The last couple weeks have been a measurement in both being
busy and apathetic pushing this down on my priorities. Having commissions and talks to do is an
understandable task to prioritise, but apathy (or quasi-laziness depending on
your perspective) is something that gets in the way. I know that I’m still trying to figure out
the most suitable day to schedule writing these posts, but I should make sure
that I get it going at least once a week.
Regardless let’s get onto talking about a classic I’ve been playing over
the past couple weeks.
Dungeon Keeper is a part of Bullfrog’s classic collection of
games from the 1990s that featured a combination of traditional real time
strategy (RTS) and management elements in a dark aesthetic. For many people, its original from 1997 will
be the better game with its range of sprite-based creatures presenting a more
varied design beyond typical bipedal, humanoid body types; but for me the
second entry will always hold a greater impression in shaping my early pc
gaming years alongside such titles as Total Annihilation or Unreal
Tournament.
Dungeon Keeper 2 released in 1999 with myself buying in at
the turn of the century, which if I remember correctly it was bought with
Populous: The Beginning as a bundle. Being
someone who was used to playing TA and CnC styled RTS games, my first
experience of Dungeon Keeper 2 was a confusing one as I didn’t understand the
tile system for rooms. This was probably
down to me picking skirmish rather than new campaign and thinking that one
temple tile for 3000 gold must be good (and that couldn’t be further from the
truth). Once I took a step back, I understood
the tile system and started to really enjoy the game, particularly the My Pet
Dungeon mode which was part-tutorial part-challenge mode. To this day, I install DK2 ever so often and
power through the content over a week or so much like marathon’ing an old TV /
film series. Since going to University, I’ve
played through DK2 three times and recently I started to think about how the
tunnels and tile systems align with some architectural theory; in particular boundaries
and how we map our space in correspondence to others.
To those who aren’t aware of these systems, DK2 takes place
in an ‘underworld’ where the area needs to be mapped out through the tunnelling
of rock by small worker creatures called imps.
Rather than tunnelling free-form through the landscape, the rock is
carved into cubes where each piece of rock needs to be tagged to create paths
and rooms. As you do this, your worker
imps can also claim the land (as long as you own the land next to it) turning
it to your dominion as well as generating mana (one of the game’s resources). Each of these tiles can then have a number of
things placed on them to augment their usage; with room tiles to provide
content for your creates like sleeping accommodation (lair) or traps and doors
to defend against potential enemies of both the evil and goodly kind. The rooms in question have a minimal size
requirement ranging from 1 tile to 5x5 (25) tiles. Because of this, tunnelling through rocks to
create rooms requires a combination of pathways alongside rooms with designated
spaces to facilitate certain activities which in turn entice different kinds of
creatures into your domain. With this
tile system taking into consideration, one can see there’s a nod to cartography
in how we construct an image of our surroundings alongside the spatial
awareness of architectural theory and how we consider ourselves in the built
environment. Adam Sharr’s book “Heidegger
for Architects” takes this example and uses the Lake District of northern
England (a reinterpretation of the Black Forest in Germany) and considers the
play between the small market towns, car parks, mountain paths and treelines
together creating an overall map of the area to which millions of people visit
every year. All these actions feature a
range of tasks that are both important and mundane, but they all come together
and create a picture of the area and the actions they took place inside of it
(or their map). Much like DK2 and its
tunnelling, players will create their dungeons in specific ways for both
mundane and important decisions, but in turn they all have mapped out the land
in their own way.
Another factor in DK2 I briefly mentioned was that of
boundaries. As you progress in the game,
you start to encounter other keepers and goodly heroes who all have their own
territory specific to a certain colour (white, blue, green, yellow and purple
alongside the player’s own red). There will
be a number of situations when you’ll have unclaimed land in between two or
more players; where the corresponding imps will move closer and closer to each
other until they interact with each other only to attempt to overtake the
oppositions land. At this point, the
only factor is the number of imps each player has available to the action, but
like in any conflict, the victory can be stacked towards you through a use of aggressive
tactics like grabbing your militant creatures to scare the enemy imps. Naturally, the enemy then may use their own
creatures and a conflict is born. In architecture
is conflict can be a mixture of this physical aggression (invasion) or
ideological indifference; but it can also be a factor of form and aesthetics in
how two pieces contrast each other or functional application like heavy
industry being next to a residential area.
In the past, we have discussed the idea of ‘voids’ in architecture and
this concept of boundaries comes nicely into the fray when we consider how fog
of war is used, not just in DK2 but generally in the RTS genre.
Overall, Dungeon Keeper’s system of tiles presents an
interesting concept behind the creation of space and how we interact with
others in both a physical and theoretical manner. As a side note, the series “Thinkers for
Architects” which is authored by a number of architectural historians is a nice
resource to have. It gives a nice bridge
between basic thoughts on architecture and the denser essay collections that
get into the finer details behind the subject.
I hope you find this post interesting and I hope to be back on track in
the next week.
Resources:
· Sharr, A (2007). Heidegger for Architects. Routledge. London
· Dungeon Keeper (1997). Bullfrog Productions.
Electronic Arts
· Dungeon Keeper 2 (1999). Bullfrog Productions.
Electronic Arts
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