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.)

[tricosahedron]

It's difficult for me to imagine how that Goo World idea would turn out in practice, but I like the overall idea! :)

About the Eternal Storm land idea:
Maybe a tiling (there are currently implementations of a 10-, 40- and 50-cell pattern) could be used to guarantee that the player won't get stuck. Just make sure that in each tile, it's possible from each cell to reach the central cell, and from there to get to at least 2 or 3 neighbouring tiles (or something like that).
Wind directions could be generated completely randomly during play, or the game could randomly select a configration for each tile from a list of preset configurations.

[wonderfullizardofoz]

The Tomb Of The Greedy Adventurer is a subland of the Graveyard unlocked by a certain very high number of kills and some number of Necromancer's Totems. It never spawns close enough to a Great Wall to see, and a Great Wall never spawns close enough to it to see.

It initially appears to be a horocycle, but this is a trap: it's actually a very distant equidistant, followed by a half-plane. When you first enter, most directions lead out. But when you go in deep enough (towards more treasure), most directions lead further away from the entrance - in fact, you'll probably never find your way out; it's essentially a non-traditional game over. Don't venture in too far!

[tricosahedron]

Sounds interesting! If I understand it correctly, the Graveyard is shaped like an Ocean (imagine there are no Whirpools), and the TotGA is shaped like a beach area + everything beyond the Great Wall, right?

[wonderfullizardofoz]

Yup!

[tricosahedron]

Land idea: Fortress

The land mainly consists of concentric circular castle walls. Each wall is 2 cells thick, i.e. it is made up of an inner and an outer circle. The outer (and higher) wall part is mainly Rock III, with some Rock II tiles in between. The inner wall part is mainly Rock II, with occasional Rock I "stairs".
The idea is that it's hard to get inside, but leaving is simple.

To get past the walls when you're outside, you could push barrels (height I) near the Rock II wall parts. However, the game controls would have to be adapted s.th. you can choose whether you want to push or climb a barrel.
Alternatively, the player could be required to push explosive barrels next to a castle wall, which explode like a mine if a fire is started on an adjacent cell (hint: there would be Fire Cultists or equivalent monsters among the guards).
Another option would be that there are gates that open if 2 nearby pressure plates are activated simultaneously.

The goal is to get to the central room (finite version), or as far as possible (infinite / horocyclic version). In case of an infinite version, castle walls could be interrupted by treasure chambers that are only accessible from the inside.

[tricosahedron]

...something like this, maybe:
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=546650941
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=546650999

[phenomist]

Land of Darkness:

Mechanic is Fog of War. You can see 2 squares radius, which increases per 10 treasures (akin to Minefield); treasures are fittingly Hyperlanterns. Hyperlanterns give off a 1 square radius light around them.

Now, that would be fine and dandy, but enter Darkness Elementals. They exude a field of 2 squares darkness (this overrides hyperlantern light), so you can't see anything within that range - even if you're in that field! (Importantly, you can't see the elemental itself.) Fortunately you still get "____ would kill you!" messages if you're next to one.

Orb: Orb of Smoke. Upon detonation, creates a field of smoke of radius 2 for 7 turns. While in it you are effectively invisible, even upon moving, collecting treasures, standing still, and attacking. It is similar to Orb of Flash should you try to kill monsters before it expires, but less instant; however you do gain a small amount of tactical mobility as a tradeoff.

[Toph]

Well, it was nothing like my idea, but we did get a storm-themed land with Fulgurites in 8.0, so I'm happy.

[zeno]

I think I will implement something like your idea too, at some moment :)

[tricosahedron]

I really can't complain about a lack of content after the recent update, but here's another (rough) land idea, inspired by M. C. Escher's Reptiles[en.wikipedia.org]:

The tiles have the shape of a lizard. Occasionally, some tiles will turn to life, and the lizards that emerge from them will leave behind a hole in the tiling, and try to attack the player. They are invincible, but will turn into a simple tile again when they land on another hole in the tiling.

Treasures are lizard statues: They have the same shape as a lizard, and picking them up will leave a hole in the tiling, and cause one or more lizards to emerge from other tiles.

Not sure how to handle plain or ASCII tile modes.

[Fulgur14]

The thing is that the Reptiles picture is Euclidean... each lizard is something of a 6-pointed star (1 head, 1 tail, 4 legs) so you would have to come with a variant that would work on a heptagon :) We would need two distinct pictures, one won't work for HyperRogue.

[tricosahedron]

Well, at least creating hyperbolic versions of Euclidean tilings is possible: Here[www.josleys.com] is a gallery of pictures that are hyperbolic versions of Euclidean tilings by Escher, and which were generated using the program 'Ultrafractal'.

The heptagons could indeed pose a problem, but in the worst case one could make only the hexagons lizard-shaped. Btw., it could be fun if the lizards had a zigzag movement pattern, e.g. if they could only enter hexagons (like Rock Snakes), or if they could not move between 2 hexagons.

[Fulgur14]

The method is funny -- increasing the multiplicity of certain vertices. E15 is originally based on squares and the hyperbolic version deforms them into quadrangles with angles 90, 90, 90 and 60 degrees. E70 is based on more complex pentagons with four 120-degree angles and a single 60-degree angle, duals to snub hexagonal tiling (four triangles and one hexagon at every vertex). The hyperbolic version reduces the 60-degree angle to 45 degrees. Very interesting.

[wonderfullizardofoz]

Re: this Reptiles idea, I'm picturing a more dangerous version of the Land Of Eternal Motion, where the native enemies leave chasms wherever they go but you have no such ability.

[wonderfullizardofoz]

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=549827766

The "wall-less great wall", as I've nicknamed it, is a potential border between two lands with no actual wall. It follows a hex line, essentially, with each side of the border alternating between hexagons and heptagons.

It could be used as the border between thematically-related lands, or it could become a regular addition to the game after a certain amount of treasure is collected, as with the alternate crossroads. An alternate crossroads where all the great walls are wall-less would be crazy!