ErikH2000
Level: Legendary Smitemaster

Rank Points: 2794
Registered: 02-04-2003
IP: Logged

There was a great turn-out on this contest and some excellent entries! The polls are closed and what do we have now? Man, I've got six different windows open to sort this all out:

1. Corel PhotoPaint to see pics
2. Eudora to see e-mails which indicate who authored pics.
3. 1st poll so I can see the filenames of the first 7 attachments which let me look authors by e-mails. (I named files after times e-mails were received.),
4. 2nd poll so I can see final results and filenames of the last 2 attachments.
5. "What is real" poll.
6. The window where I am typing this message.

So the alt-tab key is seeing a lot of use. Hmm. Let's start by saying who authored what.

First Entry - Rabscuttle
Second Entry - Gamer Extreme 101
Third Entry - Rabscuttle
Fourth Entry - Wackhead UK
Fifth Entry - Wackhead UK
Sixth Entry - Doom
Seventh Entry - Nillo
Eighth Entry - Fafnir
Ninth Entry - Slug

There now I can close a couple of windows and bring the teeming chaos under control. For the poll where people were asked to rate the realism of entries, our third place winner was Gamer Extreme 101's Second Entry. It is an altered version of a room from King Dugan's Dungeon. Looking at it, I can tell you that it would be possible to make this room in JtRH, it would be solvable, and you might even enjoy it. So while the graphics are not accurate, the room itself is perfectly plausible.

In second place was Ninth Entry, provided by one of our contest latecomers, Slug. Actually, Slug entered well ahead of the deadline, but I lost his e-mail so his entry along with Fafnir's had to be added to the poll. Here's something somebody wrote about Slug's entry to me in e-mail (name changed for some semblance of privacy):

Citizen H wrote:
[screenshot 9] looks so freaking amazing! And it's made by Slug or Fafnir? Someone is getting 160 points...! Except that I didn't like the undo move and especially undo 10 moves thing. (Except if their use is limited or something like that)
If any of those other screenshots are real they lose clearly compared to #9. I suggest you to remake JtRH graphics for later version if for example #2 was a real one

...which gave me a little pang of terror. What if one of the entries looks better than JtRH? Then I tented my fingers and settled back smug. Impossible. I spent hundreds of hours working on art. And Mike spent hundreds of hours working on display coding. The fools can't compete against that!

I don't know if Slug made his art from scratch or borrowed it from someplace else, but 95% of it was definitely not from DROD. Of all the entries featuring gamescreens, it was the least derivative. I was quite impressed, and it is inspiring to know we have a talented pixel artist like Slug amongst us.

The winner in the first poll, by a narrow margin, was the Sixth Entry by Doom. (Not to be confused with the Doom Entry by Wackhead UK!) I can see why people liked this entry. It looks very polished and there are some new elements in it. Credible! If the detail of tile size had been discussed more, I wonder if it would have done as well. It using the 14x14 tiles instead of 22x22. I think the gag rule was for the best, because otherwise I doubt it would have garnered as many votes in the "what is real?" poll. It would have only taken one smarty to harp on the 14x14 discrepancy and everybody else would get wise.

I also note that this room is possible to make in JtRH along with Gamer Extreme 101's, except that there is no green tar. I put it to the other folks here (not Caravel teamers) as a little mini-challenge: if we substitute green tar for blue, and make optimistic assumptions about what orbs do, is the room solvable? I believe the rules for rattlesnakes are described elsewhere.

In some ways the extra "What is real?" poll is more interesting than the first. This is where we learn how people were tricked! I imagine there were some gleeful cackles as the votes came in. I'm particularly pleased that five of the entries managed to fool somebody. (Remember that one vote must be subtracted for the author who is obliged to vote for his own entry.) Oh, if you didn't guess yet, none of the entries were real, so you guys got seriously hoodwinked here! The sheep preferred different shepherds, but Doom corraled the most with his convincing #6.

Only four tire-kickers said "I ain't buying it!" Which four? Step forward and declare yourself, if you don't mind. Any particular reasons for your skepticism?

