New Branches?


Although the central place for design discussion is ##crawl-dev on freenode, some may find it helpful to discuss requests and suggestions here first.

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Halls Hopper

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Post Wednesday, 10th April 2019, 18:11

New Branches?

Pretty simple question, really. Are new branches, whether they be entirely new or another option that has a chance to take the place of a Lair branch, something that has the potential to be added? Are there any current plans for potential new ones? If suggestions would be taken under consideration, what criteria should their design be based on?
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Post Wednesday, 10th April 2019, 20:24

Re: New Branches?

New branches are a *VERY* large undertaking, the most-recently-attempted branch I know of was intended to alternate with the lair, it was tweaked and tweaked and tweaked and eventually just given up on (although some of the content survived to be moved elsewhere). The problem is ultimately that it is very very hard to balance that much new content and make it be cohesive and still be distinct from the existing branches. Not to say it's impossible, but just be aware that the work required is significant, and ultimately if it doesn't work just perfectly, is likely to be cut even if it seems interesting.
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Post Thursday, 11th April 2019, 00:11

Re: New Branches?

I would say that adding a new branch is the hardest of the big 3 difficult things people regularly want to add (branch, god, species). None has been added (or even attempted) while I've been a dev so I don't really have a sense for in general what criteria might be applied, but the advice I've seen is basically to first consider something that might work as a portal and start there, and if that works and gets in, consider what it would take to turn the portal into a branch (and where it might fit). A portal branch is much more modest in scope (still not easy) and more practical to get through the PR process (also still not sure how easy, but it'll depend a lot on the details). At one point this was a path that some people envisioned for the desolation of salt.

I think the last attempt to really add a branch that Siegurt is referring to is the forest branch, which would have placed a bit deeper than lair; iirc one version alternated with crypt, and something on a (git) branch even alternated with vaults and had a rune (mossy). This one was coming from inside the devteam, and really was just extremely hard to balance, and also extremely hard for people to come to agreement on. The later fallout of design disagreements to do with the forest branch was pretty high drama and led to multiple devteam members quitting, that kind of thing. Probably can't be blamed on trying to add a branch per se, but it maybe does provide a warning about how complex the task is. As Siegurt says, most of the content generated for the branch got used in various places, just not as a single cohesive unit.

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Post Thursday, 11th April 2019, 05:45

Re: New Branches?

I might suggest that a good place to start would be to come up with a cohesive theme, in terms of gameplay mechanics, for your new monsterset.

Each new monster's abilities need to make mechanical sense, and they need to be differentiated enough from existing monsters that adding a new branch for them will be worth the (inherently linked) future balance/maintenance effort. You'll also likely want at least a basic lore outline for the branch that could be spun into descriptions/tiles/thematic ability links among the monsterset.

(Obviously, your lore can be bent to serve the needs of gameplay, but it helps to have a somewhat-believable link, to present to players, between all these new things you're adding.)

I'm mentioning all this because it's a failure condition that might not be obvious to someone newly-contributing a branch idea to DCSS: Your monsterset mechanics *really* need to make sense in how they interact to create gameplay tension within your branch. If they don't, you may find people in active opposition to adding them to the game.

The folks in ##crawl-dev on freenode are friendly, and they will work with you, certainly -- But it will really help your case if you have a strong grasp of what you're trying to accomplish, mechanically, by adding your new monsters to the game.

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Post Thursday, 11th April 2019, 07:25

Re: New Branches?

Could it be possible to create a new branch with existing monsters? The monster set could be selected based on the monster properties, and this would then create the "theme" for the branch. For example, the monster set could include monsters who either 1) have ranged attacks, 2) can go invisible or 3) can buff other monsters in different way. This is just a stupid example, but you get the idea.
This way, the designer would not have to come up with new monsters, the player would not have to learn those new monsters, but we would still get some variation in the game.

Of course, selecting the monster set and the level layout + flavour for the branch would still be a big task. I guess it would be more interesting if the monster set included monsters which are otherwise rare.

Or is a new monsterset with new monsters a prerequisite for a new branch?
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Post Thursday, 11th April 2019, 08:03

Re: New Branches?

Interesting thread. If your question is "If I make a suggestion of a new branch, can I expect to see it in a future version of DCSS?" -- All evidence points to one answer: No.

If your question is "How would I best go about exploring possibilities for a new branch in crawl?" -- All evidence points to one answer: Make a fork.

