Dungeon

NOTE : I JUST COPY PASTED THIS ARTICLE FROM THE DOCS, I'LL MAKE IT BETTER SOON

The dungeon is composed of a bunch of levels (floors). The player starts at the top and goes towards the depths of the dungeon in their quest.

Most levels will be a series of rooms that the player can explore, encountering other characters, fighting enemies, finding equipment and riches along the way. Or dying.

The dungeon is composed of multiple “branches”, interconnected groups of floors that are part of the same “unit”, be it a forest, a cave or a poisonous swamp.

Biomes will determine the type of environment that can be found in a dungeon’s branch. This will affect what kind of floor, traps, monsters, loot and NPCs the Player will encounter.

The main branch has the highest number of levels in it as it goes pretty deep. Most other branches will generally be 2 to 6 levels or so.

## Rooms

Rooms are built around central set pieces (pre-made structures) designed to make fights exciting.

Each room in a floor will usually have an Encounter in it, during which the player will have options to talk, negotiate and fight with non-player characters, with more or less risk and more or less reward. Brute force may not always be the safest or the most profitable way of solving an encounter.

Some rooms may be empty, containing maybe very minimal loot, or interactible objects that might start an encounter.

## Points of interest

The dungeon features towns, lairs, inns, temples and shops, where the Player can spend their money and acquire equipment and supplies for exploration.

Various points of interest can be situated in a level in place of a room encounter. They can also be a mini-branch, a floor parallel to the floor they're connected to.

### Shops

Shops can replace a room encounter. They allow the player to find a variety of items they can buy, as well as sell some of the riches they've found during exploration.

Apart from general stores, shops are specialized and only deal in one type of items. The following types of shops should be available :

* General (pretty much any kind of item can be found there, any kind of item can be sold)
* Tools ? (light sources, pick-axes, lockpicking equipment...)
* Weapons
* Armor
* Scrolls & books
* Potions
* Jewelery
* Food

### Inns

Inns can replace room encounters. They allow the player to rest, eat or buy some food, talk to other characters in the common room and potentially recruit new party members.

### Temples

Temples can replace room encounters and generally contain an altar, a priest, and some random faithfuls.

The player may buy blessings or holy water from the priest. High level temples may give an artifact to a very devout character. The player might find a faithful willing to join the party. Of course, players can attack cross-aligned temples. (Life vs Death, Order vs Chaos etc.)

### Towns

Towns are 1-floor branches and contain a few buildings, some shops, an inn and a temple. They're usually well-guarded.

Towns are generally aligned and their alignment dictates the kind of citizens that live in them, which means they may also be hostile to the player.

### Lairs

Lairs are branches composed of a few rooms containing the themed characters and some treasure. They may be monster lairs, in which case they contain a few hostile monster encounters with variations of the same type of monster and a boss monster.

They may be aligned strongholds, in which case they contain aligned soldiers and faithfuls. If they're of the same alignment the player may find potential party members. They may also attack them if they're of the opposite alignment, for some hard fights but good experience and loot. They might potentially find some captives of their alignment they can free for rewards or to gain new party members.

## Biomes

A branch's biome determines a bunch of stuff for the levels in that branch:

* the environment (floor, walls, decorations)
* the characters that can be encountered
* the interactible or static objects and traps that can be found in rooms
* the items that can be found
* the shape and form of the rooms

Each level is usually composed of a number of rooms that can contain peaceful or hostile encounters and/or various points of interest.

Here are some of the potential biomes the player could find while exploring the game.

Each biome will likely be a lot of work in terms of both programming and art assets so most of those ideas won't be used for a long time. (also these are mostly just ideas, some will likely be discarded or replaced by others)

### Ruins

Regular dungeon setting, big rooms made of stone, statues, old suits of armor that kinda stuff

Can be turned into a catacomb setting by adding caskets, sarcophagi, bones and general mausoleum-y stuff. Maybe some individual rooms can be catacomb-style stuff in normal ruins floors.

Some room entrances may be collapsed instead of having a door like normal, potentially barring the player from exploring the room unless they have a way to clear the rubble. (those rooms should probably not have encounters or at least not encounters with regular living things)

**Traps and interactibles**

Will mostly get the most common traps/interactibles, increasing in lethality as the player goes deeper.

Of course, the catacombs stuff can get all the undead-related stuff.

**Potential creatures**

Smaller beasts and insects, brigands, cultists, gargoyles, living statues, minotaurs and other adventurers

Catacombs get skeletons, zombies, vampires, liches, ghosts etc.

**Room styles**

Mostly L/H/h/U-shaped rooms, with little variations in height, lots of pillars.

Straight corridors link the rooms together.

### Caverns

Plain caverns, beast lairs, flooded caverns, mines or lava caves

**Traps and interactibles**

Pits, poisonous and explosive gases, mine carts, unstable pillars or piles of rocks and rolling boulders

Mostly lit by lanterns, torches and glowing mushrooms

**Potential creatures**

Worms, giant moles, bigass digging scarabs, giant ants and spiders, earth and fire elementals, manticores, lesser demons, aquatic eldritch fishmen assholes, troglodyte weirdoes, rat people, civilized Golems and humans

**Room styles**

Big open spaces, blob-shaped rooms for the most part, platforms, stairs and slides, climbable stuff

### Forest

A weird underground forest mysteriously lit in parts by the ceiling and in parts by luminescent plants and mushrooms (yes I love glowing mushrooms).

**Traps and interactibles**

Contains a bunch of poisonous vines and exploding mushrooms, walls of brambles, carnivorous plants etc.

**Potential creatures**

Beasts, insects, plants, snakes, horrible malformed vegetal stuff as well as civilized Sylvans and Fae

**Room styles**

Small clearings and sinuous, narrow passages, lots of destructible trees and brambles opening the space up

### Swamp

Poisoned swamps, complete with a cathedral containing more poison swamps.

Lots of misshapen trees, bogs, reeds and weird poisonous creatures everywhere

**Traps and interactibles**

Poisonous plants and stuff, underwater tentacles, grabby trees,

**Potential creatures**

Bigass mosquitoes, giant snakes and spiders, basilisks, gorgons, dragons owo?, naga, giant eels/kraken-y stuff, scavenger birbs, giant frogs, piranha thingies?, more eldritch assholes and demons, civilized Lizardfolk and Shapeshifters

**Room styles**

Dirt islands often linked by narrow land passages. Characters can traverse the swamp directly instead of through the land passages, but they might get poisoned or attacked by stuff in the water.

### Demonic realm

Hellish landscape filled to the brim with demons and other nasty stuff

...

### Eldritch temple

Half-submerged temple to the glory of ancient, twisted divinities.

...

## Modifiers

Dungeon floors and rooms may get random modifiers that change their layout or the amount and type of environment features like traps or rubble or water.