Dungeon Master Forum

Would it be possibly to have, in higher difficulty levels, slightly increased monster speed/attack speeds. On lower levels the increased monsters just give you more skills practise rather than a challenge sometimes, as you can go toe to toe with them without much effect.

Fair point - at the moment all it does is increase their numbers and health...other stats should certainly be affected.

I know monsters can be imune to magic, but can they be resistant to magic? Something where the higher the resistance the more likely a spell is to 'miss' or be resisted and the less damage the spell does?

Carrying this further, would it be possible to make it so monsters were immune to specific runes, ie a fire monster should not be effected by any spell using the fire rune.

- Amaprotu

So far, the difficulty levels have only affected the number of monsters (and health, I hear?). I think increasing the number of opponents is too easy a way to create more challenge. Besides, some dungeon-puzzles may depend on the number of monsters.

On the other, the increased number brings about many (un-)pleasant surprises... So, I propose, that the dungeon author should have the choice of determining the effect of the difficulty levels. Should it increase the number of foes, should it make the existing monsters stronger, decrease the number of food, make nasties drop less food, make torches last less longer, or should it even affect the dungeon architecture somehow?

Affecting the dungeon architecture is a big no-no I'm afraid; very difficult to do. Having said that, you could do some cunning fudge to make it appear like that was happening...

Imaging a CSB style "giggler-operated-setup" whereby you have gigglers running about which step into teleporters at random so making the dungeon appear different each time you play. Now imagine if you had a single giggler in a room with 4 teleporters; each one opening up a fake wall. Normally only one of them would be activated (namely the one which it ran through); this would give a random dungeon with one of four new areas opened up (or whatever). Increasing the difficulty would increase the number of gigglers which would increase the number of new areas opened up making the dungeon more difficult.

Anyway - you get the idea; I'm sure all your imaginations are up to implementing such a dungeon far better than I can describe it

I agree with changing other factors too (e.g. food depreciation rate) but am not sure about making them user configurable...

How about the engine having a set range associated with it for difficulty (that effects everything, food speed, generator toughness, etc) and all the designer can influence is what number each player difficulty setting is associated with.

So if there was a range of 0 - 255, one dungeon that is low on food anyway might only have a difficulty rating of 80 - 90 associated with the player setting 10 (so food doesn't go too fast) and use oter fudges to alter the other effects, while another designer might decide that 10 = 255

I will freely admit to not understanding what beowuuf just said... but here is my idea(s) for control over dungeon diffucly by the creator.

The main one would be to allow difficulty specific pads. For example pads that only operated if the difficulty is 5 or up. It would be nice if it was a range, so you could have completely different rooms open to someone who chooses difficulty of 1 vs someone who chooses difficutly of 10.

This could allow control over how much food, how many monsters, what monsters, what puzzles, everything basically.

Ideally I would say the dungeon creator would be able to specify if the difficulty level would effect monster numbers or monster toughness. This way the creator could say that difficulty does not effect either of those and could have complete control over what is experienced at each level, or say that it only controls monster toughness and not their numbers or visa versa.

lol, hey, writing random words down seems to work most of the time : )

My thought was for simplicity the engine has one range of numbers for difficulty internally. This one number effects everything - food rates, monster toughness and speed, etc. So 0 means slow food dep, easy creatures, 100 means running for your next dragon steak while eating the last, and you better have a big weapon handy cause you ain't getting them cheaply.

Externally, when designing a dungeon, all that the designer can do is associate the player difficulty ratings 1 - 10 with one number in this internal difficulty range. So player difficulty 1 = difficulty 0 or 10 or 100 if they want!

So a normal dungeon might have 1 - 10 represent 0 - 70, a dungeon with less food might have 1 - 10 replresent 0 - 40, but make all the monsters tougher to compensate, and a really evil dungeon might have 1 - 10 represent 50 - 100.

The thinking is that this means game speed factors are unconfigurable, so therefore simple to code, but can still be influenced by the dungeon designer. This assumes that generators have a seperate additional toughness byte, like the ones in DM currently do.

well, I would seriously consider looking at the probable complexity of designing a dungeon if using so complex a difficulty variability.

There are those less technically minded who would like to work out a few nice puzzles and some cool levels and just worry about that. trying to figure out the layers of probabilities and how to make a level more difficult then setting it to a specific number and then figureing out yet again how to make it ever more difficult and again setting a number to those pads and areas.. it's like some odd graphical progamming language or an extremely complex war strategy game.. It's just a lot of work.

you want something that can be set up easily if you don't want to bother. I mean the idea is cool and all but you don't want to have to do it every time.. not everyone is that into complex level design.

I think a more variable level of control should be there for people. Those who are not into all of that can flick a switch and let the monkey do the work.. (Ie a difficulty preset things that adds monsters and plays with other variables) and for those who want to do more can controll a few settings on their own..

It seems to me that these are the things that should be modified by difficulty level:

Monster Hit Points
Monster AC
Monster Movement Speed
Monster Attack Speed
Monster Attack Power
Party food/water consumption rate


Thre reason monster number isn't in the list is (as stated in the bug forum about the zoo) it seems capable of breaking a dungeon by putting monsters where none should be.

Did I miss anything?

I agree with drake that it should be simple, not everyone wants to create a complex dungeon design and worry about the difficulty level. I was thinking one flag available to the dungeon creator with options normal (effects all attributes, even number of monsters), power (everything except number of monsters), party (only food/water consumption and other party effects), and none.

This way someone who creates a simple dungeon can have difficulty effect everything for them, while someone else can create a dungeon that is completely different depending on the difficulty level.

I was thinking about it and I think only a minimum difficulty level on pads would be enough. Default would be 0 and if you want a range, use multiple pads. With difficlty dependant pads you could teleport more monsters into parts of the dungeon the higher the difficulty level, open rooms with extra monsters, add extra puzzles etc.

how about adding to the list generator speed.. how often or how much the MonsGen shoots out?

mooo

I hadn't thought of that one drake, and what about the speed of wall shooters also?

dunno about that.. part of setting the speed of shooters is to alow just enough time to get past without being hit. If you speed them up there never is a chance to get by them.

No one likes a test of skill that can *not* be done. I think that would simply frustrate me.

However I could understand it in something like the room for the Diamond edge. The poison clouds would double and triple at great speed but again it ould simply be a matter of how fast you can get your butt out of there.. if htey are too fast you would die too quick unless you were like an archmaster fighter with tonnes of hitpoints.

so it's really a matter of how effective you want to be in killing off the poor fool who turns up the difficulty.