There is tons of space to explore with regard to improving and replacing dcss branches, even within the parameters of a crawl derivative very similar to dcss. Existing branches are not very good. Even the general philosophy of how to build levels in crawl, as shown in practice by the levels actually generated, is flawed, making it good terrain for exploration. Monsters are a similar story, though more constrained by limitations of the game's mechanics. People in this thread talk about the very high standard a new branch would be held to. I am in complete agreement that anyone bringing a new branch to the table would face a very high standard, great pressure to compromise, and a good chance of rejection, but I don't think that can be explained in terms of the merit of existing branches.

If you create a fork yourself or with a small group of like-minded individuals, your results will of course be a function of your imagination, industry, and critical point of view. The devteam is generally above average in its critical perspective and they're very good technically, but you can get enough benefit from their expertise through conversation in my opinion. If your ideas are solid and original, you'll probably have more influence through a fork.
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Post Thursday, 11th April 2019, 14:40

Re: New Branches?

Really, I was just curious. If I were to design anything related to branches, my main interest would be to create more portal vaults for the early game (which I usually find very boring) to add flavour and variety.

Sadly, despite my love of design, I don't know the first thing about coding, and the resources at my disposal are very limited. I see no way I could create a fork in the near future.

I may as well keep designing small things and submitting my ideas, because that's something I feel like I can actually do. For instance, my unrand suggestion is getting a lot more attention than I thought it would - even though the current proposal is a completely different weapon than my original idea.

Of course, I prefer large amounts of variety and flavour to the extremely streamlined experience so many people want crawl to be, and that might hurt my chances of getting anything in... But it never hurts to try. Thanks for the feedback, by the way.
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Post Thursday, 11th April 2019, 16:05

Re: New Branches?

MisterPersonMan wrote:Really, I was just curious. If I were to design anything related to branches, my main interest would be to create more portal vaults for the early game (which I usually find very boring) to add flavour and variety.

Sadly, despite my love of design, I don't know the first thing about coding, and the resources at my disposal are very limited. I see no way I could create a fork in the near future.

I may as well keep designing small things and submitting my ideas, because that's something I feel like I can actually do. For instance, my unrand suggestion is getting a lot more attention than I thought it would - even though the current proposal is a completely different weapon than my original idea.

Of course, I prefer large amounts of variety and flavour to the extremely streamlined experience so many people want crawl to be, and that might hurt my chances of getting anything in... But it never hurts to try. Thanks for the feedback, by the way.

Something to keep in mind is that it takes about 10 times the work to actually implement something as it does to come up with the idea, so if you aren't going to be doing the work yourself, you have to get someone who is going to be doing the work *really really* motivated about the idea. On the forums, people do enjoy talking about, exploring, and fleshing out ideas for development, but in an all volunteer project, even if literally *everyone* thinks it's a good idea, if there's not a programmer whose excited about doing it, it's not going to happen.

Some other things to keep in mind are that only a small portion of DCSS's dev team reads these forums, and also completed work (even mostly-completed work) is more likely to get attention and acceptance than ideas in a vacuum. Also keep in mind that, as an open source project, the person who does the programming doesn't have to be a member of the dev team, they just have to be competent and submit work that the dev team approves of.

It's a lot easier to get excited about your own ideas than it is someone else's so be aware that proposing stuff on the forums isn't always the greatest way to actually get anything done. Getting actual code in front of someone is *way* more likely to have any sort of impact. "Getting something in" through a proposal without any code behind it is very unlikely, it does happen (when someone passing by picks up an idea from the forum and decides they are excited enough about it to do the work) but it's rare, and in my experience pretty much limited to reasonably simple concrete suggestions (spells, an occasional item or race or something) open ended suggestions which are very involved are hard to get changes made even if have code written, codeless open-ended suggestions are something I would be extremely surprised if someone took up and wrote code for. Keep in mind that programmers aren't just sitting around waiting for ideas for things to code to drop into their laps, they have things that *they* are interested in, it's only things that are really inspired and original that are going to pull them away from their own ideas and interests, and even then only if it's something that they don't consider a long term distraction to their own interests.

That being said, you shouldn't discount your ability to contribute concretely, you've already made some nice weapon tiles, and even without your specific proposal behind them, they've got potential to be included in the game as resources. Vaults are another not really a "programming" concrete contribution (you can make them more complicated with some meta programming-ish stuff, but they're somewhere between real programming and simple resources like images) If you want to contribute more concretely, I'd learn how to create some vaults as well. Maybe make some more tiles if you like doing so, good pixel art is actually an underrated skill.

