Castlevania Dungeon Forums
The Castlevania Dungeon Forums => General Castlevania Discussion => Topic started by: squaretex on March 23, 2012, 02:36:53 PM
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First, the TL;DR:
Side-scrolling Castlevania, roguelike random room placement. Good idea, or bad?
And now...the treatise. ;)
Maria: It's strange. This castle is different then I remember it.
Alucard: This castle is a creature of chaos. It may take many incarnations.
Maria: I can't trust my memories huh? Oh well, I'll do my best.
This conversation highlighted the differences between Rondo of Blood and its direct sequel, Symphony of the Night. If one were to play them back to back, there would be areas like the clock tower that strike that similar-but-different vibe. But of course, this is a comparison of two different games, and each game's own design remains static.
But suppose the design WASN'T static? Suppose, as a "creature of chaos", the game layout changed each time you played?
That has been the major design of the "roguelike" games. The plots are generally simple: descend into a dungeon, kill the bad guy, come back. But to make it interesting, each visit to the dungeon is randomized, using templates of rooms and connecting halls. So while the feel of the game remains the same, the ever-changing layout keeps the players off-guard. And thus, even in ascii or low-res graphics, these games remain highly popular. In fact, there IS a top-down Castlevania roguelike out there!
However, that's top-down. Can such a feel be caught in the traditional SIDE-SCROLLING Castlevania style?
Consider, for example, a Marble Gallery. First time you play the game, it flows from left to right in a generally straight line. The SECOND time, however, it goes from right to left...mostly. Seems that there's quite a lot more vertically-oriented rooms this time, which kinda throws things off a bit. Or how about, in true RL fashion, it puts you in the "MIDDLE" of the level, and now you have to decide which way to go!
(And if this game has editor tools, like what the Diablo-inspired Torchlight has done for its fans, imagine what crazy fan-designed templates can spice up the mix!)
So there you have it. Now, there are two questions:
1. Could such a thing be done relatively easily, or is it a nightmare in the making?
2. If it COULD be done, would anyone want to PLAY it?
p.s. I even have a name in mind:
Castlevania: Scherzo of Chaos
:)
p.p.s. However, since I can't code my way out of a paper bag, I'd have to leave this idea to someone who wouldn't make it suck. :D
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1. I know jack squat about coding, but I'd assume the latter.
2. ALL OF MY FREAKING YES
Also, doesn't this belong in the Fan Stuff section, even if it's just an idea?
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Also, doesn't this belong in the Fan Stuff section, even if it's just an idea?
Being a bare-bones concept with nothing else to show, I wasn't sure where it would fit.
That, and there's a cap on Fan Stuff postings, and I know better than to spam my three posts just to get an idea out. ;)
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While technically possible, there are a few inherint issues with this concept.
One is the imagery and theming of areas would be shattered in a sense. The levels are constructed in a specific manner for a specific reason. You lose this. Visually it would become a complete disorientated experience as well. The Castle like structure, the aesthetics of it all, would be lost to a random generation. The best way they could do it, is have randomized segments, not room by room. Each segment would be hand crafted, and they'd link to each other segment at specified required rooms, like the loading rooms.
I don't personally like most random generated dungeon crawlers. Why? It takes the 'art' out of the design. Its now a cold machine of meaningless configurations. When you have an intentionally designed level, you can feel it. Things in the level have true purpose and have a soul to them, being hand crafted.
The randomized areas/segments concept I mentioned earlier also is not used often because its basically level designing the game 5 times over. Most developers find it unnecessary and far too time consuming to be an implemented feature.
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I understand your view there, uzo. It's quite a dissension between the two camps...
Non-RL: Don't you see? The craftsmanship, the style, the SOUL...!
RL: ...which you can play blindfolded after 50 playthroughs. *YAWN*
Non-RL: That's not the point!!!
RL: Look, if I'm going to invest some time in this, I'd like to be surprised every time I open a door!
Non-RL: Alright, then...YOU come up with five different variations.
RL: Well...um...
I concede that this style of CV game might indeed have a limited audience. :)
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Couldn't you still have a form of randomization in a CV game? It could work like this; You have a fixed number of stages in the game. However every time you play a new game the stages change. They still use their assigned tiles & sprites however they are re-arranged to give the player a new challenge every time. ...I can't help but feel we've talked about this concept before on the forums.
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It's questions like these that point out uzo's complexity concerns. For example, would a "room chunk" be tile-independent, so that a design could show up in both an Underground Cavern or a Dance Hall (with appropriate tiles appearing)? Or should there be specific exclusive chunks for the Clock Tower, Throne Room, etc?
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I think there should be areas, and the areas would have some interconnections that are static. That is, they are the same in every playthrough, probably the location of the exit to the next areas, and the boss room.
