Dungeon Master Forum

Version: 2.2
Platform: CSBWin
Author: TyGuy6
Email address: wisety@gmail.com
Date published: 2005, September 12
Date last updated: 2005, September 20

I've finally finished my first dungeon, and now it's ready to be played.

Read the BackgroundStory.txt before playing please. And give me some feedback. I need some words of advice or encouragement so that I can make better dungeons in the future.

It's a tightly packed, partly linear, small (a few hours long) dungeon. Hope you have fun!

Story:
Your movement is sluggish. You feel as if your legs each weighed a ton. Your eyelids are sealed shut. You push yourself forward, groping for something. You feel your heart jump as you immediately bump into a wall of...a hard crusty substance. You look for a way around, only to find yourself in a tiny cell, with walls only a few feet apart. You feel claustrophobia creeping into your throat. In desperation you throw yourself at a wall, which crumbles! You rub your eyes and find that you can see again. You stand up, brush yourself off, and look around.

You find yourself in a well lit dungeon. How long you have been here is beyond your knowledge. You search the randomly twisting corridors and find that you weren't the only one trapped in cages of the red, coral-like material. Through holes in the encasings you can see the faces of many powerful wizards, whom you could never hope to match up to. You need to free some of these great men and women to help you escape from the dungeon. There could be any number of traps and monsters lurking in this evil place. You shove with all your might against the wall of a cell...

Notes:
This dungeon is meant to be played with a team of four characters. Two characters are necessary for some things to make sense, and some parts will be very difficult with only one character. For extra difficulty, try reincarnating (untested). And remember to save often.

This is my first attempt at dungeon-making. I've learned a lot in the dungeon-building process and hope to be able to make larger, better dungeons in the future . . . maybe with some DSAs I actually understand next time. Rate me in the forums; I want to know all the mistakes I made so that I can fix them.

History:

• Version 2.2 (2005-09-20)
  • Allowed worms on level 2 so that they still exist if they fall down a pit in level 1.
    Changed teleporter target for invisible pit to avoid a dead end.
• Version 2.1 (2005-09-14)
  • Fixed door-closing problem in "Back Attack".
• Version 2.0 (2005-09-13)
  • Shrunk "Laughing Gas" area.
    Changed mechanisms in "Ages".
    Made "1234, 5678" area more difficult.
    Other changes that I can't remember
• Version 1.0 (2005-09-12)
  • Initial release

Download:
Download this dungeon from this Shared OneDrive (in the 'Custom Dungeons' folder)

This looks like it could be an interesting little dungeon. But... I have noticed a couple of things! Firstly the stairs down at the start: the ones back up are misaligned, and secondly yhe giggler generator is a little too harsh as it floods the level quickly. Maybe if you are fast and can get to the generator it will be ok, but if you don't the actuator next door just goes bonkers!

yep... i couldn't kill them all so i gave up.

Seconded (or thirded, rather), I also found them very annoying.

I managed to clear the area of Gigglers. But I did not
enjoy it.

I also tried to kill all gigglers in the room, but realized
that they kept coming. A certain wizard spell was helpful.

These gigglers seem to only steal from the left hand,
ignoring your right "weapon" hand. This should not be.

That's how it was when we used to play it on the Atari. Haven't tried this dungeon yet - downloaded it though.

That's how atari engine works, hence how CSB works

oh. thanks for pointing that out

Yeah it means you can still hit the little bastards and not worry about them pinching your wep - I like it that way muahahaha .

Thank you all for playing my dungeon, and for the comments! Sorry, I see now that I overdid it on the gigglers. Because this was my first dungeon, and I just threw all my ideas into it, the puzzles don't get harder gradually as they should. I recommend the easy way: run up to the gigglers as fast as possible.

Due to these comments, I have made some changes to the dungeon. Version 2 above.

I played the start and didn't have the giggler problem - henagain, it did say laughing gas, and qwuickly, so you are warned : )

Well, i at least liked the generator, and i was playing with one reincarnated character. Excellent place to train, a few punches, war cries, swings and light spells, great stats in less than 10 minutes, and it was fairly easy to get through, just have to move foward as soon as you kill one. Really enjoying the dungeon so far, great riddles and puzzles.

