CFD 2012: Discussion thread (Submission Thread Link Within)

[HaunterV]

Submission Thread: viewtopic.php?f=14&t=4276

The Idea: To put together a collection of work submitted by the Grimrock editing Community as a showcase of the overall talent out there. The end result, remains to be seen.

Criteria:

• -Submit a 1-2 floor dungeon.
  -No pits on your final floor -
  SpoilerShow

  • a 2 floor dungeon can have pits on the 1st floor,
    and of course a single floor dungeon gets no pits.
  -Teleporters are the preferred entrance/exit to your submission
  -Your submission must be 100% complete. or so very close that changes to your submission are minimal and relatively painless to pull off. Any drastic changes you want to make to your submission will have to be either reviewed for feasibility if it is before release of the CFD, or it will have to wait to be incorporated into the CFD:EE

(More Edits Incoming)

Additional Rules:

• -Your Dungeon must be crash free
  -Please clone your keys so they only work within your dungeon - If you need clarification or help with this, just ask.
  -Name all objects with custom id's so they will not conflict with other's. We recommend using your forum name or initials as a prefix. (HaunterV_longsword, HV_longsword, etc...)
  -Please ensure your floor/dungeon is completable
  -The teleporters must be the same objects, named "level_entry_teleporter" and "level_exit_teleporter" for consistency and allowing the Scrolls of Return to work. Here is a thread detailing what we plan to implement:
  SpoilerShow

  viewtopic.php?f=14&t=3300&start=80#p38988
  -There are Scrolls of Return btw, how many are present in the CFD will be determined later once a final floor count is handy -Use self.level or party.level. Do NOT use any numeric level values.

(More Edits incoming)

Further Suggestions:

• - Please try to consider at least 75% of the character builds out there when designing your submission. As it's been pointed out, it won't be fun for some players if they are going entire 6 or 7 floor blocks without a single piece of loot useable for their class they choose to play. If everyone takes this into consideration, the chances of that are greatly reduced.
  -Do not worry about whether you need to give the player a mortar or not. The Mortar will be given out to the player at the very beginning, along with one torch. If you do not like this idea, you can take the items away with a script and a HUD message. something like "a rat scares you and you drop your pack in a puddle, everything else seems fine but your torches are hopelessly ruined and your mortar seems to have cracked." But honestly, don't put too much worry and thought into it.
  -Teleporters aren't absolutely necessary entrances and exits as we have a contingency in place for those that just can't make it happen, but please try to make it happen, we have a neat colour coded system in place for it and everything.
  -XP rewards, if you make a combat heavy or a dense dungeon you run the risk of throwing off the whole level curve of the CFD, too combat this, we will come up with an xp penalty of sorts to apply to your floor so don't worry about "spending" your floor's XP allotment when designing your submission. See this thread for more information:
  SpoilerShow

  viewtopic.php?f=14&t=3300&start=40#p37259

(More Edits incoming)





I expect this will be a sort of Xmas present to the community so can everyone try to get their floors together by the end of November. We will release a sort of extended edition in the new year for anyone else who missed the initial submission window.



Read the following Noteworthy posts in this thread to help wrap your minds around where we are on getting this thing off the ground and also to help integration of your submission go a touch smoother as well. My aim is for zero to bare minimum modifications to floors being necessary for everyone's submission to be included.

Central Staircase
Everyone seems to want and be gravitating to a central stairwell for the easiest integration of floors into the Dungeon proper.
Here is a post by one, Edsploration on the topic:
viewtopic.php?f=14&t=3300#p33299

Sevenbirds posted on both the concept of the central staircase and the benefits of this method of going between levels He also touches on what I believe to be the best solution for Duplicate IDs:
viewtopic.php?f=14&t=3300#p33419

Duplicate IDs
SpacialKatana brings up a major hurdle in the that duplicate ID's are going to pop up and that is really going to lead to lead to conflicts in scripts, you can read his post here:
viewtopic.php?f=14&t=3300#p33341
or
Edsploration has come up with a script that will solve that issue, as mentioned in this thread:
viewtopic.php?f=14&t=3300&start=50#p37702

The Problem with Keys
The problem with keys is a couple of things that need to be considered;

• -what if someone takes a key form one submission into another submission, they could bypass entire puzzles or tests to get the keys that the floor designer put thought and effort into designing only to have it skipped.
  -Even if the keys don't get used, there is the possibility of a player's inventory flooding with keys after a while, there are ways to fix this and I'm sure we can come up with one that works for everyone.

