Nuntar
Level: Smitemaster

Rank Points: 4513
Registered: 02-20-2007
IP: Logged

averagemoe wrote:
Joined recently? Wait, does that mean such a thing is still open? Where?

Since the project is on a beta board, you would have to have CaravelNet membership and turn on "Available for beta testing holds" in your profile.

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50th Skywatcher

Zizzencs
Level: Goblin
Rank Points: 19
Registered: 09-23-2007
IP: Logged

In the next few weeks/months I'll have a lot of time to spend on things at home, so if possible, I'd like to participate testing this Entry Point hold, just to do something fun and probably useful. I've enabled the "available for beta testing" setting.

What would be the next step? :-)

Nuntar
Level: Smitemaster

Rank Points: 4513
Registered: 02-20-2007
IP: Logged

I've sent you an invite, so next time you are on the forum main page, you should see it at the top of your page with "Accept" and "Reject" buttons. Naturally, we would prefer you to click "Accept"

This will give you access to both the latest version of the hold and its beta board, which is where feedback should be posted. You could also drop into CaravelNet chat any time, and there are often a few members of the EP team around.

One word of advice: the hold is very large, and Chapters 1-5 are almost completely finished now, so you may prefer to skip those chapters and concentrate on the later ones, where feedback is most needed. If you want to play through from the beginning, though, any feedback you choose to give will be welcome.

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50th Skywatcher

Baine53
Level: Goblin

Rank Points: 19
Registered: 03-26-2017
IP: Logged

I'd also like to test Entry Point, though, to be honest, I'm not sure how useful my critique would be. I am a rank amateur, though, so I can at least gauge how useful the guides are to me!

jbluestein
Level: Smitemaster

Rank Points: 1670
Registered: 12-23-2005
IP: Logged

I would be interested in testing as well if there is still ‘room’.

I am still working my way through TSS, but, um, it’s kind of hard in some places?

Josh

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"Rings and knots of joy and grief, all interlaced and locking." --William Buck

Illusionist
Level: Master Delver

Rank Points: 165
Registered: 05-27-2020
IP: Logged

jbluestein wrote:
I would be interested in testing as well if there is still ‘room’.

I am still working my way through TSS, but, um, it’s kind of hard in some places?

Josh

Entry Point is slightly harder than TSS IMO. I myself have to resume testing the hold, because I was neglecting it for a while

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[Last edited by Illusionist at 07-18-2021 03:17 PM]

Pinnacle
Level: Smitemaster

Rank Points: 1123
Registered: 06-10-2004
IP: Logged

Assigning a single difficulty level to EP or TSS is pretty much impossible. EP starts significantly easier than TSS starts, closer to early GatEB, but ramps up to probably around Complex Complex difficulty.

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Once (adv.): Enough.
Twice (adv.): Once too often.
~Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary

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[Last edited by Pinnacle at 07-18-2021 05:33 PM]

TripleM
Level: Smitemaster
Rank Points: 1373
Registered: 02-05-2003
IP: Logged

Nuntar wrote:
Time for another update

We're still making great progress -- with 2.8% gained over the last two months, at the current rate of progress we should be finished within another six, even without compromising on any of the content we'd like to have. That's not a guarantee, of course, but it means that things are very hopeful.

Those who have signed up recently have been great additions to the team and have helped enormously. So, as always, the door is open if anyone else wants to take part.

Dragon Fogel's streams are now midway through Chapter 4, and pretty much all issues before that point have been resolved. There are only twelve remaining unfinished levels -- most of them in varying states of partial completion and some nearly finished -- and an ever-shrinking list of levels we are looking for more testing on.

I know I've said a few times in the past that I hope we can get this finished in the next year, and each time that hasn't worked out, but this time I feel confident that we will be releasing some time in 2021. I don't know exactly when, but the current plan is that around Christmas we will look at where we are up to and decide on a tentative release date.

Have there been any updates since this?

