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[nenjin]

RPS unloads both barrels of disdain at Impire. I'd like to give it slightly more credit than just being a shameless grab for DK fan money. The review judges it entirely on its SP merits, which is fair. But the more I look at the game the more I realize that, despite all the effort that went into cutscenes and voice acting and mission scripting...it's intended for MP primarily. Which is why the SP campaign falls flat after a few hours. It's banking on a human opponent to breathe life into the game, where the AI normally would in a good, SP dungeon management game.

[Korbac]

I still don't understand why people don't just clone dungeon keeper. Reskin the graphics, change the imps to gremlins, perhaps make monsters harder to get along with and introduce 1 - 2 more of them. There! Easy! XD

[Biowraith]

Re: Patrolling - as far as I can tell, the game sort of splits your dungeon into zones based on unbroken stretches of corridor, and patrol units will stick to a given 'zone' - i.e. if you send a patrolling squad to a particular corridor, they'll tend to stick to that corridor, dipping in and out of adjacent rooms (but not moving over to other unconnected corridors).  Also, ladders only ever spawn in corridors, which doesn't include the doorways to/between rooms.

You can sort of use that in your dungeon design: don't use corridors unless you have to, connecting rooms directly to other rooms wherever possible - to the point of using cheap rooms like nurseries instead of corridors. When you do need to use corridors try to keep them as a handful of continuous corridors, rather than lots of little 1 or 2 tile corridors connecting things.  That makes ladder location a lot more focused and predictable, and gives you fewer more easily managed patrol areas.

Of course it's possible I've misinterpreted what's going on, but I've had a fair bit of success with automated ladder destruction that way (though the time between ladder spawn and hero arrival is a bit short for that to be 100% reliable) , and haven't observed the squads straying far from the corridor blocks I assigned them to. 

My last game I didn't even bother going back to the map when ladders spawned.  I was able to set my dungeon up with only a single stretch of corridor, with a brewery and trap array at the end - wherever the ladders spawned the heroes just went straight to the brewery without bothering the rooms on the way then died in the traps on the way in/out the brewery.

Also re: feeding, there's a rune or two later on that pretty much removes the need for it (though they do require a 5 DEC investment - I really hate the limited amount of DEC you get each game).  One that acts like the aggression mascot while in your part of the map, and one that gives 50 aggression on kills.  Doesn't excuse the feeding system, but lets you forget about it once you reach a certain point.

[nenjin]

I still don't understand why people don't just clone dungeon keeper. Reskin the graphics, change the imps to gremlins, perhaps make monsters harder to get along with and introduce 1 - 2 more of them. There! Easy! XD

I'd link War for the Overworld, but it's been linked like 4 times already in this thread XD

I honestly don't want a clone. I want someone to approach a dungeon management sim having incorporated the lessons from DK; I don't want a total rip off. I'm already slightly displeased with WFTO because they 100% ripped the look of Dungeon Keeper dungeon tiles, something I'd give my left nut for them to change.

This is my Dungeon Keeper wannabee Manifesto:

-A LIVING DUNGEON. Creatures should have things to do, tasks and they should have AI to manage it themselves. No monster should ever be standing around doing nothing. They should have lives, even if that life amounts to catching ZZZs in their lair most of the time.

-DUNGEON ARCHITECT. Players should be encouraged to build a dungeon from square one, instead of being asked to fill in the gaps in an already pre-plotted dungeon (Impire, Dungeons.)

-DUNGEON MANAGEMENT. The things you put in a dungeon should have a point, and more than one point. If you have a room that feeds guys, its placement should be important to the flow of your dungeon. If a room produces something, where it produces it should be just as important as what it produces. Resources should be balanced both against what you can produce and what you can maintain, so they stay meaningful. Enough of these freaking hard caps of "Gee sorry, you can't have more than 8 monsters until you reach Dungeon Level 10, or build <insert stupid blocking object here>." The only time I want to see a hard cap is when it's related to game performance...not because the developer has an arbitrary number of steps and requirements they want me to meet first. There's mechanics that influence pacing....and then there are mechanics that dictate it. More of the former, enough of the latter.

-SANDBOX. Enough of these goddamn campaign-driven objectives and scenarios. Nobody truly wants that, expect as a way to get to know the game. If you're not planning on a true, unrestricted sandbox mode, ask yourself wth kind of game you're actually trying to make. Because no one gets to have fun making and appreciating their dungeon when things are constantly distracting them or demanding their attention so they can micro something they'd prefer be automated.

