New Portal: Dwarven Factory

[Ferociousdragon]

A large, fuming factory made, and still occupied, by technologically advanced deep dwarves. It is full of pistons and other machinery that makes a loud echo through the factory. It is also filled with many spinning rotundas that workers use to get around. Beware, as once you enter, the factory will be put on alert, summoning trained Dwarven warriors and constructs. Not to mention the many ways to go that have caused even the workers to sometimes get lost. As dangerous as it may be, adventurers still go in knowing the rumors of a secret room behind the factory, filled with treasure and riches.

The Dwarven Factory would be an area, probably encountered somewhere in the middle game, that would contain many deep dwarves. It would also have unique spinning rotundas. These rotundas would have a number of split rooms (from 2 to 8). They would turn for the length of one room, then stop, then repeat this process so a certain room would go to all possible destinations, and the rider would be able to get off at the one he wanted. However, as you are an intruder, these will probably be filled with dwarven security guards and iron golems anxious to get at you, so be careful. The boss would probably be a powerful dwarf or group of dwarfs, or perhaps a dwarven unique or construct. It would be a one floor portal, spawning once per game. Each factory would be of a different product, such as armor, weapons, scrolls, jewelry, processed food, and evokables, though it would mostly influence treasure spawn rates. There would be several rotundas, leading to many different paths, where it is easy for an outsider to get lost, making for a dangerously long time until you found the treasure. There would also be armed security mechanisms to try to stop you.

This would certainly be a pretty unique branch, with the rotundas, but I wonder what it would take to make tiles that spin around an point in order to make these rotundas work.

[PleasingFungus]

Deep dwarf enemies were systemically rethemed or removed because their gimmick was "doesn't regenerate", which is a really bad gimmick. It might not be quite as bad in the tight confines of a portal vault, but it's still not good (at best it's just irrelevant), and you still haven't gotten anywhere toward designing what interesting things they do.

What kind of gameplay do you see coming from the 'rotundas'? Can you explain how they work in a little more detail? I'm not sure I understand.

[Ferociousdragon]

The rotundas are supposed to be like a large circular room split into cells which turns periodically. They're kind of like elevators, except theres several shafts going one way in a loop, and it goes around rather than up and down. Also, each room is a part of one big circular room.

As for the dwarves, maybe they could be a different type of dwarf, or perhaps a different species altogether?

[kuniqs]

Or elevators: a portal, where the main part is a 7x7 square room. There are 1-4 'hidden' rooms around it.
First, some enemies spawn while the 'elevator' 'rides' up. After ~20auts, the elevator 'stops' and a previously closed-off tile is changed to a movable one - one of the rooms opens.
Inside is a mob around a table, having dinner. Some of their possesions (random loot) is lying around, as well as a portal out.
After ~30 auts, the tile closes off and either the player moves to the next room (fighting another mob on the way), or exits through the portal.

[njvack]

I feel like this design would encourage hanging out in the rotunda, luring small groups in as the door opens. Unless I don't really understand what's going on.

My gut says this is really complicated for the amount of awesome it would generate (though I'd say that about the Tomb wizlab, too, which exists, so yeah).

Definitely agree that a portal vault is a way to try something like this. I don't think you really need a unique monster set (at least not at first). Theming-wise, if you're willing to skip the dorfs but still want an arms-and-armour flavor, it could be Okawaru's Basement.

[adozu]

except in that case it would be filled of +0 boots and ugly sweaters. so much for treasure.

[PleasingFungus]

The Tomb wizlab is pretty simple. Just a bunch of walls that are set to vanish on a timer...

It seems like the actual 'rotating' functionality is excessive, if I understand it - you could just have a hub room with a set of doors around the outside that take turns opening/closing. Would need some handling for making sure creatures & items don't get stuck in the doors, but we already have something like that for one of the volcano portals (the one with the collapsing ceilings), iirc.

Agreed with nvjack that unique enemy types are excessive for the core concept.

[njvack]

The Tomb wizlab is pretty simple. Just a bunch of walls that are set to vanish on a timer...

My experience as an unspoiled player was "what is going on with this place, it doesn't make any sense OH GOD OH GOD!" Didn't think to dig at the squares.