Just finished. Excellent dungeon! . The pet bit was hard to figure out and well done, but i liked the 4 way place the best. I think it may be possible to stuff your game at the back attack place, not sure though. This is one of the dungeons i have enjoyed the most so far, i wished it was longer. Can't wait for your next dungeon!

I'd like to know what characters you used, which version you played, and (email me privately) how you got past back attack. It's nice to know someone enjoyed my dungeon! Thanks a lot!

I sent you a pm. I used reincarnated Elija and played version 1.

You're pretty bold to try this dungeon on the toughest setting. (1-character reincarnated) You seem to have mastered it. I wonder if you found the secret passageway on lvl 2? (the "Room of Choices" level) Naw.

I'm glad to hear you found a way that I hadn't thought of to get past "Back Attack" with only 1 character. (I didn't think it possible ) As I hadn't considered this way as plausible, I missed that problem that you caught. Thanks, I will try to fix it in the next version, if I make one.

Also, I hope nobody has any problems with Chaos jumping through the walls into other areas of the dungeon. I didn't anticipate it before I designed the dungeon, and can hardly fix it now. Better save often everyone. He kept appearing in the corridor down the "Flame" pit while I was testing.

Through !

Nice little dungeon. Died here or there sometimes

version 1 (liked the giggler starting area, like Antman did. Also trained there; really fast,
maybe bcs csb rules ? =switch level difficulties?)
anyway
used reincarnated Elija
In the end he was
artisan Fighter and Ninja, adept priest and wizard
h/st/m_:325/163/123
st...: 48 43 46 40 49 37

Actually, with CSBuild I can, and did, change the experience multipliers. The original DM has x1 experience on the first level, mine starts with x3, for levels gain three times as fast.

Version 2.1 out, with fixed (I hope) "Back Attack." Don't upgrade if you have version 2, just save before trying "Back Attack." I'll make version 3 if I make important changes.

Not sure if what level level 2 is but i opened a secret wall that links the four ways. I think 1 character reincarnated in this dungeon might be the easiest? Very easy to train at the start so reincarnating is much better then ressurecting imho, and you train faster with just one character, i think 1 good chracter is better than four average characters, especially with magic.

never played much with a single character, ironically in this custom dungeon i did!

SEVERLY OFF TOPIC, I COULD NOT HELP IT:
In general, one character is a bit like cheating when you take into account that you can dodge a good deal of lightning bolts, fireballs and such (or not even noticing them at all).

four or three characters won´t be able to evade them; thus, the game gets more difficult.
It´s also more difficult to train a given four characters in all professions. A single champion advances easily in levels, if he/she survives long enough.

An advantage of more characters is that you have more mana and a greater health pool, but mana gets spent easily and if you do not like any of your characters get killed, the health pool is actually the health of the weakest character!

Another advantage of more than one champion is that you can use two weapons and may cast more spells in total, even though at first weaker ones compared to playing times.

You may carry more stuff with four heros, but it seems nobody cares about items so much anymore to have them around all the time.
Most severly, the game gets considerably shorter with a single champion. Either you die soon or you more or less dodge and run your way through. I do not want to say it´s crap, but It´s just a different approach on the game. How much a little decision at the beginning can change the course of the game!
ok. for people who do not like training that much, a single champion would be nice, as well as for people that want to get a special kick out of it ...
puh, just wanted to write that, thanks for reading.

Antman, you say that a single character will train faster than 4 characters. Does this mean that 100 punches will gain more experience for a lone character than it would for 1 character among 4? (if the 1 character does all the punches himself) Or do you mean that the experience is spread among all four characters instead of all put into one character?

I see that there are benefits to small party play, and, in fact, you could say that my "Flame" passage is a statement to that effect. But I don't think I could've ever gotten past the scorpions in the "Art of War" area of Imprisoned Again" with 1 character.