Dragon Fogel
Level: Smitemaster
Rank Points: 2350
Registered: 06-21-2014
IP: Logged

Nuntar has unfortunately been severely preoccupied. He expects things to get better for him in January. I'll leave it up to him if he wants to clarify the situation any more than that.

This has unfortunately resulted in a lack of main hold updates. I've been trying to get some of my own architecture work done to keep things moving in the meantime, though.

Because of this delay, it's still going to be a while before we finish. However, it's likely that early next year we'll make a shift from "finishing the levels" to "work on just getting the hold out even if we don't finish all the levels we wanted to do".

The good news is that the last year or so of work has greatly reduced the number of things that might get cut out. At this point, all but a few levels have either a full draft or something close to one. A lot of what still needs to be done is testing and making changes in response to feedback, and we've made good progress on the levels that needed the most changes.

It's good to hear that people are still interested, and I for one will be doing what I can to make sure that next year is when this finally goes out the door.

Nuntar
Level: Smitemaster

Rank Points: 4513
Registered: 02-20-2007
IP: Logged

So... it's been a long time since I posted an update. I was hoping to be settled down in my new flat in January, but things look a lot longer than expected. However, I finally completed the purchase a month ago today, and two weeks ago got the internet connected and permanently moved in. So, it will be a lot easier for me to keep up with EP work from now on.

Dragon Fogel has been doing awesome work in the meantime, keeping up with streaming his playthrough of the entire hold, which has helped us to structure our feedback and editing so that more and more levels can be shunted to the "finished" pile and we can focus our energy on the remaining ones.

We have finally crossed the 95% barrier -- in fact our bar on the beta board is now at 95.25%. Fogel's streams are now more than halfway through Chapter 8, the last story-based chapter (although there is one more tier of content after this). Clean-up is going very well, and most of these levels are now finished -- which says a lot more about the skill and hard work of the original architects than it does about mine

At this point I don't want to speculate about a release date -- a lot depends on what happens as we transition from mostly clean-up to trying to build the rooms we need for unfinished levels. But I will keep posting here to keep everyone updated, and I might be doing some architecture streams soon.

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50th Skywatcher

Nuntar
Level: Smitemaster

Rank Points: 4513
Registered: 02-20-2007
IP: Logged

Today, we celebrate having kept this thing going, through all manner of circumstances and difficult times, for eight years.

And we are still going Our bar is up to 95.75% -- maybe we will pass Treacle Stew soon? -- and clean-up work has moved on from Chapter 8 to what we, internally, call "Tier S", the very final tier of optional levels. In fact we are almost halfway through this now.

I haven't been able to do architecture streams yet -- for one thing, I started a programming course in July that has been taking up most of my time -- but it's still a possibility for the future, especially after my course ends in October. We'll see.

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50th Skywatcher

Nuntar
Level: Smitemaster

Rank Points: 4513
Registered: 02-20-2007
IP: Logged

We are making really good progress. Treacle Stew pulled ahead, but we have nearly caught up, with our bar now at 96.6%.

We now expect that by the end of this year, Dragon Fogel's testing streams will have gotten through all the complete levels, and those can be moved to the "absolutely finished, no more changes" pile. Then all that's left will be finishing what is now a small handful of incomplete levels.

I don't know exactly how things are going to go, and I've been wrong about things before, but it really does look like we can have this all wrapped up some time in 2023. Huge thanks to everyone for being so patient!

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50th Skywatcher

enzi666
Level: Master Delver

Rank Points: 162
Registered: 01-05-2004
IP: Logged

Really looking forward to it!
So much DROD content!

As I'm really bad with gel it'll probably be out months before I mastered Treacle Stew!

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58th Skywatcher

DROD AE: Finished - KDD2: Mastered
JTRH: Mastered
TCB: Mastered - RPG: Finished
GatEB: Mastered - TSS: Mastered

Nuntar
Level: Smitemaster

Rank Points: 4513
Registered: 02-20-2007
IP: Logged

It's been a while since I posted an update, but Mike has brought the EP bar back, so I figured I should let everyone know where we are up to.

