Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - Suggestions and Feedback Dungeon/level design suggestion

I've created a model to explain suggestion for non-linear vertical dungeon design.
Intention of the level is that player have fun exploring because level itself is cloaked with mystery.


Map legend

• Sphere - point where engine seamlessly loads upper floor/level and indicates where player can go back down.
  These are usually stairs.
  
• Icosphere - secret item/weapon ... which can be obtained solving the puzzle or is hidden behind secret wall
  
• Torus - mysterius portal; some are working, some are not
  
• Pyramid - quest and/or boss area with boss encounter or some other tough A.I.

notes:
Walls and pillars are not scaled to exact measure.
They need to be placed to hide some A.I. encounter or secret door to another area


edit: updated

Give this man a cookie! This is awesome looking

If the in-game map could be looked at like this by a 'Game Master' that would be cool. It would allow the 'Game Master' to dynamically place things on a 3d map or whatever when the game is in progress.

Hey, I forgot to mention that after you beat the boss there should be some exit point of the area if the player chooses to leave.
Level map is inspired by Bloodborne and Dark Souls 3 level maps.

Looks interesting

Do you have ideas how to make level design more interesting and compelling ? (in japanese: omoshiroi )

Well, for starters, before you even begin to design the dungeon, you should first decide what the place is - what function it has or had. What reason does this dungeon have to exist. What goal are the designers trying to accomplish?

Inspired by action games is not a good starting place for a turn-based game. This map is mostly narrow corridors which does not fit very well at all with the style of D:OS 1 and 2A combat arenas and it fits ESPECIALLY POORLY with the "harmful-surface creating" combat of the game.

The value of verticality is also questionable since bridges which you can walk over and under are impossible in the engine. Some has been added back in with height bonuses for archers, and D:OS 2 makes plenty of use of varied height, but the game also usually encourages keeping your party together, and this design seems to make it difficult to go back and forth between areas of different height without a lot of backtracking.

I'd honestly never realised that: they've done a good job of disguising it, but yeah, now that you mention it. I remember having similar incredulity when I learnt the same was true of Doom way back.

A friend of mine literally just gave up on modding Dragon Age entirely when she realized the engine wouldn't allow for multiple levels like that.

It seems to be a staple of top-down engines.

I had in mind stairs which leads to upper floor level (the sphere sign). This can be achieved by seamlessly loading the upper level or through loading screen.
Verticality of the level can boost the exploration value.

Also, it would be cool if the level design follows animated structure as in Dishonored 2 Clockwork mansion level. When player hits the switch, level starts to reshape.

Cool idea, but how would you suggest handling the age old problem of how to handle maps in a level with a lot of verticality. It has been handled, with varying degrees of success, in the past in a number of ways but in almost all cases I would say it's better to focus on creating interesting scenery than worrying about multilevel design. (unless you create a compelling use for the multiple tiers like puzzles or encounters of course)

I'm not sure that the engine can even handle geography which would be reshaped. Reshaping geography looks much cooler in first-person games and third-person platformers than top-down isometric games.

Stabbey, Killroy, animated dungeon could be used for puzzles and mazes.
The engine could pull it off. It's full 3D engine. You could have pillar raised and could lead you to another level area and back. It does not need to be as complex as in Dishonored 2.
I think this could be great fun in the game and completely another experience itself.

Yeah, for sure. It could be cool. That's a significant chunk of design that needs to be done for this late in the games dev cycle though. I'd love to see some cool level design based puzzles though.

The real question is whether or not all the hoops are required to make that happen, I'm a little less sold on that front.

If we had infinite amount of time and infinite amount of money, yes, it could be pulled off.
But no, the engine is not "full 3D".
As stated above by Stabbey, the AI grid / Pathfinding is 2D. You can't pass under a bridge and above. You can't go on a balcony and pass under it. We also don't have any "moving platform" whatsoever. We don't have the tech for it.
We always block one of the path because the AI grid doesn't handle that.
Have I personally asked to be able to have a 3D grid? Yes. Will it happen? Not for now. It would need a really big amount of work to be done. Switching from 2D to 3D is one hell of a task.

CRPGs are usually pretty static environment wise.
If you look at all the other top down CRPGs, DoS is pretty much the most dynamic. Could it be more dynamic, for sure, no doubt about that. But everything has "a price". When you make a game, you have to make choice. You can't ship all the ideas that you have if you want the game production to not last forever .

Being in full 3D actually hurts the games chances of utilizing moving parts because of the added complexity of AI creation. Usually, in the rare instances it is done, the AI is either scripted to use the terrain features under specific circumstances designed for a specific encounter (a lot of time investment so you want to make sure it's a really important encounter) or designed to be robust enough to intelligently use moving platforms to their advantage in pathing. (which is much harder and even more time consuming, and as an added topper usually creates abuse-able behavior) You then also need at least two people to work on the assets to make the feature work. A graphics designer to make the models and hopefully one that knows how to do their own rigging, as well as a programmer to add it properly and set up the pathing maps to incorporate it. After all that you have one encounter that is slightly cooler than average... It could be done, yes, but it's probably not worth the hassle.

Perhaps my understanding of how it could be done more cost effectively is flawed but the above is basically why you only see moveable objects related to combat in 2D games where AI scripting is MUCH easier or when enemies have a method of ignoring the terrain like flight or even no clip in some cases. (Oh 8bit 2D platformers :P)