Castle Paradox

[*Worthy*]

What are some characteristics of your "ideal dungeon"? I find that too many dungeons are simply a maze with a battle every few steps.

To me, a dungeon should be more than that. It should contain elements of the story within it. There should be something happening in the dungeon, rather than a vacant path or maze.

What are some things you've seen in dungeons (or haven't seen) made in OHR or other games that you liked (or would like to see) in a dungeon?

~Worthy
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You can do whatever you want...but prison is full of people who make bad decisions.

[Setu_Firestorm]

This is kind of a ....um.....broad question.
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[*Worthy*]

I agree with you, but simplify it. Pick one aspect of a dungeon and write a quick sentence about it.

For example, the graphics of my ideal dungeon would be have visible walls that can be seen, not simply implied. I would like to see creativeness in the walls and not the same maptile throughout the dungeon.

If it were a cave, perhaps cracks, torches, rope, or other things could be added to the map to make it seem more like a cave. Too many dungeons use the same tile over and over making it seem like a maze of tiles. More detail or a change of the monotary look should be added. The outline of the dungeon should not be a square. Turns should be curved or bent, rather than abruptly changing the path's direction at 90 degrees.

~Worthy
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You can do whatever you want...but prison is full of people who make bad decisions.

[Camdog]

Ideally, a good dungeon should instill a sense of exploration in the player. Essentially, all dungeons boil down to mazes with battles thrown in, so the scenery should be excellent and the stuff you can find should be way cool.

In other words, the player should be saying "Wow! Look where I am now! And look at all this cool stuff!" instead of, "God, I hate mazes."

[Komera]

judging by the many people i've seen say they like w;p1's banta cave... the ideal cave is probably the banta cave with less random battles.

not many people know this, but my inspiration for the banta cave was ff4's antlion cave's final chamber.
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LJ.Art

SD - Ten creatures remaining.

[*Worthy*]

What are your thoughts about throwing in plotscripts in caves and having small little sequences with various things. Or do you prefer having complete control of the character without little cut-scenes in the middle of dungeons?

One example of what I'm trying to say is something similar to final dungeon in FF7 in which you choose paths to go, you encounter your team mates once and there's a little talk scene, things like that.

~Worthy
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You can do whatever you want...but prison is full of people who make bad decisions.

[Setu_Firestorm]

An older idea of mine was to incoporate lighting/status. For example:

You enter a cave, and it's dark inside. You can't see a thing. So, you have torches in your inventory, and you can optionally use them. Now what I thought of was to set up a script for this to where any battles you run into while it's dark, your accuracy, evasion, and defense are cut in half (seeing as you cannot see what you're fighting, and you can't see what's attacking you). If you use the torch, however, the situation is neutralized.

But, now! Planethunter's the only person I know who's ambitious enough to figure out how to script that.
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[Fenrir-Lunaris]

Dungeons in most OHR rpg's generally boil down to the following...

1 - Prototypical cave with pitfalls, dead ends, and relatively weak random encounters. This accounts for 90% of any game's first dungeon. Usually brownish in color.

2 - Swampish cave/area. Little difference from the Prototypical cave, except enemies seem to have a profound liking for poison attacks for some unexplained reason. Usually before this cave, NPCs will advise you to stock up on antidotes, even if there's no indication as to WHY.

3 - Undead Ruins. Usually some fallen shrine to an evil diety, or in other examples, a collection of ghost ships, or anything involving people rising from the grave in various states of decay. This is usually the part of the game in which the party's white-mage type character (usually female) demonstrates a surprising amount of skill in dispatching the various creatures with holy magic, thus sparking the steriotypical love interest between her and the main character.

4 - Astos's Castle. Standard 4th area encountered in most RPGs where some lone king or ill-disposed ruler tricks the heroes into completing some errand for him, then reveals his true identity as the king of the Dark Elves or something. This area may be substituted with any castle type dungeon ONLY if the heroes are defending it, in which case they will inevitably fail. That being the case, the main hero will be forced to fight his best friend for no good reason, and the game's heroine white mage will be abducted by the main villain, quickening the game's plot.

