eytanz
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I think this has been raised before, perhaps by me, but I don't recall ever seeing a reaction to this by a developer - I know Erik isn't around but I'd like to hear Mike or Shick's opinion -

At the moment, if someone wants to release a big hold (say, Bavato's Dungeon, or Deep Hold), then they are bound to have some revisions once they get player feedback. And, as both holds mentioned clearly show, there will be bugs which require fixing. At the moment, this means that early players of holds are in a sense beta testers. It also means that, if I play a new hold, I run the risk of having to lose all my progress (which could easily have taken me hours), because the last room before the stairs is broken and I have to download the fix and restart from the level beginning - and no warp room can take me mid level.

I say, why not formalize this. Lets not have players be de-facto beta testers for new holds - lets have real beta tests. Allow hold authors to mark their holds as "beta releases". This should enable to debug options (skip room, undo) for that hold only. That way, people could play through the hold - and if they find a bug, they could report it and keep playing. If a new version is available, they could skip all the rooms that weren't changed. When the author is satisfied that the hold is ready, he can remove the option, and presto - no more debug options.

Sure, this means beta-testers can cheat. But you don't have to have open betas - there are enough of us here that anyone concerned for the secrets in his hold can release beta-versions privately to people he or she trusts. And yes, it's possible to replicate this to some degree at the moment by sending editing-approved holds to beta testers, but that's not the same - first, playing through the editor doesn't allow for demo recording (useful in bug reports), and is discontinuous - you don't get to play the hold as you "should". It also means that secrets are automatically revealed on the map - beta mode would allow easier revelations, sure, but responsible testers won't use them.

I think this will result in better holds, and a better experience for everyone. I'm getting more and more hesitant to try out new holds before I hear someone else has completed them - and as more and more people will feel that way less and less people will play fan-made holds at all. If I know that I'll have the option to skip rooms I've already completed, I'll be happy to beta test. Right now, I just can't afford the time expanditure.

I really, really hope this makes its way into 1.7.

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Oneiromancer
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Eytan makes a compelling point, and I do agree. However, let me play the devil's advocate for a little bit. In both cases where there were many revisions, at least recently, the authors have admitted that they did not playtest some (or all) of the rooms. So, some revisions could be avoided that way. Also, recording demos is not necessarily that important; there really aren't that many showing problems yet.

But like I said, I do agree. You don't need to have a broken hold to want to release a new version: in my most recent hold, Treasure Hunt, I found out that there were at least 4 rooms that could be more or less trivially solved in a way I did not intend. So I released a revised version, which again means people have to play it over again from scratch, practically, in order to see the changes. Although, since I solved all the rooms the way I intended them it could have been done that way at first, you're just not "forced" to, and people with the first version could try to solve it the "right" way as a challenge.

Anyway, a fourth option on the hold edit screen does seem to make the most sense. Call it a "beta" option, call it a "cheat" option, but have it there so people can test more effectively, as Eytan said. And I too have been putting off trying out new multi-level holds unless they have a warp room. I think another good design decision would be to have fewer rooms per level. Maybe 8-10 maximum, just to make it easier to skip ahead during the testing process. I know people won't want to limit themselves, but really, it does make sense. More levels, fewer rooms per level is perfectly reasonable to me.

Game on,

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eytanz
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Oneiromancer wrote:
Eytan makes a compelling point, and I do agree. However, let me play the devil's advocate for a little bit. In both cases where there were many revisions, at least recently, the authors have admitted that they did not playtest some (or all) of the rooms. So, some revisions could be avoided that way. Also, recording demos is not necessarily that important; there really aren't that many showing problems yet.

Absolutely. But if my experience as a developer taught me anything, it's that the author of the work can often be blind to things that are obvious to others. For one, impossible rooms aren't the only sort of bug - a room that allows 0 margins of error may also be considered a problem (not in all cases, but usually it's best to allow people to recover). Checkpoint placement can look very different to someone who knows a room by heart and to someone unfamiliar with it - they may try doing things in the wrong order and a badly placed checkpoint could really screw them up, or maybe one is missing somewhere where it's sorely needed. And not to mention the other side of the spectrum (which you mention above, but I add for completeness) - rooms with unintentional trivial solutions, or unintentionally giving access to a room out of order and thereby messing up the whole level, etc.

There are many cases in which a single author, no matter how much he or she tries, just cannot do everything alone.

I think another good design decision would be to have fewer rooms per level. Maybe 8-10 maximum, just to make it easier to skip ahead during the testing process. I know people won't want to limit themselves, but really, it does make sense. More levels, fewer rooms per level is perfectly reasonable to me.

To me too, but that should be an author's individual decision; sometimes it's much nicer to have a big, sprawling level with many paths and maybe rooms you can visit from multiple sides and so forth. And it doesn't really matter, anyway - the room I found a bug in in Bavato's level 4 was the second one I tried. Even if there were only 3 rooms in the entire level, I would have still had to solve the first one again, which took me an hour the first time, and I don't think it would take much less the second time, because it wasn't figuring out what to do that took the time, but being extra-careful to not get stuck.

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agaricus5
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Oneiromancer wrote:
In both cases where there were many revisions, at least recently, the authors have admitted that they did not playtest some (or all) of the rooms.

I know... I know...

I'm doing that right now.

Anyway, a fourth option on the hold edit screen does seem to make the most sense. Call it a "beta" option, call it a "cheat" option, but have it there so people can test more effectively, as Eytan said.

I'd agree - it will make testing a lot easier, and will save the trouble of re-releasing fixed holds.

However, I think that it should be a level-specific thing. This is because it will ruin the fun of levels like level 5 (You will see what I mean) of my hold because people will be tempted to use them in the level to find the solutions by cheating, rather than using the warp room to skip it if they do not want to do it.

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eytanz
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agaricus5 wrote:
However, I think that it should be a level-specific thing. This is because it will ruin the fun of levels like level 5 (You will see what I mean) of my hold because people will be tempted to use them in the level to find the solutions by cheating, rather than using the warp room to skip it if they do not want to do it.

I think it'd be easier to make it hold-specific. In special cases, like your apparently is (I haven't seen it yet), just release seperate levels individually with different settings.

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Oneiromancer
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I forgot about the checkpoint issue. That can definitely be an art, and it's just one little change that right now makes someone have to replay the entire level.

Game on,

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Mattcrampy
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I'm baffled that it's not done on a per-room basis. I was here while this was being discussed, and I fail to remember why we didn't just chop off the restore thread at the first changed room.

I'm not sure about letting jump cheats in, but perhaps a beta mode that doesn't delete progress when rooms change?

Matt

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mrimer
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Getting to respond here: this is a very interesting idea. It's probably worth trying out at least during the test phase to see if it's worth keeping in indefinitely. In that case, I'm thinking it would be nice to have a "Testing" flag for each level. (That's no harder to add in than for each hold, and provides more flexibility. It would be more "paperwork" to keep track of though.)

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