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ErikH2000
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You've done a few things besides sitting in front of your computer, right? I imagine sometimes you walk to the living room to watch some TV. And perhaps you sometimes trek to the kitchen to microwave yourself a few burritos. People tell me that you live an action-packed life full of events like this. It would be great if there were more information available about all your fascinating activities.

But who will tell your tale? There are some professional biographers that would surely jump at the chance. But how can you trust a stranger to chronicle the wonders of your experience? There's only one person up to the job--you, of course!

For our July contest, we will ask you to tell one true story from your life using a DROD hold, machinema-style. This won't be a story about Beethro or any part of the Eighth; this will be something that really happened--a Story of You!

Rules

1. To enter, you must post between one and three holds in a reply to this topic before:

Local Time:07-20-2006 at 01:00 AM

2. You are asked to remove any entries in excess of three from this topic. If you have more than three posted, there is no guarantee that I'll pick the ones you wanted to use as entrants. If you post more than one version of a hold, be sure to delete earlier holds from the topic.

3. The story you tell in the hold should be something that really happened to you. Of course, it's unlikely that anyone here will be able to verify your truthfulness, but don't tell us that you took a trip to an island full of magical unicorns. An appeal of this contest is that we might learn a little about people's real lives.

4. You can use all the features of the DROD engine like scripting, image floors, audio clips, and demos. I encourage you to put it to good use!

5. The emphasis should be on storytelling, not puzzle-solving. There's no rule against putting puzzles or gameplay challenges in your hold, but I will be asking voters to rate your hold by just its story.

6. Any images or audio that appear in the hold must be completely your own work. You can't copy and paste from other sources, even if you have permission. This means no DROD graphics from any of the games can be used for the contest. Just draw it yourself. Use of photographs are okay if you took them yourself.

7. Each story should be completable within 30 minutes or less. For interactive holds, it should be possible to view/listen to all the content in the hold within 30 minutes or less without making any special kind of effort.

Winning

After people vote, all the entries will have an average rating. Whoever has the entry with the highest rating will win 1st prize, a hundred rank points and any item of his choosing from the Prize Pile. The second and third placers will win 50 and 25 rank points, respectively.

Only each person's highest-rated entry will be considered for contest placement. In other words, one person can only win one prize no matter how screamingly wonderful his entries are.

Thoughts and Ideas

The player-controlled Beethro element could be you or someone else in the story. It could also be an invisible observer that doesn't effect the story at all.

You could have the player walk through the story interactively. Should the player be able to affect the story? This gets into grey areas because a rule is that the story must be true. Perhaps an interactive exploration would be possible, but the same events would occur regardless of the player's actions.

Instead of having interactivity, you could record a demo to walk the player through the story. In this case, remember to mark your demo to "Show from Title Screen", so that when you export your hold, the demo will be included.

Some ideas for stories:
* A really bad accident you got into
* A date you went on
* Your first day on a job
* The time you got in a fight with a school bully
* The day you forgot your kid at the grocery store

No doubt there will be some DROD-ities that creep into the depiction, i.e. why is the main character holding a sword? My suggestion is to not draw much attention to them, and ask the viewer to filter them out or use his imagination a bit. Your dog might be represented by a roach, for example.

That's the contest. So who's going to make a story?

-Erik

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The Godkiller - Chapter 1 available now on Steam. It's a DROD-like puzzle adventure game.
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[Last edited by ErikH2000 at 07-03-2006 03:51 AM]
07-03-2006 at 01:56 AM
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Chaco
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Wow, good idea.

I'll have to start coming up with something right away. :)

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07-03-2006 at 03:02 AM
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Tahnan
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Maaaaan. That's a fascinating contest idea. Quick question: can text come from other sources? If it's the story of the day I spent reading Milton (which is public domain) or Arthur Miller (which isn't), can I use text from those sources in audio/scripting?

[Last edited by Tahnan at 07-03-2006 03:05 AM]
07-03-2006 at 03:05 AM
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Chaco
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As an aid to incorporating custom images into a hold (say, a car) what's the size of a tile in DROD in pixels?

