CFD 2012: Discussion thread (Submission Thread Link Within)

[HaunterV]

Welcome non-steam owners of Grimrock.

Try your hand no submissions will be rejected. hell you can just give us a hallway if you want.

[Edsploration]

In another thread I posted a spreadsheet 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. I call it SL for Suggested Level. I'm linking that post from here because I'd like to use this as the basis for deciding which sets of items/monsters are allowed or encouraged to be implemented for a designer contributing to the Community FrankenDungeon!

Here is my post in the spreadsheet stats thread: viewtopic.php?f=14&t=3285&p=35849#p35849

Oh, and I also included Ixnatifual's Tome Library in the spreadsheet. His thread about that is here: viewtopic.php?f=14&t=3338

[HaunterV]

Thanks again Edsploration for yet another huge addition in terms of resources. This weekend I'll be getting the 1st floors done.

[HaunterV]

Almost done the introductory floor

[Edsploration]

I'm looking forward to seeing your introductory floor HaunterV! Although, this could just done as one of the submissions where the designer makes an introductory floor instead of a regular dungeon level. (And the same for the finale floor.)

We've come a long way already with plans for this, and the editor has been released! I'd like to describe, in my mind, what's left before we can open submissions for Community FrankenDungeon 2012!

• A consensus regarding the transition between designer's floors. What and where. My reason for pushing for stairs instead of teleporters is because when you see a staircase, you immediately know you've reached the end of the floor. With teleporters you don't have this feeling at all. Unless someone were to make a custom teleporter! I would support that! While that would forgo the undeniable epicness of the DOWN STAIRCASE™, it would have the advantage of taking up less space, be placeable anywhere, and could even be spawned/moved dynamically with a script.
  Rainbow Teleporter Example:
  
• Rules. We must establish a list of rules for what can be submitted. If a submission doesn't meet the requirements, the author can be notified and a fixed version be submitted. There shouldn't be many issues. It's just so dungeon submissions don't crash the game or are impossible to beat.
• (Optional) A system which allows a player to jump to a specific floor and play just that floor, or play on from that point. If I have time I may be able to develop an auto-level and auto-equip script which would allow this. The other component would be a password-entry system on the first floor. It would be nice to have some custom asset like a grid of buttons which lets you enter in a password without having to run up and down a huge hallway of levers. (Anyone know how to make this????) The passwords themselves could be generated by the organizer and each one revealed only to the creator of that dungeon floor via PM on the forums. The passwords could also be left in scrolls on each dungeon floor. So a player would either have to be able to beat each floor in order, ask the creator about how to beat it, or beg for a shortcut from the owner of the next floor.

Now here are my proposed rules for submissions. Let me know if I overlooked anything:

Strict Requirements

1. One- or Two-dungeon-level dungeon with no pits on the bottom level.
2. Fixed entrance and exit locations, which we have yet to decide on.
3. Name all objects with custom id's so they will not conflict with other's. Recommend using your forum name or initials as a prefix.
4. Use self.level or party.level. Do NOT use any numeric level values.
5. Crash-free.
6. Possible to get through, beginning to end.

Additional Rules

• Test your level! Shoot for 100% bug-free.
• Pick a tier (listed below), and design to that tier. That is, keep your SL's for monsters and items in check. Use your best judgement for custom monsters/items. The tier can always be reassigned based on how things turn out.
  1. Don't use overpowered monsters. No monsters more than one SL above the tier number (predicted party level). Exception: monsters which do not pose a threat to the player due to their location or some other special condition.
  2. Try to supply items with various SL's, some above and many below your dungeon's tier level. Just don't litter your floor with overpowered junk.
• Don't include so much XP as to eat up the whole leveling curve. Although an exact upper limit is hard to pin down without knowing how many people will submit dungeon levels. An initial choice might be, don't add more than 60% of the XP needed to reach the next level. At that level we would have to get at least 26 submissions to suture the final Community FrankenDungeon! Is that reasonable?

Tier (SL / Party Level) | XP to next level | 60% of XP to next level
........Intro Floor..................0.......................0
..............1.....................850.....................510
..............2.....................1164....................698
..............3.....................1595....................957
..............4.....................2185...................1311
..............5.....................2994...................1796
..............6.....................4102...................2461
..............7.....................5620...................3372
..............8.....................7699...................4619
..............9.....................10548.................6329
..............10...................14451..................8671
..............11...................19798..................11879
..............12...................27123..................16274
........13+ (endgame)...........etc.....................etc
........Puzzle-Only.................0.......................0
........Finale Floor...............???......................???

(Is there any way to make a real table on this forum?)

XP and SL can be calculated or referenced by:

Stats Spreadsheet: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc ... 6SGc#gid=0

Custom Dungeon Analyzer (new tool): https://dl.dropbox.com/u/18420968/LoG/E ... lyzer.html
Thread discussing it: viewtopic.php?f=14&t=3624

Further Suggestions

• Everyone participate! Even a single room is worth submitting! This is by the whole community, for the whole community!
• Use your own custom keys. If you don't, you risk your locks being bypassed by keys from other dungeon levels.
• Sign your name in-game somewhere.
• Design for quality rather than quantity. If you try to fill two whole dungeon levels you'll hit the XP cap for your submission very quickly.
• Be unique if you want to. The more wild the idea, the more memorable.
• Have fun!!

