ErikH2000
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After the two Matts get the new hold submission stuff working, I'm sure somebody will come along and update this message. Actually, I will leave it to our good webmaster, because I keep snatching away all his speaking opportunities.

-Erik

I said earlier:
Well, there's no holding back the flood of creativity out there. I feel like a grumpy old parent at a swimming pool. "You kids can't go in right after you ate! Hey Jimmy, that sign says 'no horseplay'!"

But, do please keep in mind that we are still in beta. When you make your holds, be prepared for the possibility (probability) of losing your data along the way--which means you'll need to use the export function to make backups of your data frequently. The developers (well Mike mostly, and sometimes me and Schik) aren't going to concentrate on recovering your lost data, although we are very interested in fixing bugs that cause your data to be lost.

If all that sounded confusing and irritating, you could just wait until we make our official not-full-of-bugs release of "DROD: Architect's Edition". It really won't be long.

This board is intended as a place to post and discuss holds while they are under development. Schik and Mafinot are putting together some site features to be used for publishing completed holds. It's going to be pretty slick, I think! So once you get your hold ready for action, you can distribute it to the masses through this other means that has not yet been invented. From the player's point of view, if he mainly enjoys playing polished holds with all the kinks worked out, he'd do better to not download holds from this board while in their preliminary stages, but wait until they are done. Some of you may have holds that you consider complete and ready to be published. Just be patient while we finish up on the beta and the new site features.

Hmm. I shouldn't sound so certain about how things will be arranged. Treat that last paragraph as a tentative truth.

[Edited by ErikH2000 on 11-03-2003 at 06:38 AM GMT]

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Mattcrampy
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Schik's slick schtick.

I couldn't resist.

Matt

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Oneiromancer
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ErikH2000 wrote:If all that sounded confusing and irritating, just wait until we make our official not-full-of-bugs release of "DROD: Architect's Edition". It really won't be long.

You know, you can interpret this sentence as meaning that the official release will be even more confusing and irritating than the the beta. (Not that the beta is either confusing or irritating, but that's just how it sounds.)

Sorry for the nitpicking...

Game on,

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ErikH2000
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Oneiromancer wrote:
You know, you can interpret this sentence as meaning that the official release will be even more confusing and irritating than the the beta. (Not that the beta is either confusing or irritating, but that's just how it sounds.)

Ha! Okay, I debugged my writing. Thanks.

Reminds me of an SNL skit where Chris Farley is a nuclear plant inspector, and he says to people working there: "Of course, you can't have too much coolant in the reactor." (or something similiar) The workers try to figure out if he means "you can never have too much" or "you shouldn't have too much". And I think the plant blows up because they take his advice incorrectly.

-Erik

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NoahT
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Mattcrampy wrote:
Schik's slick schtick.

That sounds like the kind of stuff my dad would say. He's a silly guy, and I'm like him.

-Noah

[Edited by NoahT on 08-16-2003 at 01:15 AM GMT: Age rules]

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zex20913
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Since this post is talking to new architects, I thought I would add a couple of testing rules, for the editors, in case they post a hold.

1. Make sure every room is solvable. If a certain sword direction is required upon entrance, make sure that the previous room can still be gotten to.

2. Make sure all of your stairs link to the proper levels of your hold.

3. Make sure you can backtrack to the entrance from all of the rooms. This seems to be the worst problem I've encountered, and been guilty of.

I believe that should set good hold standards, to begin with. Also, this isn't required, but I thought it was a good idea: give a bit of a description of your hold. I.E. hack&slash, puzzling, no carbon based life forms, etc. This helps the testers in knowing what they're getting into, if for instance some people hate hack& slash, or some people are carbon based lifeforms.

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krammer
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zex20913 wrote:
Make sure you can backtrack to the entrance from all of the rooms. This seems to be the worst problem I've encountered, and been guilty of.

Well, not necessarily - you can't on Level 1 of DD but that's not bad design, you just don't ever need to go back. If there is a choice of directions from a room though, then make sure that you can return to this room to go down the other branches whichever way you go first.

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Mattcrampy
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I know people aren't going to read down this far, but what exactly WERE Schik and Mafinot working on for new holds? Because I can't see it.

