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[Syreal]

Many of you guys seem to be worried about balancing issues. When I posted this, I meant it more as a way to bounce ideas for my own game off some people who play adventurer mode a lot -- my favorite "roguelike" ever.

While it would be awesome if Toady added multi-z-level megabeasts, I haven't seen that anywhere in the planned development. If it takes a long time to see those crazy awesome features implemented, it will undoubtedly take an even longer stretch of time to see fan suggested features take hold.

Overall, I've been pleased that people seem to be excited by the prospect of multi-z-level megabeasts. The game I am planning will have no fortress mode for a very long time, and thus will be very simplified as far as balancing. Coding the beasts will be unimaginably tough, but as I mentioned before, nothing that breaks the roguelike genre has been easy.

[Red Jackard]

If you can get animated multi-tile monsters that people can climb on and attack individual pieces of that will be something impressive.

[Dwarfaholic]

Impressive is far too mild a word.

The correct term would be something like: "Awesome as Ironblood riding a zombie carp into battle against the cannibalistic zerg-elves."

[Syreal]

Awesome as Ironblood riding a zombie carp into battle against the cannibalistic zerg-elves.

Rofl. That gave me a good mechanic idea. Imagine if you could do completely random, hilarious stuff like that -- kind of like DF, except to the next level! Record a "video" or just share a console log of you riding a zombie carp into a fray of zerg-elves. Kind of like Kingdom of Loathing in a way, I guess.

Kingdom of Loathing + Dwarf Fortress = ROFL 24/7

[Neoskel]

The thing about making a beast that you need an army to kill is this: Huge beasts are supposed to be good against armies and much less so against the single Conan-hero. Think Legolas killing that oliphant or Luke Skywalker taking out that AT-AT. Or Shadow of the Colossus.

A huge beast's strength should be area of effect, not pinpoint accuracy against a single moving target.

[Cthulhu]

It doesn't need pinpoint accuracy, it has area of effect.  I guarantee if that Colossus with the club slammed it down within 20 feet of you you'd be on the ground.

[Neoskel]

It doesn't need pinpoint accuracy, it has area of effect.  I guarantee if that Colossus with the club slammed it down within 20 feet of you you'd be on the ground.

A good hero wouldn't be there when the club comes down. He might even be climbing up the club at the time.

Lousy little starting heroes would of course still be exceptionally minced.

[Syreal]

Alright. So if you are a Legendary Acrobat, the megabeasts shouldn't be a big issue. : )

I intend to introduce a "Climber" and "Acrobat" skill to my game, though I may end up just making it Acrobat instead of dividing the skills and making each slightly less useful.

[Jamuk]

Well, this isn't technically multitile, but what if the megabeast had an overlay or background tile on each of the spaces next to it.  It wouldn't actually take up those tiles, but it could reach into tiles outside of them, similar to how a bronze colossus has a 1 tile reach.

A monster could be displayed as

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_
/ \
|O|
\_/But could have an adventurer run up into reach

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_
/ \
|O|
\_D

D=dwarf

This wouldn't make some of the ideas like a monster being blocked by a small corridor possible, but it would look better and be able to use some of the code already present.

Also, entering the tiles that are inside the megabeast's area could have a chance to fail and be knock you backwards.  This would make having an army of peasants less powerful against it, as they would fail the skill checks more often and be knocked back before they can do any damage while a skilled fighter will be able to avoid being smacked backwards more easily.

Walls nearby could also be knocked down, making it a good idea to take out the monster before it can get to your fortress and start running through the hallways smashing down your walls.  Another alternative would be to have a lower speed when trying to crawl through 1 tile spaces.

Since only one megabeast would ever be on screen at a time, this would probably be more feasible than having to path a multitile creature, as it could be limited to a finite number of surrounding tile checks instead of pathing.  Depending on how toady implements the code, it could be like having 20 goblins on the screen, but while only having do the expensive pathing for one of them.