Work in progress: reviving the Enchanted Forest as a branch

[Roderic]

A perfect place to add tengus, centaurs and sludge/wild elfs. Also ents/treants/dryads could be designed to inhabit there.

[eeviac]

Just posting to voice my support of this. I'd like to see it put in .12 for testing, as a new extended game rune branch.

I may have already mentioned this in several GDD threads.

[Roderic]

Some kind of tree-dweller critter -monkey or whichever- with the ability to move among trees would be a nice threat. It should be the equivalent to diving monsters in Swamp .

[eeviac]

There are few things that I would oppose more strongly than increasing the number of submerging dudes.

[Roderic]

Not even for a rabid squirrel?

[sgrunt]

For those of you wondering what's been going on lately:

I've restarted the Forest project essentially from scratch, leveraging various bits and pieces of things worked on recently by mumra and DracoOmega to form something that I think is a little bit more likely to ultimately end up in the game.

Per some discussion with other devs when I started working on this again, this iteration of Forest alternates with Crypt as a branch (the entrance to Tomb moves to Forest in games where Forest is present instead of Crypt). It exclusively uses mumra's layout_twisted_forest (for the moment) with some depth-related tweaks and introduces several new and/or reworked monsters:

• The previously designed dryads (now with maintaining range) and forest drakes (now with a wind breath attack instead of acid spit, using code from DracoOmega's fan of gales);
• Bands of tengu including tengu warriors (with better weapons and attack damage) and tengu conjurers (who cast Force Lance and Battlesphere amongst a couple of other spells); and
• Fauns and satyrs, who use movement-hindering hexes against the player as they attack from afar with longbows, including the unique satyr Pan, who confuses the player in other ways.

I've borrowed some of my old vault designs for entrances and one of my old vaults for a temporary ending while some balance sense is beaten into this branch design.

Where is this available, you say? Look no further than the forest_redux branch.

I look forward to comments and feedback!

[khalil]

Just tried this, and I really like it.
However, I think replacing crypt is a bit odd, as most of the crypt uniques don't really fit here.
Perhaps repalce the slime pits instead? They're the only constant lair sub-branch, and forest has a very lairish, animalistic theme.

[jejorda2]

Is crypt still a bad branch with DracoOmega's new monster set?

[mumra]

Is crypt still a bad branch with DracoOmega's new monster set?

A ton of effort went into the new monsters and of course this represents a major improvement, but I wouldn't say this is enough yet to call the branch "fixed". Look how much work went into Vaults for 0.12: a whole new layout system (rewritten twice over), a ton of new vaults, plus a reimagined monster set (and some really interesting mechanics in how the new monsters interact with the new layouts). And Vaults were already a well-loved branch with one of the most climatic branch ends in the game.

Anyway, I'm confident that Crypt is now getting the level of attention it requires and will be much much better by the time 0.13 lands. I've already got a good idea how the layouts need to work. But this doesn't mean that the rotation isn't still a good idea ... You'll appreciate the content all the more if it's not even available every game.

[WalkerBoh]

Just tried this, and I really like it.
However, I think replacing crypt is a bit odd, as most of the crypt uniques don't really fit here.
Perhaps repalce the slime pits instead? They're the only constant lair sub-branch, and forest has a very lairish, animalistic theme.

The only true "crypt unique" is Khufu anyways (jory also appears in main dungeon). Replace him with the enchantress and mission accomplished.

Replacing crypt works better than slime for thematic reasons (what happens to jiyva?) as well as gameplay (no variation in branches currently after lair). I like the idea, still haven't tested it though.

[khalil]

@WalkerBoh
Most of the repacements have similar themes, spider/snake as poison, and swamp/shoals as water. If crypt is going to be replaced by something, that something should also be undeath themed. Posibly the proposed desert branch.

[mumra]

@WalkerBoh
Most of the repacements have similar themes, spider/snake as poison, and swamp/shoals as water. If crypt is going to be replaced by something, that something should also be undeath themed. Posibly the proposed desert branch.

