petri wrote:The only doubt I have about random dungeon generation is, is it fun? It works great in roguelikes, e.g. ADOM, because you can see the whole explored map all the time, but what about when you only see a tiny sliver of the randomly generated level (the viewpoint in LoG)?
Approaching the issue from another angle:
Because there is no intelligent design in randomly generated levels you become easily lost. Therefore the next logical step would be to add an automap that is always visible on the screen. And then suddenly you're moving around on the map, and the 3D view becomes more or less a gimmick. So why not get rid of the 3D first person view and make the auto map really pretty with a topdown/isometric view, with animated player character, etc.? Hmm, this reminds me of some pretty famous diabolical game...
quoting this because its true, but also...
premade dungeons have a distinct advantage as far as fun factor because they generally have pretty clever puzzles built into them, and are more often than not designed around the puzzles, rather than the other way around. random dungeons do not have this sort of luxury. if everything about the dungeon is random, and you want to have puzzles in them, they generally have to be very simple, or best case scenario, are kind of complex but are just code copy pasta at which point they get reused far too often and thus, become mundane.
randomly generated dungeons generally lead to hack and slash games, which leads to games that require super-characters, which makes an entirely different game than what legend of grimrock is.
rather than making a random dungeon generator, i would much rather see a patch made that easily implements a user created content upload/download hub. i also would love to see almost human made add-on dungeons.
Captive was one of my favorite games on the Amiga, just after DM/CSB, Pool of Radiance and Ultima IV/V.