Here, I must repeat my apology to Fafnir and Slug, who might have enjoyed seeing how much tromping they could do in the "What is real?" poll. Particularly Slug, whose entry was rated just a tiny bit under Doom's. Faf, you didn't make a six rating, so you aren't eligible for 10 rank points under the side pot rules. Slug you're eligible for 20 rank points. I think both you guys got less rank points here than if you had been properly entered in the "What is real?" poll so I'll try to make it up to you by dumping some bonus mod points onto your accounts as well. Hey, what is best in life--respect or power? I'm telling you, go for the power every time. It's much better.

I can close almost all those stupid windows now, but I have to open up a new one--my exhaustive record of who all has previously entered one of our ten contests. I can't remember this stuff anymore, gotta keep track of it. So who's a rookie?

Not Rabscuttle (Dungeons of Snoll)
Not Gamer Extreme 101 (Songs of the Eighth and Tourist)
Not Wackhead UK (Short Question/Long Answer)
Not Doom (Least Number of Moves and Dungeons of Snoll)
Not Nillo (Five-Suite Speaking Grounds)

Fafnir, Slug--you guys are new and get the rookie bonus. The two rookies probably learned that Erik is a little flakey on the e-mail and you gotta follow-up if he doesn't say he got your entry.

Distributions go as follows:

Doom - 180 rank (main/real: 100 + 16x5) and either free copy of JtRH or item of your choosing from the DROD store. E-mail erikh@caravelgames.net for your selection.
Slug - 90 rank (main/side/rookie: 50 + 20 + 10)
Gamer Extreme 101 - 55 rank (main/real: 25 + 6x5)
Wackhead UK - 55 rank (real: 11x5)
Nillo - 45 rank (real: 9x5)
Fafnir - 10 rank (rookie: 10)

This stuff is hard to keep straight with all the windows open and people running amuck in my house making me lose concentration. If a few people would double-check my above assertians, I'd appreciate it. I'll wait for the dust to settle before I start throwing rank points around.

-Erik

____________________________
The Godkiller - Chapter 1 available now on Steam. It's a DROD-like puzzle adventure game.
dev journals | twitch stream | youtube archive (NSFW)

Doom
Level: Smitemaster

Rank Points: 3226
Registered: 07-05-2004
IP: Logged

Citizen H wrote:
[screenshot 9] looks so freaking amazing! And it's made by Slug or Fafnir? Someone is getting 160 points...! Except that I didn't like the undo move and especially undo 10 moves thing. (Except if their use is limited or something like that)
If any of those other screenshots are real they lose clearly compared to #9. I suggest you to remake JtRH graphics for later version if for example #2 was a real one

I can confirm that these were my comments. You shouldn't be afraid about graphical quality of JtRH. I could compare entry 9 only with other entries and I think it looked great compared to them. Now I've seen the real JtRH screenshots and they're not bad either. Maybe I exaggarated when I said that 160 part but that's the result of voting or commenting without thinking before...
I also noticed a few flaws later but that wouldn't had lowered my rating a lot.

See, I said: if for example #2 was a real one. It wasn't and there's no need to worry.

By the way, I guessed the undo thing right
And you called me "Citizen H". But I'm not a beta tester

edit: One last thing, The room should be solvable and quite easy in fact. I didn't think too much about what do different orbs do. You could define the orbs in many different ways but I doubt it would become that difficult.

[Edited by Doom at Local Time:11-21-2004 at 11:12 PM]

Slug
Level: Master Delver

Rank Points: 122
Registered: 11-08-2004
IP: Logged

It's unfortunate that my pic didn't make it through spam filters. Not that I care that much about rank points but it would have been nice to see how many 'real' votes I could have gotten.

Nevertheless it was fun to make that picture and I'm glad that so many seemed to like it. This was pretty much my first time I've drawn anything at this scale so it took quite awhile to finish it. About 9 hours if I had to guess and thats including all the coffee breaks (it's amazing how much time coffee breaks can actually take ).

About those buttons... well, at first I didn't plan to but anything but it looked kinda plain. Then I got this idea to put some buttons there and since 3 of them didn't look enough I had to make some more. And the first thing that got into my mind was that undo feature that I rememebered reading from somewhere. I guess I should have checked that.

But one thing that I don't understand is that when I sent the pic its size was about 260kb and here its 510kb and a bit blurry. Was it was saved again or something?

jdyer
Level: Smiter
Rank Points: 329
Registered: 03-19-2003
IP: Logged

I didn't buy any of them. Do I get a free tire?