-DOORS. Fucking doors. When a dungeon game doesn't include doors, it tells me it was too much effort for their pathfinding to deal with. I.e., they aren't that serious about AI. When I hear that a door presents too much of a challenge to someone's pathfinding, all I hear is "We want to be Dungeon Keeper but we lack the talent to actually replicate what they did."

-BE FUNNY OR DIE. Impire has really, even more than Dungeons, made me reject humor as a necessary component of these games. In DKII it was enjoyable because there was some restraint. Every successor since has acted like the humor is a bullet point feature all its own, and horribly overshot the mark in trying to achieve it. There was ONE real instance of humor in DKII...the narrator. There weren't several talking characters who spewed bad puns or were desperately trying to get a laugh out of the player. DKII's humor was genuine because it wasn't trying to live up to anything. All these DK wannabees, since, are all trying to recreate that humor, which makes it all seem forced and disingenuous.

Ladders

I'd have no problems with ladders (I like alternative entry systems that don't destroy your dungeon walls in the process) if, like you said, the gap between arrival and invasion wasn't ~15 to 20 seconds. The fact that ladders always show up at fixed intervals, and invasions follow immediately after, just further dispels any illusions you have remaining that there's something dynamic at work. There isn't. They might as well just have put up a timer on invasions, at least that way I wouldn't waste time waiting around for the invasion I know is coming.

[umiman]

I still don't understand why people don't just clone dungeon keeper. Reskin the graphics, change the imps to gremlins, perhaps make monsters harder to get along with and introduce 1 - 2 more of them. There! Easy! XD

Here's the what-seems-to-be carbon copy clone: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/subterraneangames/war-for-the-overworld

[Biowraith]

By the way, in case anyone's not aware of it, there's a dungeon keeper clone in development here: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/subterraneangames/war-for-the-overworld


 

[Korbac]

Haha, yeah I knew about that. I wasn't sure how closely it follow the original.

Nenjin, I don't want a 'clone' either, but if we give the designers the slightest bit of leeway the game will end up being not very much like DK II at all.

[nenjin]

Haha, yeah I knew about that. I wasn't sure how closely it follow the original.

Nenjin, I don't want a 'clone' either, but if we give the designers the slightest bit of leeway the game will end up being not very much like DK II at all.

Yeah, truly, I don't understand how both those games went out looking to top DKII, and ended up being games in different genres. Dungeons was close because it's still a dungeon management sim (just one with a really, really stupid premise.) Impire though......I don't know at what point they threw out the dungeon management and replaced it with an RTS.

Really, everyone fucks up by even invoking Dungeon Keeper. Both those games would have done well to never mention Dungeon Keeper, even when asked. Then they might have stood a chance at being judged on their own merits. But when you mention DK....it is the gold standard by which you will be judged. Which means your judgment will be shitty if your game isn't even in the same genre/neighborhood as DK.

[lordcooper]

I agree with pretty much all of Nenjin's points except for the sandbox.  I like campaigns.

[Biowraith]

Yeah, agreed on Nenjin's points too, except I don't particularly care about doors*, and I also like campaigns (I like sandbox more, but ideally I want both).

I suspect "let's make it RTS focused" was probably something they thought would help them stand out from the crowd and not be judged soley on how it compares with DK, but their problem is a) they didn't develop either RTS or dungeon management portion of the game very extensively so it's not a great RTS *and* the dungeon part compares poorly to DK, and b) however much you advertise that it's RTS focused, people are still going to buy it wanting and expecting a good dungeon management game.


*I've not played DK in over a decade, so I'm maybe missing something there.

[nenjin]

*I've not played DK in over a decade, so I'm maybe missing something there.

Doors serve one master purpose: to control access. Be it your minions or the enemy. In DKII, a Wizard Door (or whatever it was called) was as good as a monster in terms of what it did to heroes. A regular old door would slow down their advance quite a bit, giving you time to muster troops. The Secret Doors were a way to give your minions better access while not leaving you vulnerable to the AI smashing it down and getting quick access to "privileged" parts of your dungeon. You could lock minions in a room to restrict their access and make them work more. You could divide your whole dungeon into self-sustaining sub-sections by simply using locked doors. Why? For the fun and immersion of it, mostly.

