Disconnected dungeon generation

[Derakon]

I'd be fine with rubble taking longer to move through than normal terrain, though that does make it something of an oddball. Then again, I guess all Vanilla "terrain" is oddball in some way since there's so little of it.

Then you could also make it so tunneling through walls first converts them into rubble, which then has to be tunneled through as well to make a clear space.

[d_m]

There is already an assymetrical dungeon mechanism: doors.

Creatures who can open doors should be able to remove rubble also (not necessarily in a single turn) like the player can. I also kind of like the idea of a spell that either creates rubble or turns walls into rubble.

I do like the idea of using rubble in vaults, although I don't really like the idea of removing tunneling (I guess I am agnostic on the spell and wand).

Actually now that I think about it I like the idea of earthquake and destruction generating fewer walls and more rubble!

EDIT: At one point I changed rubble to often generate rounded pebbles, with the goal of making slings slightly better by making their ammo really easy to find. It ended up being a bit too annoying, but I still like the idea. Now that squelch is more nuanced it might actually be pretty nice.

[PowerDiver]

Surely the solution is to let all monsters ignore rubble?? Then it simply blocks LOS but not movement.

That breaks my desire to replace vault chamber breakable walls with rubble.

For now, it is necessary to have a type of square that the player can traverse but most monsters cannot traverse. That's implicit in many vault designs. I don't see how any change can fix Derakon's problems without requiring the redesign of vaults.

[rdermyer]

You mean you don't want Saruman running amok on level 15?

[Magnate]

That breaks my desire to replace vault chamber breakable walls with rubble.

For now, it is necessary to have a type of square that the player can traverse but most monsters cannot traverse. That's implicit in many vault designs. I don't see how any change can fix Derakon's problems without requiring the redesign of vaults.

I am wary of using something for a non-intuitive purpose, such as using rubble to "fence" in monsters. If you want a type of terrain that the player can traverse but monsters cannot, why not use secret doors and say that monsters cannot detect them but the player can?

[Derakon]

I don't like that mostly because monsters opening secret doors is a moderately big part of the early game.

Maybe we should just make all vaults be surrounded by magma veins? Only slightly harder to dig than rubble (rubble: 1; magma: 2; granite: 4) and implies that the vaults were sealed in by pouring magma on them, which is pretty cool.

[PowerDiver]

I am wary of using something for a non-intuitive purpose, such as using rubble to "fence" in monsters. If you want a type of terrain that the player can traverse but monsters cannot, why not use secret doors and say that monsters cannot detect them but the player can?

I don't care what you call it. The current mechanic is rubble. If you want to rename it, I don't care, but I don't see how you can remove the idea of it without reworking vaults.

Doors openable only by the player are hardly any different. They are just slightly different ways of describing achieving the same thing. You need something asymmetric, and I thought that was what Derakon described as the difficulty with pathfinding.

[Derakon]

Er, could you clarify where I was talking about this? I see my name being called out but I don't remember talking about pathfinding recently.

[Adley]

Detections can be gerrymandered to fit the dungeon instead of some arbitrary region of space. (You detect all monsters within 50 walkable squares from your current location.)
ESP can be the same. (pass wall monsters become brutal)

Yes for detect. No for ESP.

[Derakon]

You realize that this would render sealed-off vaults impossible to detect except by ESPing the monsters in them, right? Is that really desirable?

[fizzix]

You realize that this would render sealed-off vaults impossible to detect except by ESPing the monsters in them, right? Is that really desirable?

It was my original suggestion. And just because I think something is possible doesn't necessarily mean I think it's a good idea. I have a lot of ideas. Not all of them are good. Most of what I wind up actually doing are other people's ideas, because mine kind of suck. Eddie also blamed you for the rubble comment hurting pathfinding even though you recently started using an avatar!

Anyway continuing to throw out more ideas:

We could make a lower-level detection spell, maybe something like "hear monsters" which would detect all moving creatures some distance away. Detect monsters in MB1 can work like this. Reveal monsters in MB3 could have thru-wall detection.

or, you can make all detection work through granite but not permanent walls. You may not be able to map deep into vaults with lots of permanent walls, but you can "see" into the first section.

[PowerDiver]

Eddie also blamed you for the rubble comment hurting pathfinding even though you recently started using an avatar!

Once is carelessness, but after Derakon's reply I really should have figured things out before attributing this to him a second time. Apologies to the both of you.