Dungeon Editor Progress

Talk about creating Grimrock 1 levels and mods here. Warning: forum contains spoilers!
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Thels
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Re: Dungeon Editor Progress

Post by Thels »

gambit37 wrote:The Dungeon Editor needs to be as usable and accessible as possible, if you want to make sure that most people can create dungeons. It shouldn't be a requirement to have to write Lua to be able to create a basic dungeon. So from that point of view, the dungeon editor needs to have a full visual GUI, which is capable of creating everything that we see in the basic game. Yes, this is a big deal and a lot of work -- but will pay off in the long run.
I totally disagree!

If you provide a GUI, a lot of people will limit themselves to the options provided in the GUI, and never bother to even check LUA.

If you do not provide a GUI, people will quickly discover that LUA ain't hard at all, and can then do a lot more than they could ever do in the GUI environment, allowing for more creative, diverse and interesting dungeons.
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PSY
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Re: Dungeon Editor Progress

Post by PSY »

Curunir wrote:We've already done this before, thankyouverymuch! :D
WHAT THE HELL????? Good one :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:
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TZO2k12
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Re: Dungeon Editor Progress

Post by TZO2k12 »

Thels wrote:
gambit37 wrote:The Dungeon Editor needs to be as usable and accessible as possible, if you want to make sure that most people can create dungeons. It shouldn't be a requirement to have to write Lua to be able to create a basic dungeon. So from that point of view, the dungeon editor needs to have a full visual GUI, which is capable of creating everything that we see in the basic game. Yes, this is a big deal and a lot of work -- but will pay off in the long run.
I totally disagree!

If you provide a GUI, a lot of people will limit themselves to the options provided in the GUI, and never bother to even check LUA.

If you do not provide a GUI, people will quickly discover that LUA ain't hard at all, and can then do a lot more than they could ever do in the GUI environment, allowing for more creative, diverse and interesting dungeons.
Define easy...Easy for a programmer is incredibly difficult to a traditional artist...So no, I completely disagree because if you make an SDK only for the programmers then you will not get a vibrant modding community! Sure, you'll get excellent and quality mods, but only a few once every year or so...Just compare the mods coming out for the Tes and NWN series vs the TW1, Dungeon siege, Unreal and S.T.A.L.K.E.R tool sets, not to many mods for them is there?...Besides, it's not a question of difficulty, as it is of motivation and tedium! ;)

While I agree that modders should have unlimited access to the scripting and hexing capabilities of the SDK, to do away with a GUI or a user-friendly SDK is simply dooming the modding community to 2 or three great projects once in a blue moon, that only programmers can mod for, basically shutting out the rest of us from the creative process of modding! (And that's not the first time, nor the last) Edited to add: Also, I can count myself as an artist, and the thought of typing my way into making a dungeon, would be frightfully boring, which will kill any desire to mod anything (I know I do not stand alone on this) unlike a programmer, who's addicted to programming in the first place! ;)
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Curunir
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Re: Dungeon Editor Progress

Post by Curunir »

Thels wrote: If you do not provide a GUI, people will quickly discover that LUA ain't hard at all, and can then do a lot more than they could ever do in the GUI environment, allowing for more creative, diverse and interesting dungeons.
Thank goodness the devs don't listen to the likes of you... :cry:
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Isaac
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Re: Dungeon Editor Progress

Post by Isaac »

petri wrote:My gut feeling is that the game engine is not really designed to be extendable so anything else is going to be really hard.
Crashbanito wrote:I have a question, will we be given a way to use put cutscenes/still frames in at the beginning and end of our dungeons?
I'd like to know this as well. Would it be impractical to allow/support to play a Bink video file instead of displaying an image (or the dream sequences)? Such that if the user has one, they can play it (either when the party steps on a plate, or pushes a button, or sleeps ~or at the beginning or end of a user created dungeon.
atamanashi wrote:Will there be a way to add new monsters? I know it would be really difficult to create the models as modders but it would still be great. Or if not I Would gladly buy DLC for new monsters.
I would love to see a rough workflow for creating a functional monster asset (model & animation format; textures, and logic). It wouldn't have to be a friendly step-by-step tutorial, just the basics for someone that can manage on that ~in depth tutorials would eventually come from the modding community.

