Some Suggestions I Have

[mishko]

Hello fellow keepers! I have a list of ideas I would like to throw out there for your game since I've been thinking about what I would do if I made a game like this for awhile

• Death Animations!: There should be unique death animations in certain cases where death is guaranteed through some kind of trap or ability or if it is possible to execute prisoners. The only somewhat example of death animation in DK games is in DK1 where some creatures had a "dying" animation and blood would spurt out. DK2 and WFTO didn't have that at all. But I want to see it go a step further and see unique ways creatures can die like being beheaded and see their mangled corpse lying on the ground.
• Balance the maintenance of creature based on usefulness/power: You don't need every creature to be similar in usefulness. In DK1 you had more powerful creatures but you had to know how to manage them better and they required more maintenance. I want to see something similar to that but better where there is way cooler more powerful creatures you can eventually summon but have a big downside or have to be uniquely maintained in several ways. For example: say your werewolf is super powerful in werewolf form but has the downside of being a frail man part of the time and in werewolf form goes out of its way to try and kill your vampires if left with nothing else to do.
• Think carefully about unique creature traits: First lets look back at DK1 again. Your bile demon was big so it ate a lot, was heavy so wind spell didn't push it, made gas so gas didn't affect it. Bile demon hated skeleton for being so skinny and vice versa. To give creatures true personality and detail you need to think about all possible physical traits and lore about them and think of ways to add more uses and downsides for them based on those traits outside of their job in the dungeon.

[mishko]

Sorry I probably didn't need to start a new thread I could've just stated these on the development thread.

[DBlac]

Hey mishko, a suggestions thread is fine though i wouldve called it that to invite others to do so, although suggestions at this stage are kind of hard to make useful given the limited information you guys have to think on. Onto your suggestions.

Those death animations are a given. Firstly, creatures have their own actual animation for dying in regular cases and when they reach a certain point in it they ragdoll. Secondly, traps adding certain animations is highly likely, tho we will have to see how that goes exactly. Remember that we have 16 creatures and 15 heroes, it might be hard and very lenghty to animate all the combinations those (atleast the creatures due to their diversity) would create. But we will see what can be done there. Additionally, i want to have sync kills in the game, activating as a deathblow is delivered if certain conditions are met.

The balance will naturally be heavily tuned in those regards. We do not at this point plan on having a Payday (i always despise the mechanic when games use it, it stops your entire dungeon from functioning untill everyone drags their asses over to the treasury and back), so instead the primary way creatures will introduce maintenance costs to you is through the fact that every time they eat, it costs gold. Obviously creatures like trolls might take a longass time eating and their food might cost more. Ive been thinking about making the vampire partial to drinking the blood of heroes and while he might do that on the field if he kills something, i was thinking about the possibility of having to feed it prisoners, but WftO did that and it practice it turned out to be an awful, babysitting mechanic that made their vampires vastly undesirable, last time i played. So that bit is prolly not gonna be quite like that, but still different creatures will have their own characters as far as we can carry it with the mechanics and obviously budget, once we.. actually have one, lol.

Creatures outright hating each other turned more into irritating micro management in DK1, mostly due to the fact youd constantly have to pay attention to break up fights. I remember having skeletons in a lair on the other side of the dungeon from the bile demon's lair and for some reason i would still get fights happening between them every 3 minutes which was irritating as hell. Creatures will absolutely have character and interaction with each other and the world though, we will make sure of that, but i doubt it will be as severe as outright fighting each other. After all, are you a Dark Lord or a kindergarten teacher? Your troops should know to stay in line to a certain degree, atleast the non-demonic ones. Particularly the um... "big guy" might be hard to maintain in a similiar way that Horned Reapers were, although again, not -THAT- horrid, you couldnt leave that fucker alone with anything for 3 seconds.

That said in DK2 the creature relationships were boring and only affected evil creatures vs heroes and just with a stat drain and complaining, accompanied with messages. So.. not that, no thanks. In our case it will be stuff like creatures not liking to share a Lair with the Undead and so on.

[YourMaster]

I don't care if we get lair-rivalries back or not, but you must have done something wrong to still get your creatures fighting. Creatures will only fight if they are sleeping in their lair and a creature they hate will walk through that room. So if you make sure there's only ever 1 way into a lair room and enough lair space so that the creatures can choose not to make the beds in rooms of creatures they hate you'll never have fights. An exception to this is flies, they will go and explore all rooms and fly into the lairs with spiders so flies automatically disappear when the map is explored.

