Dear Doug,

Serial: Multiple adventures can share the same Save Adventure File
(SAF).

Lets say you have 200 maps. 5 common maps- similar to New Treleon,
Wilderness and Arbor Crest- that can be accessed at all times and 195
quest maps- similar to Cellars and Sewers. Common maps would be maps
0-4 and each adventure would have 27 new quest maps. You would have
8 adventures total in the series. By using Global State 247-254 you
could let the engine know which of the 8 parts the players are
supposed to be in and give the player a warning if they loaded the
wrong part- "I am sorry, you have loaded Part D of this series,
please load part B". Just like in "Return of Kra'an" players could
not start a new quest until they had finished the previous one and
talked to the king/ magician/ old wise man/ etc. However, like the
Lonely Spirit Inn & the Cellar, once a player completed a quest, they
could not return to that quest but would have to go one to the next
one. You would have to ask Jason and Gabe about the use of Local
State on maps 05-31 but they should reset when the players load a new
part of the serial. This would also keep down memory because the
player would only load part of the adventure into his PDA main memory
at one time.

Rethink: Do you really need that many towers in the game or could
this upset your players.

To illustrate, the MAPEDITOR recommends a map size of 30 x 30 (900
squares) which is a substantial amount of dungeon for the players to
explore. The Wilderness in "Return of Kra'an" was 70 x 80 (5600
squares or 6 times the size of a 30 x 30) and I searched every square
and tree, I never thought the level would end. You might want to
release your adventure with the first 32 maps and see how it is
received before making a 33+ map adventure. This also concerns
playability below.

Adapt: Force players to move through lower levels of the tower first.

In the Castle portion of "Return of Kra'an" different levels are
needed because it is a 3-D maze, but most time you can keep players
on the same map. I was running out of levels just like you, so I
took my trail levels, made them half as many maps- from 24 to 12- and
made each individual map 3 times as big. There is no limit to the
size of a map except PDA memory. In most trails, and most towers,
you must use the lower section to reach the upper section, unless it
is a 3-D maze like the Castle. In the adventure you could have a
ladder leading up to another part of the same map- MAP EXIT XXX YYY
255. Since they have to explore the bottom of the trail or tower
first, it does not matter that they can see the lower part on the
same map as the upper part. A designer could put in tall skinny
towers using the same map. A 5 x 5 tower the size of the Wilderness
map-5600 squares- the tower would have 224 levels. One map with 10
different towers size 5 x 5 would have 22 levels each tower, all on
one map.

Playability: A level has the following in common- random monsters
that can appear and sky (recharge) or no-sky (no recharging). Each
time a character goes to another map, the random monsters should get
more difficult. Dragon Bane II Engine is designed primarily for
parties of level 14-18. With starting characters- all spell casters
even if they have only one spell- the party's abilities changes
everytime they gain a new level of spells- character level 5th, 9th,
and 13th. The abilities peak around 16th level characters when they
catch up to the FIRE ELEMENTAL- 14th level to hit w/ 3rd level spells
and SHEOLAN- 18th level handweapon. One day I would like to build a
two part serial adventure that goes up to 28th- 36th level characters
and uses the same SAF. First, however, I am going to build a few
14th-18th level adventures to get more experience with the balance in
the Dragon Bane II Engine. With an 16th level party as a target, 32
maps gives you 2 maps with slightly different monsters per level of
the party. Unless Mythological Software increase spell levels higher
than 4, I think you will have a hard time keeping the player
interested in more than 32 maps and sets of random monsters.

Mythological Software has put a lot of thought and more importantly a
lot of playtesting into Dragon Bane 1 and Dragon Bane 2. While
designing my own dungeon I have found out many times they have made a
decision or done something one way because it is the best for game
play and enjoyment. "Return of Kra'an" has 30 maps, out of a
possible 32, and this lead to an enjoyable and fun adventure.

Sincerely yours,
Nuke 'em from 20'

--- In DragonBaneII@y..., "Gabe Dalbec" <gabe@m...> wrote:
>
> You could, but you would have to put one of these for every square
in the
> dungeon, which would take up a TON of memory, and would probably
make the
> level run slower.
>
> What you want is separate maps. If 32 isn't enough, we need that
feedback,
> so we can consider increasing the limit.
>
> There are other problems with using the same map to simulate
multiple maps,
> like lighting, monster density, the name of the map, etc (some of
these can
> be worked around in special code). Also, the set of monsters is
chosen per
> map, so you would have the same group of monsters in each simulated
map.
>
> -Gabe
> > --- In DragonBaneII@y..., "tess2tim" <tess2tim@y...> wrote:
> > > I like having 2 - 4 level dungeons and towers and these can eat
up
> > > maps quickly.
> > > -Doug
> > > > --- In DragonBaneII@y..., "tess2tim" <tess2tim@y...> wrote:
> > > > > To save on the number of maps I set up a single map with 3
> > > > different
> > > > > levels (different sections on the map). How do you (if you
> > can)
> > > > keep
> > > > > sections of the map unviewable. Example: If the party is in
> > level
> > > > 1
> > > > > (on the left side of the map) they cannot see level 2 (which
> > is on
> > > > > the right side of the map).
>