The dimensional portals from RotDG are a great framework for creating cool tangential themed areas. There is a lot of potential for expanding the game if modders had a few more tools: 1. The ability to incorporate custom tile sets in dimensional zones: What I mean by this is that when a player enters a dimensional portal, it should be possible for the modder to designate a custom tile set specificially for the zone. This will make it possible to create unique dimensions, like a cheese-land or a candy-land (with chocolate water tiles), or a spaceship. 2. the ability to designate special dimensional rooms, unique to that dimension. In following with the ability to designate a custom tile set should be the option to specify from a list which rooms the dimension will map out (and also to specify which rooms would not appear in other dimensional zones if those zones used rooms randomly from the rooms.xml. 3. the ability to spawn special monsters, unique to the dimension. If the first two points can be managed, then the modder could create custom rooms with special mob spawns to compensate. But it would also be nice to instead be able to specify from a list which hostile mobs would spawn in the dimensional zone. The list should be exclusive, meaning that no other mobs are randomly spawned in the zone aside from the ones on the list. These three points are the essential tools that modders would need to make amazing content. the following points are more ancillary, meaning that they would be nice, but not necessary: 1. The ability to spawn a custom portal If modders had the ability to create custom portal objects with a gauranteed chance of sending the player to a specific dimensional zone, then it would be possible for modders to specify which floor the special portal would appear. For example, the portal to candy-land could appear in a special room on floor 1 with a sprite that appears to be a portal to a strange land of sweets. It would also be nice if dimensional zones could be flagged so that they would not appear randomly if the modder wished for the player to enter their dimensional zone only through a specific portal. 2. The ability to change the game soundtrack to a specific track. It would be nice to have special flags like this when a player enters a strange new place if the music could change to something that does not ordinarily play, like a portal leading to diggle deliverance that changes the soundtrack to an ominous dungeon banjo tune. These are all of the ideas i can think of at the moment. I'll update this thread if i come up with more.
This could be the key to people's inventory concerns. My method for dealing with an over flowing inventory is to find a room with a lot of same level portals (for easy access), and putting infrequent access items (crafting stuff, extra food, etc...) sorted into piles, and coming back to it after every level, and eventually shlepping the whole thing down a few levels when I get about five floors past it. With a bit of dimensional control, a storage dimension could be created. Accessible either from a custom room or (if possible) a summoned portal tile.
It'd also be nice to have portals that didn't dissapear when you left them available with modded portals. Perhaps there could be a hidden Brax shop in another dimension. Of course in that case it'd be more evil to have it dissapear so you can't save up for anything, but it'd certainly be interesting. Perhaps allow us to define negative floors in the branchDB as special otherdimensional floors. Manually including other levels' floors or specific rooms could be nice as well. Of course the branchDB would have to be loaded by mods then. Then in the rooms there could just be a mysteriousportal element type, and the ability to specify a branch and whether it remains after entering.
