And how about that, today they post a little blurb detailing more about how the whole system works.
http://forum.kalypsomedia.com/showthread.php?tid=7578Entertaining Heroes for Fun and Profit – “DUNGEONS” Overview Available!
Bracknell, UK - 21st December, 2010– Ever wonder why a dungeon is so full of great stuff like spell scrolls, gold, magical weapons and so much more?
In DUNGEONS, Kalypso Media and RealmForge answer that nagging question by putting you in the role of a Dungeon Lord, an anti-hero bent on attracting adventurers to his diabolically crafted dungeons, only to capture them and steal their precious soul energy. The happier a hero is, the more soul energy he contains, and so it's in your best interest to keep those hapless heroes happy. Today we are pleased to release an overview of what exactly makes a hero happy, and entices them to stick around your dungeon. Along with the “Hero Needs” overview, we have included several new screens from DUNGEONS, which is set to ship on Windows PC in February, 2011.
Calypso's Tips - Lesson 1 "Happy Heroes = Awesome Resources"
Your main job as a Dungeon Lord is to keep heroes happy. Yes, you read that right...you have to keep the heroes entertained - but not because you're a nice guy. No, you see a happy hero equals a hero who is rich with wonderful and powerful soul energy. That soul energy is what we in the dungeon-making trade consider a prime resource, so if you can "fatten" up heroes, they become ripe with soul energy, that you can siphon from them in prison cells and torture chambers. Mmmm…I do love a good torture chamber.
So, what sort of needs to these pesky adventurers have?
* Need for Treasure: The hero loves treasure and shiny things. He satisfies that need by stuffing his bags with the contents of a treasure chamber.
* Need for Knowledge: The hero is, frankly, a nerd and quests for knowledge to he can prove he’s smarter than anyone else. He satisfies that need by reading books in libraries.
* Need for Equipment: The hero just plain loves cool stuff. If this were the modern world, he’d be the guy sitting around the electronics store waiting for the latest gadget to be released. This type of hero satisfies his cravings by stealing new items from armories.
* Need for Damage: Some heroes are just plain weird. This hero acknowledges his masochistic instincts and just loves it when monsters inflict damage on him in battle. I think I dated someone like this a while back…
* Need to cause Damage: This hero has a sadistic need to inflict damage on monsters. (now that’s my kind of man!). The stronger the monster, the greater the satisfaction he gets in delivering a sound pounding to it.
* Need for Traps: Much like the damage-seeker, this “hero” is certainly one of the stranger creatures you’ll meet, as he satisfies his needs by tripping traps
* Need to Heal Others: What a sweetheart (yuck!)…this hero type has a need to heal others. He satisfies it by healing other heroes with potions and healing spells you leave around the dungeon for him to discover.
You might be wondering how exactly you meet these adventurers’ needs. Good, it means you’re paying attention to the lesson! You meet each type of need by building specific “provider rooms,” each custom-tailored to specific needs. Here’s the list of provider rooms you can build -
The different Need Provider rooms
* Treasury: You can build treasuries wherever is space. Heroes with a Need for Treasure will automatically go to a treasury and take your precious gold from it, until it is empty. If you have enough Gold, your goblin workers will automatically refill any empty coffers, to ensure that you can satisfy all the heroes.
* Armory and Library: You can build those only in rooms (at least 2x2 tiles) of a specific type. Armories fulfill the need for equipment, while libraries fulfill the need for knowledge. There are three different types of gimmicks you can stock these rooms with.
* Interaction gimmicks are important, for they are what let the heroes use the room at all. You can only assign one interaction gimmick per room. The interaction gimmick determines the amount that a hero can "steal" from a room
* Efficiency gimmicks determine the speed at which the hero satisfies the corresponding need. Heroes can therefore satisfy their current need more quickly in a high-efficiency room than in a more inefficient room. Your goblin workers can restore the room's capacity by working on efficiency gimmicks
* Capacity gimmicks determine the supplies that the room has to offer. Every time a hero fulfills his needs in this room, the room's supply decreases.
Lastly, how do we satisfy those heroes who love to receive or inflict damage, or can’t get enough trap-tripping? That’s all part of the dungeon design kit, my attentive student! By using gimmicks, you can place monster spawn points or traps throughout the dungeon. When a hero passes by one, he could end up in a battle with blobs, skeletons, zombies or far worse. If you’ve played your cards right, you’ll be able to knock out the hero, take him to your prison cells or torture chambers, and extract some soul energy, turning that pesky hero into a sort of battery filled with lovely soul energy.
