Topic: Theoretical: Randomized traditional Castlevania?

[Reinhart77]

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.

[Ring_of_Varda]

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.

[Jorge D. Fuentes]

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:


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.

[Dremn]

Oh man, I would love something like this. More Traditional Castlevanias in general would be appreciated.

[Munchy]

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.

[GuyStarwind]

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.

[K.G. Morder]

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.

[squaretex]

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! 

[Jorge D. Fuentes]

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.

[uzo]

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.

[Jorge D. Fuentes]

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.

[uzo]

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.

[knightmere]

Hmm randomized Castlevania?

Sounds like a pretty sweet idea

[Ahasverus]

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 

[Aridale]

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

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