RogueRunner Development

Moving Between Areas

The goal of many of the features of RogueRunner is to meet the needs of both randomly generated and hand designed worlds. Moving between areas is one of those key features. In Angband, for example, there is 1 town at the top, and X number of floors in the dungeon. You can't move off the edge of the map, and stairs are the only way to move up or down ( besides scrolls ) - pretty simple. In RogueRunner, all travel between levels will be handled with generic 'warps'. A warp is simply a cell that can take the player from one area to another, or from one level of an area to another.

The are 2 types of warps - directional and point:

Directional warps will take the player to neighboring areas in the 4 cardinal directions and above and below. If the area is a multilevel dungeon, the above and below warps will be used like stairs to connect each level, and only the top and bottom levels will take the player into a new area.

Point warps take the player to a specific cell in a specific area. This can be in the same level or in an entirely different area - it doesn't matter. Since these are so specific, they probably won't be used much in randomly generated parts of the world, but they can be very useful for things hand designed. One area where they will come into use is on the overworld map. When the player walks off the edge of a town map, for example, the player will be warped to the specific location of the town on the overworld.

Both types of warps can be used in 2 ways - walking onto them and activating them.

Not surprisingly, walking warps are activated by simply walking on them. Areas that have neighbooring areas in the cardinal directions will automatically have these types of warps created for them on the edges of the map. There's lots of situations where a walk-on warp makes sense, like a portal that warps you to another realm, or a trap door that 'warps' you to a pit level you have to fight your way out of.

Activation warps will need to be activated in some way. These are warps that you can choose if and when you actually use them. The most common will be using the '<' and '>' keys to warp up and down in a dungeon. Remember that point warps can also be activation triggered - so say the player beats the final boss and must now destroy the forbidden tome he dropped to erase the memory of the dark spells that he used to reign in terror. When the player smashes the book on the nearby altar, there is a great explosion, all goes black, and they wake up in their bed at home. Behind the scenes, the altar was a activation point warp.

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