As such it is not a micro-mechanic, but it brings dept to the dungeon building, as it gives more requirements to consider when building and planning your dungeon. The same goes for the payday. An efficient dungeon makes sure lair fights don't break out, creatures don't get shot in the library and creatures working and training are right next to hatcheries and treasure rooms so that you don't have down time in working/training.

EDIT: Another possibility is you were getting scavenged. Creatures that are being scavenged by the enemy will start to wonder around before they leave your dungeon, also causing lair-fights. This forces you to defend against scavenging by using enough creatures in the temple. This offsets the costs of scavenging.

[Metal Gear Rex]

I do have to half agree on the thing with Lair Enemies. It shouldn't ever be a problem. But then, sometimes the creatures go full retard and it gets annoying. Like it shouldn't matter really. It becomes an issue when the AI is dumb really.

I do agree about the idea of having more to bring to dungeon building but I would also say that Lair enemies specifically was really irrelevant. It didn't feel nearly as impactful a decision to make, compared to figuring out Hatchery placement for example.

[YourMaster]

Hatchery placement is key. But it does have some effect. Without lair enemies I'd always simply build a 5x5 lair straight next to the dungeon hearth and continue from there. I would also always have 4 exits on every lair room as it are fine hubs.
But with the lair enemies you're encouraged to build lairs out of the way, in quiet areas and have more smaller lairs.

It's just a small thing, but there really isn't much dept in dungeon design in these games to begin with, so I take what I can get.

[mishko]

Hey mishko, a suggestions thread is fine though i wouldve called it that to invite others to do so, although suggestions at this stage are kind of hard to make useful given the limited information you guys have to think on. Onto your suggestions.

Those death animations are a given. Firstly, creatures have their own actual animation for dying in regular cases and when they reach a certain point in it they ragdoll. Secondly, traps adding certain animations is highly likely, tho we will have to see how that goes exactly. Remember that we have 16 creatures and 15 heroes, it might be hard and very lenghty to animate all the combinations those (atleast the creatures due to their diversity) would create. But we will see what can be done there. Additionally, i want to have sync kills in the game, activating as a deathblow is delivered if certain conditions are met.

The balance will naturally be heavily tuned in those regards. We do not at this point plan on having a Payday (i always despise the mechanic when games use it, it stops your entire dungeon from functioning untill everyone drags their asses over to the treasury and back), so instead the primary way creatures will introduce maintenance costs to you is through the fact that every time they eat, it costs gold. Obviously creatures like trolls might take a longass time eating and their food might cost more. Ive been thinking about making the vampire partial to drinking the blood of heroes and while he might do that on the field if he kills something, i was thinking about the possibility of having to feed it prisoners, but WftO did that and it practice it turned out to be an awful, babysitting mechanic that made their vampires vastly undesirable, last time i played. So that bit is prolly not gonna be quite like that, but still different creatures will have their own characters as far as we can carry it with the mechanics and obviously budget, once we.. actually have one, lol.

Creatures outright hating each other turned more into irritating micro management in DK1, mostly due to the fact youd constantly have to pay attention to break up fights. I remember having skeletons in a lair on the other side of the dungeon from the bile demon's lair and for some reason i would still get fights happening between them every 3 minutes which was irritating as hell. Creatures will absolutely have character and interaction with each other and the world though, we will make sure of that, but i doubt it will be as severe as outright fighting each other. After all, are you a Dark Lord or a kindergarten teacher? Your troops should know to stay in line to a certain degree, atleast the non-demonic ones. Particularly the um... "big guy" might be hard to maintain in a similiar way that Horned Reapers were, although again, not -THAT- horrid, you couldnt leave that fucker alone with anything for 3 seconds.

That said in DK2 the creature relationships were boring and only affected evil creatures vs heroes and just with a stat drain and complaining, accompanied with messages. So.. not that, no thanks. In our case it will be stuff like creatures not liking to share a Lair with the Undead and so on.

Thanks for the response. Your stance on death animations already sounds a lot more interesting than wfto. I hope some of them are over-exaggerated and with blood spurting I understand creatures attacking each other got annoying but I was just using that as an example as I at least want ways you have to think about how you want to lay out your dungeon and manage it. Also are we not going to be able to slap creatures to work faster or pick them up since you aren't exactly a dark figureless god anymore?

[Woudo]

Without lair enemies I'd always simply build a 5x5 lair straight next to the dungeon hearth and continue from there. I would also always have 4 exits on every lair room as it are fine hubs.

Wrong. Bad Mark, smack you on head.

Putting a Lair next to the Dungeon Heart stops you from resting your creatures while the heart takes damage, as the creatures will immediately stop healing to go fight.