The bar is now at 96.8%. We went through a slow patch earlier this year as both Fogel and I had health problems, but we have been making steady progress, and Fogel's streams have now covered all our finished levels. We are still working on certain issues in clean-up (making some of the more problematic rooms more playable, weeding out breaks, designating rooms secret if necessary, checkpoint issues, and so on) -- but these are now down to a handful of rooms. We are on track to finish clean-up by the end of May.

After that, the next task is to complete the remaining unfinished levels. There are only a few of these, but they are very important levels for the project as a whole. It's exciting, but also very daunting, to be finally at the point of getting down to serious work on these final levels.

I'll keep updating this topic when we have more news, and thanks again to everyone for being so patient

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50th Skywatcher

Nuntar
Level: Smitemaster

Rank Points: 4513
Registered: 02-20-2007
IP: Logged

We've hit 98%. You may have noticed that the last few months have seen the bar move in irregular bursts; that's just because we are in an architecture phase, which makes it hard to quantify progress except when substantial chunks get completed. Progress has actually been fairly steady, and continues to be.

As of now, clean-up on the finished levels is done, and all that's left is to finish off the remaining unfinished levels (there are not many of these but some of them are awkward), then do feedback and clean-up on those, and a few miscellaneous small tasks like the last few level intro texts.

I know I've said a few times before that I hoped we could get the project finished within a year or so, and it hasn't worked out; but now I feel we can promise that we will get EP finished and submitted before the project's 10th anniversary (14 September next year). Maybe much sooner than that, depending on how things go from here, but that should be the outside limit.

Incidentally, Dragon Fogel has stopped EP streams, because all the remaining levels are endgame levels that we would like to keep under wraps. The streams have been extremely useful, and it's been an unfortunate but necessary side effect that most of the hold has been shown off publicly by now -- but we want there to be some surprises

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50th Skywatcher

kikuchiyo
Level: Master Delver
Rank Points: 103
Registered: 04-01-2012
IP: Logged

Have you considered splitting the hold and releasing it in parts?

I mean, don't take this as an attack, but as I've read, this hold is going to have more than 2000 rooms - isn't that more than all Caravel's official releases, combined? Releasing the already complete first half or first third would give people something to play, while letting you concentrate on finishing the ending.

disoriented
Level: Smitemaster

Rank Points: 2342
Registered: 08-07-2007
IP: Logged

kikuchiyo wrote:
Have you considered splitting the hold and releasing it in parts?

I've brought up this question, and the answer is yes, they have considered it, probably on more than one occasion. The decision was made to not split the hold (likely because it would involve a lot of work to restructure things).

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34th Skywatcher

Best to PM me, since I might miss your message on CaravelNet chat.

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[Last edited by disoriented at 11-06-2023 08:17 PM]

Nuntar
Level: Smitemaster

Rank Points: 4513
Registered: 02-20-2007
IP: Logged

kikuchiyo wrote: Have you considered splitting the hold and releasing it in parts?

I mean, don't take this as an attack, but as I've read, this hold is going to have more than 2000 rooms - isn't that more than all Caravel's official releases, combined?

It isn't. The five main holds have a total of 2718 rooms, even before starting on Smitemaster's Selections. There is no chance at all of us reaching this number It's still a bit up in the air because of our unfinished levels, but EP's final room count will almost certainly be between 2420 and 2450.

As for splitting the hold, it's really not possible because of its non-linear structure. Progression through the chapters is linear, as it has to be so that each one can build on previously introduced elements and ideas; but geographically, sometimes Beethro returns to earlier areas, similarly to how you have to return to Older Holding Vats and House in the Forest in TSS. The ways in which secrets and bonus levels are unlocked also depend on this interconnectivity, and we have taken advantage of it in other ways, for instance by adding interactions with characters if you return after triggering endgame progression flags.

It's certainly something we've considered as an emergency measure, when the end was a lot further away and it looked like we might have to resort to desperate measures to get anything released at all. By now, I am really confident that we won't need to fall back on anything short of our Plan A of bringing the hold to full completion and releasing it in the usual way.

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50th Skywatcher