It didn't help that somehow I wasn't in view of the vanishing walls when they vanished (maybe I had decided to leave?) and then the first monster I "saw" was an invisible lich casting OOD. So it was just, like, an empty room that suddenly started hitting me with orbs until I looked at the learndb and it made sense.

[tasonir]

That tomb wizlab is way more nasty that most wizlabs. I'm fairly sure I've gotten it twice, died the first time, and was forced to flee the second time. I don't think I've ever completed it. I knew the gimmick the second time and didn't advance forward until the monsters appears, but how you're expected to deal with a large amount of mummy priests and liches at that depth I'm not sure.

On topic, the rotundas to me sounded like a room that applies a tornado affect (rotating the player/monsters 90 degrees) every couple of turns. I'm not sure how much that would really add to the tactics/flavor, but it should be fairly easy* to do if you reuse tornado minus the clouds/duration.

*for certain values of easy

[dpeg]

I think there is an underlying problem with branch proposals in general: It is very natural to start with flavour, like "let's make a branch with lots of water" (that is how Shoals started out). If you're lucky, the theme indicates a monster set; if you're really lucky, that monster set can be made more or less to work. Often, you see branch proposals spending a lot of words on flavour and features, and few lines on monsters.

However, as PleasingFungus correctly points out, branches are really about (diverse!) threats, so its about monsters. In fact, I'd hazard that you're better of proposing an abstract monster set (like a collection of gimmicks that can reasonably well work together), and afterwards slap on a theme (this will always be possible, don't worry about this step).

In my opinion, after monster the next relevant bit is rules. A branch can in principle have slightly different rules. Crawl doesn't do very much in this regard, but there are some steps (Slime has harmful walls, Abyss has obvious rule tweaks, Hell has hell effects and different stair rules etc.)

Only after that I'd put layout (and here I mean properties like "no tunnels" or "many doors" etc.).

Thus: monsters > rules > layout > flavour.

[BobIsDead]

I'm always a sucker for portals that are a little gimmicky. I love wizlabs and have probably put an ungodly amount of time into trying to think up interesting ideas for late-game portals that make use of seldom-used mechanics.

Now, if I were to implement an idea based around the rotunda concept, I'd cheat with the rotating rotunda. See, I'd just make the walls rotate. Imagine an empty circular room with a two tile gap at the top. This gap rotates around the wall slowly, giving one access to the rooms coming off it. Err... if that makes sense. Basically, it's a concept that's used in the Labyrinth (and maybe the Abyss), just altered and made more orderly.

As others have pointed out, the rotunda could easily be used to just lure enemies one at a time into it. As such, I'd take advantage of the while "automated factory" thing and make all enemies in this area statues. This would allow the portal itself to take advantage of the rotunda. Each time the player left the rotunda, they'd be in a small room with five or six statues, would have to take them all down at once, instead of using hit-and-run tactics, as there'd be no escape or hiding from the statues until the entrance into the rotunda came back (barring teleportation, of course).

Now, as for monsters, as I said this would be an exclusively statue portal. Lightning spires, obsidian statues, etc.. Probably some new statues as well. Maybe an iron guard, that pelts you with iron shot. A monitoring statue, a statue that can see invisible, rob you of your positive status effects as well as summon iron golems. A toxic pipe, which inflicts damage, with a chance of poisoning and/or causing corrosion. A green crystal statue, which summons crystal guardians. A radioactive statue, which can cause random transmutation miscast effects.

These ideas probably need to be thought out a bit more (alright, a lot more) but the point is that some will cause direct damage, others will summon minions, and others will cause miscellaneous negative effects. Some might even do a mix of these things. The point is that they create a diverse array of effects between them.

Err... but all this is based on the idea of going with a rotunda/factory theme and working backwards. Which, whilst fun as an exercise in creativity and problem-solving, is probably a real pain in the butt to balanace and implement. The idea behind a rotunda/factory area is cool, though. No one can fault you for that.

[ajon]

Monsters -> Deep dwarves with 1-2 random wands
Rules -> no magic? No potions? Whatever wands you have or drop are what you use? No natural healing/regen - only heal like DD do

[spudwalt]

No natural healing/regen - only heal like DD do

Ooh, that could be interesting (and terrifying)!