Why did Dungeon Keeper work so well?

Hey guys, so I grabbed Dungeon Keeper off of GoG for a couple bucks and I found the whole experience kind of interesting.

For one, my nostalgia glasses were immediately smudged when I realized that the game has aged horridly. The resolution is horrid, the controls are not that great, the game is loaded with several bugs and crashes randomly, it's WAY too short (but mainly because it runs out of things to do with the tool box given to you).

BUT, I do have to admit it was fun and most like was as long as it needed to be. Dungeon Keeper 2 is a painful reminder of how unnecessary additional content was.

Still, it was undeniably unique and fun.

Why?

Well, the obvious is that the game was packed full of little fun discoveries. Of course my giant spiders are going to eat my giant flies. Of course the dominatrix wants to be tortured in the torture chamber. You can beat minions with your cursor to make them work harder at the cost of some health?!

All good and fun.

But what was REALLY what sold it was the fact that the dungeon, for the most part, took care of its self and let you just make the big choices. While most RTS games had you select a worker, then tell them to build something, then tell surrounding workers to help. You just clicked what you wanted and the imps got on it. If there wasn't anything to do they would reinforce the walls and claim tiles.

And every unit had a job and just did it.

You didn't need to tell wizards to go research they just did it. Trolls went straight to the work shop. And so on.

If you wanted to have someone do something you just dropped them on in.

Meanwhile you could always help out by moving gold to treasury areas. Or beat your minions. Or heal them. Or go in their view to make them work extremely fast.

Hate the guy or love him (but mostly hate him) Peter Molyneux did make some crazy fun games back in the day.

What do you all think?

 

I've never played it, but it's been on my vague I-ought-to-try-that-sometime list for about two decades, so, I really ought to try it somebody.

From what you describe, it sounds a bit Dwarf Fortress-ish, or maybe Corporation Inc-ish, but with the whole twisted humor of building something to destroy adventurers.

Maybe somebody should do a fresh take on it... it sounds like it'd make a good mobile game. Except today, they'd put in the stupid @*#! "feature" where anything you build takes half an hour unless you spend some coins/gems/real-money to rush it. Gawd, how I hate those games.

 

There is a spiritual successor to the game. Having played both I felt they were both very enjoyable. The DM is hilarious too.

 

Plus, the narrator. (BTW, I totally agree with Not_Sure that, in addition to the great style, the units' unique autonomy made the game.)

I can't tell if you're kidding. If so, forgive me for being dense. If not, remember articles like these? Will EA learn from the terrible Dungeon Keeper mobile game?

 

No, I wasn't kidding, and I hadn't heard of that.

I've never been so depressed about being absolutely right.

 

On the bright side, maybe it leaves an opening for someone else to finally do it right for mobile. Perhaps in a James Bond-esque supervillain theme, or a Frankensteinian lab, or any number of sci-fi scenarios.

 

I agree with you. I played more on Dungeon Keeper 1 than the second episode (Peter Molyneux didn't work on it and you can feel it).

I also played to "War for the overworld" which is kind of a remake of DK2.

But overall, DK1 was the best because it was more simple, it was fun to have the choice to overpower one mistress or horny to controle it and destroy your enemy only with it, something you can't really do in DK2 and WFTO.

The horny minion was fun to play and to train your minion you only needed one room and time (but CTRL and + would accelerate globally the game).

I used all the time the accelerate time feature and my brain was running at maximum speed, always something to do, never bored.

I always though I would someday make a remake of DK1 when I have more time.

I discovered this game when I was like 12 ou 13 years old and replayed it probably at 16 then 22.

At that time, I wanted to have someone to play against me to extend the game's life.

 

Had to laugh at that one, knowing how the actual DK mobile game turned out

I wonder what kind of games with sort of RTS-like controls would not benefit from a way to fast forward time. It seems like a good way to give the player the tool to minimize their own boredom. I remember making extensive use of it in Homeworld Cataclysm and thinking at times I wouldn't have the patience to play these missions at all, if it wasn't for timewarp.

 

I have to say that after one or two hours of DK1 playing like that, returning to the real world was painful, it felt like everything was too slow.

 

They are.

 

Briefly considering it over the past couple of days:

• Lack of competition (it's near the very top of the "god games" list on Wikipedia).
  
• Original idea (it started the whole concept of dungeon management).
  
• Funny mentor (world map for the first game, but overall for the second).
  
• Well known company (Bullfrog had some good titles).

 

Yes they did. Too bad there aren't any Magic Carpet clones.

 

Why indeed? I suppose that question could be asked of many games, particularly old ones.

I will admit the game hasn't aged all that well, particularly in the graphics department. More importantly though, I often find the game moving rather slowly for my modern taste. Still fun, but it does boil down to a little too much waiting.

I certainly believe the game wouldn't have done nearly as well had it been released at a later time. I think gamers today would find the pace to be too sluggish, particularly in the levels where you have gems.

 

I was wondering, if I wanted to create an open source remake of DK1 where anyone can contribute, would I be allowed to do so ?

 

A straight remake? Offhand I'd say no, but it would depend entirely on how Bullfrog feels about it. I'd reach out to them and see how the company feels about it, otherwise it likely wouldn't end well.

 

Indeed reach them before is the smartest way so far but Bullfrog doesn't exist anymore.

According to Wikipedia, EA acquired the studio in 1995 but on the french page of it it says that Bullfrog disappeared in 2004.

So it seems EA have the licence of Dungeon Keeper (and destroyed it with their mobile game) but since it would be an Open Source free project, I don't know what it mean for the licence. (What about donation ?).

Aside though: I wonder what will happen when every games's licence made before 2000 will be expired, but we all be very old or dead by then.

