Dungeon Master Forum

I'd like to be able to flag secret areas in a dungeon. I think it would be a nice idea that on the stats screen, as well as all the stats currently shown, it also shows how many secrets you found (6 of 15 for example). This would certainly add to replayability of a dungeon.

I guess a mechanism could be built using the current actuators, that used a counter or something. But this wouldn't be tied in to any overall stats processing.

Would it be possible to add something like this?

Good idea. Easy to do too

How do you envisage this working though. A simple counter would be easy enough (so at the end it displays "Secrets Found: 4/5 (80%)" or whatever).

Would it be better to have more though. For example, text for each one - not that would be displayed on discovery (you could do that with text flooritems already) but at the end so as well as telling you how many you found, but also which ones. For example, in DM you could have one secret labelled "Compass" for finding the compass at the start of level 2.

You could take that further by (at the end) displaying all the texts and indicating which ones were found and which not (that way the text could act as clues as to what you've missed and act as an incentive as to go back and look again at certain areas).

Or both of course!

Feel free to suggest away...

I'd only thought of the counter to be honest.

Now that you mention clues, that would be very cool. It would give more meaning to apparently 'randomly hidden' secrets.

I don't recall exactly how the stat screen looks. How would we display clues? Is there enough space? What if you had 50 secrets -- you'd need several stats screens to show clues for all of them.

Hmmm....

One thing that would be nice to add is a 'secret sound' as in Tomb Raider that gets played when the secret is found. This could be done already using another floorpad, but it would be neater to combine it into the SECRET actuator type.

Perhaps there could be a bonus associated with finding secrets, that randomly increases the characters luck statistic.

Gambit37 wrote:How would we display clues? Is there enough space? What if you had 50 secrets -- you'd need several stats screens to show clues for all of them.

Not a problem. I was planning to re-use the code for displaying the monster kills at the end of the game. That spreads over several screens too...

Gambit37 wrote:One thing that would be nice to add is a 'secret sound' as in Tomb Raider that gets played when the secret is found. This could be done already using another floorpad, but it would be neater to combine it into the SECRET actuator type.

Could do, although as you say, it can already be done by having a floor trigger with a null action and a sound.

Gambit37 wrote:Perhaps there could be a bonus associated with finding secrets, that randomly increases the characters luck statistic.

Now that's starting to get a bit too complex

You could restore health though by having a damager object in the same place that heals you for example...

Or the little "you found something" sound from Zelda.

Having thought about it, I think that a single text label per secret is the way forward. Specifically, clues can already be done by using the Hint Oracle (making the text either localised to the area, or visible over the entire dungeon and can be much more complicated, possibly spreading over several pages per clue).

So for DM, you'd have a short word or two displayed per area found that would be understandable to the player as an indication as to the secret found. As in the example above, using the word "Compass" would clearly highlight the bit at the start of level 2.

To give a bit more of a clue, you could include a number before the text (e.g. "2. Compass" which would help a player re-playing the dungeon to look for another secret earlier on in the dungeon (i.e. the screamer treasure at the end of level 1).

Numbering secrets like that would work fine in a linear dungeon like DM, but if you were playing something like CSB where you could encounter pretty much area (before the DDD) in any order, a numerical order of secrets would be kinda pointless .

True, but I was suggesting that the numbering would be included in the text string (as above "2. Compass") rather than as a separate parameter. If a dungeon wasn't linear, then you could do something else (for example, "Ros 1. Compass" or "DDD Speed Boots" or whatever)...

Next question - if strings are going to appear at the end of the game, what order should they be in? Options are:

1) Alpha numerical order
2) The order they appear in the dungeon text file
3) The order they were found in
4) A set order defined when creating the secrets (the flooritem would have a SECRET_NUMBER=(n) parameter which wouldn't be displayed as such, only used to determine the display order).

Any others - which would be best?

I like the sound of a set order, because everything but 3) could be implemented too.

Maybe you could have them listed in a particular order and shade out / leave a line where the undiscovered secrets were, making the player realise they didn't find them and give them a rough idea where they are?

To be honest, I'm not bothered about the oder. What's important is whether or not all secrets are displayed (using greyed text for those not found) or only showing the ones that were found.

I'm undecided about this.

Likewise, although I would slightly lean towards displaying them all. It's not much of a preference though, so would be happy to go the other way if thats what the prevailing mood is!

Well, I reckon it'd depend on the dungeon. If it was a linear dungeon you could list them in the order in which they were meant to be found (ie in order of level or whatever), then either a greyed-out secret name or a black space or whatever where you missed secrets. If it was non-linear, you could just list all the secrets found, in the order in which they were found, and then the ones that were missed in umm rough order of the dungeon or something.
Whether missed-out hints would be displayed by name or just as "You missed something here" could maybe be up to the dungeon designer. In a linear dungeon, you probably wouldn't need to give the secret name because if it was in between two secrets you'd already found, you'd have a pretty good idea of where to look for it regardless of whether you knew its name or not.

I'm in favour of greying them out I think, kind of gives the player a sense of what to aim for second (or third, forth etc.) time round. This could work if the designer gave the secrets intuitive names such as 'The secret of xxx' (forgive the boring name - my mind's numb from the worst lecture of the week ).

Could you have it as a customisable option? For the designer to choose wether undiscovered secrets were displayed at the end of the game for example?

OK; this is done now.

- The total number found (and percentage) is displayed at the end.
- Each secret has a brief (25 character) description. This is displayed at the end (and greyed out if the secret wasn't found).
- Each secret has a number which determines the order in which the secrets are displayed at the end.
- Optionally some text is displayed when the secret is first discovered.
- Optionally a sound is played when the secret is first discovered.

All that needs to be done now is to have some "default" discovery text and sound. Any ideas?

Wow, that's perfect! Thanks George!

"Secret uncovered" with some muted bell or 'bung' noise perhaps?

Here's the Tomb Raider secret sound which I've always liked:

http://resonantedge.com/downloads/rtc/4 ... Secret.mp3

Of course, it's MP3 so you'll need to add that support to use it...

Hehe I have a couple of the Tomb Raider games so of course I know that sound. Good thing about something like that is it's a unique sound for the game so you know for definite when you've found a secret. The Oddworld games have a secret noise too, though it makes the same noise when you successfully complete a task such as getting a door open.

The Legend of Zelda obtained item 'na na na naaaa' was always a favourite of mine. Whilst maybe not quite fitting into the atmosphere of DM, it would certainly be funny to hear it in there!

Tomb Raider's secret seems fitting to me, although if not that, something similar... Some sort of mysterious, echoing twinkle maybe?

Or a mystic voice going "Woohoo!" (a la Homer Simpson for those who don't recognise that phrase by sight ).

That was my idea too! I second it.

PadTheMad wrote:The Legend of Zelda obtained item 'na na na naaaa' was always a favourite of mine. Whilst maybe not quite fitting into the atmosphere of DM, it would certainly be funny to hear it in there!