Slowly mapping away at this dungeon. This is the most recent dungeon, which leads to the 2nd floor in the main room. The idea of the dungeon, for those who don't know, is to get to the lone room on the third floor, where the goal is, by navigating through a maze. Note, I'm only doing the correct paths right now, and will do the deadend paths and loops and whatnot after that. The dungeon design for the correct path is an ascending figure 8 (with the main room being the center of said figure
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As you can see from the map, there's complete dark spots, which is transparent background for the parallax background (it'll be explained at some point that it's the work of the Void during the dungeon. Yes, the same Void that you're probably familiar with in the FF series). Some of these spots are actually can be traversed despite it looking like the other spots on the map (while Eientei and Blazing Fires uses this gimmick a bit, as does Cave to Makai, it starts getting used a lot more come beta5 onwards. In fact, Pandaemonium has a room that's just invisible floors to train the player a little). In addition, we have bats, both blue and red bats. Those who have already played the game fully will know that blue bats are harmless, but red bats tend to suck away HP at an alarming rate (and can lead to game overs). However, these red bats, despite them always going towards the player, do not suck blood. They just like to get in the way (the bats are represented by the various Es).
Another feature that the Hollowed Caverns has, which I wanted to introduce way back at Youkai Mountain, is you can actually walk underneath bridges as well as through tunnels. The tunnels you can't see in this screenshot, but you can tell the bridge here. I have yet to actually code in walking underneath bridges and going through tunnels, but it's very doable.
I'm also having a rather tough time making the cave interesting with each room now. There's one room in particular where there's all three floors in it, but leads to nowhere except in the room itself. Other rooms...I haven't thought on at all since this is all on the fly at the moment. I have gotten a little reply on RPGMaker.net on some ideas for the dungeon, but none of them really seem to fit well with the theme of the dungeon. For those interested, here's the reply:
"OK. Why is the magic stone here? Maybe this is either a secret base of the villain - in which case you could make it full of defensive fortifications, ritual sites, stockpiles of both traditional and magical weapons. Maybe he chose the site as a secret base because it was an abandoned underground fortress with walls built into the caves.
Or maybe instead of the villain's base, the magic stone is here because it's the site of convergence of magical leylines or whatever-the-dump. So you could have brightly colored glowing sections, pools of mystical liquids, glowing swirling spires of energy. Other magical artifacts and ritual sites that are remnants of the attempts of other people in the past to harness the energy in this site. A temple built by elves around the source of the energy.
If there's a dimensional distortion on the third floor, maybe there are other ones. Maybe sections of the cave have been sucked into the void and now there is just a vortex of darkness where they used to be.
Maybe the key item you have hidden behind a puzzle-locked door is important to the identity of this place. Is it a ring or magical object, which would have been stored or manufactured by a specific type of people? What would those people have put in place to guard it? What type of facility and equipment would they have needed to build it or energize it? You could scatter those kinds of things around the cave or even build part of the cave into a research lab - or a magical prison. Is it a machine of some type, and you could fill the cave with engines and pulleys and machine-driven gates as if it were the workhouse of a group of engineers? Is it a weapon or shield, and perhaps the cave was once a secret hideout used by blacksmiths who were persecuted by an ancient power? The remains of both their survival camp and their craft would still be present.
Maybe some of those ideas will be useful in spicing up the area. No one wants to walk through a totally featureless boring cave."
Keep in mind, the poster probably doesn't know anything about Touhou Fantasy, but some of the ideas (particularly the Void idea) might be useful? I don't know...as it stands right now, Hollowed Caverns is well...just another cave. ^^;;
I really need to brainstorm ideas more often. Tis one of the things I DON'T have really. x_x;;