In a game like Impire, doors would be the thing that stops that one ladder you missed from dumping 4 heroes straight into your treasury. They'd actually have to break down a door while your patrollers went after them. And then you wouldn't have to immediately deal with the problem, and actually let the systems handle it. You know, like a boss.

Nowadays, the ability for a player to do something like lock a unit in a room seems like something even sim developers are afraid of allowing...because they're worried about players breaking gameplay and not thinking about their game in terms of emergent behavior.

Campaign

I say what I say primarily because I *never* finish campaigns in games like these, ever. I play campaigns to the point where all features have been detailed, and then I go sandbox it up (unless I manage to get invested in the story.) While campaigns are fun, sometimes, to negotiate the scripted challenges devs create, in games like Impire and Dungeons the campaigns are tedious and repetitive. DKII's campaign was ok, at least it used the assets it had to create scenarios which were fun to figure out, that at least gave the stringing out of features over levels a purpose. Like teaching you to use fear traps by making them the focus on an entire level, showing you how they work and encouraging you to experiment with them. Other games? "Go through this area, fight guys, collect stuff, fight the boss, micro stuff while you'd rather be paying attention to your dungeon, listen to our god awful humor and requisite cheeky storyline."

If you're going to have that, fine. But please give us a proper escape from the tedium and necessity of playing through the campaign just to get our rocks off. I've got 100 objectives of my own I've created in planning my dungeon, I don't need or want to grapple with "place x of something at y location, because story." In Dungeons for example, the sandbox felt just as restrictive as the campaign because it ran by all the same rules. I prefer sandbox as well because when I build something, I want a clean slate starting from the hero gate, so I can always try something new. Which is what makes Impire so disappointing, even raeg inducing, because not only do you never get a clean slate, what should be the heart of your dungeon is stuck out there for the heroes to be on it within 45 seconds if unopposed. It's like a huge middle finger to anyone who spent 10 hours in DKII's sandbox building their dream dungeon.

[snelg]

Agreeing with nenjin on everything except I don't mind a campaign or a number of scenarios to play. The dungeon keeper gold scenarios were heaps of fun for instance and the campaigns weren't bad either. That said I've spent many hours in the sandbox duneons on dungeon keeper 2 as well.

Only played the first couple of levels so far but here's my thoughts on the game so far.
The game feels riddled with unnecessary micromanagement with feeding, keeping track of and rebuilding your squads. Repairing rooms, summoning and putting workers back there when they get killed. etc.
And the interface is doing everything it can to stop you from taking care of them. Every time a room gets wrecked I have to find where Baal was hiding, have him summon a worker manually, then repair the room manually and then put the worker back to work manually.
The squads I have to send to eat manually, send to attack the ladders manually (even if they're close) and I find it hard to keep track of them but need to check on them frequently if they need to eat. It would be nice if they rebuilt themselves when some die and upgrade their equipment without me having to find them everytime.

It feels a little like what I imagine Majesty 2 would be like without the ai controlling the heroes and you having to do everything (including manually sending each one back home to visit the toilet every five minutes).

A lot of the humor, Like in Dungeons feels like I just want to look away and forget it happened. It was fine in dungeon keeper, with the narrator. But I guess once the actual characters in the game starts throwing bad puns and acting silly every time they're on screen or open their mouth things tend to start moving from fun to stupid.

I really wanted to enjoy the game but have a lot of trouble so far doing that.

[Neonivek]

Yeah, truly, I don't understand how both those games went out looking to top DKII, and ended up being games in different genres.

Ok let me fill in the missing detail for you.

They were never trying to be Dungeon Keeper 2 they were just saying that out of lazyness and to entice people to fork over cash. Anything they said about Dungeon Keeper 2 and trying to emulate it was purely lip service.

It is becoming SO common for games to state the names of other games to advertise their games that I am starting to have a negative reaction to seeing it even when this board does it (Game + Dwarf Fortress = This awsome game!)

[nenjin]

Oh I spent 99% of my time playing sandbox. I don't want campaigns, but if you're going to have them, at least make them sever some other purpose besides stringing out features.

negativity

Totally.

[Neonivek]

Ohh dear goodness Nenjin you are going to start a fad >_<