I've got plans, certainly. Oh yes. Of course, Schik has ideas as well, and between us we should be able to come up with something marvellous.

As it stands, we're giving completed holds scores by acclaim (as in, complain and we'll change it) as follows:

Difficulty, out of five, taking Level 24 as 3.5. This would be determined mostly by looking at user comments and subjective analysis. Using old elements in a new way is also a good way of bringing this up. This would appear as brains on the hold download screen, initially set by the creator but modified by the admins as they play the hold.

Length, measured by the amount of rooms. The longest hold is given a score of 5 green doors, the shortest 1/2 a green door, and everything else settles in between. Maybe using a bar similar to the statistics screen. Showing the number also gives a good indication of just how long we're talking.

Enjoyment, which is a score out of 10, determined by the average score of everyone who plays the hold. I'm tempted to display this as a bar of tar - a tar mother can mean the hold hasn't got enough votes yet (and thus needs to 'grow' in popularity, snicker). As well as the number to the side.

Amount of monsters, because it's funny. Just as a number - although any excuse for snakes is a good excuse, I don't really want any more pretty bars.

Downloads, because that's always interesting.

Major theme (if there is one): If you're going to build a hold around invisibility potions, that's what'll go there. "Invisibility Potions, Erik's Triumphant Return".

And a link to the description on the forum - Schik's good idea was to not build a new DB but instead use the one we've already got. I can't believe I didn't think of that - maybe I just want more DBs than practical. DBs! Woo!

Matt

[Edited by Mattcrampy on 10-16-2003 at 03:15 PM GMT: typing while sleepy doesn't work]

[Edited by Mattcrampy on 10-16-2003 at 09:39 PM GMT]

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Schik
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Ummm... sure, make me look bad. My work on that was sorta abandoned for various reasons.

But that's all good, because now I want to do it a different way anyways. I think what we should have is this - a custom page just for uploading holds to the site. When a hold is submitted:
- it will be entered into a database, along with some (TBD) information about it.
- a new thread will be created in a "Holds" forum, containing either that file as an attachment or at least a link to it. Nobody will be able to create threads in this forum in any other way (well, except maybe admins. Maybe.)
- Anyone who has selected "inform me when new holds are available" in their profile will get an email. (Option is not there yet)

I guess that's about it, other than my writing some PHP for you to query the db and get hold info. I've been playing with some templating code so I can write the retrieval of information, you can write the presentation of it in HTML (plus template tags). It shall be cool.

Length, which is mostly based on the length of other holds, measured by blue doors

Ew. Is that really a good way to do it? You could certainly make a huge hold with absolutely no blue doors. How about number of rooms? When a hold is uploaded, I can have it automagically add the # of rooms in the hold into the database. We don't have to even show the exact number, just a bar graph like you said, to show relative sizes.

I can also add numbers of different types of monsters, if that would be at all interesting.

Difficulty, taking Level 24 as 3.5 brains

On a scale of.... ? If it's 1-4, I guess that's okay as long as we're allowing halphs... er... halves. And what about users rating the holds? I really want to add that, in case I think your rating of them sucks.

I'm also gunning for having the option to have "release notes"

Those would end up in the message of the first post in the new topic as well.

How does this sound? If it sounds good, I can start coding it up soon.


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Mattcrampy
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Sorry, I was thinking more on the presentation side of it. I'm an idiot, eh?

I've reworded it above.

A user rating would be useful, and random statistics would be highly amusing. If it's easy enough, go right ahead.

You know, I never thought of just making it part of the forum.

Matt

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Schik
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Mattcrampy wrote:
Sorry, I was thinking more on the presentation side of it. I'm an idiot, eh?

No, that's what you're supposed to think of. I'm really thinking this templating I mentioned will work well - you can rearrange the HTML to your heart's content and not worry about the backend db access.

I like your edited thoughts - once I get something put together for a backend, I'll email you & we can work out the details.

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Mattcrampy
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ErikH2000 wrote:
After the two Matts get the new hold submission stuff working, I'm sure somebody will come along and update this message. Actually, I will leave it to our good webmaster, because I keep snatching away all his speaking opportunities.

-Erik

Yeah, that's right! Give me the megaphone, you're getting it dirty! I said give... oh, fine, don't give it to me then.

Hah! Reverse psychology!

Matt

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