[Brodie301]

Can you give a step by step to use analyzer?
Can't seem to get to work.

[Edsploration]

Can you give a step by step to use analyzer?
Can't seem to get to work.

Sure!

1. Copy/paste the contents of your dungeon.lua file into the textbox.
   This file is found in your mod_assets/scripts folder.
   Just open it in any text editor, select the whole text (ctrl+a), and copy/paste it in!
2. Click the Analyze button!

If this still doesn't work... Can you tell me which browser you're using (and version number)? Different browsers support different amounts of Javascript/HTML. I did test it myself in Firefox and Chrome before uploading it. But it's possible it won't work in IE or Safari. Older version of IE are infamous for crappy support of web standards.

Options
The "Monsters killed per spawner" option will add on experience for that many monster kills for each spawner in your dungeon. That is, a snail is worth 60 XP. A snail spawner will be worth 60 XP if you set it to "1", 120 XP if you set it to "2", and so on! You can also set it to "1.5" or something, whatever you think will best represent how many kills the player will get off of your spawners.

The "Show full content tables" option just includes rows for every monster and tome even when there are none of them. I included this mostly because it was easy to do, and it lets you copy the whole same-size tables out into a spreadsheet for some other purpose if you want.

(If you change an option you must click Analyze! again to update the tables.)

Tables
The first tables is the Dungeon Overview. It displays total XP and certain objects per dungeon level.
The second table shows the SL of the dungeon level, based solely on the highest SL monster on that level. It also shows the expected party level reached by the end of each dungeon level, given a certain % of XP obtained.
The rest of the tables are Content Tables. They merely count up objects for each dungeon level. You can see some useful things like if a monster is set to a higher power level (1-5).

[HaunterV]

All excellent points.

Personally I have no problems with people submitting their dungeons now if they felt like it. submissions will no longer be accepted after Dec. 1st though.

However I will keep stressing that all submissions before dec.31st WILL BE INCLUDED IN THE MARCH RELEASE OF THE EXTENDED EDITION. which will hold all sorts of deleted levels and tossed ideas and the 1 sub per user rule is lifted.

[Ancylus]

I would be happy to contribute a level to FrankenDungeon. In fiddling with the editor and learning its ropes, I've been developing a puzzle-based dungeon level that should fit right in. At this point, I have three things to note concerning level design.

First, I think the best way to handle level entry and exit is a central stairwell. Teleporters are too impersonal for something that should be a significant milestone. On the other hand, designing a level so that it could be reasonably entered at any corner is difficult, and many would likely just end up teleporting the party to the real starting point. A stairwell at a predefined location (central or not) is much easier to plan around. For example, if stairs are placed at (15,16) and (17,16), always descending from north to south, it is easy to create the first room of the level to the south of them and the last one to the north so that they remain accessible even if the stairs exchange places. Of course, if everyone is expected to create two levels, this will be less of an issue, since the stairs between different designers' levels can just be placed into a fixed location. I think it would be better to allow one-level submissions, though.

Second, I suggest that everyone clone whatever keys their levels need. It's easy enough that anyone should manage it with instructions, and it will prevent levels from affecting each other in this respect. Even if this is not adopted as a general rule, I'm certainly going to do so myself, and would recommend the same to anyone whose level or puzzles could be bypassed with an extra key.

Third, it might be a good idea to give the party a compass and a mortar at the initial level. We should be able to count on the party having those, without handing out more of them at every other level just in case.

[HaunterV]

I would be happy to contribute a level to FrankenDungeon. In fiddling with the editor and learning its ropes, I've been developing a puzzle-based dungeon level that should fit right in. At this point, I have three things to note concerning level design.

First, I think the best way to handle level entry and exit is a central stairwell. Teleporters are too impersonal for something that should be a significant milestone. On the other hand, designing a level so that it could be reasonably entered at any corner is difficult, and many would likely just end up teleporting the party to the real starting point. A stairwell at a predefined location (central or not) is much easier to plan around. For example, if stairs are placed at (15,16) and (17,16), always descending from north to south, it is easy to create the first room of the level to the south of them and the last one to the north so that they remain accessible even if the stairs exchange places. Of course, if everyone is expected to create two levels, this will be less of an issue, since the stairs between different designers' levels can just be placed into a fixed location. I think it would be better to allow one-level submissions, though.

Second, I suggest that everyone clone whatever keys their levels need. It's easy enough that anyone should manage it with instructions, and it will prevent levels from affecting each other in this respect. Even if this is not adopted as a general rule, I'm certainly going to do so myself, and would recommend the same to anyone whose level or puzzles could be bypassed with an extra key.

Third, it might be a good idea to give the party a compass and a mortar at the initial level. We should be able to count on the party having those, without handing out more of them at every other level just in case.

Honestly my only sticking point with the central stairwell is EVERYONE will know where they have to make it to to get deeper. although i suppose that's workaround-able.