Quick question on the WB

I'm sorry alot of what I was readingon another thread made me wonder this and I'm still unclear without much deeper delving on a simple point:

Is it within the strengths of the ToEE-World builder to design a random dungeon?

I assume no for maps - would there be a way to Randomly string together map Sections ( tiles)


Failing that - it was spawns that made the discussion that gave me this to ask:

could it have random placement in a dungeon?

i'm pretty sure a wandering monsters mechanic exists; I suppose it could be just that -

but i was more wandering baout random placement of "there" monsters.


The rEASON i ask is that 2 games i can think of off the top of my head have nothing going for them within their genre OTHER than their ability to create random; fresh adventures ( story.. what story? ... I'm sure we could come up with a story that explains why people are looting a random dungeon if we tried)

- Dungeon Runner and Fast Crawl come to mind.

This came up for me as reading the occaisional post as a random passerby has given me a better understanding of just HOW MUCH work has gone into the fixes and the mod tools- and so its just natural for me in my barely-modding anything way to ask such a thing.

And i ask because from what I did read; I'm not sure I can interpret what info there is based solely on my understanding of WTF all these dang 'smart people' are talking about.. so in the interest of KISSing i ask it as a simple question.

To make it clear from the get-go i think random content is INFERIOR to well-designed content; but i think it has its place for develop-times reason if nothing else.

 

Yes, this can be done. But it isn't inherent to how the ToEE WB works.

Basically, if you want to make a "random" dungeon then rather than creating all of your door destinations through ToEE WB you would manage their destinations via scripts attached to the doors.

You can also respawn all maps via a spawner, and you could randomize this as well.

It would take work and scripts.

ToEE WB wouldn't be that useful, but you wouldn't want all maps to be randomized. You would need some static maps like a town, shops, etc... and the entrance area of the "random dungeon."

When the player would enter the dungeon then everything from that point on could be randomized.

- Livonya

PS: There are some ways that you could do this via the ToEE WB... for instance you could create 10 doors in each dungeon map, and then turn the doors on and off via scripts, each door going to a different map. But a truely random dungeon would be better done via scripts only... though a combination of methods would work. No matter what the bulk of the work would have to be handled via scripts... as scripts are really the life's blood of how ToEE works.

 

Thanks!

and quite a bit of food for thought.

You definitely have the wheels turning.


Your mention of keeping a town map (in short) - that not all need be random.. led me to brainstorm this idea..

I realize it isn't Canon (neither is Verbonc being drow i believe) but maybe in the spirit of greyhawk...

Perhaps keeping the overland map and instead of the temple area its actually a ruined city

lets say destroyed in a seige (first thing to mind) (phlann from the gold box games as a paralell)

monsters as well as "heroes" - many factions - might send treasure hunters there -
so an area of random encounters

the city; being observable; ISNT a random map -

but could have the "doors" you speak of - random "dungeons" within this semi-stable area - those mini-adventures could be completely random .. ruins lairs sewers; what ever i suppose.

a really ambitious project might be to dig up something in greyhawk for which that would actually FIt and fix a map up to that.

But i was just brainstorming a city that could replace the temple on the map for the sake of this discussion.

 

It would be doable. But it would be an entirely new expansion (kind of like KotB if you're thinking huge or like Verbobonc if you're thinking as big as any sane single modder will do).

Good luck with your project as I doubt any of the current active modders will have the time or inclination for a project that big for a long time to come

 

Hmmn not sure that Is my project its entirely conjectural a brainstorm...

I've done some very mild scripting and that was in mod-freindly games; lol
I'm still unclear if - to what extent the WB makes ToEE in effect a mod-friendly one

also; its good to find out what limitations are hard-coded before you adopt any "babies"

think of it as watching the other swimmers to see if the water is too icy.

Random dungeons is one of my pets since the days of Hero and DeathMaze; lol -

but that doesn't mean I'd really be willing to jump right in and tackle such a thing...

although i have to admit Liv DID get my gears turning...


such a thing is not undertaken lightly!

but nope looks like everyone already has their own projects; yep ( on another thread i encouraged liv to go ahead with the personal project he was threatening

 

You're a champ!

Right now for me it's basically a choice between learning flash - from scratch - and seeing what I can scrabble together until school starts...

Or deciding if trying to re-teach myself scripting to do some project related to this.


** as an aside; i dont remember KotB that well; so don't recall how much was random - but i have an entire BLOG elsewhere about how random dungeons or at least random monster placement would improve replay value of a certain suffering MMO. (toasts)

IIRC However; in KotB; there were just off to the west, the caves of the Unknown or some such...
Doing anything with that?

 

IIRC the caves of Chaos - the Temple of Chaos section - had a side tunnel that at the DM's discretion could or could not lead to the Caves of the unknown ( the unmapped cave at the west i referred to )

 

Can't help but be curious you know -

Have to say KotB is about the only upcoming gaming project I have actually bothered to check up on or looked forward to.

Not all that much promising on the Horizon if you have my tastes in gaming I'm afraid.