Of course you can always toss more ideas into the forums as you get them, but a lot of people who misunderstand how DCSS development works get frustrated after a while of just submitting ideas and having opinions on the forums as to what work should be done on DCSS and not seeing it materialize, not realizing it's not specifically a criticism of their suggestions, but rather just a mechanical function of how development interacts (or doesn't) with ideas from the players on forums.
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Post Thursday, 11th April 2019, 17:43

Re: New Branches?

"Learn 2 Code."

No. The reason ideas run aground in DCSS is not lack of skilled labor. The game itself is a limited resource and that means there has to be rationing, gatekeeping, and politics. If you want to add something big or make a big change, that is the most significant limiting factor.

If it were just about coming up with the code, you would never hear a story like the one upthread about the forest branch. We'd all be complaining about how much the forest branch sucks. Another point that story indicates: A lot of people who can write nice, functional code have a hard time coming up with things worth coding. At the same time, plenty of bad ideas get coded and accepted.
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Post Thursday, 11th April 2019, 18:48

Re: New Branches?

MisterPersonMan wrote:Really, I was just curious. If I were to design anything related to branches, my main interest would be to create more portal vaults for the early game (which I usually find very boring) to add flavour and variety.

Sadly, despite my love of design, I don't know the first thing about coding, and the resources at my disposal are very limited. I see no way I could create a fork in the near future.


Ok, that's actually pretty helpful for further answering your question. The easiest way to dip your toe in then is probably to try designing some maps for one of the early game portal branches. Coordinating with the devteam members (not me) who do vault design is still probably something you want to do along the way, but this is a kind of contribution that doesn't require any coding experience (though lua enables fancier things) and has pretty good documentation. There's a ton of existing examples here.

If you are completely new to level design for a game like this, it might be best to start with something even simpler (since portal vaults I think are all whole-floor maps) and try something like an arrival vault. Examples, and some specific documentation.

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Post Thursday, 11th April 2019, 19:02

Re: New Branches?

advil wrote:
MisterPersonMan wrote:Really, I was just curious. If I were to design anything related to branches, my main interest would be to create more portal vaults for the early game (which I usually find very boring) to add flavour and variety.

Sadly, despite my love of design, I don't know the first thing about coding, and the resources at my disposal are very limited. I see no way I could create a fork in the near future.


Ok, that's actually pretty helpful for further answering your question. The easiest way to dip your toe in then is probably to try designing some maps for one of the early game portal branches. Coordinating with the devteam members (not me) who do vault design is still probably something you want to do along the way, but this is a kind of contribution that doesn't require any coding experience (though lua enables fancier things) and has pretty good documentation. There's a ton of existing examples here.

If you are completely new to level design for a game like this, it might be best to start with something even simpler (since portal vaults I think are all whole-floor maps) and try something like an arrival vault. Examples, and some specific documentation.


That's what I'll probably do, then. Tiles and vaults are something I can definitely look into doing.
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Post Tuesday, 16th April 2019, 18:52

Re: New Branches?

Sprucery wrote:Could it be possible to create a new branch with existing monsters?


When I first beat the Pandemonium Branch, I realized immediately how special that was. The entire experience is practically the same as World of Warcraft's online team raid. Something I never got to do, but always sort of wanted to try. All that in a free game is incredible.

So for a new branch I have an idea based on the quote above, League of Legend's esque Rune Branch. There are so many statues in Dungeon Crawl. It would be great to fight along side three randomly generated Strong monsters as allies. Working together to take down the statue on the other side. Whilst all the while defending your own against their heroes and minions. The rune could be under their statue.

Perhaps as a bonus area first to gauge people's reactions.

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Post Tuesday, 16th April 2019, 20:52

Re: New Branches?

HawkI wrote:When I first beat the Pandemonium Branch, I realized immediately how special that was. The entire experience is practically the same as World of Warcraft's online team raid.
? ? ?

Crawl and WoW are two very different games. (Admittedly, I haven't played WoW since WotLK, so my experience is wildly outdated, but still.)

Raiding in World of Warcraft was a balance between player scheduling logistics, realtime technical execution, and grind.