A couple were easily dispensed with as photoshop mods.

I was dubious about the sixth entry because it looked like someone had loaded up the tilesets and twiddled, like in The Demons of Color. Also, gameplay considerations cropped up; the goblins here don't really make any sense, and as far as I can tell the rattlesnake isn't good for anything. Finally, the resolution seemed wrong.

The second and fourth one looked like blow-up-and-antialias jobs. I still got seriously thinking about the second shot for a while but I realized the room would be flawed in actual play; the tar grows to an extent that the finishing job would be utterly (and unnecessarily) tedious, and I presumed our esteemed designers wouldn't do that.

The first and eighth didn't look different from regular DROD, and I knew enhanced graphics were in store.

The ninth had me doubting partly because of the tilted view. I didn't disregard it altogether, though, becuase I figured it might just be showcasing some sort of 3d effect one could make. What really caused me to toss this one was the 'Undo' buttons. Having an 'Undo 10 steps' button means there would be unlimited undo, which would go against a.) the DROD experience and b.) what was said about checkpoints and being able to restore to any checkpoint; if you have unlimited undo, why do you have checkpoints?

I finally contemplated the credits for a bit, then thought 'nah'. I *knew* there were more people involved than those listed.

[Edited by jdyer at Local Time:11-22-2004 at 02:25 AM]

eytanz
Level: Smitemaster

Rank Points: 2708
Registered: 02-05-2003
IP: Logged

My main problem with a "undo 10 steps" button is that it's rather arbitrary. When is the point you want to undo to ever exactly 10 steps back? And if it is, would anyone really count moves well enough to know?

____________________________
I got my avatar back! Yay!

Slug
Level: Master Delver

Rank Points: 122
Registered: 11-08-2004
IP: Logged

Lets just assume that 'undo 10 moves' button was there just for room testing purposes and it would have been removed in final version.

Stefan
Level: Smitemaster

Rank Points: 2119
Registered: 05-25-2004
IP: Logged

ErikH2000 wrote:
Only four tire-kickers said "I ain't buying it!" Which four? Step forward and declare yourself, if you don't mind. Any particular reasons for your skepticism?

I didn't believe any of them was real. Here's why:

The 3nd and 5th entry were quite obviously jokes, so those two could automatically be discarded.

The 1st, 2rd, 4th, 6th, 8th and 9th entry all fell for this:

ErikH2000 wrote:
For the time being, we're sticking with 38 columns by 32 rows. The tiles will be 22x22 pixels though, and 1024x768 resolution will be used instead of 640x480. So room sizes are the same, but with more detailed graphics.

The first entry was basically DROD:AE with a new potion. What this potion does is still a mystery to me. It seems to make tar transparent (with not-so-good-looking edges), evil eyes harder to see, tar babies completely invisible (or tar cuttable without producing babies), goblins and Beetrho white, and roaches seems to be unaffected?!

The second and fourth entry were the right size, but most of the graphics were basically enlarged DROD:AE elements, so the graphics were not more detailed, they were just a bit larger (and blurry).

The sixth entry was cool, but the resolution was incorrect. Also, I don't think that there will be goblins AND serpents AND rattlesnakes AND green tar on the SIXTH level. JtRH is designied for those new to DROD (I couldn't find a post that confirms this, but it's a quite well-known fact).

The eight entry has incorrect resolution and tile size. It's basically DROD:AE with a couple of new elements.

The first time I saw the ninth entry I was just stunned. However, it has a couple of flaws. The resolution is incorrect and the tiles are consequently the wrong size. Also, it's a picture of the third level, but there are both serpents and a brain here (and green roaches), which doesn't really fit in.


That leaves the seventh entry. This is just the kind of screenshot I would have expected from the developers, but this too had it's flaws. First of all, the resolution is incorrect (1080x720). Secondly, the picture of Beethro is obviously from the website (here). The D.R.O.D. logo is there, but Journey to Rooted Hold is in ordinary text (seems a little suspicious, don't you think?). Also, the font used (Arial?) didn't seem plausible for DROD.

So there you are, no entries left. Therefore all entries were fake. QED

____________________________
0.099³

Krishh
Level: Master Delver
Rank Points: 282
Registered: 06-05-2004
IP: Logged

I was one of the skeptics too.

Discarding the joke entries we have the fake ingame screenshots and the senventh entry.