However, everything in between would be differently arranged. You have to design the rooms as 'puzzle piece' elements, whereby every piece 'can' conceivably fit into every other piece.
In a stage that's mostly vertical, you might have more vertical segments, than horizontal ones. The random stage generator would have to decide "OK, so here's the start of the stage, in this part of the global map, and this is the end of the stage, in another part of the global map. The area between these two stages is the area I can fill with 'rooms'. How many combinations of a pool or rooms can I use, in this playthrough? Once decided, the generator would have to adjusts the entry/exit points (which can be variable; you can just 'wall off' segments').
It would be somewhat like how they did it in DoS with the sliding puzzle room, except the CPU always knows all the possible answers, and the rooms aren't perfectly interlocked squares.
The downside is:
-you wouldn't be able to use a map.
-the castle may at times feel disjointed. Of course, old CV games were somewhat disjointed (if you map out Super Castlevania IV, it's mostly going 'to the right' and it's huge).
The end result would be to have areas, sort of like the "Sectors" in Metroid Fusion.
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Thinking about it more, I believe the best possible implementation of this, while keeping the signature Castlevania style and theming, would probably be multiple enemy placement patterns.
This could be done in a couple of ways:
The first option would one of multiple hand crafted enemy patterns is loaded when entering a room. So if you leave and return, you will likely fight a new pattern of enemies. You could even give a ratio chance to each possibility, so there is a rare chance you may run into effectively a mid-boss type monster, while other times it is a bunch of normal monsters. Not only does this screw with repetitive grinding tactics, but also gives an element of surprise to each room. Suddenly, mid boss fight out of nowhere, even though you've been through that room a bunch of times.
The other possibility I came up with is based on something CV games have done very lightly in the past. The areas have a static non changing enemy pattern set, however, as you progress, at a certain point, the enemy pattern for an area changes. Usually with the inclusion of harder enemies. Past games used it lightly, and not very effectively at that. This could be taken a step further, so older areas become a bit more dangerous again, with entirely new enemy layouts.
And honestly, you could combine those two concepts into one.
I might try out that first concept at least in my own project. Thinking about it now, it sounds pretty nifty. Enemy patterns are much easier to mass produce than whole level layouts, and rooms can be designed to cater to many enemy layouts while not having to utilize evey point in every enemy layout pattern.
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@ Jorge:
So basically, there are set "areas" in the castle, such as the clocktower "area" the dance hall "area" etc.
And those are set in stone, but every time you enter them, their layout is randomized. So the Dance hall will always lead to the Main Hall, but the area layouts will always be different in either.
But occasionally, you could perhaps get an extra door in a randomized room, that leads to some sort of goodie or shortcut. I think that would be interesting.
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Yeah, that's basically what I was proposing in my first post.
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I really like the idea of enemy placement, uzo. I remember from tinkering with FloEdit, an old Wolfenstein 3D editor, that each enemy's appearance would be determined by what difficulty setting - or higher - it was set to. So while the population of a map's "Can I Play, Daddy?" setting was much less than "I Am Death Incarnate", it was all still on the same map.
Yeah, I can see this being fun.
"Ho hum, back to the Entrance Hall..."
*Slogra pops up*
"WHAT TH-" *CRUNCH*
:D
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Yeah, that's basically what I was proposing in my first post.
Well it sounds just dandy to me.
Kind or reminds me of what Capcom supposedly wanted to do with X6's Nightmare system, but never actually managed to do. (instead leaving us with not-so-randomized stage effects)
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Well, they did do it in Scaravich's stage. It was kind of neat, but having the armor part inaccessible at random was a little frustrating.
Oh also, another additional concept. Randomizing doesn't happen every time you reload the area or room, but after a set time while you're away from the room or area.
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This thread made me think of Portrait or Ruin, and what it could've been.
The castle would've been the same all the time but the portraits would've been randomized. It would make sense cause they're, you know, paintings. Some of the paintings could even be REDRAWN by Brauner as you explore to add extra confusion and evilness (though not to a point where it becomes frustrating) I think this would've made the game a lot more interesting and difficult.
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maybe this will be the format for the next Harmony of Despair? reuse all the old areas that hadn't already been reused and arrange them in random order with random enemy placements.
i've wanted to play a randomized Castlevania game (2d or 3d) ever since playing Dark Cloud. i loved the way the layout was different every time.
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i had a long conversation about this with a buddy at work last summer. I personally am all for the concept of a randomly generated castle. In my conversation on this concept i had even gone so far as adding in different boss rooms where the room itself played in the changes of the game. Almost as if the rooms were a boss themselves. I.E you have a set of 10 rooms with different concepts behind them such as spikes, moving platforms, ascending/ decending while fighting, ect.