[Metal Gear Rex]

Hatchery placement is key. But it does have some effect. Without lair enemies I'd always simply build a 5x5 lair straight next to the dungeon hearth and continue from there. I would also always have 4 exits on every lair room as it are fine hubs.
But with the lair enemies you're encouraged to build lairs out of the way, in quiet areas and have more smaller lairs.

It's just a small thing, but there really isn't much dept in dungeon design in these games to begin with, so I take what I can get.

In addition to what Woudo said about the Lair already requiring some strategic placement for healing, there's a lot of ways to incorporate additional strategical elements.

Personally I'd like for a mix of some of the more obvious but also subtle effects for rooms like the Lair. For example, activity in the Lair could wake creatures up, lower their mood a bit, and cause a bit of delay before they go back to sleep, slowing down the whole process. Subtle elements could be surroundings that relax creatures more, resulting in them falling asleep faster / sleeping better / having better mood recovery. A Warlock might like having pure quiet so they would hate being surrounded by rooms like the Workshop, Training Room, or Hatchery. Meanwhile a Troll might like the noise, especially from the Workshop, as they're less fighters so the Workshop is a place of peace for them even though other creatures would differ. Tentacles liking water, Dragons liking lava, etc.

It would have to strike a fine balance in its effect so that it's small enough to not essentially force the player into building their dungeon a certain way so it leaves the sense of freedom, but matters enough so the player that can take these things into consideration is rewarded.

One of the problems with mechanics like Lair Enemies and the default Hatchery is that it's relatively the same in how you build it, in almost every map. In my most recent DK2 maps I tried to remedy this by designing the levels with limited or awkward spacing to put more pressure on the player to build the dungeon differently, and while that's interesting and produces unique dungeons, it does get tiring after a while and sometimes a player is going to just want to build a dungeon.

Ideally, there would have to be something within the core game to create some sort of variance or need to create variance, and more specific and conflicting creature needs is one way to do that. Making creatures complex and having it so it's *almost* impossible or just really difficult to fully satisfy a creature, but also making it so you never *need* to is also a way to further that idea, and also reflect on player preferences more. Dungeon design will vary more based on what creature needs / terrain considerations are prioritized, based on the player. Provided players aren't doing anything really wrong, there's much less of a 'right' way to do things. Assuming it's all properly balanced of course.

[DBlac]

Right sorry guys i wrote a reply last night but i accidentally didnt post it and it got lost, it was so late that i couldnt bother trying again, but here it is now.

@YourMarkster You know, it may have been that they wandered through for training, altho i usually dont put my training room beyond a lair. I like to have central hallways and rooms to their sides so i doubt that was the case, however if it was the game could've bothered to even hint a little as to what the reason is. I mean up until you just said it i didn't know it was just because they walked through it, i thought it was because they share the same lair. Would it have killed them to write a vague line suggesting creatures dont like certain others from walking near their lairs? They said keep flies and spiders apart sure but like... that could mean keep them in separate lairs or whatever. Now that i know how it works and its effect i am curious about implementing something similar, but ill get to that when im replying to Rex's thing.

@mishko Well, naturally there will be blood in the game, but spurting and such would probably only happen if we have an execution that dismembers in some way. And no, you cannot pick up or slap creatures, remember, this is not Dungeon Keeper nor is it trying to be, it is merely inspired by it.

@Rex, i was thinking about exactly those sorts of things last night and you know what? Weve already set up the framework for it and have been planning things similar to it. You see, we use influence maps and so we will be able to tell what's going on in areas, as well as actually store that information. So we can make it that traffic through lairs wakes creatures up, slows their healing or makes them unhappy, if it is traffic that is not from creatures going to bed. As well as being able to track exactly what has been through there, so again, the whole creatures not liking being near undead would be a thing. The same could be true of the library, research could be slowed down or interrupted if the wrong kind of traffic goes through. And also we can use these maps to track "noise" from neighboring rooms, and determine whether creatures enjoy sleeping near them or not. Certain rooms like the library or sanctum near the lair may even provide a calming effect to creatures sleeping nearby, increasing their healing.

As for the "not building the same rooms over and over again" well theres precious few things-REALLY- preventing people from doing that, we will do our best of course but there will always be those people who try to do the same thing as it is easiest. However given how our dungeon construction works, i think players will actually innately end up building more uniquely. Since you are the one who places objects, like in Evil Genius, designs are not limited to "Square or die". HOWEVER, even in Evil Genius i often ended up remaking the room designs i had created and was very happy with, so you know, That said, you only have 2 levels to build in Evil Genius so its hard to tell.