 

I never got fan projects that use the original name.

Why not remake it then just call it "Dungeon Master" or something and sell it?

 

My first idea was to make an exact copy up to date graphically, I think just changing the name will not be enough isn't ?

 

Some projects get around such issues by loading the art assets from the original game and thus requiring the player to own the original. Afaik that's how all the things like brutal doom, zDoom etc. do it. You'll still need to make sure your product can't be confused with the original and whatever other pitfalls trademark laws might have for this kind of thing.

Honestly I don't think it's worth the headache and time investment when you could work on your own original IP instead.

 

Someone beat you to it.

https://opendungeons.github.io/

 

Awesome

But well, I was thinking of making the exact same gameplay as DK1 and use Unity instead of Ogre...

 

Right. I don't know of any reason why you couldn't build an open source clone and upload it somewhere. A quick search through UnityList shows there are already other open source Unity games on Github. There is also the Daggerfall engine remake project that is designed to use the assets of the original game.

Dungeon Master is taken.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dungeon_Master_(video_game)

 

Or something...

My point is why not make money off of your efforts?

As far as Brutal Doom goes they're using their own code and assets that plugs into another program. They are not distributing doom, or any Id property. Legally there's nothing that they COULD do.

Blizzard went through this with the original Diablo when a third party developer made an unofficial expansion called "Hellfire". Since none of their code or assets were used there wasn't any reason they could stop it from being published. Although, arguably it added to the value of the original product so why would they want to?

But back to Brutal Doom, I don't see why they would bother putting in so much effort into a decades old game and give it away, when they could have more easily made their own FPS from scratch AND made money off of it.

If you wanted to make a Dungeon Keeper game you could most likely look up the math they used and slap it into Unity. It's not exactly the most complicated game ever. Then with an artist and a little investment you could easily get it on Steam, GoG, or whatever.

EDIT: Here's a good start if you're interested in the math from DK.

http://dungeonkeeper.wikia.com/wiki/Category:Creatures

EDIT: Personally though I think DK would work well as an asymmetrical game. You have an overworld map and as the bad guy you pick a location to hide the entrance to of your dungeon. You then dig into the ground and unearthing minerals, setting up traps, researching new things, and building your army.

Meanwhile the good player has the starting advantage, but needs to find the dungeon and destroy the heart before it's too late for them to overpower the dungeon.

And in the mean time the bad guy can make raids on the good player and steal resources. Or they could set up several decoy dungeons.

 

I think it is questionable if enough people would have cared at all about the game/mod, if it wasn't based on the most iconic first person shooter IP ever. It is profiting from Doom's popularity and quality (levels are still the same I think?). Its success could not be easily replicated with original IP without having an established fanbase first, unless you have one of the best marketing videos in gaming history.
Now that Brutal Doom is a hit, I think the dev could make his own IP and people would care if they liked Brutal Doom already. Isn't he already working on a new game? I think I heard something like that from a friend.

 

I'm not sure what he's up to these days, but if I'm not mistaken isn't Brutal Doom a free mod? There's no profit in free mods.

At any rate, I'd rather sell 10,000 games for $10 a pop than give away 10,000,000 copies for free any day.

 

Except that the far more likely outcome is selling 0 games for $10 a pop. (Maybe 2 or 3 copies if you have nice friends/relatives.) At $2 a pop, you might get lucky and sell 100.

The gaming market is brutal.

 

Most markets are just as brutal. Try making anything yourself and then selling it to the general public.

 

Been there, done that. Games are especially brutal for a few reasons:

• Games have no intrinsic value.
• Games are a sexy product that everyone wants to make.
• The 'next unit' cost of making a game is effectively nothing.

Selling ag chemicals, paint, coding time tutorials and LARP costumes have all turned out easier then selling games. None of those markets have the same race to the bottom quality of video games.

It's certainly worth knowing the characteristics of the market you are operating in. Telling yourself it's all the same is not a good idea.

 

Well... I just wanted to make a remake out of passion without thinking about any marketing and business stuff.
I just want to do it on my free time like any other hobbies and if poeple like it, good for them.

I have a full time job and two childs, I can't take the risk to rely on a such impredictable market but I have a huge respect for thoses who takes theses risks.

 

That's fair.

I'm in the same boat, but I'm still going to try to sell whatever I make.

 

Not to derail the derail, but the point about automation piqued my interest. DK minions actually do some useful actions, and that makes what could be an overwhelming micro fest into a strategic experience that feels like I still have control when I play it. I always wished that in RTS games I could give conditional orders, like "When a tank gets to 50% health, retreat to be repaired" or "When a large group of infantry come in, send all flame tanks to that area".

Especially annoying are when a unit is being ranged or going into an obviously awful location because of poor pathfinding/AI, and just sits there soaking up damage like an idiot rather than reacting in the only way possible. I think that when it's a "no brainer" move, where only one thing is the "right" action, if it doesn't add excitement or fun it should be handled by AI.

I actually had a really interesting discussion with a friend who works for a professional studio where we made a case for using friendly AI to carry out more complex decision-based behavior, allowing the player to manage much larger groups and have much larger engagements with supply chains and notifications for events that the player needs to resolve. Especially if it was a scale, where players who love micro can go smaller scale and control everything by hand, moving up to mostly automated minions following a master strategy for those who want to be at ten thousand feet.

DK does pretty good with having it fixed in a place where it's still fun, and useful, and I rarely have "dammit what is this guy doing" moments like a lot of other games. I'd guess that the key is making sure that the AI only does stuff the players generally don't care about doing, particularly urgent repetitive non-skilled stuff, and making it do it in a way that the player wants. Nobody wants another Superfly getting stuck in the map and bogging down the experience