Biomes

[curiousdannii]

From the intfiction.org forum

Inspired by Terraria we will introduce Biomes to Kerkerkruip. These will be large scale geographical features, and I'd expect to have 3-5 of them in a dungeon. Some of them would be in every dungeon, others would only sometimes be present. Some of the Biomes I've thought of are:

• The core dungeon: This is where the player would start, and it would have a few essential rooms such as the drawing room. I've always imagined Kerkerkruip to be roughly hewn from rock.
• Malygris' home/fortress/bunker: Malygris lives in a separate part of the dungeon, which is much more nicely decorated. Inside his home would be the library, workshop and other more civilised rooms. This biome would always be present. Malygris however wouldn't always be inside. Possibly it should appear half abandoned (otherwise the player might be afraid to enter)?
• The underworld: a world of heat, smoke and lava. If the bridge is present it will be here. (Or perhaps, if the bridge is selected to be placed, then the underworld will be selected as a biome. I haven't thought too far about how the dungeon generation rules would work.) The biome would be below everything else.
• On the shore of the underground sea: a linear biome would stretch out N-S or E-W, with the sea stretching out on one side of it.
• Borrowing from Terraria, maybe a forest or The Corruption? If we had something like The Corruption it could be a place that even Malygris would be afraid of, perhaps a place of dark blood magic?

A few rooms/items/monsters would be locked into a particular biome, while others will be more likely to appear in some biomes than others. Some, such as the temples, could appear in any, but would change in appearance depending on where they are. In the core dungeon they would appear as they do now, but on the shore of the underground sea maybe they would be a simpler arrangement of standing stones. This would largely be flavour text, but perhaps the biomes could influence the behaviour of rooms too sometimes.

Tunnels would sometimes be required to link up between biomes, while their descriptions would be generated to match the biomes they are next to.

Rooms currently have a mood. If you want to keep that system I don't know how best to integrate it with biomes.

[VictorGijsbers]

I'm still worried that this would make the dungeon too predictable. Perhaps it could be prototyped in a separate branch? (Or we could discuss it further, of course.)

[curiousdannii]

Yeah, when I get around to this I'll do it in a separate branch.

[ektemple]

Please keep the graphical map in mind as you plan. In a well-made game, the graphical map would use different tiles for different biomes, and would also label biomes on the map.