greater number of options, each dunegon could be unique every time.

I know alot goes more into this, but its start of an idea that I hope Turbine can run with.

To expand upon your request, I am sure that there are random-generation maze algorithms out there. I would love to see a quest that's built off of a randomly generated maze based off of similar constraints you described.

Make the quest have no xp degridation due to repetition, and quite possibly make different ones available at different level, and you have yourself a quest that never gets old. You only need 1 objective; get to the end of the maze. The rest is random traps and mobs, and a random maze that can't be mastered.

As for your feedback (to the OP) Laith, I wouldn't want the maze to display on map....I'd actually put a big pic of a cloud on the map, and have the questgiver explain how the maze is magically protected from being scryed or plotted. And as for the map not being coherent (different textures, lighting, etc), well, I wouldn't really care. In fact, it might add to the character of the maze, being completely random looking. It might prove to be more confusing than a coherently schemed dungeon.


Edit: And here's a link regarding the random maze algorithm: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maze_generation_algorithm

[Ziggy]

you know this idea comes up about once a month. but its not going to happen.

Ah, random traps again. Okay, so let me sum it up a bit. Yes we can do random traps. There are many post-launch quests that incorporate them. We're likely not going to go back to old quests and add them in because of the development time it would take away from new content.
We can do different random traps in one spot, but usually don't because many traps rely on a particular room or hallway setup which doesn't fit with many different trap configurations. Besides, I don't feel that a fire trap will surprise you any more than an acid trap, the second or third time you run the quest. Aside from that, if I randomized every trap in 4 different ways, it would take me 4 times as long, and you would get less content.
I prefer to place traps in many different places. If I do that, it almost guarantees that the first few runs will be fresh and new, since you won't be able to hit all the traps and learn their locations in one run. There's nothing I can do for you if you're running a quest with people who have run it a couple dozen times and happen to remember where traps can be. My goal is to at least carry you through your Normal, Hard, and Elite runs - and hopefully beyond.
Full and complete randomization is not going to happen to the degree and scope some of you wish. We need to build and script every trap. There's no procedural method for randomizing traps because our game relies so heavily on custom crafted content. We place traps with purpose. Sometimes it's to encourage a different path. Often, we place traps in areas we feel deserve more challenge and we want that challenge to exist all the time. I suppose fully random traps would be more likely if the game was 2-D, top down, and tile-based. Many other problems arise if everything were that random. You won't want to enter the dungeon only to find a fire jet blasting you in the face and killing you the moment you load in. I think we can all agree that would be frustrating and unnecessary.
That being said, I'm still committed to building random traps and killing your characters in fun and creative ways!

[blakbyrd]

To be honest, I am at a little bit of a loss as to why quests are so slow to come out. Practically everything I can think of from what I see of the quest designs is pre-made and built in a map editor. A map editor similar to many other games out there (DF2, BHD, NWN, Starcraft, etc). Some of the reasons I think this are as follows:

1. Continuously repeated map sections in quests (sewer tunnels, building designs and skins, etc)
2. Continuously repeated placeables (barrels, boxes, desks, corpses, trap boxes, doors, doorways, etc)
3. Continuously placed event trigger areas. All work the same way, yet the event trigger areas slight differ in size, even for identical situations in differnt quests. This suggest the same typical even trigger style placement as used in every map builder I have ever used.
4. Placeables being placed slightly in bad areas. IE areas you cannot reach or is hindered from being broken, etc. Another situation common to every map builder I have ever used. Also some placables being placed backwards, or the previously hard to find trap box in Gwylans that you had to backspace to find (until they turned it around).
5. Looking at the outside of the walls of Stormreach. Although no so apparent from the inside; from the outside you see colliding wall pieces, multiple odd pieces combined to create a nice look on the inside. This all suggests the typical item placement usage used in almost every map builder I have ever used. They only work from one or two sides, the other sides are a horrid and ugly mess (partly why we arent allowed access outside the walls).
6. Traps working the exact same way. A combination of predesigned trap sections and readily available even trigger boxes.
7. The method almost all mobs spawn (ie even trigger boxes again). Precisely the same way every map builder with triggers has worked in all the ones I have used.
8. The occasional grey screen when passing through map sections. This is a common trait of map editors when two map pieces were just slightly misaligned. I have also seem larger more misaligned spots in quests where 2 sections didnt meet at all and you could see the blackness between them. I common trait of almost every map editor I have ever used.

Everything I can think of presents the fact that they have a map editor. Many such editors are not exactly user friendly and take some time to get used to. Many are very frustrating. Regardless, I have never seen one that took more than a week of playing with to get familiar enough with to turn out some very impressive creations. Many also work under wireframe conditions which makes such creations a little difficult to create. Even some of the most complex map creations I have built in other games took no more than 3-4 days to complete on my own (including debugging). Now, to be fair, debugging a map for an MMO requires more time to do, so I can't argue that. My point is that everything points to the fact that they have a map editor for making these quests. The very design of the game allows for this method very easily.

