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Dungeon interior Designer

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Sat, 09/10/2011 - 21:08
larienna
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I was playing with the Hero Quest furniture and realized that it could be cool to make a game about interior design. But it could be even better if you were designing the interior of a dungeon.

The goal would be, like in regular design, to combine aesthetics and functionality. In other words, you need to make a beautiful dungeon which is still deadly to the adventurers.

I am not sure yet how it would work. I first thought that each player could control 1 to 3 room and each try to make the best out of their rooms. Or each player has a small dungeon that needs to manage.

Else, I though it could be like a tower defense game, when you set up your dungeon and once a while heroes comes in to conquer your dungeon. They might not actually destroy your furniture, but they will kill guards and make your dungeon weaker. You could then take the gold dropped by the adventurers to buy new furniture. Some characters like the barbarian could have a special ability that destroy or damage some furniture.

Else it's always the scoring the problem. How can you evaluate that a room is well designed. You could gain bonus if color match. But it's hard to evaluate the placement of the furniture.

Any other ideas?

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Mon, 09/12/2011 - 05:55
#1
Cogentesque
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I think it is, as you rightly

I think it is, as you rightly say, very veyr hard to base any game on any kind of popular opinion. As in, the scoring system for any game based on any arts will be very subjective.

Game-dev-story: what theme is "most popular with your audience" has a fluctuating value (AA, A, BB, B, C, D) for the current appreciation of your game (this normally always changes in exactly the same way with time)

Some of the old Pizza games do the same: the "popular" flavors fluctuate with time.

To make the best dungoen design you could: you would need to have some kind of way of showing that: Yes, this is a better dungeon than that.. This gets a 6/10 and that gets a 2/10.

Perhaps you could do some kind of player motivated changing system. Perhaps they could vote that "Mossy Granite stones are totall in right now" or "Flame traps are no longer trendy" with various card choices (secretly) that would average up between all players and then they would come to a conclusion: out of 6 different secret choices ....PORT CULISSES ARE BACK IN FASSION! Everyone with a port cullis gets +1 design points.

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Mon, 09/12/2011 - 08:52
#2
larienna
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Fashion fluctuation could

Fashion fluctuation could also be an idea. It reminds me of another game where if everybody had a certain item it means it was popular.

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Mon, 09/12/2011 - 13:55
#3
ilta
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Fashion fluctuations make

Fashion fluctuations make sense. I love the idea that spike traps are the "on trend" item, showing up on the cover of "Better Crones and Dungeons" and whatnot.

You might also want to think about combos. One thing I always liked about Evil Genius (the PC game) was that you got extra points if you could arrange your traps such that one pushed those meddling spies into another. Certainly one measure of your dungeon's style should be how well and deviously it kills the adventurers.

Other PC games to take inspiration from include Dungeons and the old but much-loved Dungeon Keeper series.

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Mon, 09/12/2011 - 20:06
#4
CloudBuster
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GAH! DANG IT!

ilta beat me to it!

I was gonna mention Dungeon Keeper, too!

I like the idea of "what's most popular". I think you need to keep opinions out of scoring if you can. I have no design skills, no artistic talent, and I'm a bit color blind...so you can see I'm going to develop crappy designs if it's just up to popular opinion. However, if you can come up with a player or game generated system of choosing what's popular (for instance...basing it off what cards everybody else has), that's pretty cool.

I was thinking each person has a grid with a certain number of squares (or hexes) and that represents that person's dungeon. You've got tiles that determine what kind of rooms you can make...or perhaps the tiles don't determine that at all...maybe you just need to finish off floors so they can be built. In Dungeon Keeper, you had your little minion guys dig out areas of dirt to form rooms. I can't quite remember this part, but I seem to remember the next step was to determine what kind of room you wanted...torture chamber, prison, mess hall, treasure room, etc. etc. Based on the rooms you built, different dungeon type creatures would be attracted to your dungeon and they'd start populating the rooms.

So...to your game...to keep the same idea you've got tiles of different types and you simply place 'em on the grid to form the different rooms. You'll need to assign values to the different tiles...more rare tiles are worth more when you place them? I'm not sure about the mechanics, but I like the general idea.

OH! You could even turn this into a card game, couldn't you? Now you don't even need a grid...the players just place cards down to form the dungeon floor and you put room cards on top of those to show what kind of room(s) you're building.

-CB-

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Mon, 09/12/2011 - 23:24
#5
larienna
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Quote:(for instance...basing

Quote:
(for instance...basing it off what cards everybody else has)

A bit like car demand in automobile. Each player has a portion of the information, but does not have all the information.

I rapidly dungeon keeper, it was fun to play the other side of the story. But I did not play much.

Architect can make bigger rooms, but interior designers work with what they have. If I want to strictly have a designer game, players will be forced to have a certain room configuration.

One problem is that this game can easily become a solitaire multiplayer game, especially if each player has a dungeon of it's own. While if players have different rooms in the same dungeon, there might be more interaction.

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Mon, 09/12/2011 - 23:54
#6
deFunkt29
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I like the idea. At one point

I like the idea. At one point I was thinking of making a game about being a dungeon master, stopping heroes, but what I think really seperates your idea with probably some others like ours like there, is the designing aspect. I think it could be really cool to have dungeon lords choose how best their spike pits compliment their wall paper choice, and it'd be pretty funny to boot (if you wanted it to be that way). Keep up the good ideas!