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07-03-2006 at 03:29 AM
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Ezlo
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So, about audio. We have to make our own music if we want to put some in? That doesn't seem quite right. Can't we use music we didn't create? I can understand image tiles and spoken word, but not music. I doubt 20% of the forum has even the ability to make their own music let alone the talent!
07-03-2006 at 03:31 AM
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ErikH2000
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Tahnan wrote:
If it's the story of the day I spent reading Milton (which is public domain) or Arthur Miller (which isn't), can I use text from those sources in audio/scripting?
Yeah, a sentence or two is fine.

-Erik

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07-03-2006 at 03:32 AM
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ErikH2000
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Chaco wrote:
As an aid to incorporating custom images into a hold (say, a car) what's the size of a tile in DROD in pixels?
They are 22 x 22 pixels.

-Erik

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dev journals | twitch stream | youtube archive (NSFW)
07-03-2006 at 03:32 AM
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ErikH2000
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Ezlo wrote:
So, about audio. We have to make our own music if we want to put some in? That doesn't seem quite right. Can't we use music we didn't create? I can understand image tiles and spoken word, but not music. I doubt 20% of the forum has even the ability to make their own music let alone the talent!
Who says you even need to have music?

But yeah, if you include music or other kinds of audio, it must be entirely created by yourself. This might seem unneccesarily strict, but I really hate exploring the grey areas of copyright infringement. Even if I am successful in explaining it, it takes a lot of time and people end up not understanding. So it's very frustrating and I'd rather not get into it.

The question about using text that was just asked seemed a little more clearcut to me, so I said it was okay to use a few sentences of text in the "fair use" rationalization. But I don't want to open the floodgates here. Generally, you need to just create everything yourself.

-Erik

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The Godkiller - Chapter 1 available now on Steam. It's a DROD-like puzzle adventure game.
dev journals | twitch stream | youtube archive (NSFW)
07-03-2006 at 03:42 AM
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Ezlo
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You said that you wanted to see everything used to it's fullest potential. I immediatly thought of adding music. :? No said I had to, it's just that I wanted too.
07-03-2006 at 03:47 AM
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ErikH2000
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Ezlo wrote:
You said that you wanted to see everything used to it's fullest potential. I immediatly thought of adding music. :? No said I had to, it's just that I wanted too.
Fair enough, Ezlo. I get grumpy about these things, but I don't hold anything against you for asking.

-Erik

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dev journals | twitch stream | youtube archive (NSFW)
07-03-2006 at 03:54 AM
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coppro
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ErikH2000 wrote:
Ezlo wrote:
You said that you wanted to see everything used to it's fullest potential. I immediatly thought of adding music. :? No said I had to, it's just that I wanted too.
Fair enough, Ezlo. I get grumpy about these things, but I don't hold anything against you for asking.

-Erik

Parody clause! :P

As a side note, does singing the lumberjack song automatically count as parody, seeing as no one in their right mind would actually sing it seriously?
07-03-2006 at 04:56 AM
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Mattcrampy
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You're not parodying the lumberjack song, are you? Penny Arcade got into trouble for something like that: you can parody things, but you actually have to parody them. You can't use something copyrighted as part of a parody unless that's what you're parodying.

Unlike Erik, I haven't been burnt multiple times by trying to explain copyright, so I shall keep reaching for the hotplate.

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07-03-2006 at 07:36 AM
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Chaco
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Are we allowed to simply use no "Set Music" commands and have DROD simply play the default "neutral" music (or Puzzle if there are NPCs) ?

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07-03-2006 at 05:45 PM
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ErikH2000
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Chaco wrote:
Are we allowed to simply use no "Set Music" commands and have DROD simply play the default "neutral" music (or Puzzle if there are NPCs) ?
Sure. That is already included with the game and you aren't distributing it in any way. I really only care about including other media that you didn't create in your hold.

-Erik

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dev journals | twitch stream | youtube archive (NSFW)
07-03-2006 at 06:56 PM
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Chaco
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Alright, good. Thanks.

I've started my entry now. Right now it's got a couple levels for my house, one for the street I live on, and... well I won't spoil it.

I'm not done with this post yet though. Since this community seems to love to compile things, I've had an idea on how to do the compilation for this contest. I won't do it, since I'm busy with the Death to Death one, but if anybody else would take it up:

The canonical angle on this one is that a party of people from (well, whereever Crampy in his article The Eighth Pinned Down came from) have arrived somewhere in the Eighth. Beethro decides to interview these people to get more information about them and where they came from.