Suggestions for keys so far are;

• -Clone your keys and make sure they are only useable in your submission
  -Make sure by the time the player is leaving your submission they will have had to use all keys they obtained.

Submission difficulty and Total Experience allotted for your submission:
Edsploration put a HUGE amount of thought into his analysis of both the game and what we are trying to pull off in such a short time with everyone still being relatively new to the editor as a whole. In any case his post here goes into the brief amount of consideration and effort we can politely ask from each submission:
viewtopic.php?f=14&t=3300&start=10#p33471
The post in general is a great read as it provides a strong basis to work off of with any team effort.


Itemization:
Edsploration has provided a link to a post in another thread about a spreadsheet (Designed by him) which includes nearly all in-game items and monsters along with a metric for their "ideal location" in a dungeon with a smooth difficulty curve.
viewtopic.php?f=14&t=3300&start=40#p35853


Intro/Outro:
Looking for a volunteer to collect together the names and put together a credits scroll for the outro and some sort of intro for this whole thing.

The surgeon:
Edsploration has volunteered to be the man to sew the monster together.


Tools to help you:
Custom Dungeon Analyzer (new tool) &Thread discussing it: viewtopic.php?f=14&t=3624 Thank you once again Edsploration, you're doing the community a great service.


Remember to Subscribe to this topic, as this is where all the preliminary ground work will happen. There will also be the internal developer discussion thread on the steam workshop mod page for quick discussion and trouble shooting among those working on this and I'm also thinking that we will be starting another thread once submissions start getting received properly. I have been urged to put a bit more thought into how we proceed and have finally seen the light and been brought down to earth via some choice worded PMs and will going forward treat this project and the community as a whole with the respect it deserves.

Submission window closes December 1st, at which point we'll begin assembling the dungeon. after which if there is time we might stitch your level in if it arrives late for the last week of the year release. As stated previously, all submissions WILL eventually be included in the "FrankenDungeon2012:Extended Edition" that will be released by the end of spring. Ideally.

[Montis]

Using corner squares for level entrances/exits doesn't really work.

[HaunterV]

Using corner squares for level entrances/exits doesn't really work.

really? then one block in
(1,1) (1,31) (31,1) (31,31)

[Montis]

You should also specify in which direction, since the stairs have to line up.
So like: going down in direction => you also have to go up in the opposite direction <=. And both stairs must be on the same square on different levels (which you already specified there).

[HaunterV]

You're absolutely correct, edited OP

[Emciel]

is there even a way to combine maps together? >_>
or else you'd have to copy each map Exactly as the creator did, in order for the level to work...

[Edsploration]

This is a neat idea and I would love to contribute! However, I think it might be a tad premature. Many people are still learning the editor or working on their own pet projects. And many people don't have access since the beta is Steam-only. That doesn't mean this couldn't start now with the groundwork or be a reoccuring project!

Using corner squares for level entrances/exits doesn't really work.

really? then one block in
(1,1) (1,31) (31,1) (31,31)

I don't think using corner squares is a very good idea, because it suggests that your floors should be square and fill the whole available space. You'll be restricted to always turning the path or teleporting to avoid the artificial "edge of the world". And no one should be designing "just to fill space" anyway.

The in-game map doesn't show you where the borders of the level are going to be so the player can't predict the layout of the dungeon. It is the player (or player's champions) who are supposed to be drawing the map, after all. They would naturally start drawing in the middle of the page if they had no idea how the dungeon was arranged.

This is one arrangement that could work and be repeatable:
for odd levels:
Up stairs at (15, 16) facing South
Down stairs at (17, 16) facing North
for even levels:
Down stairs at (15, 16) facing North
Up stairs at (17, 16) facing South

is there even a way to combine maps together? >_>
or else you'd have to copy each map Exactly as the creator did, in order for the level to work...

I believe the maps are defined wholly within the dungeon.lua file. In fact, it looks like which level is which is only defined by the order they appear in the text. So levels might be arrangable simply by copy/paste-ing them in the right order. And scripts could run within an arbitrary level by using "self.level" to reference the current level. So I think it's very doable.

