New branch idea: The Aviary

[danr]

I was just thinking about what could be a good replacement for Hive as a mid-level branch, and I thought - what about an aviary? A bunch of flying monsters.

It could be cliff-y - instead of walls, you'd have yawning chasms that the birds can fly over. Chasms would be like lava or deep water: falling in is a one-way ticket. Like lava, in that items dropped in are lost. Kenku would have an advantage here, just like Naga / Merfolk have in shoals / swamp / sewers.

The end vault would have kenkus. Gryphons - are there giant eagles? Bats (maybe in more flavours, like rats come in).

Actually, that would be another theme, and very appropriate to a dungeon cave - a branch full of bats. Vampire bats. Flying vampire wizards.

[KoboldLord]

The subject has come up before. Existing material can be found:

https://crawl.develz.org/wiki/doku.php? ... ting_rocks

It's proposed as a Vaults alternative, but I don't see why something similar couldn't fit in as a replacement to nearly any other branch. The tricky part is, of course, that nobody's implemented slopes or empty space yet. Until somebody's willing to take that on themselves and actually write the code, it's difficult to get enthusiasm for the branch started.

[danr]

Whoa, that's way fancier than what I was picturing. Just a different flavour of lava / deep water - you can fly over it, but anything dropped is lost forever.

[TGW]

https://crawl.develz.org/wiki/doku.php? ... h:mountain

[evktalo]

I think the Aviary sounds like a good idea for an early portal vault.

--Eino

[jackalKnight]

The problem with an aviary branch is that the flying monsters don't really have enough variety or a coherent theme. Certainly not as much as the jellies and snakes do. As it stand, the infamous "Air" vault is probably the best they can do unless they start introducing a huge variety of fliers/birds.

And if they wanted to do a race-based branch (like how Shoals is for Merfolk and Elf is for Deep Elves), it would probably be easier to implement Deep Dwarves.

[MrMisterMonkey]

As for theme, Shoals isn't about merfolk; Shoals is about fancy greek stuff like cyclopes and harpies and manticores and merfolk (which, having the most room for expansion, got it) and shoalsy stuff like turtles.

As for variety, do the same expansion thing to Kenku.

And another thing: deep dwarves already happened

[jackalKnight]

Sure, if it actually makes kenku feel less like a random birdman and more like a part of the Crawl universe. If DDs and merfolk (the main humanoid inhabitant of the Greek-style Shoals) get a branch, kenku should get one. But kenku's is begging for a SE Asian feel somehow...

I'd like something with a mountainous/cavern feel (so it would seem like Japan, I love Kurosawa's samurai movies) but how do you fit a mountain into a dungeon?

[KoboldLord]

I'd like something with a mountainous/cavern feel (so it would seem like Japan, I love Kurosawa's samurai movies) but how do you fit a mountain into a dungeon?

Same way you fit five levels of vertically stacked swamp or archipelago into a dungeon.

I usually rationalize it as the entrance to the main dungeon being at the peak of Mount Zot. As you descend, you eventually reach an exit to a sheltered valley (Lair) not easily reachable on foot from the outside. This is roughly sea level, and you're descending farther from there.

[jackalKnight]

Or maybe the Dungeon is a metaphysical place that warps time and space and the stairs to branches are entries into "pocket universes". That's the best way I can rationalize a jungle existing in a dungeon (the current version of Lair has a very "jungle" feel).