** BTW I finished LoG today; fantastic game. 8-)

*** Is it totally beyond the scope to envision the level editor as an expanded set of Lua commands assigned to an alternate character interface, where the buttons are used to place "inventory" editor items.... imagine being able to drag a "pit" or pressure plate out of the (recycled) inventory UI and place it on the ground (this thing could be a picture of a pit, but have the editor place the actual pit [ASCII code] on the saved map); same with plates, same with torch sconces; same with buttons; same with inscribed messages; same with monsters. It could all even be sorted in editor-only containers (the sacks or chests; filled with creature icons or place-able shelves, and of course the regular inventory items to drop where you'd like them to be).

**** Is it possible for the LoG engine to depict the entire map from top-down view?
Last edited by Isaac on Sun Apr 29, 2012 12:00 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Darklord
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Re: Dungeon Editor Progress

Post by Darklord »

Isaac wrote: ** BTW I finished LoG today; fantastic game. 8-)
Congratulations! Glad you enjoyed it! :P

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gambit37
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Re: Dungeon Editor Progress

Post by gambit37 »

When I said a Dungeon Editor needs to be accessible and easy to use, I meant just that: the Dungeon Editor. I'm not talking about all the modding abilities that come through writing custom code.

If you want hobbyist designers to be able to create dungeons (not mods), you need a visual Dungeon Editor that is capable of constructing all the game's basic mechanics: the map layout, doors, switches, alcoves, monsters, pads, torches, items, etc. I linked to DSB earlier, this works exactly the same way. The editor has a GUI for building all the basics, and you don't need to write any code. But if you want to add new assets or do some custom puzzles or whatever, that's when you need to write code. It is the best of both worlds for all levels of designer/coder, and hundreds of other games have editors that work the same way.

You can't expect hobbyist designers to root around in code to build a basic dungeon. It would frankly be nuts to code a dungeon by hand. Yes, I appreciate the LoG team did that, but they didn't have the time or resources to build an editor, so it was the most cost effective solution for them at the time. That doesn't mean it should be the approach for a future editing tool though. Even if the editor pumps out a bit of Lua for activating a door or whatever, this is much better than making the user have to write that code.

Without a visual editor, it will limit who can make dungeons, and therefore it will make the modding scene for LoG so exclusive as to be unattractive to most hobbyists.

Generally speaking, designers have a visual mindset and work best with visual tools, they aren't so good at coding. It's the whole left brain/right brain thing. Programmers who say programming is easy for anyone simply don't appreciate that different people think in different ways: what's easy for some, is devilishly hard for others.

If you force designers to have to code, you are massively restricting their creative output. And that's the death knell for your modding community.
petri wrote:Creating complex puzzles with a graphical system would be a huge mess and you would be ultimately limited to the logical building blocks we provide (e.g. timers, delays, counters and whatnot). Once you can place the walls and dungeon objects with a GUI, you only need a very limited amount of Lua code to implement the remaining logic for puzzles.

E.g. opening a door should be as simple as writing:
treasuryDoor:open()
^^^ Are you saying that the editor won't even link a switch to a door without coding? Every editor since the beginning of time allows that, I'm not really sure why you wouldn' build it more intuitively? Have you checked out the DSB and RTC editors? They do all this stuff in the visual editor, there's no need for the designer to write any code for basic mechanics. In fact, even really complex stuff can be done in the GUIs of those tools.

------------------------------
TL;DR
Visual, easy to use tools = a vibrant and extensive dungeon building/modding community
Code based tools = a limited, exclusive modding community with few releases to enjoy
Last edited by gambit37 on Sun Apr 29, 2012 12:12 pm, edited 3 times in total.
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Darklord
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Re: Dungeon Editor Progress

Post by Darklord »

gambit37 wrote: Generally speaking, designers have a visual mindset and work best with visual tools, they aren't so good at coding. It's the whole left brain/right brain thing. Programmers who say programming is easy for anyone simply don't appreciate that different people think in different ways: what's easy for some, is devilishly hard for others.

What you say makes sense Gambit.

Daniel.
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Isaac
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Re: Dungeon Editor Progress

Post by Isaac »

Would such an expanded visual editor still be a free download or the first DLT? (tool). That's a lot of work.

(What I mentioned above is still a lot of work, though ~in theory~ it recycles several existing interfaces.)
gambit37 wrote:^^^ Are you saying that the editor won't even link a switch to a door without coding? Every editor since the beginning of time allows that, I'm not really sure why you wouldn' build it more intuitively?
They can't write Kismet... (can they?)
I would be fine with "treasuryDoor:open()"; I'd also be fine with a drop-down list that writes some standard (but perhaps non-intuitive) Lua code for me.
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gambit37
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Re: Dungeon Editor Progress

Post by gambit37 »

Isaac wrote:They can't write Kismet... (can they?)
I'm not sure I understand what you're saying?
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