[SpacialKatana]

You're going to run into a heap of hurt with duplicate ID's unless everyone names their Objects etc with their own tags....good luck, it's gonna be a lot of work for ya

Edit : Oh yeah, pits are gonna really frustrate you layering the floors....

[HaunterV]

I don't think using corner squares is a very good idea, because it suggests that your floors should be square and fill the whole available space. You'll be restricted to always turning the path or teleporting to avoid the artificial "edge of the world". And no one should be designing "just to fill space" anyway.


No one said you have to design to fill space... nothing to stop you from making an indiana jones hallway from one entrance to another


The in-game map doesn't show you where the borders of the level are going to be so the player can't predict the layout of the dungeon. It is the player (or player's champions) who are supposed to be drawing the map, after all. They would naturally start drawing in the middle of the page if they had no idea how the dungeon was arranged.

Who says that starting at the corner has the be the actual entrance? why couldnt it be a down stairs block with an empty block in front of it then a teleporter block that takes you to the real entrance of the floor? if there is anything that disorients a player it is teleporting.

This is one arrangement that could work and be repeatable:
for odd levels:
Up stairs at (15, 16) facing South
Down stairs at (17, 16) facing North
for even levels:
Down stairs at (15, 16) facing North
Up stairs at (17, 16) facing South

See, the idea is sound but a) depends on everyone cooperating and agreeing "I'm submitting level 12 or 13 or what have you" and b)you have provided definite locations for entrances and exits. My corner idea at least gives the players 3 possible directions to travel where as you have provided only one.

is there even a way to combine maps together? >_>
or else you'd have to copy each map Exactly as the creator did, in order for the level to work...

I believe the maps are defined wholly within the dungeon.lua file. In fact, it looks like which level is which is only defined by the order they appear in the text. So levels might be arrangable simply by copy/paste-ing them in the right order. And scripts could run within an arbitrary level by using "self.level" to reference the current level. So I think it's very doable.

Totally agree on the last bit. I think part of the fun of this 'project' which i don't imagine will be available until late December unless ppl wanted to tinker with the WIP version. Also noone is forced to participate, I just think it'd be a neat sort of barometer to show the community where it is editing wise from year to year.

[sevenbirds]

I would be more than happy to help out with this, both contributing and helping coordinate. I think we need to set some ground rules and also review each level submission. As previously mentioned, we need to check for pits, ID conflicts, unfair/ impossible set ups, designs that could crash or freeze some computers ( such as too many particles at once, etc), and general bugs.

For the guidelines, we need to ensure that level designers have minimal constraints so that we can see the widest variety of designs. I have a few suggestions that can help minimize both level compatibility and limitations.

On connecting levels, we could put a spiral staircase in the center with each down stair covered by a grate, with each level requiring different conditions to be met before the grate opens. This is a better option than using the corners as the designer can expand in any direction they wish, but still suffers from a predictable layout from the players stand point. I think that the best option would be to use teleporters instead of stairs that way there is no constraint whatsoever on stair placement, and each designer can designate where his level starts. Then we can set the target location from the teleporter above one level to this starting location. the only requirement would be to place a teleporter at the end of your level and to have one to go back up as well (assuming we want them to be able to go back!)

With IDs, we need to set a requirement that every item asset placed gets a unique ID. while this could be tedious, it will save a lot of time later on trying to sort out where those two timer_3s are. It would be easiest to simply put designername_ before each i, or something similar. So my level would have sevenbirds_torch_1, sevenbirds_skeleton_warrior_1, etc. this also ensures that an effect on one level won't have unforeseen consequences for all levels.

With level submissions, each submission should have a description, an overview of the challenges, and any custom assets within. This will help us make sure that we don't have any duplicate or similar levels and avoid repetition. We will need a center location for these too, as we have these forums, the steam community, and the nexus community each of which is active.

Finally, I believe that the first and last floors need to be special in some way. the first needs to be both a nice introduction to whatever overall "story", present the premise of such a...varied dungeon and also be interesting without being so difficult that it dissuades players from going any farther. The last level could be many things, and until we have a good portion of the dungeon it will be hard to say what it could be. I think that a lot of custom content would be best for the last level; something completely different and new.

Well, that is my two cents for now. If you have any more plans to organize and such let me know and I would love to help with this project!