Zyx wrote:Well, if I had time, my next dungeon would be much more abstract in its behavior. It would adapt to the player with a certain personality. The game would be as much to survive as to understand the mind of the dungeon, and manage to dialog and "tame" it.
I mean that the dungeon would react with discomfort, fear, degenerescence, anger or cowardice under certain conditions structured by a hidden logic with progressive, hierarchical steps with a few "AND/OR" twists.
Symmetrically it would be at ease and pleased, even "smiling" or pleasing under other circumstances also secretly structured, according to rules similar to those of a human mood.
By learning what it likes and dislikes, and what it wants from you, you would be able to negotiate, ie, obtain some things slightly desagreable for it to yield in exchange of greater benefit. The better the object targetted (ie, powerful weapon), the more negative for it to give access, the more you have to treat it kindly and offer great relieve. Or you could use threats and bad treatment to subjugate the dungeon...
The levels would have an organic design and with areas, wall items and floor items functionally linked between them and with some inner values (pleasure/pain) associated with some of their states or modes. Thus, the whole dungeon would be a closed ecosystem and a body. The generation of monsters, food, items, etc. would be a by-product of its existence. The walls wouldn't be static and the big hollow dungeon-entity would move through stone, altering its shape.
The basic, corporeal missions for the player would thus to treat diseases, prurit, hunger, etc., of the dungeon.
But I would try to set a few rules for achieving some more spiritual meta-missions too.
Something that I think would be interesting would be to put this "body" in a spatial context. (like, you finally discover that the everchanging dungeon has struck a vein of magma and is now too hot and uncomfortable, so you must teach it to avoid it and stop the flooding. Or similar scenario but this time the dungeon, once a happy surface dweller, dug into the ocean which started pouring into it, making it heavier and slower, and it is sinking into the ocean. So you must empty it by several means (evaporate, fill the breaches, sever flooded section, close important doors, destroy water elementals, pump water out, augment the dungeon volume, create a balloon room at the top, etc.).
However those metamissions would need a more versatile interface, probably making the actions menu behaving as tree of choices. Everything seems doable by DSA but it would take a year or two to research everything, so if anyone is interested by the idea, don't wait for me.
Anyway, going back to the topic started by the non-euclidian link of Adamo. I've been wondering for a while now... why was this concept not new to me? And then I remembered it, it was an animation I was watching when I was around 3 years old (and now showing to my 5-months son
):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v45qOGNsrbw
(at 0:37)
There was some non-euclidian geometry in the episodes: ubiquity, worm tunnels, inner space bigger than outer volume, discontinuity, etc.