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Tue, 09/13/2011 - 02:05
#7
CloudBuster
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hmmm...okay then...

Well...perhaps back to the grid idea then?

Each player has their own grid (room of the dungeon) that they need to decorate with various things...(I like the spike pit, by the way!)...trap doors (In wood, bamboo, metal, cork, and wicker). <--I jest...but I'm not sure how the decorating works here. Are you going for form and function and fashion? It's a dungeon, right? So yeah...I think you'll want to make it amusing (as deFunkt said). Perhaps all trap doors should be some type of metal...so burnished bronze, copper, rusty iron (for color), oiled iron, etc. How do you score this? Is it opinion again, or do you set up some type of chart so the players get points for certain combinations?

You seemed worried that it might be a solitaire multiplayer game...isn't part of design to help with function? So...you've got this dungeon and [insert your choice of fashion designer voice here] "the space simply doesn't work...I think you need to knock out this wall here and connect this room with that room. It'll open up the space nicely and you'll have much more room to entertain!" Architects can deisgn and build what the designer suggests. So...perhaps you've got tiles that connect your room to the other player's rooms. Extra points for doing this perhaps? Maybe the other dungeon designers can sabotage your work, or claim it for themselves somehow? Your hallway becomes their hallway? <--meh. I don't know about that...maybe they can build a hallway of their own so that your hard work doesn't get taken away by some other player (see the card mechanics that people hate thread).

-CB-

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Tue, 09/13/2011 - 04:37
#8
Cogentesque
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Maybe even a deck of cards:

Maybe even a deck of cards:

"You get 20 design points if you create:
-A greblin birthing pool furnished with a rusty iron door, smaller than 4 squares wide litered with at LEAST 2 knight-Warrior bodies ... 10 points additionally if you defaeat and leave the body of an Arch Mage in the north of the room"

Along with +2 design points for every completed dungeon sqaure, +4 for a rusty iron door and +5 for any greblin related dungeon rooms.

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Tue, 09/13/2011 - 21:17
#9
dameonunleashed
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I could see a deck of

I could see a deck of objective cards, kept face down so only you see it, but it's not necessarily in your hand. Each one has a theme, like a torture chamber, or birthing pit. If you build a room that has the components listed on the card, you can flip it over and turn it in for points. Either the most points at the end of the game wins, or most points after a set number of rounds?

You could also have a reference card with a list of generic bonuses, like finishing a room with all of a certain type of card. All of the items in this room are keyword/card color/whatever = x bonus points

You should totally consider a hero mechanic. If you manage to kill of the hero, then you get points to bank towards your goal. Or some of the objective cards could require that a hero die in that room to complete it.

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Wed, 09/14/2011 - 10:35
#10
larienna
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Objective deck is not a bad

Objective deck is not a bad idea, but it force a player to do certain things rather to encourage creativity. I rather like a fashion deck with part hidden information like in automobile for replacing "Objective cards".

As for the scoring, one of the thing designer tries to match is colors and patterns. So if you match the color and pattern of objects together they are worth more. You could also match metal type, wood types, etc. Neutral colors can be mixed with any color without penalty.

I saw some design pictures that were made in the 70ies I thing and the design was horrible because it was full of pattern. You could have like 3 patterns in the same room. But maybe if the right fashion card is placed into play, double patterns for example could not give you penalty. You might be able to mix colors together unless they are contrast, but the contrast fashion card could be in play.

Else the rest of interior design regards storage space and especially the use of the space. What are the actions the people do in the room and optimize the furniture so that their actions are optimized.

Now this is very hard to evaluate because it depends on the selection and placement of the furniture. You cannot fix a movement pattern on the dungeon either because these patterns are relative to the furniture placement. My only solution so far would be to give some ratings. Furniture would make various rating raise and drop once placed in a room: Storage, Usability, comfort, Movement, security (traps), etc. Big furniture could reduce movement for example. Maybe certain room types place certain rating in priority.

It would be fun that each player could manage his small dungeon. The solitaire multi-player could be a problem. So There is a need to place interaction between players. The first interaction I see is the fashion, maybe characters draw a set of fashion cards and can decide to discard 1 card from their hand. So that they have a bit of choice over what will be popular.

The second interaction might be the material and personnel required to design the room. There could be a second hand shop where you can buy used stuff for less, but people buy from the same pool. But you could also hire a carpenter to do a custom furniture, but if you use the carpenter, other players cannot do it. Painting might need to be done by a painter, which would make harder to change the colors of walls as you wish, so you might try to use curtains on walls instead (easily removable)

The other question is how would the time of the game work. At some points fashion cards are going to get revealed and stuff are going to be scored, but maybe the game last multiple rounds. Each round is a year for example. So you need to upgrade, change and redesign your rooms.

One of the things designers needs to deal with is with what they have. So having limited resources and budget is also something they will have to deal with. Maybe each player get budget according to how well they have done on the previous round, but I don't want any run away leader. Another idea is that players switch dungeons at the end of the round. So they need to change and improve what other players have done. So even if a player received more money, he can end up with a poor dungeon the next turn making sure he is not that much ahead of others.

Thanks for all the input, it looks really interesting.

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