5 - Der Cave?! Of Urth!! ! This is usually either a deep, forboding labyrinth leading to some anchient shrine of power which coincidentally happens to be the game first encounter with a 'Fiend' type boss, or a mountain where the hero will gain some kind of power to fight evil and have to defeat said Fiend to get it. Fiends typically get an upper level boss music, which is often a slight remix of the main villan's theme.

[Fenrir-Lunaris]

6 - Defending the Home Turf. This is usually the hero's childhood home, which in some kind of odd twist of fate is being attacked by monsters under the control of the main villain. Once the monsters are defeated, the main villain takes off in an airship or similar vehicle, daring the hero to retreive some object of nonconsequential value, which takes us to....

7 - Der Cave? Of Fyre!! Standard volcano, complete with anchient ruins. Walking on lava mysteriously only harms the hero and his companions by a measly 1 point, even though in real life they would be burnt to a crisp. Said object of value is guarded by Marilith, who is not only the next Fiend, but also one hell of a cook. If the object of value is NOT in the cave (by some inexplicable twist of fate), then Marilith will reveal it's location to the party before crumbling into ash.

8 - Der Cave? Ov EYCE!!1 While it comes as no surprise to us where the object of inconsequential value REALLY is, the heroes seem utterly stupefied. This is the point at which the game's Monk-type character joins the party. After trekking through the cave, fighting undead (who mysteriously show up here for no apparent reason) and relatively innocent looking Arctic wolves who breathe Blizzards if provoked, the object is found. When leaving the dungeon, the Main villain/Hero's best friend who betrayed him retrieves the object of inconsequential value and causes an avalance somehow, which the game's monk-type character will either give his life to ensure the rest of the party survives, or they miraculously survive but are trapped, thus allowing some character interaction between the heros, showing how well they hold up as a group under stress. It is at this point, that the game's cutesy character discovers a second way out of the Ice Cave albeit by accident, or humorous situation (to ya know.. break the ice).

9 - Watery passage. The next area is either an old underwater ruin (which was beneath the ice cave all along) or a watery cave passage which is either incredibly long, or so incredibly short that it's a wonder none of the world's NPCs discovered it long beforehand. At the end of this dungeon is the game's Water-type Fiend, usually a Kracken, or in some rare cases the Leviathan itself, which can be summoned later by the game's gothic summoner.

[Fenrir-Lunaris]

10 - The main villain's hideout part 1. This is usally some dark castle, abandoned fortress, or evil looking tower on the horizon that nobody ever goes to because the world's NPCs are total pussies and get scared at the sight of a mere low level creature like forest imps. The purpose of this raid on the main Villain's home is NOT to end the game, but rather simply resuce the white-mage character from his evil clutches. The main villan's hideout is generally the halfway mark of the game, and has a few consecutive boss battles with his inner circle of minions before he shows up himself to do battle with the party. At this point, the old man character usually breaks his brittle old man hip and dies casting a spell that later on the gothic summoner type character can whip out with no trouble whatsoever. Coincidentally, the old man fades away in a very yoda-esque fashion. After the old man dies, the hero's best friend comes back to his senses, and the evil villan escapes, usually either kidnapping someone else of value to the party, or saying that he's found some ultimate source of power with which he will control the world with.

11 - Temple of the Anchients. At this point the main villain turns out to NOT be the main villain, and instead some eerily bishounen guy turns out to be the game's antagonist. The guy who the party thought was the main villan gets killed off by the bisounen guy, who turns out to either be the brother of, role model for, or second cousin thrice removed from the main hero. At this point he hints that the guy who the party thought was the main villain was either a pawn of the bishounen guy, or just s0omeone getting in his way of ultimately destroying the world, which is quite a step up from the previous villain's plans of global domination. As such, he quickly defeats the party in a show of strength, then flies off to the next location.

