eytanz
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Why are checkpoints disabled in the editor? It's really annoying, and I just can't see the advantage of it. It does have several disadvantages, as follows:

- It means that I can't play the room the same way a normal player does. I can't tell the overall experience of my room.

- It's much harder to figure out good checkpoint placement - I don't know where would be places where checkpoints could cause trouble, or make it too easy.

- On complex rooms, it usually makes no sense to just place beethro in the middle of the room - what if there's a trap somewhere in the beginning I need to drop for the red door? No checkpoints mean I constantly have to replay the whole room. Either that, or modify the room so that it's in the state that the player would be expected to reach at that point - inviting errors when I forget to put things back just right; and immensly complicating testing for these rooms.

I'm assuming there are benefits which I just can see - could someone please explain them?

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Oneiromancer
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Well, I do think that checkpoints should be enabled, but one workaround could be to make a copy of the room, make the changes, and then test those changes. Then instead of having to reconstitute the original room you could just add the changes to the original room.

There's no substitute for enabled checkpoints, though.

Game on,

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eytanz
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Well, yeah, but going through all that every time you want to test something late in the room would be highly annoying. And there's always the chance of getting something wrong when modifying the room to fit the "late" state - especially if there's tar mothers or roach queens involved; or worse, serpents - there's way too many factors involved to predict correctly where a snake will be placed and what it's length would be after half the room is completed.

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mrimer
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I agree playtesting should work more like regular in-game play. The reason that checkpoints are disabled is that otherwise all the player's games saved at checkpoints during playtesting would also be accessable during normal play. So, yeah, this means some kind of workaround is in order. When all these bugs get fixed and we have a stable build, then that would be a good time to write some code to do this. I built the level editor so people can share their dreams and imagination with others. So the thing we need most now to make it reality is making it work right. Then we'll get to the feature requests!

eytanz
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mrimer wrote:
I agree playtesting should work more like regular in-game play. The reason that checkpoints are disabled is that otherwise all the player's games saved at checkpoints during playtesting would also be accessable during normal play.

If I had to choose between turning on checkpoints in the editor and having them accessible in normal play, and the current situation, I'd choose turning on the checkpoints. Yeah, it's hardly ideal, but remember, this will only happen in holds I'm designing, which I doubt I'd play normally anyway.

You're absolutely right that writing a workaround should be a low priority - but disabling checkpoints because of this problem seems to be a case of pouring the baby with the bathwater.

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Schik
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A saved game created by a checkpoint has, I believe, a list of rooms in the current level visited and a list of rooms conquered. When playtesting in the editor, these fields don't make sense and I think would be empty, so using these saved games when playing the hold could create unsolvable situations. Mike, feel free to chime in and correct me here.

Regardless... While enabling checkpoints and discarding them after you're done testing would be nice... I think that this would be a LOT better:

- Allowing unlimited undo moves
- Don't allow Beethro to make a move that will result in him dying.

Who needs checkpoints if you have that? I'd rather say "whoops, I meant to go SW instead of S" than replay half the level since the last checkpoint anyways.

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Scott
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I agree that the best solution would be allowing undo.

eytanz
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I don't think it's a good idea to have the editor playtesting be so different than normal playing - allowing undo would be nice, but disallowing death would be really, really annoying; and in any case, allowing undo won't be helpful at all in determining the right places for checkpoint placement, which is an important issue.

Again, if using checkpoints in the editor would make the hold unsolvable - well, that's a really minor price to pay; why would you care about solving the hold you just built anyway? And if you already solved it and that's how you got editing rights, well, you already solved it, didn't you?

I wouldn't be arguing any of this if the early builds didn't have checkpoints enabled, so I know the code for having them exists - and I also know that it doesn't cause any obvious problems in the design process, because I built a hold with checkpoints there, and it was a lot better than trying to design a complex room now without the checkpoints.


[Edited by eytanz on 06-27-2003 at 07:02 AM]

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Schik
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eytanz wrote:
disallowing death would be really, really annoying;

It's also really, really annoying to be testing or proving solvability, and keep making silly mistakes and having to redo large parts of a room. If you could undo a move that caused you to die, that would be better than disallowing death. (Currently, with cheats enabled, you can't undo after you die - too late!).

Again, if using checkpoints in the editor would make the hold unsolvable - well, that's a really minor price to pay; why would you care about solving the hold you just built anyway?

It would just be silly to have it create invalid saved games (which I'm not even sure it would do... it just seems like it might?). Since yes, checkpoints would be great in testing, they should be enabled but not saved to your player database when you quit testing that room. Don't worry, Mr. Rimer will make everyone happy.


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eytanz
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I'm not worried in the long run. But I just think that of the two temporary solutions possible, the wrong one was chosen.


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mrimer
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Aw, man. I guess I'm not perfect. Well, now I've written the code for this (enabling checkpoints and not having it mess up your game) and it will be in build 24. Not sure how I feel about undo. If Erik says it's all right, we'll turn it on for play-testing.

BTW, we recommend a hold author does play through his entire hold normally before releasing it, with saving victory demos enabled. If you don't, and something's not beatable, the mobs'll get you

eytanz
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Hey, don't worry - given the amount of excellent work you're doing, there's bound to be a mistake here or there.

Anyway, I'm really looking forward to build 24 - it seems like it will be one big step towards the beta's completion.

[Edited by eytanz on 06-27-2003 at 08:25 PM GMT: typos]

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ErikH2000
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mrimer wrote:
Aw, man. I guess I'm not perfect. Well, now I've written the code for this (enabling checkpoints and not having it mess up your game) and it will be in build 24. Not sure how I feel about undo. If Erik says it's all right, we'll turn it on for play-testing.

I can think of bugs it might introduce. I'd rather leave it out.

Besides, enabling checkpoints should alleviate most of the pain. If the author is really having a hard time playing through his room, that's a clue for him that it might be unenjoyably difficult. I suppose also, he could throw extra checkpoints around the room for playtesting and take them out later.

-Erik

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