SP Native Catacombs mod 0.91

[Chel]

Catacombs mod ​

Try to escape from prison through a network of underground catacombs.
You will fight numerous enemies and try to acquire great items before assaulting the prison keep.

Player death is permanent and to truly beat the mod you're expected to play with realistic saving.
(Although this first version is not yet well balanced and may be too hard or too easy)


-Look around your prison cell carefully before leaving.
-There are helpful items to be found in the catacomb walls, not only in treasure rooms and loot.

Download link: https://www.mbrepository.com/file.php?cid=10&id=244

I'm looking for suggestions on gameplay and comments on balance. Let me know if it is too hard or easy, some enemies too strong or weak, some items too powerful or useless. Thank you!


Version 0.9
-New world map
-New battle map
-New items
-New troops
-Treasure rooms
-Hidden treasure

Version 0.91
-Removed manhunters and farmers spawning
-Decreased army patrol party size
-Increased the amount of enemy parties on the map
-Adjusted polearm stats
-Adjusted Prison Keep defenders
-Adjusted armory and treasure stash loot

Things to do:
-Improve enemy spawning in battle map
-Improve the prison keep
-Improve balance
-Add items
-Add more treasure rooms


Contributor Credits
luigi -- items
Raptor -- weapons
Aqtai -- pictures for textures

​

 

[Colt]

Except for the somewhat off-putting red walls it looks very interesting and I'll certainly give it a run-through when it's done. I'm really quite impressed by how you've managed to consistantly put out these small but high quality works.

 

[Chel]

is this wall color better?

 

[Janus]

To me, the problem with the wall texture is that it's much too monochrome. Basically just two colors.

The idea sounds kinda fun.

 

[Highblood89]

Catacombs remember me on Diablo or, not all know it I guess, Arx Fatalis.

 

[Swordmaster]

Good luck Chel. You are really making good mods even if it's small.

 

[Demon samurai]

From looking at it i think reds better it just make is look that bit sinister and suits what u you are doing cause the guy STANDS out from the wall and that looks effective . so basically change it back

 

[fisheye]

Are those custom scenes?

If you give me the 5 standard forms of rooms (dead end, corridor, L-shape, t-shape, cross-junction) I can probably figure out how to make the maze randomly generated.

EDIT: Ok, I see you said you haven't tried modelling, so I guess not. Anyway standard rooms are really easy to model, just a pain to prop. Hmmm. If I make a barebones random dungeon, would you help me prop it? It would be the first "roguelike" mod.

 

[yori]

this kinda reminds me of diablo 2 act 2 lol ill try it out for sure

 

[Chel]

A roguelike is what I had in mind, yes.
If prop is placing objects with in-game edit mod, I could do that.

This one I planned like this:
The world map is drawn using plain (stone texture) and water (red lava) terrains into a maze. The enemy parties spawn along the maze on the world map and the character moves on the world map, having to fight the parties:


And I built the catacombs on the battle map where the fights between the enemy party and the character take place. So it is quite a large maze without loading a new scene at every turn, but the same every time

 

[fisheye]

That's cool, but not what I had in mind.

Which roguelikes have you played? There was this variant of Angband called TOME. It had an overland map and a series of catacombs. I was thinking something like that. A proper overland map with minor enemies. All the real assholes are below ground in the dungeons, which are totally randomly generated every time you enter them.

Level-scaled loot and baddies, of course. The deeper you go, the harder it is to survive. When you get killed, you get booted back to the surface.

 

[tuktuk]

That's cool, but not what I had in mind.

Which roguelikes have you played? There was this variant of Angband called TOME. It had an overland map and a series of catacombs. I was thinking something like that. A proper overland map with minor enemies. All the real assholes are below ground in the dungeons, which are totally randomly generated every time you enter them.

Level-scaled loot and baddies, of course. The deeper you go, the harder it is to survive. When you get killed, you get booted back to the surface.

Sounds better in my opinion to be honest, but you really have to have the main balance on dungeons becose otherwise this might get too close to yoshis RPGmod.

 

[Chel]

That is similar to what Yoshi is doing, fisheye, only without the randomly generated dungeons. Also a much bigger project than I'd like to commit to now.

I think a single deep dungeon with maybe a few branches would be good. Without monsters and magic there isn't much variety in enemies for a long dungeon.
However I think a randomly generating dungeon would be great and can be made very fun. A project worth working on.
I tried fighting some vaegir deserters in my catacombs and it was more fun than I expected, the AI often coming at you from unexpected places and navigating the maze well enough.

The vanilla wall texture does not look as sinister:

 

[Smokedfish]

It's easier on the eyes though.

 

[Cymro]

Hmm... Such a shame it isn't one big dungeon, and if you die you go back to the start, mainly becaus that is the entire point of roguelikes (you were expected to win without saving)

Speaking of which, I must find out how to do that.

 

[fisheye]

Hmm. I know that it will only take a weekend of work to make a randomly generated dungeon....

But I'm off my modding kick lately. I want to do it, but... I want to do other (non-modding) things more.

So I'm not doing the random dungeon. Oh well, sorry guys.

 

[Septa Scarabae]

You could always slightly edit the Native texture hue for a different look (I hate the yellow stucco colors):



Another thought would be using a stone texture for the walls, instead of brick. As for the lava, it looks a bit like blood. I'd suggest highlighting the texture with yellow or orange.

 

[denizk]

The world map is drawn using plain (stone texture) and water (red lava) terrains into a maze.

Perhaps it is a good idea to decrease the amount of red color in this mod just to make the life easier for the players. Other than that, it looks promising.


And one thing I couldn't figure out: Does the whole story progress in the catacombs or just some part of it?

 

[Chel]

It is all in the catacombs, deniz.

Here are two of the 4 different starting classes:
Savage (light armor, thrown axe, morningstar, large sword) and Paladin (heavy armor, mace, long sword, shield)


And this will be the wall color:


I've got some strange problem with the map, not all the places I click on the world map make the character move there. And periodically an error comes up on the world map that can be ignored, but still something isnt right.

The map looks like this:

 

[Merentha]

Looking good.  The Paladin armor looks intricately beautiful.  I wonder though-if you start with that gear, will there be any way to improve? Or is this supposed to be more of a dungeon crawl idea, with not much equipment progression?