Anyways, I am not trying to pick on the Turbine staff. It just appears in every way I can think of that they do use a map editor, although it seems to appear as if they make it seem like each quest is individually designed on its own, when there is far too many situation identical to each other throughout the quests to suggest that method of customization. All in all it just seems to suggest that they only have 1-2 people actually doing the quests, which is why we only manage to see a couple per update, rather than many more which the map editor allows for.

Who knows though, as these are just my observations, but to me it seems very obvious they use one, they just arent very efficient with it.

[swooshrp]

you know this idea comes up about once a month. but its not going to happen.

Your forum reference thread indicates random traps. I am proposing a random dungeon mapping system. Traps are just one element. And even if traps could not be implemented, I still think this idea is still viable.

Such as a set of pieces being placed together. Rooms end to end, left, up, down, etc.

[JosephKell]

The closest you'll see this to in game is if Turbine uses it to create new static dungeons.

[Hafeal]

To be honest, I am at a little bit of a loss as to why quests are so slow to come out. Practically everything I can think of from what I see of the quest designs is pre-made and built in a map editor ... All in all it just seems to suggest that they only have 1-2 people actually doing the quests, which is why we only manage to see a couple per update, rather than many more which the map editor allows for.Who knows though, as these are just my observations, but to me it seems very obvious they use one, they just arent very efficient with it.

... your close. But really, it is one kobold tied up in back-room and he only works by moonlight - could be a she, no one has ever really looked close enough. Speaking of which, has anyone checked on it lately? Might need some food or water ...

[Ziggy]

Your forum reference thread indicates random traps. I am proposing a random dungeon mapping system. Traps are just one element. And even if traps could not be implemented, I still think this idea is still viable.

Such as a set of pieces being placed together. Rooms end to end, left, up, down, etc.

well unfortunately the thread has been purged.
But trust me, TRD was speaking about all randomizing. See the portion below.

Full and complete randomization is not going to happen to the degree and scope some of you wish.

[Knightrose]

I think the 'idea' of a random dungeon is entertaining. But get down to brass tacks here. When you're looking to do a pope run or something else that's fast, say even a raid, do you really want it to be random? You don't think that woud be annoying?

Consider this: Let's say you've repeated a certain quest one hundred times. Then suddenly its random. Now all your knowledge of the loot, traps, monsters and layout are washed and every time you re-enter the same quest (you used to know so well) will be different. Not different in a unique and challenging way. But in a very boring and annoying way. Remember that the goals in the quest wont change, just the design. So you'll be trying to do the same thing you always have before except now there are roadblocks. And the roadblocks aren't interesting. They're just different roadblocks from before to slow you down. Is the reward greater for going slower in a quest? No. Does repeating something you used to know well in a longer period of time make you happier? No.

So where do random dungeons create enjoyment?

[swooshrp]

I think the 'idea' of a random dungeon is entertaining. But get down to brass tacks here. When you're looking to do a pop run or something else that's fast, say even a raid, do you really want it to be random? You don't think that woud be annoying?

Consider this: Let's say you've repeated a certain quest one hundred times. Then suddenly its random. Now all your knowledge of the loot, traps, monsters and layout are washed and every time you re-enter the same quest (you used to know so well) will be different. Not different in a unique and challenging way. But in a very boring and annoying way. Remember that the goals in the quest wont change, just the design. So you'll be trying to do the same thing you always have before except now there are roadblocks. And the roadblocks aren't interesting. They're just different roadblocks from before to slow you down. Is the reward greater for going slower in a quest? No. Does repeating something you used to know well in a longer period of time make you happier? No.

So where do random dungeons create enjoyment?

I disagree with you. The random dungeon I imagine would allow the option of a short to a very long quest. And I would rather have something short thats relatively new over short and done a bazillion times, i.e. POP.

It's not about necessarily doing something quick. It's about having something the group has a little control of what type of dungeon they choose. It's also the ability that beside doing other "done that" quest, this can be done instead. Even the type of mobs could be random, thus, you can get a pretty new and unique experience every time regardless of a static layout. It would be a suprise around every corner or room.

Also, imagine that a group of 4 friends are waiting on a few of their normal group members to get online. In the downtime they can customize the dungeon to fit what they have available. Something easy, doable with 4 and perhaps no cleric. The group isnt sitting around waiting and getting a little exp out of it.

[Knightrose]

I sincerely do not see the enjoyment of random dungeons based on the content of your argument. Convince me?

You'll never see a dynamic random dungeon system in DDO. Seems hopeless to ask for one.