[Open / Signup] One Room Round Robin 3 - Calling All Modders

[minmay]

They appear right outside the door to the room. I guess I'd better make those more obvious.

[THOM]

Short Update:

I'm through the half of the rooms. But I changed my direction and try now to follow the path of the main story. If there is one.

Seems to complete a storyline and make it a bit more oppressive I have to change a bit of the present tale. (But not so sweeping that it would be necessary to restart everything from scratch.)


When I'm a bit more clearer with that I will tell it here.

[minmay]

The story has mutated quite a bit from the original document. Currently, the plot is:

- Bardwell, who is both a sage and some sort of king, invites the party to have an audience with him. He says that they will be received in the Hall of Mages in the town outside his castle, which is named Bardwell after him. (This part would be explained in the intro that doesn't exist yet, and we could change the name of the town to be less confusing.)
- The party arrives at the town outside the castle and finds it almost abandoned; only a few ratlings are there. (Alternatively, we could get rid of the ratlings and make it completely abandoned)
- The party finds a note from Bardwell in the Hall of Mages apologizing that he can't receive them in person, and tells them to come to his castle instead. The note further indicates that the rooms were designed by people who were previously invited, just like the party members.
- The castle is in the center of the Twisted Forest, which is currently cursed with some kind of magical barrier. Only a weapon made of meteorite ore can break the barrier, so the party has to complete rooms to get the ore.
- In the course of this, they may find a grave belonging to "Qinea, Hero of Bardwell".
- When they reach the castle, they find an apparition of Qinea outside, who tells them not to trust Bardwell. It is not clear how she died.
- To open the door to the castle, they need to place ghostly remains on the two ethereal tombstones in front of it. This is admittedly kind of flimsy compared to the first "lock".
- Then they need to open another door to get to the part of the castle where Bardwell wants to receive them. Currently they do this by placing "Founder's Orbs" in alcoves. Presumably, we want to A. figure out what the hell Founder's Orbs actually are, B. make models/icons/etc. for them, C. make something more meaningful than "put them in alcoves" (even something as simple as "put them in these sockets to power a magical door" would be an improvement).
- At this point, Bardwell attacks the party in an unfinished boss fight without explanation and there's no ending. The original plan was to have the party choose whether to go along with whatever Bardwell's plans, or fight him.

[THOM]

Ah - thanks minmay, that helps.

I will anyway go through the mod and look, what is where.

Things that I'm already thinking of are

- fixing the confusing of Bardwell as a place and a man - I would prefer renaming our opponent
- to be honest the town is not a town but a small village. Therefore I would rename the levels (AFAIK that can't break scripting).
- ratlings must not be thrown out. We can keep them as helpful NPCs if we simplifiy their behaviour. That way we just would need one more animation.
- the part with the invitation to the castle is lame. Also getting it by a note.
- we do not need an explanation for the presence of the rooms. They are there because they are part of the landscape. And they must be visited because otherwise the party can make no progress.
- the Qinea part seems to be unfinished
- maybe we can use her for the unlocking of the castle
- I'm not sure if we can keep the idea that the party must decide at the end if they choose the light or the dark way

All in all the mod seems to be in a surprisingly good shape. The rooms are there (almost all), the common areas are far away from being just a scatch (just being aimless - do not tell something), and some parts of the mainstory and it's mechanic are already elaborated - some features are really great.

I am optimistic.

I am going to invite a storyline and when I'm ready with it I will display it here and we can discuss it.

[Duncan1246]

Therefore we hava a lot of free space in our filesize it should absolutely be possible to add something special.

I think you're on your own there. The last time a room was added was about two years ago. I doubt there are many people still interested in working on ORRR3 at all, let alone making new art assets for a new feature when the mod doesn't even have a proper beginning or ending yet.

Hi, Thom,
I am still alive, even if I haven't worked on LG2 last year. I don't know if reworking the whole thing is a good idea... I tried to play it a year ago, but without a main story it's only a frayed patchwork quickly boring...
It's seems to me that ORR3 as a bad karma.
But why not?
If you want some help, on my room or on the story (if any) you can count on me. I am, like you, rather a story teller than a Lua geek, but I have more Lua's knowledge now than at the beginning of ORR3, so ...

[THOM]

Hi Duncan,

good to hear that you are still active.

Well, the next step will be that I try to write down a storyline (nothing too complicated) and discuss it with everyone here.

Next step will be to contact all room-modders. We will see, who will still participate and which work has to be done from the rest of us.

If your help will be needed (beside working on your own room) I will ask you.

Stay tuned...

[Diarmuid]

Heeeeeey! Wow THOM that's an amazing move of trying to resurrect this, I'm sure something can be done to get it out in a decent state.

I'm still here too, if things need to be adjusted in/around my room, and I'll be able to do some general playtesting too.

[THOM]

Hey - it's sunday! Everyone seems to find time to have a look into the Grimrock-Forum.

Good to hear from you, Diarmuid. Thanks for you attendance. Playtesters will be needed, indeed...

[Diarmuid]

Alright, I replayed my room last night... it takes some patience to solve for sure, even if you know how, especially the 4th "secret" pattern.

While I still like the concept a lot, I'm not sure about the general name and hints, with some distance I don't find them clear enough. In particular, the concept of mirror is misleading, since the puzzle requires you to do opposite patterns above and below ground, but if we imagine the ground plane as an actual "mirror", the light patterns would be the same, not reversed.

So maybe it would be a good idea to rebrand the room by changing references to mirrors (including the room name, Mirror Universe) to references to inversions/negative.

The scroll you find could for example change from being signed "N'Harsiyss, archmage, puzzle creator and admirer of reflections" to "S’noyss Revnni, archmage, puzzle creator and admirer of inversions."

Another idea would be to use the idea of balance, write some backround story about how the archmage discovered the magical power of geometric patterns, but also that a fundamental law of it was that any geometric magic force needed to be balanced by an opposite and equal force, and he constructed the structure there to conduct experiments.

Those who actually played it, do you think one of those would make more sense?

[THOM]

Until now I wasn't able to play you room. So I cannot answer one of your questions.

Of course there is no problem in doing some chnages.

I give you a feedback when I've run through it. Should be within this week - I've just 6 rooms to do.