12 - Wind Castle. Somehow or other the bishounen guy's plans involve smashing the Elemental crystals/sources of divine power/pillars of the world or whatever, and coincidentally has destroyed all but one or two of these. The last remaining crystal is guarded by the Fiend of the wind Tiamat, whom the bishounen guy lets the party defeat on their own, even though he could very easily ram his masamune through the dragon queen's black heart. Either way, the last crystal gets knocked out of commission by the bishounen guy, who takes off to the promised land rambling something about either A. Meteors, or B. something called Ultima Weapon. The shards of the wind crystal give the heroes further power, and the game's gothic summoner character has a 60% chance to leave the party here.

[Fenrir-Lunaris]

13 - Mandatory Aeris scene. At this point, one of three things will happen. A. The bishounen guy sets a trap and kills off the white-mage type character. B. The bishounen guy kills off the gothic summoner type character. C. The bishounen guy unseals Ultima Weapon, who doesn't exactly follow his instructions to destroy the heroes, and instead runs off and starts attacking random towns for no good reason, which still somewhat acomplishes the bishounen guy's goals, even though it's never explained why. There's a 90% chance that after one of these three things happen, the main hero of the game chases after the bishounen guy alone into the next area...

14 - Edge of Despair. The bishounen guy and the Main hero meet up usually on the edge of a cliff, where the bishounen guy starts playing the role of some kind of sick psychologist, and 90% of the time will succeed in utterly destroying the main character's mind. This is usally accomplished by playing on the main hero's inability to protect those he cares about, or simply because the main character was already mentally unstable. At the end of this scene, the main character gets pushed off the edge of that cliff, and is rescued by the remainder of the party.

15 - Caretaker. This is moreso a short area which is actually the main character's mind. It involves whichever character the bishounen guy did NOT kill off, running around and repairing the damage caused by the bishounen guy. At the end of this 'dungeon' the game's plot typically becomes nonlinear and involves a lot of running around completing subquests, not the least of which involve defeating Ultima Weapon who is ALWAYS stronger than the game's last boss.

16 - Subquests. This usually involves running form town to town, leveling up, or obtaining the party's best attacks, weapons and armor for the final showdown with the bishounen guy. Upwards of 5 to 30 hours tops.

[Fenrir-Lunaris]

17 - Jade. Steriotypically the game's longest dungeon, which may or may not involve running around dead end, solving puzzles, and fighting incredibly powerful enemies just to reach the next area of the game. There are no fewer than 6 optional bosses here, each of which guard one of the many 'legendary weapons', which are arguably the game's best offensive equipment.

18 - Castle Pandaemonium. 80% of the time, this is the next to last dungeon of the game, often taking many forms, such as the core of the moon, the bishounen guy's castle, or Memoria. Typically Pandaemonium is a pretty straightforward dungeon with no weird twists and turns, but features the game's most powerful random encounters. The bishounen guy hangs out at the end of this dungeon, where the next to last battle is fought, which afterward the bishounen guy will use the last of his strength to summon the 'Eternal Darkness' and it's revealed that the actual last boss of the game is none other than Cale, who's getting pretty sick and tired of this sort of thing happening.

19 - The Void. The last dungeon of the game. Often one screen wide, with the last boss talking to the party about, life, death, and a whole bunch of other philosophical concepts before actually engaging them. After his defeat the Eternal Darkness vanishes, not to be sen until the next RPG where he's called upon again. After this fight, the world is mysteriously fixed, and everyone lives happily ever after.

[MultiColoredWizard]

Actually Setu, that's pretty easy to script..

Anyways, throw in lufia ii-esque complex dungeon and I'll be set. (hint: play Lufia II)

[Sephyroth]

Sephy's idea of an idea dungeon = Zelda/Lufia 2/(oh, what the heck)Metroid

I mainly like those two because of the exploration and heavy puzzle-related aspects that I think every good dungeon should have.
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im realy ded

[Flamer]

Yeah, the really good aspects are a few puzzles here and there inside the dungeon that may need to be completed to advance.
and of course a cut-scene in the odd dungeon makes it quite interesting and ideal for a dungeon.
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If we were a pack of dogs, IM would be a grand Hound, CN would be a very ficious little pitball, and Giz...well, it doesn't matter breed he is, he'd still be a bitch
(no offense to anyone that was mentioned)