Dungeons of Dorin

What You Will Build

A turn-based dungeon crawl RPG. The dwarven city of Dorin fell centuries ago, and its halls now twist through ten floors of darkness. Each floor is procedurally generated from random rooms and corridors. Monsters roam the passages. Treasure lies in forgotten chambers. The player descends through fog-shrouded dungeons, fights creatures in stat-based combat, collects equipment that modifies attack and defence, and manages limited potions to survive. Reach the Heart of Dorin on floor 10, and the city is restored.

Why This Game?

Every game so far has had one or two interacting systems — movement plus collision, or a board plus rules. Dungeons of Dorin has five: movement, combat, inventory, procedural generation, and persistence. Managing many variables, multiple arrays, and several subroutines that all depend on shared state is the challenge. This is the proving ground for the capstone game.

The turn-based design is deliberate. With no frame rate pressure, the interpreter can take as long as it needs to process each turn. Complex systems are viable in BASIC when you remove the clock. This lets the learner focus on system design rather than performance.

Procedural generation — building dungeon floors from random rooms and corridors — introduces the idea that a program can create content at runtime rather than having it hand-authored in DATA statements. Every playthrough is different, which gives the game real replayability.

What You Will Learn

Phase 1: The Descent (Units 1-16)

• Character stats — HP, attack, defence as variables that drive combat
• 2D arrays as game worlds — a 16x16 grid of walls, floors, stairs and features
• Procedural room placement — random position, size and number of rooms
• Corridor generation — L-shaped paths connecting rooms
• Turn-based movement — QAOP input with wall collision
• Viewport rendering — a 7x7 window centred on the player, scrolling as they move
• Fog of war — a visibility array that reveals cells as the player explores
• Monster placement — parallel arrays for position, type and HP
• Turn-based combat — dice rolls modified by stats, attack and flee options
• Difficulty scaling — harder monsters on deeper floors, culminating in a Dragon on floor 10

Phase 2: Riches and Ruin (Units 17-32)

• Treasure chests — loot tables with gold, potions, weapons and armour
• Equipment system — weapon and armour bonuses that modify combat stats
• Consumable items — potions with a carry limit, used during exploration
• Combat polish — descriptive messages, colour-coded damage, sound effects
• Difficulty curves — tuning monster counts, healing availability, and equipment drops per floor
• Sound design — BEEP effects for movement, combat, treasure and death
• Save and load — writing game state to tape and restoring it
• Title screen — atmospheric presentation with controls and options
• Victory sequence — end-game summary with stats from the entire run