I want to take my foundation to the next level

Explore ways to advance your Ancient Dangers foundation beyond the basics.

Use Herb and Fallen Hero Notes to put narrative in your level#

These are advanced elements to use, but if you’re a keen learner just give it a go! Giving players some narrative is a lot of fun and can incentivise them to play through your dungeon. You can see examples of their setup within the template scenes. Try to have Herb deliver the key info, saving other details for the notes, as the player _has _to sit Herb chatter but can opt to read notes or not.

Herb#

There’s no getting around it - this is quite a complicated element. But don’t panic. There’s really just one part of the logic you need to find and make edits to.

If you just want a one-off Herb moment, follow these steps:

1. Stamp the element in the location you want it.
2. Scope in three times till you see the Herb Logic microchip and open it up.
3. Check the trigger zone is the appropriate size for your needs.
4. Find and open the Herb Dialogue microchip.
5. You’ll see a bunch of dialogue text displayers. They’re in pairs - tweak the top pair and you’ll see they say Herb Chatter 1 and Herb End 1. The logic for the start and end of a chatter depends on these. This will give you 2 bubbles in your Herb chatter.
6. Tweak these and input the text you want.

If you want the chatter to have more bubbles, that involves a bit more work:

1. Clone Herb Chatter 1 and stamp it to the left.
2. That clone is now your first bubble, so it’ll help to indicate this in the text for your own memory and the purposes of this explanation - we’ll refer to them by their new positions from now on.
3. Delete the wire that goes from the output of the AND gate to Chatter 2.
4. Connect the output of the AND gate to the input of Chatter 1.
5. Now connect the next output from Chatter 1 to the start text input of Chatter 2.

You can just leave it there - the text will chain properly. But if you want to add some polish, you can connect up another 2 wires to control Herb’s audio and animation:

1. Tweak Chatter 1 and go to the inputs & outputs page.
2. Move the tweak menu to the left for this next bit.
3. Clone the wire coming from the text active output on Chatter 2.
4. Connect it to the text active output on Chatter 1.
5. Now clone the wire coming from the text animating output on Chatter 2.
6. Connect it to the text animating output on Chatter 1.

Phew! That was a lot of wiring!

So that covers Herb speaking to your player once. If you’re feeling up for it, the Herb Dialogue microchip actually gives you the ability to have Herb speak to your player 5 times in different places your level. In that case follow these steps:

1. Activate the teleport switch on the Herb Logic microchip.
2. Set up the positions you want Herb to appear. The location where Herb is stamped is the first dialogue location.
3. Place tags, which you should name HerbTeleport, at each of the subsequent locations you want him to appear.
4. In the Herb Dialogue microchip, find the Herb Teleport microchip.
5. Find the 5 outputs you need, all named Power Tag Called “HerbTeleport”.
6. Wire each output from top to bottom to the HerbTeleport tags in sequence.
7. The system is linear. After the first chatter is triggered at the start location the logic activates the next HerbTeleport tag in sequence. After that one is done it activates the next. And so on. Examples of this setup can be seen in the Play & Edits.

Fallen Hero Notes#

Another complex element, but worth giving it a go. It has two main objects: the trigger, a fallen hero body/skull with logic to define the note number; and the scroll, which contains the visible scroll, its animation, and all of the text gadgets. The logic detects the note number being broadcast from the body and triggers the corresponding text gadget to display on the scroll.

Turn off preview invisibility and turn on x-ray to help find the relevant microchips you need to open.

To set up the note text, open the scroll logic microchip called Fallen Hero Notes Master and tweak the text gadgets and add your text. Be aware that you'll have to scope in to the note a good few times before you'll be able to open the microchip.

To set up the bodies to make a series of fallen hero notes, you’ll need to extract the fallen hero part of the element by holding it while scoping all the way out, and clone it for the number of notes you want. It's important to stress - you're only cloning the hero, not the scroll.

Then for each clone, tweak the value slider called note number to set the number for that note.

Think about adding puzzles#

Exploration, loot and combat are great fun, but set your dungeon apart from the rest with a bespoke puzzle or two. Puzzles require a bit of thought, especially if you want to make them interesting and unique.

At the basic level puzzles are straightforward - you have a switch or switches that need to be pressed/pulled. The puzzle comes in what the player needs to do to find and make use of pick up & place elements in order to activate all the required switches to open the door, reveal the treasure, or unleash a monster they need to fight.

Make sure you check out the Animation tutorials, because animating the scene by raising floors, opening walls, and so on can be really fun. Reveal alternate paths or secret rooms.

Cameras are key to larger puzzle spaces. If a switch is opening a wall that is offscreen, you should show it to the player. It doesn't have to be anything too fancy - a quick camera cut to the affected area to show the player its state change is all you need. By the way - this is a good time to make use of the camera gadget property disable controller sensor inputs to stop the player walking off a ledge while you’ve stolen the camera view from them!

Be adventurous with your level design#

When you’re starting out it's easiest and natural to build in a linear way, one room or corridor following another, with one-way doors to stop the player backtracking. This is how Play & Edit 1 & 2 are designed. Non-linear designs are a lot more fun and engaging but usually require a little planning to work well. We’ve demonstrated this throughout the Ancient Dangers game, and in the template’s Playground and Play & Edit 3.

Another important trick for level design is wrapping the path around a point of interest or vista. Your thermo restricts how much can go in a scene, so design your level to make the most of what you’ve got. If you spent a lot of thermo on a beautiful background, design your level to maximise your views.