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[Last edited by Chaco at 07-03-2006 09:06 PM]
07-03-2006 at 09:06 PM
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Jason
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Any Space limit? (ex: 4 levels, 25 rooms, etc)

Also: Can it be a small version of my life story?
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[Last edited by Jason at 07-04-2006 06:59 PM]
07-04-2006 at 06:54 PM
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Chaco
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Part of my "story" involves me going to the library. So I'm doing a small model of the relevant part of my neighborhood... in DROD. I imagine it mightn't be a bad idea to start your day in your house, though you don't have to if you don't want to.

Remember, the contest doesn't end at the end of the month, it ends about halfway through the month.

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07-04-2006 at 11:51 PM
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mrimer
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Larry Murk woke up. First, he got out of bed and went to clean his harmonica. Second...

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Gandalf? Yes... That's what they used to call me.
Gandalf the Grey. That was my name.
I am Gandalf the White.
And I come back to you now at the turn of the tide.
07-05-2006 at 08:23 PM
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larrymurk
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mrimer wrote:
Larry Murk woke up. First, he got out of bed and went to clean his harmonica. Second...

Hey, hey, hey. We'll have no picking on that Larry Murk. I hear he is a very nice fellow!
07-05-2006 at 08:51 PM
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ErikH2000
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+10 rank points to whoever posts an official entry here first. We need somebody to kick off the contest and give an example of what can be done. It is like me and empty dance floors in clubs at 10pm. I go out and dance like a fool by myself, and then other people will slowly come out because there is at least one person that will look worse than them.

To claim the +10 it has to be a real effort and not something you faked up in two minutes.

-Erik

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07-06-2006 at 08:44 PM
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Chaco
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Hey, hey, I have an excuse. I'm currently in the middle of surveying my immediate neighborhood so I can fit it into DROD!

Unless you'd like me to do a haphazard job so I can get the 10 rank points...

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07-06-2006 at 08:52 PM
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mrimer
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Chaco wrote:
Hey, hey, I have an excuse. I'm currently in the middle of surveying my immediate neighborhood so I can fit it into DROD!

Unless you'd like me to do a haphazard job so I can get the 10 rank points...
This sounds cool. And reminds me of Dr. Emmett Brown when he says "Please forgive the crudity of this model."

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Gandalf? Yes... That's what they used to call me.
Gandalf the Grey. That was my name.
I am Gandalf the White.
And I come back to you now at the turn of the tide.
07-06-2006 at 09:17 PM
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ErikH2000
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Chaco wrote:
Unless you'd like me to do a haphazard job so I can get the 10 rank points...
Well, no, don't let me sabotage your project for 10 dinky points. :)

-Erik

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07-06-2006 at 10:24 PM
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Chaco
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About how close is everybody else to finishing then? ;)

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07-06-2006 at 10:26 PM
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Tahnan
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ErikH2000 wrote:
+10 rank points to whoever posts an official entry here first.

Believe me, Erik, I'm not failing to post because I'm not writing one, I'm failing to post because I'm doing more with scripting than I have ever done before, and I keep running into all kinds of limitations to work around. ("What? I can't specify a non-rectangular 'wait while player at' area?") But I'm getting there, I'm getting there.
07-07-2006 at 03:21 AM
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Chaco
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You can make any shape at all out of enough rectangles. Granted, a triangle will take an infinite amount to make the smooth slope instead of steps, but in this case you can get all the tiles and be done with it.

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07-07-2006 at 03:22 AM
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Tahnan
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But can you have a single "wait while player is at" encompassing them all?
07-07-2006 at 04:33 AM
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Chaco
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Nope, sorry. Can't be done.

You'll have to go with multiple "if... go to" statements.

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07-07-2006 at 04:36 AM
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ErikH2000
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You could set up a whole bunch of carefully placed eyeballs that waited for the player to walk inside of a non-rectangular area and then write an NPC script to check if the eyeballs moved.

Somehow I suspect this isn't very practical.

-Erik

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dev journals | twitch stream | youtube archive (NSFW)
07-07-2006 at 05:06 AM
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Tahnan
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It's a good idea, Erik, but my real-life encounter with giant eyeballs didn't happen until a year or two after the story I'm telling in this hold, so I just can't really include it.
07-07-2006 at 06:38 AM
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