Immersive and Intense Dungeons

[barnzie8]

Well if your poking fun at cliched puzzles, you could have a locked door with complex instructions, only to have another actor get impatient and destroy the door. Doing some planning of your game before hand would be the best option and help makes your game feel complete and connected.

 

[TeutonicOath]

Sounds like a good idea, but that could be expanded upon by doing something like maybe having multiple doors. Each one has a riddle that provides a hint to the location of the key, and by the last door, one character just gets so ticked off that they bust open the door. Whether your game is serious or not, it could always use some comic relief. There's so many ways to create complex and interesting dungeons, or even short and interesting dungeons, but you just have to know how to use the Maker. 

 

[Basileus]

I find that one aspect of Zelda dungeons that often gets overlooked is how each one contains a new item - more specifically, an item which brings a new mechanic. Each dungeon is carefully tailored to make excellent use of the dungeon item's mechanic. Instead of a simple tutorial dungeon that teaches all of the essential skills, every Zelda dungeon requires learning a new skill to complete and that learning process can be fun as you advance from simple puzzles to more advanced one.


A core part of the "theme" of a dungeon is not just the aesthetics, but the actual actions the player must take to progress. One dungeon in The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Seasons had a magnetic item that let the player do all kinds of tricks with attraction and repulsion - some enemies were defeated by pulling their metal shells off and pits could be crossed by pulling and pushing Link with fixed magnets on either side (or rotating ones in the middle even). It was an entire mechanic that did not exist prior to that dungeon and for the first half the player is forced to navigate without said magnetic item so large parts are inaccessible and the player keeps seeing elements that are clearly important but which they cannot yet interact with. This builds a sort of tension as the player anticipates that these things are important somehow and can try to figure out how to use them and what kind of item they will need to do so.


If you center each dungeon on a central mechanic - something like "Bow and Arrow puzzles", or "Changing Water levels", or "Vertical layout that plays with moving things between levels" - you can make a fun experience that lets the player learn a new trick and play around with it and ideally introduce a new one before that one gets boring.


But for an idea of what the basic Eventing system can do, I've been able to make:


Bow & Arrow / Slingshot / Sorcerer's Ring


Hookshot


Switch-Hook


Block-Spawning Cane


Ice Rod / Fire Rod


Ricocheting projectiles (only at 90 degree angles so far)


Auto-Move & Warp Tiles


Spike Floors


Flame traps


Portal Gun (two way portals, can teleport both player and other objects)


There is an unbelievable amount of stuff you can do if you get creative with switches and variables.

 

[TeutonicOath]

And for the 11 Zelda games that I've beaten, I've seen many more creative ways to make dungeons. But 350 hours into VX Ace, the only things that you listed that I actually KNOW how to create are the warp tiles, spike floors, and flame traps. ...There's a slip'n'slide ice puzzle in there somewhere too that I've made, but with scripts. Yanfly and terrain tags are much easier to use than player coordinates.


And the bow & arrow, hookshot, fire and ice rods, and cane of somaria I'd especially like to know how to make. At least to give me an idea of what dungeons can be made with, and how the puzzles can be executed.

 

[Kes]

and how the puzzles can be executed.

This is not the place for "How do I...?" questions.  Those belong in the Support forum for the engine you are using.


There is also more information available than you seem to know about.  As an experiment I put in the search term hookshot in the VXAce support forum and came up with a thread which appears to give the solution.


Search is your friend.

 

[TeutonicOath]

This is not the place for "How do I...?" questions.  Those belong in the Support forum for the engine you are using.


There is also more information available than you seem to know about.  As an experiment I put in the search term hookshot in the VXAce support forum and came up with a thread which appears to give the solution.


Search is your friend.

Thank you for the information. I'm just trying to get an idea, because I've only really experienced about half of the event commands.

 

[Kes]

I've only really experienced about half of the event commands

Then let me introduce you to this.




It will take a couple of hours to work through and by the end you will have discovered all the event commands and what they do.  You can open it up in the Editor and see exactly how each was done.  It is truly excellent, and spending a bit of time on this now will save you a ton of time and frustration in the future.  Highly recommended.

 

[Magnificent Brain Candy]

A point I'd make, if it's welcome, is the use of thematic or atmospheric elements to make traps or puzzles memorable. Player immersion comes in part from their ability to suspend disbelief in the fiction their character is running around in, and a dungeon puzzle is a great opportunity to add atmosphere or worldbuilding details without the player necessarily even realizing that you're doing it.


Think of the Nord symbol pillars in SKYRIM dungeons... actually a very dumb puzzle (though perhaps they weren't meant to keep intelligent foes out, but to serve as a barrier to mindless things like monsters or weak draugr), but a vividly thematic one, using the mythic symobology the ancient Nords found important and teaching the player a little bit about their culture. 


Think also of the various obstacles that guard the Holy Grail in INDIANA JONES AND THE LAST CRUSADE... each one is designed to incorporate Christian mythology and can only be successfully passed by remembering the knightly/pilgrimly virtues the trap builders were sworn to uphold.


Even leaving aside trap or puzzle mechanics, I think any such obstacle that actually makes sense from a cultural standpoint presents an opportunity for the player to say "Oh, THAT makes sense!" once they make the mental connection, and will be memorable as a result.


I hope this made sense.

 

[TeutonicOath]

@Magnificent Brain Candy


I understand-or at least think I understand-what you're saying. Incorporating the elements of the world into dungeons, such as mythology or character background in the like, and I think that's part of what can make a dungeon really memorable. Now, I don't think that's everything, as I feel that the way thematic elements, including graphics, sound, and puzzles are handled also are very important in determining what makes a dungeon "memorable."