Many of my thoughts on this concept stem from the sheer amount of times i have played each game. I am quite sure i am not alone in this but i get so obsessive about each game that, for example my last run of DoS took like 3-5 hours( sorry my memory is hazy.) and i would absolutely love a never-ending Castlevania game.
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This is easier if one uses a simple game template, like TheouAegis's CV NES-looking template, as it would let us use just one type of 'block' as a tile.
The graphic below is set to the usual H16xV12 tile template (16 tiles wide, 12 tiles tall screen size).
It would be something like this:
(https://castlevaniadungeon.net/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.inverteddungeon.com%2Fjorgefuentes%2Fimages3%2Fdungeoncrawler.png&hash=cd18eb12547ac7a7003a4ec9c804545477c93707)
You have these 'room containers', comprised of a screen in a room, each.
At the start of each stage, as Simon/Trevor/Grant/anyone is 'walking across the map graphic', you get a description of what the stage will be like.
"Alchemy Laboratory" "Underground Caverns", etc.
While it's doing this, it's calculating the stage based on the following rules:
1. The difficulty you set at the beginning of the game presets the range of 'screens' the player must traverse. A difficulty level that's high would yield a longer stage with more perils, etc. An easy difficulty would be something like 32 rooms or so, while a tougher one would be something like 64.
2. Note the map graphics above: Every green Entry/Exit point in a screen must lead to another Entry/Exit point.
3. Every screen has an 'edge' on its walls if it has walls, (in RED). The edge of every screen must touch an edge of the adjacent screen. No naked edges are allowed.
4. If the screen's side has no edge, its adjacent screen must also have no edge on the side that's touching that edge.
Following these rules, one should be able to use the room containers. Since no naked edges are allowed, this automatically will create:
-hallways
-towers
-nooks (1-screen rooms)
-alcoves (1-screen rooms with more than one exit)
-large rooms (if one uses the all-blue air room)
Once the membrane (the edges of every screen, when stitched together) of a room has been decided, the game will fill the area with various pre-determined room contents. The rules for room contents are as follows:
1. if a predetermined template can be used to fill an entire area (say, if someone designed content for a h2xv4 'tower'), it is noted. If there are more configurations, it picks one at random.
OR
2. it may fill the room with 1-screen room content templates (in my diagram I only made 3, but a good level designer could conceivably make up hundreds).
Some extra rules to spice things up:
1. If a room is an alcove, it may contain a tough enemy, or a healing font. There are no save points in this type of game, just check points upon stage clear.
2 If a room has a 'floor', depending on the theme of the stage, it may have spikes, water, or lava in it.
3. every stage needs three 'special rooms' that are always in the stage, regardless of the randomly-generated rooms. This means that, no matter how one might generate the "Underground Caverns", there WILL be a room with the Waterfall in it. If one is on the "Clock Tower", no matter how the stage is laid out, there WILL be one "Pendulum Chamber" or "Gear Room". This ensures that there is some special elements in the stages, rather than them just being coookiecutouts.
4. obviously, every tileset would have to be made to accomodate every stage, so common tilesets have to be built.
5. every stage has the boss room in the same location, and a connector to the 'exit' on the room afterwards.
6. your character will need to have the abilities to traverse the stage. This means that your character is going to need doublejump or walljump or flying powers to get through, as some stages may not have the footholds to get you everywhere. However, they should be programmed such that every combination of container and content work together. You will never start the stage and be walled off.
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Oh man, I would love something like this. More Traditional Castlevanias in general would be appreciated.
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Thinking about it more, I believe the best possible implementation of this, while keeping the signature Castlevania style and theming, would probably be multiple enemy placement patterns.
This could be done in a couple of ways:
The first option would one of multiple hand crafted enemy patterns is loaded when entering a room. So if you leave and return, you will likely fight a new pattern of enemies. You could even give a ratio chance to each possibility, so there is a rare chance you may run into effectively a mid-boss type monster, while other times it is a bunch of normal monsters. Not only does this screw with repetitive grinding tactics, but also gives an element of surprise to each room. Suddenly, mid boss fight out of nowhere, even though you've been through that room a bunch of times.
The other possibility I came up with is based on something CV games have done very lightly in the past. The areas have a static non changing enemy pattern set, however, as you progress, at a certain point, the enemy pattern for an area changes. Usually with the inclusion of harder enemies. Past games used it lightly, and not very effectively at that. This could be taken a step further, so older areas become a bit more dangerous again, with entirely new enemy layouts.
And honestly, you could combine those two concepts into one.
I might try out that first concept at least in my own project. Thinking about it now, it sounds pretty nifty. Enemy patterns are much easier to mass produce than whole level layouts, and rooms can be designed to cater to many enemy layouts while not having to utilize evey point in every enemy layout pattern.
This would actually make the Metroidvanias much more enjoyable to play through.
