Dungeon Master Forum

in a Dungeon to personalize to prefer to see you rather elements of dm1 or dm2 for the objects and decoration walls?

Decoration adds to the atmosphere - you only have to see Tower of Champions to get that feel. But a well designed DM1 dungeon can be very playable, especially with new items and such.

I got bored of the DM1 graphics after so many custom dungeons continued to use them. However, from time to time, a custom game uses them very well with enough small new changes to add interest -- Conflux 2 (not 3, which went much further) and Surgical Strike are great examples.

The DM2 items are pretty nice, as are a couple of the wall sets, but the PC version monsters are awful as they are too cartoony. For monsters, I prefer old school pixel art that's somewhere between the original DM style and the EOB/Lands of Lore style.

Dungeons with new graphics are great and really add something special, but often there's problems with lack of consistency. With Maze of Zagor, I'm trying to do something that's visually consistent throughout -- hopefully, I'll pull it off.

Gambit37 wrote:Dungeons with new graphics are great and really add something special, but often there's problems with lack of consistency.

Even when you stay low resolution, I've noticed there can still be some problems.

The one that has gotten me lately is wallitems. Unfortunately, in many cases, you can't just replace a level's wallset with something more interesting and leave everything else as-is and have it look decent. The default set of wallitems in DM are pretty much designed for the default gray walls, and many of them have little bits of wall features included in their graphics, or border colors that look good with the default DM wall but not good with a wall of a different color.

Yep, true, that's a big problem -- and it's why a full graphics replacement takes such a long time as you pretty much have to change everything.

you to prefer a dungeon to personalize with that elements from dm1, dm2 or both?

DM1 is best! Am feel its better in everything from DM2, and even better from any custom wallsets and stuff, just classic.

Haven't taken a look in the custom wallsets, but of course in a large dungeon the one or other set would be welcome. I did like the outdoor-areas in DM2, but not the caves. This was so far away from our beloved walls.
In fact I never had the feeling that DM2 was Dungeon Master.

I've always preferred the DM 1 graphics. DM 2 style seems odd to me.

Games that have taken the basic DM1 wallset but liberally sprinkled the DM2 wall objects, etc around have seemed very interesting.

thank you very much for your answer

DM or DM2 graphics? It depends... About the monstes surely DM1 (my favourite are scorpion, beholder and pink worm); wallsets and wallitems, DM2. Adding the DM2 graphics in a basic DM dungeon can create odd results.

I like the wallsets from DM2, but the wallitems, items in general, and especially monsters are much better in DM1 I think.

I'll sit on the fence and say both.
DM2 with its out door feel and multiply wallsets/weather (especially the odd lighting bolt strike) I thought was really good, but there wasn't many wall_items or decorations, a lot of the thicket wallset was just thicket. In DM there was a lot more feeling in the place, floor grates, dripping pipes, wall and floor_items.

And in saying that my dungeon has mostly DM2 elements.

I think the lack of dungeon decoration in DM2 compared to DM1 and the fact that wallitems are generally associated with a specific wallset, no matter how hard we may try, are probably related. I'm guessing they didn't have the time/memory/inclination to decorate all of the various wallsets used in DM2, so they didn't.

I personally prefer DM1. Some of the graphics in DM2 are nicer, and the Amiga version DM2 graphics do harmonize pretty well with a basically-DM1-graphics dungeon (I've done this more than once), but it just doesn't have the same, I don't know, feeling. Part of it could be I came across DM2 much later so it doesn't have the same nostalgia to me, but I think there's something inherent to the graphics, too, that appeals to me more in DM1.

Same as most of people here, DM2 wallsets are nice but monsters cartoonish design suck. DM1 has better monsters.

I think DM 2 has a better atmosphere and art, but the original is a better game from the perspective of how much you can do. DM 2 plays like a demo, in many respects.

Hmm... that doesn't make much sense? DM2 offered far more gameplay possibilities than DM - shops, improved monster AI, weather, etc. It just wasn't very enjoyable. What do you mean by your comment?

Yes, but none of that actually led to anything. You can play with the shop, you can play in the rain, but puzzle wise and progress wise is that any different from grinding worm and screamer death and trying to get all the item in the rat room?

You could say the same about many games, but the DM2 atmosphere did contribute a lot to my enjoyment of the game. I do like exploring and finding new weapons and discovering how they work, what is best etc.

I agree with Beo - the new elements in DM2 just seem unused in a way, or not important to the game. I never noticed the increased monster AI because I simply killed everything in sight with the same tactics as in DM1, for example.

The improved monster AI would've been more fun if it made the monsters trickier about killing you.

(I actually didn't notice anything either. Then again, I've never actually finished DM2. I always got sick of its... DM2-ness.)

I think the wolves are the exception, as they used to call for help, could leap over pits, and seemed good at swarming you. Then again, part of that was environment - they were in the swamp area, right?

I know Doug Bell feels differently about the AI FTL spent a lot of time on it in DM2 apparently. Maybe it's just too subtle to really notice in a game of this nature; perhaps if they were using a non-grid based engine, it might have been apparent. Who knows!

I read somewhere that they had worked hard on the AI for DM2. I assume that you are less likely to notice it if you only ever get to fight one or two monsters at a time, can move much faster than the critters, and have already developed the habit of keep moving constantly - changing the math every 15 seconds or so

There's some other AI too, actually, which I forgot at the time I made that last post - the Imp runs around pushing buttons to trigger fireballs to launch at you, and Archer Guards pick up arrows they find on the floor, and will actually retreat to a range in order to fire them at you (or punch you pretty hard if you've cornered them in melee range). Rockies are another race who don't attack (unless you start a fight), and run around grabbing Pyro rock thingys to chuck into the furnace (until a new Guard Minion spawns in front of it and starts trying to zap them, in which case they just run away from it until you kill it for them). Oh yeah, and Thieves yoink stuff and actually stash it somewhere nearby. And Glops will slurp over stuff on the floor and pick it up, thereby dropping it when you kill them. Ooh, lots of different AI in this game .

Sophia wrote: I've never actually finished DM2.

Me the same.