This is definitely the strangest thing about putting Forest in there. But if that's the only reason, I don't see why we need to let precedent rule here.

With the Spider/Snake and Swamp/Shoals roulette there is actually more of a concern with balance. You wouldn't want to roll two Poison-based subbranches - this would be annoying and even unfair if you didn't find a source of rPois early enough. Similarly with rolling two water-based branches, this is annoying/unbalanced based on whether you have a ready source of flight or swimming or not.

With Crypt it's not exactly the same problem, in part because it's much later in the game. The player can reasonably be expected to have tools to counteract the balance changes caused by food vs foodless and undead vs living. And it's a completely optional branch, you can just skip it altogether if you're not planning on finding Tomb.

For the sake of argument I started making a list of the primary differences but really there aren't many. Just food, and the fact that a different subset of killing tools work better vs. undead than living. Of course some gods are better or worse in Crypt or Forest but there's nothing wrong with this. And in many ways it's more interesting if the roulette means your endgame plan has to be a bit more flexible.

Of course the Crypt/Forest roulette is just the first thing that was generally agreed on and it's not final. Another option is having both branches but shortening them. An old idea was including a Forest entrance at the bottom of Lair and the branch actually rejoining D later on, perhaps as a way to bypass the Rune lock if that ever transpires. However the argument that there isn't much in the way of variation late-game is a strong one and I'd rather see a new branch appear in late D; so Crypt
depth seems ideal.

A while ago there was an idea bounced around of creating new Hells and having a Vestibule roulette. Something crazy I was thinking about was having the Forest branch as an alternate extended branch; sure this'd require some highly tenuous stretching of flavour and coming up with three other new branches; for instance portals to four biomes, Forest/Desert/Mountain/uhhh.... no, that's a really bad idea, forget I said that.

[roctavian]

I'd love to see rotating sub-branches from Vaults someday. Forest/Crypt seems nice, because it could develop into something like the Lair's Snake/Spider/Shoals/Swamp bit. I'd love to see the Dwarf branch or a Hexes-styled branch or something with crazy different terrain.

This is conjecture into the deep future, of course.

[evilmike]

Another option is having both branches but shortening them.

I really don't like this one, I'd rather have it be an alternate to an existing branch. I like the system used with Lair branches, it adds variety. And this seems better than adding more levels to the game.

The way I see it, the two best branches to shuffle with forest would be Crypt and Elf. Depends on the length and difficulty of Forest, really. If it's somewhere in between the two, maybe all three could go into the same pool, and the game picks two (like we used to do when we had 3 branches in the lair roulette).

As for positioning, I don't think the branch entry necessarily has to be at the same depth range as the one it's shuffled with. For example, if you get Forest instead of Crypt, there's nothing saying we have to place the forest entry in Vaults. It could be put somewhere in lower D instead, without breaking anything.

[khalil]

@murma
I'm not against replacing crypt because of precident as much as because it would be taking a (very bad) branch with it's own theme and replacing it with another lair. This would reduce the amount of enviorments you would get to fight in as while crypt is fairly unique (Tomb is similar, but that's basicly three levels worth of end vault), there's already two branches like forest (lair and swamp).
While I am all for having late game branches change, I still think it should be theme based. Elf could have a chance to be replaced with the dwarven halls, as the two are similar. (Race run level with a bunch of loot at the end.)
Crypt/tomb could probably be revamped to work like this: Enviorment, then some kind of resting place.
For example a desert containing a portal to the current tomb, a rain forest containing a mayan ziggurat, or a happy field containing an entrance to the paris catacombs.
Forest could be added as a seperate branch, which would swap out with a rain forest and an underground mushroom forest.
It keeps the themes consistant, and it would add varity.

[ontoclasm]

it would add varity.

It would also require us to make seven new branches from scratch.

[khalil]

it would add varity.

It would also require us to make seven new branches from scratch.