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To be honest I've thought of things like this. The replay value would be huge and I'm sure very fun too. However, I don't know my butt from a hole in the ground regarding making things like this. I would play it though if someone were to make something like this.
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I was thinking. Didn't Aria technically dabble with a similar concept with the Hanging Gardens? where depending how you went about traversing the area you would find yourself all over different parts?
I mean, it wasn't random at all, but the idea was sort of similar.
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Sorry for neglecting my own thread, folks. :-[
It's fun to see that this idea has caught on and giving people ideas. I especially enjoy the concept that Jorge mentioned in his latest. That's an AWFUL lot of planning and considerations there. I just hope that you, uzo, and everyone else don't drive yourself crazy trying to figure it out, because it was just a theory! ;D
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I enjoy setting my mind ablaze with ideas and sharing them.
That's usually why I'm very helpful to programmers, because I usually end up pushing the envelope.
I think that the room layout algorithm wouldn't be difficult to implement with a few constraints. Something like:
"No rooms longer than 8 screens" or
"Maximum 'stage' area = 16 x 16 screens", etc.
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I'm only concerned with the enemy pattern idea at this time really. I've already come up with a system to accomplish this. Nothing too hard.
The whole level generator though, that's not something so easy.
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The types of enemies in a stage would be dependant upon certain things:
1. a pool of enemies that are stage-specific, which might mostly occupy the 'stage rooms' I mentioned.
2. a pool of regular enemies, determined by the types of platforms in a stage. Thatis, upon platform determination (the 2nd randomized set, the first being the type of room containers), it determines what type of enemy can go where.
3. there is a set number of enemies in a room, depending on the difficulty.
4. there is a set number of types of enemies in a room, depending on the dimensions of the room (a room determined to be 'tall' or 'long' might have three screens of Medusa heads, gargoyles, or bats).
5. the elements in the room that may be outside of platforms:
-if the room has spikes, put no enemies on the floor
-if the room has pits, put no enemies on the floor
-if the room is 'long' (2 screens or longer) and has water, put mermen at the bottom.
I would imagine this would create some pretty challenging levels of gameplay, as you may have skeleton swordsmen every other platform, medusa heads accosting you, and trouble traversing uneven terrain.
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I'm sticking with multiple manually created set enemy patterns per room. Random placement is especially a bad idea if you want any meaningful challenge and setup. Randomizing based on position though may not be so bad, if you strictly limit it to a certain set it can become.
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Hmm randomized Castlevania?
Sounds like a pretty sweet idea :D
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I don't agree with this idea.
Don't get me wrong, the intentions are good, and it would be really exciting to have an element of surprise, however, Castlevania defines itself under the perfect timing and placement of enemy attacks, enemy positions and platforms. Especially the old 2DVanias. They had every subweapon in the right place, every platform lifted the exact pixels to be an estrategic position if well handled. I don't think a randomized Cv would achieve that, it would reduce the classic sidescroler to a typical hack and slash, and I don't think that's good for this series.
However some tea could come with it and make my mind blown so I won't say it's a definitive judgment :P
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Just thought Id mention it in this thread (since it kinda inspired me to do it) but Ive been workin on a map generator along side my html5 classic style cv test. Heres a link to the generator page
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/53012532/GenTest/index.html (http://dl.dropbox.com/u/53012532/GenTest/index.html)
and all the info can be found in here - about it and my cv test
http://castlevaniadungeon.net/forums/index.php/topic,4744.0.html (http://castlevaniadungeon.net/forums/index.php/topic,4744.0.html)
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I always thought Magic Sword was pretty good at randomizing.
Not so much the environments, but what locked doors or chests contained; keys/key types. It made the game very replayable. It also helped that the 100 levels or so were short stages packed with enemies and environmental hazards. You could scroll the player left of right and the stage would loop--as you'd expect going around the inside of a tower. Hidden doors led to higher levels, there were hidden chests too and plethora of helpful items.
I'm with Ahasverus though: I don't think randomizing individual room, platform and enemy placements would lend itself well to Castlevania, unless it was done on a larger scale with a huge bank of really rich collections (kind of like Magic Sword standalone levels). You'd lose a bit of what makes a certain area unique or special if you ran the randomiser over everything, but tailored sets per area might work. The level design in latter Castroids has left something to be desired and it actually feels like they ran some kind of a randomizer on it to put in platforms (and then saved those layouts). But it's a fascinating idea. I remember an old MSX flick-room game called Vampire which I used to think had Dracula, Frankenstein's Monster and Igor wandering the castle randomly, it was quite frightening to think you could bump into them at any time.
Oh, MSX Goonies was another: there was often a Fratelli gang member or two chasing Sloth, and the game would remember their positions off-screen. Very clever, but helped the immersion in the level a good bit.