Bent
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I recently realized that there are some changes and additions I’d like to make to the dialogue of a previously published hold of mine. Then I got the idea to also include a few new challenges at the same time, but before going through the work of scripting and testing them, I just want to ask if there’s a chance of getting such changes approved? I mean, challenges do not affect existing demos in any way, so I can’t really see a problem with it. On the other hand, if more people started doing this then it would probably increase the workload of the HAs, which might make it not worth it.

Dying Flutchman
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Bent wrote:
...Then I got the idea to also include a few new challenges at the same time...

Well, this is really up to the HAs indeed. They've got a lot on their minds already and are doing a marvelous job getting all the holds published. I can imagine they'll not be to keen on extra work.

That being said, it would be very cool if it would be possible to allow to introduce challenges through some standard procedure, provided nothing else is changed.

In particular, it would be a way to 'fix' badly broken rooms by demanding the intended solution through a challenge. I'd have some candidate rooms in my own holds

A similar proposal was done not so long ago, btw: http://forum.caravelgames.com/viewtopic.php?TopicID=44059

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[Last edited by Dying Flutchman at 10-25-2019 12:48 PM]

Schik
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I'm all for it, as long as the HAs have time to deal with updates.

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Dying Flutchman
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Schik wrote:
I'm all for it, as long as the HAs have time to deal with updates.

If HA could update these kind of things 'blindly', it would be ok. But typically, challenge scripts tend to have bugs pretty often (I plead guilty). So there would definitely be some work involved for HA.

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mauvebutterfly
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As one of the (admittedly less active) HAs I wanted to weigh in here.

First of all, I don't know that this would actually make any difference to the speed at which other stuff gets through the HA process. If the changes to the hold are relatively small (only adding a few challenges, for example) it would be really quick and easy to check (especially if victory demos for the challenges are provided). Often the holds that sit in the HA queue are the longer and more difficult holds, so an HA with only a little bit of time might take on the challenge update when they wouldn't have done any of the other things in the queue anyway.

It would probably be best to hold on to your changes for a bit just to make sure that you are satisfied with them before submitting. It would be annoying to have the same hold updated every week with one new challenge. Keep in mind that we also have a challenge board for this kind of thing, although admittedly the challenge functionality of 5.0 does make the challenge board feel less interesting in comparison.

Care would have to be taken to ensure that no demos would be corrupted. This is particularly problematic with scrolls. See how the scrolls were dealt with in the remakes of the official holds: no scrolls can be added to rooms where they would possibly affect brain or serpent pathing, or on a tile where a double potion could place a mimic/clone/decoy. (Oh hey, I just found another difference between clone potions and squad horns.) Scrolls can also block tarstuff growth and roach queen spawns.


I guess there's actually more to this than I initially thought. For what it's worth though I don't personally have any objections to updates being done to add challenges to old holds. Worst case scenario the HAs can just ignore the requested update or we can say "this was a bad idea; no more" if it gets out of hand.

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Dischorran
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As mauvebutterfly said, iff the architect submits the appropriate victory demos it's super easy to confirm that the challenge is possible to attain. Multiroom demos can be recorded for challenges spanning entire floors. I don't know what the options are for tracking changes in this case, but the normal pre-publication interface shows what's changed between versions, making it also easy to identify problems with version control or breaking demos.

I think it's safe to say that HAs will not go through the scripts themselves to look for bugs. It's up to the architect to determine that the scripting correctly recognizes challenge completion and that any changes (e.g. alcoves with scrolls) don't introduce USes, so that doesn't affect HA either.



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mauvebutterfly
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Dischorran wrote:
I think it's safe to say that HAs will not go through the scripts themselves to look for bugs.

Unfortunately, there are some cases where we would have to do so. If the hold tracks variables for anything other than challenges and the challenge script also messes with those variables then it could potentially be an issue. Say there's a cutscene at the end with an extra character who only appears if a challenge/secret was completed or something like that. And then the cutscene variables being off causes the game to get stuck.

I guess that'd be a really rare situation though, and it should be obvious if the hold in question does that kind of thing.

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106th Skywatcher

Dischorran
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mauvebutterfly wrote:

Dischorran wrote:
I think it's safe to say that HAs will not go through the scripts themselves to look for bugs.

Unfortunately, there are some cases where we would have to do so. If the hold tracks variables for anything other than challenges and the challenge script also messes with those variables then it could potentially be an issue. Say there's a cutscene at the end with an extra character who only appears if a challenge/secret was completed or something like that. And then the cutscene variables being off causes the game to get stuck.

I guess that'd be a really rare situation though, and it should be obvious if the hold in question does that kind of thing.

We can exercise judgment on that. If it ends up being a lot of work to check on our end, we can ask for a full continuous demo, deprioritize the update, or just kick it back to the architect. There's always the Challenge board!

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