Most of the screeshots were just redesigns for the old window, and while I didn't know what the new tile size or resoluton would be, I was quite sure that the graphics would have undergone a major overhaul, not just small additions to the curent ones, therefore that only left entry seven, but again, the bland fonts of the text gave it away for me too.

I would have been very much fooled by entry nine if it wasn't late though, although now when I study it some more, I do notice some flaws, mainly in the way the top right corner of wall blocks look.

ErikH2000
Level: Legendary Smitemaster

Rank Points: 2794
Registered: 02-04-2003
IP: Logged

Slug wrote:
But one thing that I don't understand is that when I sent the pic its size was about 260kb and here its 510kb and a bit blurry. Was it was saved again or something?

Sorry. Apparently I resaved it at one point to rename it. Doh! I should have just made a copy of the file.

-Erik

____________________________
The Godkiller - Chapter 1 available now on Steam. It's a DROD-like puzzle adventure game.
dev journals | twitch stream | youtube archive (NSFW)

ErikH2000
Level: Legendary Smitemaster

Rank Points: 2794
Registered: 02-04-2003
IP: Logged

Finally got around to awarding points.

-Erik

____________________________
The Godkiller - Chapter 1 available now on Steam. It's a DROD-like puzzle adventure game.
dev journals | twitch stream | youtube archive (NSFW)

wackhead_uk
Level: Smiter

Rank Points: 352
Registered: 06-21-2004
IP: Logged

I saved mine as a png too, and 2.2mb was not good for my modem, so I had to go and download it from school, which promptly got this site banned! So to you!

ErikH2000
Level: Legendary Smitemaster

Rank Points: 2794
Registered: 02-04-2003
IP: Logged

wackhead_uk wrote:
I saved mine as a png too, and 2.2mb was not good for my modem, so I had to go and download it from school, which promptly got this site banned! So to you!

Wackhead, you may have sent a PNG earlier, but I don't have it. The two files from you in my e-mail box are:

JtRH screen proper.bmp
(resaved to 0539.bmp and attached to "Fourth Entry")

DROD JtRH.JPG
(resaved to 0712.jpg and attached to "Fifth Entry")

It's probable there was some loss in quality on the JPG image, which I apologize for. The BMP would retain its original quality when resaved.

-Erik

____________________________
The Godkiller - Chapter 1 available now on Steam. It's a DROD-like puzzle adventure game.
dev journals | twitch stream | youtube archive (NSFW)

wackhead_uk
Level: Smiter

Rank Points: 352
Registered: 06-21-2004
IP: Logged

Ahwell, I'm still a bit at DROD.net being banned so I have to access it from home...I'm almost sure I sent it as a png because the bitmap was huge, but maybe I just forgot.

ErikH2000
Level: Legendary Smitemaster

Rank Points: 2794
Registered: 02-04-2003
IP: Logged

It got banned from your school network because the download size of the image? If so, boy are they touchy! The file wasn't that big.

-Erik

____________________________
The Godkiller - Chapter 1 available now on Steam. It's a DROD-like puzzle adventure game.
dev journals | twitch stream | youtube archive (NSFW)

wackhead_uk
Level: Smiter

Rank Points: 352
Registered: 06-21-2004
IP: Logged

Some rules from our school access policy:

1. You are allowed to follow legitamate private interests
2. You can't go on anything not to do with school

No sense, right? So I download Firefox and install it, then he complains and bans me for a day! Tetchy or what!

eytanz
Level: Smitemaster

Rank Points: 2708
Registered: 02-05-2003
IP: Logged

wackhead_uk wrote:
Some rules from our school access policy:

1. You are allowed to follow legitamate private interests
2. You can't go on anything not to do with school

That sounds somewhat contradictory, except if they assume that all the legitimate private interests you may have are school related .

No sense, right? So I download Firefox and install it, then he complains and bans me for a day! Tetchy or what!

That, on the other hand, seems rather sensible to me - I wouldn't allow people to install software on a public computer I'm in charge of without consulting me first.

____________________________
I got my avatar back! Yay!

wackhead_uk
Level: Smiter

Rank Points: 352
Registered: 06-21-2004
IP: Logged

Well, I was just trying to make a point so I could understand why he banned me.

The lesson: Never fight for what you believe in!