Designing Dungeons - A look at update v1.6
Introduction
After Housewarming Update (v1.5) came out last year I decided to turn my attention to the dungeon system. Before taking some time off from development I laid out the dungeon design changes I wanted to make. As usual, I decided on the most ambitious ideas I could imagine which has resulted in the dungeon system being rebuilt from the ground up. In this post I want to share why I think the dungeon system needed to change and what these changes will look like.
Revisiting Dungeons
After turning my attention to dungeons it quickly became obvious that the biggest decision I had to make was if I should attempt to salvage it or completely scrap it. I heavily considered taking the salvaging route but a major factor was that another programmer had implemented it entirely. This meant I had to first learn the existing code before I could make substantial changes. Additionally, dungeons were riddled with both design and mechanical issues that I wanted to overcome.
What are these issues even? Dungeons are currently huge sprawling areas with interweaving hallways and massive rooms. This sounds great but in practice it lead to players running aimlessly hoping to stumble upon the exit. Exploring was uninteresting and monsters could often be entirely ignored - unless the exit objective required you to kill them in which case good luck tracking them all down. Needless to say the progression was empty and culminated into absolutely nothing when the end presented you with no boss or any sort of climax - dungeons fizzled. These are fundamental issues which necessitated fundamental changes. Mechanical issues also plauged dungeons with the most popular being hallways being blocked by rooms preventing progress.
Looking at these issues I worked to shape the dungeon design into something more coherent. First, dungeons should focus on survival and not exploration. The main world is where the exploration should happen. To reinforce this focus on survival it made sense to narrow exploration into something much more linear. Additionally, it is crucial that dungeons build to a climax to make completing dungeons feel both challenging and satisfying. So how does this all translate into a new system?
Dungeon Redesign
Dungeons will continue to be broken up into multiple floors (realms/maps). Each floor is segmented into a "sector" which will have its own objective. Progression through sectors will be linear and completing the sector objective is necessary in order to advance to the next sector. Difficulty will ramp up slowly as you progress through sectors and floors. Upon reaching the last sector of the entire dungeon you will encounter a worthy boss. Upon victory you will be rewarded with a juicy treasure chest.
Sectors have become the pivotal component in dungeons and they are receiving much attention. Sector objectives will range from "kill all monsters" to "flipping a switch in a room guarded by monsters to power a treasure chest in another room that has the sector key in it". Objectives will have lots of variety and there can be a supporting objective to add even more. You will never know what to expect in the next sector.
Focusing on survival, there are many threats within dungeons the player will face. Hazards such as lava pools, poisonous plants and spikes will be despersed throughout. Players will encounter many traps as well such as flamethrowers, dart shooters, bomb launchers and monster alerts. Even monsters are going to prove more challenging as they will patrol their area and will link with other monsters if you're not careful. Don't be a Leeroy Jenkins and rush into rooms!
Conclusion
Now that you know more about the changes to dungeons I hope you're as excited as I am about them. Dungeons wont be the only changes coming to the v1.6 update. You can look forward to new items, bug fixes and even a "secret" new feature. Unfortunately major changes like these take time and I still have much to do. I have made great progress on dungeons and hope to have an early beta version released in the next few weeks. If you would like to follow development more closely then you are more than welcomed to follow the Siege Games Twitch channel with the schedule below. I have also been attempting to revive the Crea Discord Server and you should join! Thank you again for everyone's continued support.
Stream Schedule
Weekdays: 7AM to 2PM Pacific Time
Weekends: 12PM to 4PM Pacific Time
