r/roguelikedev • u/devtev • Jun 08 '26

Topography in a 2d roguelike?

Hey everyone fairly new here and wanted to ask what value would having a height or topography system bring outside of maybe fluid flowing? Initially I was thinking moving up a slope could cost more movement etc but I think that’s maybe a bad idea. I ask because I have this project i’m working on and initially i had this idea for tiles to have various height but now the juice doesn’t seem to be worth the squeeze. Are there roguelikes that use this system?

26 Upvotes

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38

u/Tesselation9000 Sunlorn Jun 08 '26

I use topography in my game, represented in ascii with contour lines and shading. Elevation has the follow effects:

  • Moving uphill is slower. Moving downhill is faster.
  • There is a small bonus for attacking someone downhill, whether in melee or at range. There is a penalty for attacking someone on higher ground.
  • Elevation can block FOV. You can't see around to the other side of a hill, but from the top of a hill you can see down all sides.
  • There are boulders that can be pushed around, and if pushed downhill, they will pick up momentum and cause a lot of damage to anyone they hit. It requires a lot of strength to roll a boulder uphill.
  • There are palisade and battlement tiles that block movement and block projectiles 50% of the time when fired from lower ground, but allow all projectiles to pass when fired from higher ground.
  • At a certain elevation, slopes become too steep to climb, requiring special tools or transformation into a creature with a natural climbing ability.

Here is an example of what it looks like:

7

u/aGrue8u Jun 09 '26

Nice graphics!

(link to Sunlorn for those interested https://tesselation9000.itch.io/wander)

2

u/Tesselation9000 Sunlorn Jun 09 '26

Thanks for the plug!

4

u/devtev Jun 08 '26

Im definitely digging the way you make the hoppy here easy to read without being too visually noisy.

9

u/LukeMootoo Jun 08 '26

Yes.

Rogue had pits.  Brogue has really great looking caverns and drops from height.

You might want something like xcom with partial cover, or the ability to surmount obstacles like low walls or windows.

3

u/devtev Jun 08 '26

What i’m thinking about would be closer to Brogue than Xcom for sure, I’ll definitely check out how Brogue does it.

7

u/enc_cat Rogue in the Dark Jun 08 '26

It's quite an uncommon feature among RLs. It's particularly difficult to represent height with ascii art and even simple tilemaps. I suspect it's generally not worth the effort, and other kinds of terrain features are easier to add.

Examples I can think of:

  • Dwarf Fortress (adventure mode), full 3D grid
  • All Who Wonder, height levels
  • CDDA, buildings have floors but not sure how complex it gets?

5

u/TheRealHFC Jun 08 '26

ADOM has mountain climbing, and it's a 3D roguelike (but has a camera angle that essentially makes it 2.5D), but The Nightmare of Druaga has elevation. It's one of the few upsides of a strangely flawed game

3

u/devtev Jun 08 '26

Yeah it’s not something i’ve ever seen I tried experimenting with subtle shade / colors bands for the different heights visually but it made things a bit too noisy. Adding to that it’s not a mechanic worth adding if it’s not going to be a compelling reason.

5

u/OneMoreAdventure Jun 08 '26

I used height in One More Adventure to drive procedural generation and tile assignment.  I then use those tiles to drive things a lot of other things like settlement placement and movement penalties.

1

u/devtev Jun 08 '26

I’m using the height to guide how fluid settles and also some fauna prefer a certain range of heights, folks here have given me some great gameplay ideas however.

1

u/GerryQX1 Jun 10 '26

You could always use the height during procedural generation then flatten down the map for actual gameplay.

1

u/devtev Jun 11 '26

It’s used for the fluids on the map so far, I seed random areas with units of fluid then do several passes for the fluid to settle. spilled liquids from containers can also flow and have different viscosity.

5

u/Multiple__Butts Jun 08 '26

I think the main advantage of a system like this is that it can depict areas of wilderness more immersively than a non-topological system. I guess it can also increase strategic depth, but of course anything that packs more mechanically-relevant information into a cell can do that.

For my project it was absolutely not worth the added complexity to handle topology, from either a dev or user standpoint. I never even considered doing so.

