Grimrock

I have two problems with running with only one .dat file.
1. It will likely become huge, and thus take quite awhile to download.
2. It will have to be passed around from modder to modder, and thus everyone would have to work on their dungeon in part.
|-Is it possible to save and modify a shared mod_assets folder with Dropbox, perhaps?
|-_We could then create a schedule for who can work on it when A few set hours in a day and whatnot. (to avoid the file being saved while more than one person is working on it and losing save results.)
|-__One problem that will occur when many people are updating the file is that anytime someone adds or removes a floor, certain things will not work properly anymore (teleporters)
I have a solution in mind. Everyone is given a maximum number of floors to work with in their design. (lets say 8) We create all the floors before we start designing. Everyone is given the maximum number of floors to work with. So if we have 10 designers, 80+1 floors. (1 for the hub)
The floors will be named according to designer until release (for easy location)
Example:

• Neikun's floor 1
  Neikun's floor 2
  ect..

Should some people not need the maximum number of floors, their unused floors may be left blank and remain there through the published mod. It has little consequence.
On another hand, those blank levels could be used up by late comers or original designers who want a little more space.

So while multiple .dat files will help break up the downloads, it will also break up the "one complete world" feeling that this project is going for.

Just throwing in an idea that is probably an impossibility.
Wonder if an end script could load the next .dat?

I think we are at a roadblock, without AH helping with some of these issues. The concessions we would have to make for this project(read the 6 previous posts) will harm the "seamless" integration we seek. I was really thinking something like, "Man I would have a MUCH easier time in here, if I run over to the "Tomb of Zarthos" and grab that "Staff of Blinding ugly Ogres" (made up!)"With a generic items list to start each dungeon with, we would be removing the connection between our mods. "I don't want a longsword, I want my Flail of Haste back!". I like the idea of separate .dat files, accessible from the main overworld hub. Inventory, right now, makes this impossible.
Running a dat from inside the current dat, with a persistent save, solves most of the issues that neikun raises. I just feel that this is a huge project, that many of us are showing interest in, and if we really do it under the current constraints, It will come out fractured, or even "broken". We also need to take into account the unforeseen problems of passing around a .dat file.
A: The timeframe of building it all is increased exponentially.
B: The problems we will not be aware of until attempting to connect it all could be terminal to the project.
C: One persons accident/tragedy could undo weeks of labor and love.
D: Even if we succeeded, the end result would be many dungeons sharing one item set, making them all eerily similar.

I think separate .dat's are the answer. We can do the separate .dat idea now, but it would come out cheap, and nearly useless. click on a rockface, and get text that says "This is "The Forgotten Halls", Go download it at the Nexus and start playing with a new party right now!" "Then when your done, reload this save and walk across the field to click a cliff face that says "Welcome to "The Mine of Malan Vale! Please go download it to play it with another new party!, then reload this save so you can walk across the bridge!"

I mean, we can fake it now, but it would not be what we are envisioning. maybe asking the guys at AH to add dat loading and persistent save states isn't as implausible as it sounds. It's worth a shot anyhoo, compared to the alternatives. if we want to do this and do it well, we need help.

Edit: Wow, this sounded kind of negative when I re-read it. Not how I intended it to sound, just trying to get the ball rolling!
ps . sorry i'm so long winded

Another thing to consider is AH building out the "Northern Realms" themselves which I'm much more interested in. Don't get me wrong I enjoy playing and designing mods as much as the next Grim player but, these would all be sub-lore.
AH has hinted at a lot of stuff to come. A race of rat people in one post, the thowmp that has a sand look to it, references to Nex multiple times, and so on and so on.
I would much rather the "Northern Realms" be left to them and we be as original as we can.

@Neikun, you should use git and github for this kind of project, I think it's the only reasonable way to handle it. It solves both of the problems you stated out. Git is developed for distributed Linux kernel development and version control, and this project is going to be pretty tiny compared to it. There is thousands on programmers working on Linux kernel so git can handle this project easily. Of course it means that everybody must learn to use git, but the basic usage is not that hard.

The idea is that everyone will have their own local clone of the central repository which is located on github, and when you make changes to your local repository you can push your changes to github, and only the changed files are uploaded. Then others can automatically see that you uploaded a new version and can pull your changes to their local repositories (again only changed files are downloaded). Git can handle multiple people working on same script, and if there is a conflict which git can't solve automatically, it will force you to solve it.

Maybe we can do an episodic story where you start in an open town and have the option to enter two different dungeons. One is a main story dungeon and the other is a side quest, but in the end one of the dungeons leads to another floor that is like a town, so it's like you're traveling across the lands via dungeons. Four dungeons per .dat, and at the end of the second story critical dungeon, we could have a reason for the player losing all their items, such as being arrested.

EDIT: Here is a picture diagram to show we might structure the world.

Another thing to consider is AH building out the "Northern Realms" themselves which I'm much more interested in. Don't get me wrong I enjoy playing and designing mods as much as the next Grim player but, these would all be sub-lore.
AH has hinted at a lot of stuff to come. A race of rat people in one post, the thowmp that has a sand look to it, references to Nex multiple times, and so on and so on.

We really have no idea what the AH guys are doing, and they are probably not creating Glaive Krull’s, and all sorts of amazing mods that this community is posting daily. It took AH at least 11 years to create LoG—you can see petri’s first posting of the LoG project here dated November of 2001: http://www.dungeon-master.com/forum/vie ... hp?t=21366 if you follow that thread for 8 plus years, it will lead you to LoG.

