Suggestions for new lands

[archmageomega]

In the latest HyperRogue blog, zeno mentioned sending suggestions for new lands. Well, I've been sitting around doodling in the gameboard mode, so here are a few ideas. (For lands. I don't have any ideas for what orbs or monsters would go in them.)

Feel free to post your ideas here as well.

Flower Garden

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=486269301

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=486269560

Not really much to say. It's a flower garden. There might be interesting stuff to find down some of the paths.

Boulders and Fissures

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=486269929

I was thinking that you could push the boulders into the fissures to create unstable bridges.

Wasteland

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=486269811

A mostly empty (at least obstacle-wise) area, except for these abandoned towns. Whatever monsters live in the wasteland would probably come out in force when you disturb the town. (You can probably guess I'm thinking of zombies here.)

Islands and Bridges

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=486267871

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=486268050

I was trying to work out a way of making an infinite series of islands and bridges. I think I like the first style better, but I'm not sure it'd be easy enough to generate infinitely. The second might be, but it doesn't seem as interesting. (I did see a way to use the symmetry mode to make something like this, but it involved using one color as a big island and a second for bridges, leaving the other two mostly empty.)

The Town of Citysville

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=486270373

Well, it looks neat, but I have no idea if you could generate it.

Random Interesting Patterns

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=486268503

A bunch of straight lines intersecting at right angles looks pretty interesting. They need three colors to distinguish everything, but you only need a few of the third color. I have no idea how to turn this into a playable land though.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=486267388

Another collection of straight lines. This time, they just touch in a fairly regular pattern. The three colors are perfectly balanced here. (Again though, no idea what to do with it.)

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=486266563

More straight (in a sense) lines. This time, they all just avoid touching. This one actually reminds me a bit of a cathedral for some reason.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=486267101

Finally, some packed circles. The orientation of the green triangles is random since they won't fit together regularly.

(I may have hit a pictures-per-post limit, or at least that's my guess as to why that last picture won't show up. It still works fine if you click on it though.)

[wonderfullizardofoz]

Thanks! :) Yeah, something tree-like that's mostly chasms sounds right for the Air Elementals' native land.

I have another interesting idea, for a Jungle subland! It'd be called the Amazon River, and it'd consist of a line and some number of equidistant curves on each side, all water. Boats only spawn adjacent to land, and the player's goal is to ferry a boat from one side to the other. They must avoid crocodiles (who ignore the player altogether in favor of endlessly swimming along their curve, but will kill you if you get in their way) and piranha-like hyperfish (who are regular aquatic enemies). When a boat successfully reaches the opposite side of the river from where it started, the player is granted the land's treasure (not sure what this should be?).

[Fulgur14]

So, a hyperbolic version of Frogger? :)

[wonderfullizardofoz]

Kinda, yeah. :) I considered explicitly mentioning that comparison but decided it was too distant because there are also regular enemies.

[Fulgur14]

The problem is that this land would be somehow assymetrical. If you'd made it a "special" land with single entrance like Ivory Tower, you could maybe put the river equidistant to the wall...

[wonderfullizardofoz]

Not sure what you mean about it being asymmetrical. The land extends, via equidistant curves, from the central line in both directions. I'm thinking a hex line would be best for the central line.

Maybe you missed that it's a jungle sub-land? It has no great walls in it just as the Whirlpool and Temple Of Cthulhu and Camelot have no great walls in them.

[Fulgur14]

The assymetry is in having the treasures only on the "other" side of the river.

[wonderfullizardofoz]

Actually, treasure is on *neither* side of the river; treasure is granted in reward for crossing the river. You can gain multiple treasure from the same river by repeatedly crossing it back and forth.

[tricosahedron]

wonderfullizardofoz の投稿を引用：

You can gain multiple treasure from the same river by repeatedly crossing it back and forth.

That doesn't sound very easy in practice, though, since the riversides will probably be overgrown with ivy soon, if you spend too much time there.

I suppose Orbs of Teleport, Earth, Speed, Shield and Thorns will be helpful here. ^^

[Toph]

The Eternal Storm: Strong winds blow every which way, and just like the Whirlpool, you cannot move against the flow. Every tile has a particular direction of wind, which prevents you from moving into the direction it's coming from and the two adjacent directions. Unlike the Whirlpool, the wind does not form an orderly spiral, but is independently random on every tile.

(Exact parameters to be determined after playtesting; with these numbers, it is theoretically possible to be trapped in a finite region, which is probably bad. I believe one in every 279936 heptagons will be surrounded by six inward-pointing hexagons forming an inescapable trap. Perhaps some monsters or orbs should re-roll the wind directions. Or sometimes the wind should only block 2 directions.)

Air Elementals can ignore the air currents, as can immaterial monsters like Aether Witches and Ghosts, but all other monsters (including flying monsters!) are bound by the same rules as you. The Eternal Storm spawns Crows (reskinned Albatrosses) and Air Elementals. Treasures create a single tile of calm where they spawn. I am not sure if Orbs should do the same - that seems exploitable with Dead Orbs.

The native Orb is Time Stop. For a few turns after picking it up, monsters cannot move or hurt you and air currents do not impede you. Fires don't spread or extinguish, cellular automata don't update, tides don't change, etc.

For flavour reasons, the Orb of Lightning is a guest orb here. The treasure is called Fulgurite.

[Fulgur14]

While I like the Fulgurite as treasure for personal reasons, note that I proposed Time Stop Orb a while ago and it was basically rejected for being too similar to Orb of Teleportation (moving somewhere with stopped time is basically the same thing as teleporting).

Also, I think having random wind direction on each cell would be way too confusing.

[wonderfullizardofoz]

I was thinking it might be interesting to have wind direction determined each turn by the wind direction of adjacent cells.

[Toph]

Good point on the Time Stop. Back to the drawing board then.

[phenomist]

Trying to incorporate DROD tar slimes in dhyperbolic space:

Goo World

Land: Some medium-sized (~7 cell) walls interspersed around the land. Fairly sparse and mostly empty for lots of movement possible.

Enemies:

Goo - Has a central spot like Jungle Vines. Killing this central spot renders the goo inanimate, and you gain treasure. While animate, the Goo expands into all empty squares, covering everything around it every 30 turns. By itself, Goo won't kill you but certainly can make your movement very slow. There are fairly special killing rules - you cannot kill goo if it is surrounded by precisely 3 other goo tiles. If goo ends up being surrounded by 2 or fewer goo tiles, it becomes a slimeball.

Slimeball - Standard pursuing monster.

Seep - spawns and travels through goo as well now! So you are not completely safe engulfed in goo.

Orb: Orb of Glue - passively emits a stream of glue behind you. Non-flying enemies do not avoid glue and get stuck on it for 1 turn (removing the glue).

[Fulgur14]

The problem I see here is the expansion every 30 turns. How would you show the player where in the cycle the game is (as this is fairly important)?

[phenomist]

Perhaps mouseovering gives you "Goo (x)"? where x is turns to expand?