Jmurph wrote:
> Does anyone know what some good trap/monster/item ratios are for populating dungeons so that they aren't too cluttered but don't feel empty? Or is it all just kind of play by ear? I know there are ratios for generated items (IE in NetHack, appx. 16% of items are potions) but I wondered if there was a golden ratio for populations (IE 1 monster per 10 dungeon tiles, etc.).
For monsters, on a typical Rogue/Nethack level you'd have maybe 3 or 4 on the level at any given time except for cases like monster zoos and special levels. For both cases that works out closer to one monster for about every 50 tiles of open space. I think you're best off though thinking in terms of rooms or whole levels than tiles.
For instance, a typical level might contain 8 rooms, 4 monsters (with more occasionally generated during your stay), and 5 items. Occurrence of other special items like sinks, fountains, etc. should be more or less a low chance calculated on room creation, with room for it to vary in different areas. Monster zoos and shops should be a similar low chance. Keeping all this in mind, you can probably set up a good generator just going by rooms, like if you have 8 rooms then in each regular room there's a 50% chance of a monster and a 50% chance of at least one item. Or an N% chance of a monster; if that succeeds then another N% chance of another monster; and so on, and the same for items.
If you use the N% + N% + N% + ... formula for generating items or monsters, I've worked out what N should be in order to reach a given target percentage. If the target item ratio is cT, then the chance for each next item c@ relates to it like so:
cT = c@ ÷ (1 - c@)2
That can be worked out quadratically to this:
c@ = 1 - [sqrt(4cT + 1) - 1] ÷ 2cT
With a target cT=0.5, that works out to c@=2-sqrt(3) or around 0.267949. So if you use 0.267949 as the chance for each item/monster and re-roll after each one, you should still end up with roughly 4 items, 4 monsters in an 8-room level.
Lummox JR |
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