Our project is open-ended and community driven; where, if we leave this up to AH, we will have to keep waiting for the next expansion from them. The primary goal of this project is showcasing the communities’ mods in a seamless related world, not to showcase AH’s mods. As I mentioned in my last post, this is CFD++. I want to see those custom northern tilesets in the frostbites where Ogres that have been modified to look like abominable snowmen are trying to kill me. I want to say wow, look at what neikun created or how the heck did pferguso make it snow outside! http://youtu.be/518q4QTzRUE If AH makes updates like a rat race, fine we will update our world to include that.

I would much rather the "Northern Realms" be left to them and we be as original as we can.

The AH guys love suggestions, and us building out a world would give them great suggestions to go off of. Under their Modding and Asset Usage Terms http://www.grimrock.net/modding/modding ... age-terms/ they say the following:

To make sure that we have full freedom to develop games, we would like to emphasize that we retain the rights to use any ideas from mods. This doesn’t, however, mean that we are interested in harvesting ideas from mods but that our possibilities to further develop Legend of Grimrock or similar games would be severely limited if we couldn’t use any ideas similar to those found in mods. We may use footage and/or screenshots from any published mods for promoting Legend of Grimrock.

I bet they would love to see us do this, but to appease your concern (and maybe others) we could work on the “Southern Realms”, and create a new map for it

Ok moving on to technical stuff…

I think Neikun and Jkos have a great idea with everyone working on the same file(s). This is how it’s done in software shops everywhere; whether through VS Team Foundation Server, Jkos’s suggestion of Git, or what I use on a daily basis in my job: TortoiseSVN http://tortoisesvn.net/ With tortoisesvn you check out the same file someone else is working on and then tortoisesvn will merge the changes, so you don’t have to worry about stepping on each other, and it’s free! I think with everyone using the same version control utility this could work!

If we come to a consensus that the file is getting too big then we could incorporate John Smith’s suggestion (between modules)

Maybe we can do an episodic story where you start in an open town and have the option to enter two different dungeons. One is a main story dungeon and the other is a side quest, but in the end one of the dungeons leads to another floor that is like a town, so it's like you're traveling across the lands via dungeons. Four dungeons per .dat, and at the end of the second story critical dungeon, we could have a reason for the player losing all their items, such as being arrested.

That way the first file everyone worked on together would give us like 100 hours or so of gameplay, and then we would have to load the 2nd one to continue on from there. Meanwhile, as we are developing the first module, we can request AH to create an update for persistent saves and loading modules on the fly, importing everything from the last module that we need.

Tallyho…

EOB waterdeep severs uses git as a version control tool and github as a central repository. I have contributed to this project and it works really nicely because the actual dungeon file is text based script-file (dungeon.lua). Version control tools doesn't work so well with binary files.

You can browse the project repository here
https://github.com/grimrock/eob1-waterdeep/

It's easy to see what different people has been doing.


Subversion with TortoiseSVN is ok too, but believe me if you dig in to git you won't be looking back to subversion (I haven't).
- Its distributed (no central repository is needed, but it can make things a bit clearer in projects like this)
- Everyone has equal full repository on their disk, so they can develop and make commits and what ever even on offline, and push their changes when they are back online again.
- It's fast, I mean super fast compared to subversion.
- There is more bit advanced points why I prefer git (related to branching,merging etc.), but this thread is not right place for this kind of discussion.

But anyway my main point is that you should use some kind of version control tool, git, subversion or mercurial. They are all free and suitable for this kind of project.
I believe that I don't have the time to contribute to this project but I just wanted to share my thoughts and hopefully help you guys a bit.

So I just wish good luck to you all It's not going to be easy.

I love the idea you guys have, and I wish you every bit of luck. I might even contribute a dungeon later if I have the time, but for now I have a suggestion. My idea is that everything is built around a map. One website where the main page is a world map. Click on a location and a new page appears with a description, level-range, and a direct-download link. You would download the mod, run Legend of Grimrock, start the mod, and import your character files. My idea is just a little notion to consider. It has several problems to it that make it slightly distasteful.

-No immersion from a connected, travel-able world
-The Inventory Problem

My idea also has a few merits to it:

-Relatively easy to build and maintain in comparison to a connected overworld.
-Allows for the player to only download the dungeons that he wants to run.

My idea of a website-based world map is another option laying before you. I wish you all the best of luck in your project, and I will try to support you if I can find the time. Have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

McSkivv wrote:I love the idea you guys have, and I wish you every bit of luck. I might even contribute a dungeon later if I have the time, but for now I have a suggestion. My idea is that everything is built around a map. One website where the main page is a world map. Click on a location and a new page appears with a description, level-range, and a direct-download link. You would download the mod, run Legend of Grimrock, start the mod, and import your character files. My idea is just a little notion to consider. It has several problems to it that make it slightly distasteful.

-No immersion from a connected, travel-able world
-The Inventory Problem

My idea also has a few merits to it:

-Relatively easy to build and maintain in comparison to a connected overworld.
-Allows for the player to only download the dungeons that he wants to run.

My idea of a website-based world map is another option laying before you. I wish you all the best of luck in your project, and I will try to support you if I can find the time. Have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

As interesting and innovative of an idea that is I still feel as though the cons outweigh the pros. If we could find a way to solve the inventory problem that might change. Maybe in later updated there could be some kind of world hub and by entering cretin portals it could download the .wip on the fly for you without exiting the game. That would be really cool.