Willing suspension of disbelief : Men as big as Dragons!

Post by **Gambit37** » Sun Dec 07, 2008 1:39 pm

Dungeon Master had small Screamers that weren't much smaller than the big bad Dragon. Yet that didn't seem to affect our belief that they were small little trees and he was a monster baddie.

I'm not too keen on matching this in my custom adventure. But it would mean that big beasties like Dragons wouldn't fit on screen -- you'd only see their legs and feet when fighting them at close range. Obviously that's a bit dumb.

Does it matter that a Dragon would need to be scaled to be not much taller than a man? Perhaps I should make all human sized enemies smaller than in DM?. The perspective and 'eyeline' of the viewport will make this feel a little odd though.

Thoughts?

beowuuf · Post by **beowuuf** » Sun Dec 07, 2008 1:48 pm

I know I always wanted larger than one square monsters, I think I talked about it ages ago. So the dragon would be squashed in it's space, but take up two spaced - tail on one square, body filling the other. Or giants who you only see the legs of, and their fists when they hit you, until you hobble them to look like eotb frost giants.

I think you should perhaps do something clever with perspective and the dungeon lay-out to allow the dragon to be be huge, so that normal enemies can still be normal sized

Post by **Ameena** » Sun Dec 07, 2008 2:03 pm

I suppose if you had the dragon as an immovable enemy, you could have different parts of him taking up different squares which are only accessible from one side (like the very cool Vermatrix Goldenhide in Stonekeep). Then you could have a massive great big head taking up one square at the end of a corridor or something.

Trantor · Post by **Trantor** » Mon Dec 08, 2008 8:01 am

I never even thought about this. The dragon always did look a bit squashed to me, like it already was a bit too big for the dungeon. That's why I always felt compassion for it, being trapped by Lord Chaos in a dungeon that's actually too small for it...

EOB2 did something very nice with the Frost Giants, they were trapped by Dran and eventually committed suicide because the dungeon was too small for them. They really did look like they could hardly move with the low ceiling and tight corridors. Maybe this is the way to go? Monsters that are larger than one tile sound interesting, but I doubt that it will work out. What happens if the monster turns around? Where will the "tail" be? What if a wall or the player is in that space? Questions, questions...

beowuuf · Post by **beowuuf** » Mon Dec 08, 2008 8:42 am

Hence it's a mechanical solution - I had teleporters and pillars for the tail position with damage tiles, so if the critter twisted around the party got smacked sideways, and of course monster blockers were needed aroudn the perimeter of the hall - although i had a few false walls that could be smashed down

Sadly, RTC didn't support monster direction detection, so the dragon started surrounded by pillars and I never got back to it

Post by **Gambit37** » Mon Dec 08, 2008 11:22 am

Good ideas everyone, thanks

I'll probably have to use single tile monsters for most things, but I've had an idea about one particular critter that could work with Beo's mechanic...

Parallax · Post by **Parallax** » Wed Dec 10, 2008 7:57 am

I wouldn't suggest this to everybody, but you're good enough with graphics that you could probably change the perspective if you wanted to, Gambit. Lowering the eye level requires one to remake the wallsets and probably shift some wallitem positions, but ultimately it might not be that big of a deal? I mean, if you're going to create your dungeon in a higher resolution than original DM anyways, which you seem inclined to do.

zoom · Post by **zoom** » Wed Dec 10, 2008 10:01 am

it is hard to tell if you have no samples. And I believe sound makes a big difference --- the dragon has a cloonk cluunk sound which tells us it is heavy. the screamer shuffles around and has a pitched up voice.. so .. try some sound setups to ameliorate the setting you wish to produce

Post by **Gambit37** » Wed Dec 10, 2008 10:04 am

@Parallax: I did consider that, but I think it's a pretty hefty job.

There is the additional problem that RTC uses hard coded calculations to determine the position of items further away. There's no way of overriding those, so you're still restricted to DM perspective really.

@Zoom: I'm not sure I understand? The sound is not really related to how big I can make the creatures physically appear in the viewport.

zoom · Post by **zoom** » Wed Dec 10, 2008 4:14 pm

oh. Well, erm I think I mixed the 2 sentences. This is :
I would like to take a glimpse at 2 kinds of creatures(human / dragon) to see "samples" of the problem you outlined..
to the sound thing:
I think you can give an idea of the weight of the creature by giving it some special movement sounds. Which would work unconciously at best perhaps and not working if the difference from sound conveyed to imagery used differs too much.
ah, and ameliorer is french(improve, accent ommitted).. sorry bout using that.

Post by **cowsmanaut** » Wed Dec 10, 2008 10:59 pm

well, I started to do an example, and once I was about half way through and had not yet saved. photoshop crashed due to a stupid ass feature of my laptop touch pad which forcably minimizes the current window.. which photoshop did not like.. and when I tried to maximise it just went beep and vanished.. so... alas.. I have no sample..

but what I was going to suggest is ceiling tiles that indicate the idea of a higher, non visible roof would give you an area in which your dragon could roam, if in tile two it was full screen height and at tile 1 it was just a big chest and feet..

anyway, it's always been larger than a bear and looked as though it was always crouched anyway.. so I thought of it as quite large.

Mindstone · Post by **Mindstone** » Fri Jan 16, 2009 2:40 pm

Why not just scale everything else down instead!

I played around with half-sized skeletons once. They were soooooo cute.

Post by **Gambit37** » Fri Jan 16, 2009 2:54 pm

That can't really be done successfully without making the player feel about 16 feet tall. It's unconvincing. I tried already.

Post by **cowsmanaut** » Fri Jan 16, 2009 6:30 pm

smaller doors and bricks.. it could work

though the view angle would leave them all flying

Post by **Gambit37** » Fri Jan 16, 2009 8:29 pm

The problem is the hardcoded calculations for scaling of items, it completely breaks any idea of a different prespective that you might create through miniaturised environment graphics or smaller enemies.

No, the only way to do this is design an engine in 3D with a variable viewpoint or code the 2D engine for a different perspective.

Post by **cowsmanaut** » Fri Jan 16, 2009 10:06 pm

woot 3D DM..

Lord_BoNes · Post by **Lord_BoNes** » Sat Jan 17, 2009 2:00 pm

If you're going to do a 3D DM, then could you throw some models my way. I hate having to use sprites in mine, they need to be scaled(per frame) and offseted(once again, per frame).

Post by **cowsmanaut** » Sat Jan 17, 2009 8:44 pm

if you are using DSB game code to make it work like a 3D engine I'll provide you with walls, fountains, chests, mummies.. etc.