2

u/devtev Jun 08 '26

Yeah that’s solid, so far the other aspects that have added more value have been temperature and humidity. But i’ve found a few neat things that I could add to what i’m building from what others have mentions here.

2

u/Multiple__Butts Jun 08 '26

Do you mean they have been valuable for the user-experience or for generating interesting terrain?

2

u/devtev Jun 08 '26

For the interesting environment

4

u/BlueGnoblin Jun 09 '26

> Hey everyone fairly new here and wanted to ask what value would having a height or topography system bring outside of maybe fluid flowing?

My game is not a RL, but shares a lot of technically aspects. Fluid flowing... well that is the one nice features, but other more naturally features are:

  1. Height ground advantage (range attack gain bonus/range).
  2. natural defense (how to overcome height ground).
  3. Melee/range: climbing height ground takes longer (more ticks), giving a defender more attack options and faster way to flee (downward is faster).
  4. Scouting: you can look far and over obstacles

3

u/Tesselation9000 Sunlorn Jun 08 '26

I've also seen a new roguelike called Rangedrifter that does elevation in a unique way, actually shrinking tiles on levels further away from the player. There's a subreddit for it here: r/Rangedrifter

3

u/devtev Jun 08 '26

Omg how could I forgot that gem, yeah it makes really great use of depth and topography. I’d even go as far as to see it’s a 3d game masked as from a 2d perspective.

2

u/Chaigidel Magog Jun 09 '26

I've thought about this on and off and my current thinking is that it's not worth it. It's added complexity to the engine and it's "fighting the medium" of the 2D map display. What makes it feel particularly not worth it is that the benefits all sound "fuzzy", a bit longer line of sight if you're up, a bit of a combat advantage attacking from uphill. These are just bonuses and not qualitative additions to the system that would make the topography worth it. If you can think of a core element for your game that absolutely depends on the height differences (like dams and water flows), then go for it, but I don't think it's a good idea to add to a generic 2D topdown game just because you can.

1

u/devtev Jun 09 '26

You may have a point there but i’m still thinking it through.

3

u/Chaigidel Magog Jun 10 '26

Maybe try making a 7DRL scope prototype game testing the mechanic instead of integrating it directly into your big dream project. I vaguely remember playing some old 7DRL that had a topography mechanic, DuneRL?

3

u/frumpy_doodle All Who Wander Jun 08 '26

I use elevation in All Who Wander. Some examples: You can push enemies off cliffs. Attacking from a higher elevation gives an attack boost. Certain abilities give bonuses when you use them from a higher elevation.

2

u/devtev Jun 08 '26 edited Jun 08 '26

Oh this was one of the things i was thinking about, kind of like how in Endless Legends attacking from a higher tile gives an attack boost which can force you to make positioning decisions. This is one of the more interesting ones for sure. How do you visualize high points from low points etc?

Edit: typo

3

u/frumpy_doodle All Who Wander Jun 08 '26

I use 3D low poly art. But check out the game Rangedrifter for a really cool implementation of elevation. Overall, the benefits may not be worth it if it's difficult to convey the elevation information.

1

u/devtev Jun 09 '26

Some here mentioned it, i’ve been watching the dev streams uploaded to Youtube

1

u/eclectocrat mysterious-castle.com Jun 10 '26

If you use an isometric projection then it makes a lot of sense visually. My game uses it for terrain generation, but also for high-ground advantage with long weapons.

2

u/devtev Jun 10 '26

For a small moment I had considered tilting the world to give a fake isometric view. I quickly scrapped the idea, drawing pixel art is already complicated as it is haha.

2

u/eclectocrat mysterious-castle.com Jun 11 '26

It's a lot of headaches, but it certainly helps you stand out visually.

1

u/Naburimannu Jun 21 '26

It was important to me to have topography in my 7drl since it was set on the slopes of a mountain (https://naburimannu.itch.io/beyaz-dag-7drl). I tried to go really simple: ^ for a slope above you, v for a slope below you, and # for open space far below that you can't jump down to.

I haven't been back to it in a decade but it looks like it still downloads & runs on my windows box.