Crawl is single-player, turn-based, grinding is explicitly against its design goals, and what limited technical execution it has largely consists of being able to recognize/diffuse threatening situations before you take damage.

In Crawl there is no 'holy triad' of tank/healer/dps, you don't come back month after month for your MT try to finish their Thunderfury, you don't grind reputation to finish your dungeon attunements, there are no bored Alliance guilds trying to pick you off outside of BWL before your raid starts. There's no bubblehearthing, no garbage shadow priest that everybody likes to hate but your mages love, no Horde advantage from Shaman totems, and probably most relevantly, no group of 40 people spamming cooldown-based abilities while your healers get angry at the rogues standing in the fire.


I don't see how you can compare Crawl gameplay in Pandemonium (or anywhere else) to WoW raids, unless you're doing so at a very shallow level. Like, WoW's roots are in Everquest and Diablo, which respectively came from text-based MUDs and Angband/Moria -- you have to go back 40 years to Rogue and AD&D's statblock crunch to find design influence commonality with Crawl there.

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Post Tuesday, 16th April 2019, 22:49

Re: New Branches?

Nice wall of text about an unimportant aside.

There was an early dungeon portal vault prototyped where you were given an ally. dpeg designed it, but it fell by the wayside. That could be a good place to start.

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Post Tuesday, 16th April 2019, 23:25

Re: New Branches?

When ever I enter the Pandemonium, I have the Shining 1 by my side. I summon two to three divine warriors, some of them have a cool down on healing me. The Bosses are ginormous, but the three angels tend to be; tank, healer and a dps. Admittedly I have never played Wow but, I have watched some of an online raid and it all felt very similar.

I like allies. It's nice to make use of the shout commands; even if you are only controlling a water elemental from a phial of flood.

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Post Wednesday, 17th April 2019, 00:38

Re: New Branches?

WoW was like a job you hated. Crawl is like an addiction which is hard to kick.

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Post Wednesday, 24th April 2019, 23:54

Re: New Branches?

HawkI wrote:So for a new branch I have an idea based on the quote above, League of Legend's esque Rune Branch. There are so many statues in Dungeon Crawl. It would be great to fight along side three randomly generated Strong monsters as allies. Working together to take down the statue on the other side. Whilst all the while defending your own against their heroes and minions. The rune could be under their statue.

If you're interested in radical redesigns of crawl mechanics (which this is) then I'd definitely check out Zot Defense. It was a part of main crawl up until .15, when it got removed because the developer who coded it had left and no one else wanted to maintain it. But basically you spawned on top of the orb, and waves of monsters attacked you. Every so often, bosses came who carried a rune. When you collected all the runes, you could leave (and win).

The "LOL" gameplay mode would be similar, just you'd have an enemy orb and your own orb, and waves would spawn in both directions.

It's certainly possible, but it's a lot of work, would require a ton of testing, and you'd probably have to commit to maintaining it for years and/or decades if you didn't want it to be eventually removed like Zot Defense was, after the developer left. In short though, making a LOL-style 'branch' isn't as well suited as a different game mode. The other game mode we have which is still supported is dungeon sprint, if you aren't familiar with that, try that one too.

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Post Thursday, 25th April 2019, 11:13

Re: New Branches?

tasonir wrote:If you're interested in radical redesigns of crawl mechanics (which this is) then I'd definitely check out Zot Defense.


Interesting, this Zot Defense plus the Dungeon Portal Chequers mentions, it's pretty much already been done. Fantastic. As for Radical redesign tasonir I would have to disagree with you. I only intended for this to be one variation of one rune branch.

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Post Thursday, 25th April 2019, 20:38

Re: New Branches?

Even if it is for a short period of time (say, one floor, or one branch) giving free "hero strength" allies and pitting the player against a team of other "hero strength" allies is a radical design concept.

Radical doesn't mean bad, or won't be enjoyed by players, but it's very very different from being a single character in a game that emphasizes splitting up enemies and retreating from combat, rather than diving into a 5v5 team fight.

I'm not against the idea - I'd love to see you try it, I am just trying to be reasonable in that it's a lot of work and would take a lot of convincing to get it into main crawl - you can always put it up as a fork/experimental branch though, most server admins are happy to try weird builds. And I'm primarily thinking of a "full" moba with a 5v5 and timed waves/kill the main objective building, etc. A more simple portal vault where you get one ally as chequers mentioned is a much simpler starting point, and was apparently tried before (I haven't seen it, though).

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