Devblog : Nightmare Zone !
By Mod Ash & Mod Nexus
On Wednesday 12th June we closed Content Poll # 5 , in which we ' d offered to create a new minigame for you to re-visit a selection of old quest bosses . With the vote passing the 75 % threshold , we got straight on with the game ' s development , now using your chosen title of Nightmare Zone .
In the beginning there was ... a cow !?
It ' s always exciting starting a new project . There ' s a new development stream to be branched , various tools to be updated to point at it , an internal project codename to be chosen (" nzone "), and other administrative things to sort out . Mod Ash began with the fun bit : creating the minigame host , Dominic Onion himself , mostly using graphics from Lunar Isle characters .
A lot of people had expressed interest in being able to share the Rumble dreams with friends , to stand together against hordes of boss monsters , so we needed a rough sort of party recruitment system . Our ability to modify the map is very limited , but we ' ve been able to spawn a simple enclosure area that will act as the lobby area . When you ' ve set up your Rumble dream , you can enter this enclosure and invite other players there to join your party . Once the party is assembled , the leader can start the game on behalf of the group . You ' ll be able to attempt a Rumble dream in groups of up to 5 players .
Although Nightmare Zone has no combat level requirement ( unlike the Dominion Tower in the other RuneScape ) we ' re expecting players to have done at least five of the quests that unlock these boss monsters , otherwise their Endurance and Rumble dreams would be quite tedious . If you ' re forming a Rumble party with other players , we ' ll be spawning only monsters that have been unlocked by every single player in the party ; again , we ' ll need the whole party to have done at least five of the quests . The minigame is intended to favour people who ' ve done lots of quests .
Once you ' d chosen Yanille as the site for the minigame , we chose a plot of empty land that ' s very near the bank , and programmed the lobby enclosure to spawn itself there . On arrival , we then found that this plot of land is the home of a wandering cow . Without a map editor , it ' s really quite hard to get rid of the cow . So we ' re leaving the cow alone , wandering around the lobby area . While you ' re waiting , you get a cow . We ' re thinking of it as Dominic ' s favourite cow . Enjoy the cow . Okay , mooving on ...
32 is the magic number
While Mod Ash was laying out the scenery , Mod Nexus set about narrowing down the number of quests from our bigger list to a slightly smaller list , trimming out bosses that were unwieldy or just plain boring ( such as Solus Dellagar ). Having cut the number of quests down to 32 ( which is a nicer number to deal with in code ) we were left with a list of 43 memorable and interesting bosses from Count Draynor in Vampire Slayer to The Inadequacy in Dream Mentor . This represents a wide range of combat levels from 34 up to just over 10 times that at a whopping 343 !
Mod Nexus made copies of each monster under a new name , so there wouldn ’ t be any danger of the minigame monsters triggering code from the original quests . In a worst-case scenario , we could have introduced a bug where your quest progress would go backwards ! The new monster copies were then tidied up and adjusted so they ’ d work in our minigame , including sorting out their combat abilities so they use the same special attacks and tactics that you ’ d have met during the original quest . For example , Elvarg will try to turn you into toast , whilst Flambeed unequips your weapons , the Giant Roc blasts you across the map , and other monsters reduce your stats and so on . This should make for some varied fights given the range of abilities we ’ ve given bosses throughout RuneScape in the past , and it should certainly keep you on your toes - especially if you get piled by several of them at once !