I do not expect any of that to get done any time soon. Or indeed, ever.
However, I would like to point out the code for the dwarven halls allready exists.
Furthermore, crypt/tomb have to be delt with sooner or later.
My idea is that the enviorment and tomb are actually the same branch so for catacombs you have:
1 floor of open fields. There's allready code to generate open fields used in lair.
Then several floors of two tile wide hallways that ocasionaly contain areas where undead pop out. There's allready scripting for vaults where the walls open up to let monsters out, and the hallways could be adapted from dungeon code. Failing that, one could just use the current crypt for the catacomb bit, allthough this would be a bit unsatisfactory.
Meanwhile, tomb would become one floor of desert, and then three floors of the current tomb.
Bam. The new code required would be:
Dwarf: None, someone allready coded this.
Catacombs: Almost none, as almost all the code required could be adapted from allready existing code.
Tomb/desert: Making the desert interesting would be the hard bit. Generating an open wasteland, not so much. Oasis style vaults might spice the place up a bit.
The forest replacements were just shown as examples, but a rain forest would basicly be curent forest with more snakes and a river going through the middle.

[sgrunt]

In my experience, the two major things that make or break a branch are the monster set and the level layouts.

Swamp used to have terrible level layouts, then evilmike reworked the level layout algorithm (along with a couple of monster tweaks) and Swamp became much more tolerable than it used to be.

Crypt, previously universally regarded as boring, has seen new life as a result of DracoOmega's monster revamp for crypt.

Then we have Vaults, which previously had both boring level layouts (oh, look, another layout_chaotic_city!) and a monster set completely indistinct from the main dungeon; since then, Vaults has been given its own level generation algorithms (with earlier work by infiniplex and current work by mumra) and some distinct monsters of its own (courtesy of DracoOmega) and suddenly the branch is very distinctive and (arguably) enjoyable.

I could understand an objection to rotating Crypt out on the basis that we'd miss out on some of the new content there (though having Spider appear in rotation with something else doesn't seem to have been a problem when the branch was introduced). Objecting to a new branch on the basis that it's "another lair or swamp" when it has distinct layouts and a mostly brand new monster set, however, does not make very much sense to me as an argument - given the above comments on branch variety, it should be distinctive enough to hold its own.

I do like the idea of possibly adding Elf to the crypt/forest rotation (does Tomb appear in Crypt if both Crypt and Forest are in the game? Probably.), though that's not something I would be likely to do until Forest itself is properly balanced.

[mumra]

Bam. {etc.}

What you describe here is still a ton of work. And if we throw content haphazardly into the game like this then it won't be interesting or enjoyable. There are two aspects to the work going on at the moment: 1) Tweaking, refining, honing of existing content that isn't up the high standard of most of the game and 2) Carefully designing and implementing new content. This stuff doesn't happen overnight, and improving one existing feature is infinitely better than adding five new half-assed ones. The last branch that was added (Spider) took several Crawl releases to get right from design to realisation. Forest's been hanging around for even longer I believe. Sure, Dwarf has been in partial existence for quite a while too, but the monster set has a lot of design problems, there isn't even a real concept for a level generator, and nobody currently active on the devteam seems all that interested in pursuing it right now. Whereas Forest has a few supporters - the branch I mean, not the team, although I am also a supporter of the team ;P

Anyway; I do like evilmike's idea of having the entrances show up in different places depending on which branches you get...

[khalil]

@Murma.
Point. While I probably could code up the catacombs, It'd be on level with the crypt in terms of fun.
I just really want the game to go with 'replace branch with similar branch' thing for forest instead of 'replace branch with unrelated one'. Not sure why.
Also, totally with you on evilmikes idea. If forest does end up replacing crypt, it'd be a bit silly for it to appear in vaults.

[Grimm]

I just really want the game to go with 'replace branch with similar branch' thing for forest instead of 'replace branch with unrelated one'. Not sure why.

Crypt is related to Forest as an opposite: death/life.

[rebthor]

Bam. {etc.}

<snip>
Whereas Forest has a few supporters - the branch I mean, not the team, although I am also a supporter of the team ;P

Well, of course forest has supporting branches.

[khalil]

Crypt is related to Forest as an opposite: death/life.

Didn't think about it that way. Contrast instead of similarity.