There you have it, my Dungeon Lord in training, a look at what sort of turn-ons the heroes in Dungeons have, and how you can meet those needs in order to attract more targets, excuse me, “heroes”, to the dungeon – so you can capture the witless fools and steal their precious soul energy away!
In DUNGEONS, our protagonist falls victim to a devious plot hatched by his vile, nasty and thoroughly vicious ex-girlfriend and finds himself at the bottom of the underworld hierarchy and the top of the dungeon pile. In his world, that is about as bad as it can get. Our lord must have his revenge, and make his way back down the dungeon levels to his rightful place -- but first he must deal with his new bosses, the three despicable Dungeon Lords who stand in his way.
At his disposal are his dim-witted goblin minions who dig tunnels and build rooms to lay out his lair and trap ever stronger and braver heroes who dare to enter, not forgetting to plot his revenge against his ex-girlfriend and his new bosses who think it’s great fun to bombard him with useless tasks. It goes without saying that a malicious and sneaky creature such as our Dungeon Lord has more than a few tricks up his sleeve. Revenge will be sweet indeed.
For all the latest information on DUNGEONS visit the official website at http://www.dungeons-game.com
So the basic unit of the game is the "gimmick." (Winces at the poor use of words.)
There are gimmicks that go in rooms specifically, and gimmicks that go elsewhere. Gimmicks do a lot of things. They:
-Can give your dungeon prestige, which is the general feature advancement gooey-gooey of the game.
-Draw hero's attention toward them or toward specific parts of your dungeon.
-Can be placed in rooms for heroes to interact with.
-Can alter how a room functions.
It seems like they can do one, or all of these things. The interaction gimmick that goes in the room defines the total amount of stuff a hero can collect from it. The other two gimmicks then alter either the rate or the capacity of the room, as defined by the interaction gimmick.
I imagine there will be both cost and space trade offs for you to consider when building in rooms. I.e. maybe you don't just drop one of everything in a room and upgrade as needed. And that there will be multiple levels of interaction and efficiency and capacity gimmicks, each with a look and a different cost and higher effect. Well, actually, maybe not. Since there are three tile sets to the game, and each one has its own set of gimmicks. Hrm.
There are also at least two type of rooms. Rooms that require space, and rooms that are basically just purpose dedicated tiles in the dungeon. So your basic treasury would be the tile, the "interaction gimmick" would be the chest, the "efficiency gimmick" might be a torch and the "capacity" gimmick might be little bags of coins scattered around the chest. Not exactly sure what "Your goblin workers can restore the room's capacity by working on efficiency gimmicks" means.
That heroes have several needs is also seeming promising, as a lot of these games boil down to 1 or 2 different things these AIs go looking for. That classes will mix and match the wants means there will be a lot of change in your resource rate, but that you can micromanage things with your dungeon lord if you need more than you're getting by letting heroes just go where they will and die when they will.
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So that's ONE end of resourcing. There's still another "side" to it that warrants consideration. You can kill heroes that are full of soul energy, and get it like that, it just instantly goes into your pool. BUT, if they're incapacitated, your goblins can take them to torture chambers and your Dungeon Lord can extract even MORE soul energy by torturing them personally.
The reason this is important is because heroes seem to come in on a timer. It's a wave of dudes that doesn't stop because you need to clean up and get people where they need to go. That means while your goblins are dragging heroes to their cells, there are still heroes running around, who can run into your goblins and attack them and inadvertently save the other hero. So it's kind of like an amusement park, to borrow the Tycoon analogy. You've got the main attractions, and the crowds walking through. But behind the scenes, there has to be ways for the crew to operate the ride without spoiling it for the crowds.
If they've managed to pull all this together in a way that makes sense and is fun to explore....it sounds like it could make for dozens of replays. There's already a confirmed "Endless Mode" in the sand box, so you can basically try to build the perfect self-sustaining dungeon, and have a little character to run around and enjoy making stronger while you do it.
I'd check out the screenies in that thread too, the game has visibly come along way since the last batch of screenshots....and honestly looks leagues better than what was shown in the video.
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Topic: Dungeons 2011 - Now with 50% less thread disappointment (Read 37129 times)