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Dana Callista Lexa 🏳️‍⚧️

@authorx

2x Award Winning Podcaster

Hi I'm Dana, I mostly just tool around with friends, play RPGs, and listen to podcasts, but I've also been known to make podcasts at SuperIdols! RPG and I've written a couple of short rpgs at my itch page and on twitter.

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nex3
@nex3
lexyeevee
@lexyeevee

nonlinearity in video games by which i mean doom

sometimes i think about how people refer to doom as "non-linear", and also about how people refer to castletroids (named after the famous series Nintendo Castletroid) as "non-linear", and how it doesn't quite mean anything.

or rather, it means too many things, and when you are trying to make video games of your own, that becomes inconvenient. so here are some of the things it means. also some crappy diagrams, where "progression" happens as you move to the right

nex3
@nex3

someone remind me at some point to post the graphs I made of logical progression routes through various FromSoft games

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Tayruu
@Tayruu

An interesting overview of design. I've seen similar thoughts before from Game Maker's Toolkit on Youtube about Zelda dungeon design - thinking in terms of how things branch, where keys and locks are, and such.

Leaves and interconnection-style maps are the kind I've usually planned myself in my own game projects before, but I've often struggled to then put interesting things to do in them. I blank on puzzles or stuff, which means worrying that I'm just making big empty mazes. That's probably fine for action games (Doom, Zelda) where the physical space affects combat. Less so for say, a traditional RPG.

(... also this feels main blog worthy to me.)

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Nekomansa
@Nekomansa

I think the Refueling Base example offers an idea with the tabletop dungeon approach. Intimidating obstacles (enemies/traps) and scattered resources where the player needs to probe and plot a route through the dangers to get where they need to go.

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lexyeevee
@lexyeevee

i didn't go into detail, but one of the most fascinating parts of refueling base is that circular area — THREE of the paths connecting to it (all except the north) will open traps containing more monsters than you can really deal with without a moderately solid loadout. the usual tactic for familiar players is to avoid it entirely until later in the level, even though it's big and central and inviting

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lexyeevee
@lexyeevee

no, i've always struggled with doom mapping for the same reason. i can come up with a general high-level route no problem, but once you have a bigass room, what do you do with it? you can get away with dumping in a few monsters and calling it a day approximately 1 time before the player will get kind of bored. i don't know how to fill in the details

i've been doing a little better lately with fox flux levels, though i can't really explain how. i think i've just been sprinkling things in even if they're only really vague ideas, holding onto something that feels like a direction and trying to roll with it, and just playing it a lot and trying to pay attention to whether i actually like it. (it's surprisingly easy to play a level you make and feel like "yeah whatever" and chalk that up to being bored of replaying the same thing. but you should enjoy replaying your own levels!)

it might be main blog worthy but it's one of those things where doing it right would require a whole lot of diagramming effort, and that's the same reason i've never finished a post on collision detection haha

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Nekomansa
@Nekomansa

Nice chost. It is interesting how a level can feel significantly more open ended than it actually is. I guess it's about the process of discovering and routing the solution? It's cool if you can get lost or vary how you figure it out.

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hillexed
@hillexed

good effortchost. as someone who doesnt play doom i dont know what the boxed letters and lines mean but the diagrams are very pretty nonetheless and they come with a free analysis!

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lexyeevee
@lexyeevee

that is me desperately trying to indicate teleporters on a map that is already very small and cramped lmao. circles are teleporters, squares are destinations, i included an arrow to give you a general idea where to look

also ty!

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glitchypixel
@glitchypixel

You might be interested in Joris's Dormans two main thesis on map generation and design.

  • First one is the conceptualization and separation of the lock-key mechanism and world map, I'm which usually you should design the mission first and work in tandem with the space as they are conceptually different. He called them mission-space maps, and based his ideas around Zelda dungeon maps, which i'd say have the same DNA as Doom maps and looks really similar to what you are describing here. I like his diagrams and how everything works when he uses his style of design for this. He put all of this and more in his thesis "Engineering Emergence", which I like a lot. You can find that in Open Libra as it was released as open access from the start (this book is if and talks about a lot of things, but you can go straight to the mission-space framework chapter if you want) https://openlibra.com/book/engineering-emergence

  • The second is a rather simple paper he made, but the main idea is that, for mission space maps and level, looping structures ar better than leafs. So when trying to design a lock+key system, always think of roundabouts and loops and avoid dead ends (or leafs), as it feels more natural and free to explore. I noticed this design for example in soulsborne like games and in other places as well. Here's a video on that as well https://youtu.be/yxMY6hsAzf8

Just my two cents. But maybe it can be useful for someone.

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