He is talking about the spreading of experience among several party members, and this is definitely true. I have now come to the same conclusion as PaulH: Two members is the best compromise, they will train a lot faster than a party of 4 and can still carry enough to get you through the dungeon.

When I tried doing DM solo, I actually found that Fippy was a lower level in most skills than my usual party of four by the time I finished the dungeon. I tried taking him into CSB but he kinda died a lot so I played DM through again with a duo instead and did better .

I also did a DM solo and brought my character into CSB. I gave up on it and did DM again with four characters because I couldn't kill all those munchers before they killed me. (This turned out to be true with my four characters as well.)

I think that taking four characters and only using one "main" character to fight, cast spells, etc. might have the same effect on the main character's experience as if he was alone. This would make the other three characters like baggage/mana/health carriers in case the one character is not enough. The only differences, that I see, are: you couldn't dodge fireballs, and the experience from getting hit by monsters would be spread over the front two characters. (But maybe you would want somebody to soak up damage for you.)

I know that 1 high level character will never have as much mana as 4 characters that went through all the same experiences. That is my main reason for always taking 4 characters.

Oh, that last post was me, by the way.

Ok, I had another go at it and solved it relatively quickly. Here is my REVIEW:

Gameplay: 7/10
A short dungeon with lots of stuff to do. Plays itself quite nicely apart from the beginning which was a bit annoying (see also "Difficulty" for this). The focus is more on puzzles than on fights; a few more awkward situations with monsters would have been nice. All in all, good gameplay.

Originality: 7/10
There are a lot of interesting, original ideas in here. I especially liked the rock pile/materializer trap. The "room of choices" was also well done, and the items required for the RA locks had a nice connection to the titles of the four rooms. Building bridges seems to become standard, though (that's your fault, PaulH!).

Difficulty: 4/10
I think this is the major letdown of the dungeon. Maybe it was my fault for playing with two weak reincarnated heroes - Gando and Tiggy -, but I thought the first part of the dungeon was by far the hardest. The "monster arena" caused several deaths for me. But after I was through that, the rest of the dungeon was very easy. I did not have trouble with the monsters after that at all, they were more of a nuisance than a threat. The beginning should be easier and the rest harder.

Puzzles: 7/10
Some nice little puzzles in here. "Fight back" was a very cool idea. Orientation was sometimes also troublesome and lead to some interesting situations. The "Flame" path was interesting, but also a bit annoying - or rather it would have been had I taken a full party of 4. Also, the "Ages" path seemed a little random, but I guess that's the whole point of it.

Size: 5/10
The dungeon is short, but at least it is not "bloated" - there is a lot to do. Sure, a few more levels would have been nice, and I hope you haven't run out of ideas for your next dungeon yet. The intensity is great, which adds to the player wanting the dungeon to be longer.

Replayability: 4/10
There is not much reason to play the dungeon again - there is no random item placement, no alternative ways to solve puzzles or anything. Also, since it is not very difficult, the "challenge" feeling isn't there either. Since the dungeon is small, you will probably remember most of it and won't get stuck on a situation you had forgotten. But it is well-crafted, and the atmosphere is nice, so the dungeon is ok for a an hour in-between.

Craft: 9/10
I am truly amazed how well this dungeon is crafted. The "Fight back" part works marvellously, and the "Room of Choices" is also nice with its teleporters. The opening and closing doors work great as well. Furthermore, I thought several times that I was stuck in a dead-end due to bad design, but then found out you prepared the dungeon for all eventualities. Very well done indeed!
Game Ending:

Atmosphere: 6/10
The atmosphere is very nice, there are lots of nice texts. The fiddling with colored text messages (thanks to DSAs) also adds to the mood. The lack of a plot or more "motivated" scenarios prevents the dungeon from getting top marks, though.

Overall: 7/10
A nice little dungeon that is extremely well crafted and makes the player want more of the same. The main downsides are its shortness and the awkward difficulty, but I am sure you can improve on that in your next dungeon (as I hope there will be one). You certainly have a lot of very cool ideas.


Best part: "Fight back" and the materializer trap.
Worst part: Too hard beginning, too easy later on.