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boyflea
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Joined: Mon Nov 20, 2006 3:23 pm
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Re: Tell us about your latest project; what are you doing he

Post by boyflea »

I feel I must apologise to a lot of good people here.

Come with me now on a journey through time...

Fact is, back in 2006, I published a game in RTC. It was lousy and the first three levels were bad and the graphics did not match. But I had one idea: in RTC editor, I saw you could set monsters to attack party or other monsters: from that one option I decided upon having a quest where the party helped good monsters beat bad monsters. And kill a dragon too. And multiple endings. And also unite a girl and boy PC character. And then escape the dungeon.
[Really, that's pretty much all game design is people. I was even paid to do it for real games for 4 years :) ]
So that was that. 4 people + his dog saw it and played it. Feedback helped. Onto my next quest, planning to be bigger and better. You know what comes next - it never happened. The engine, and game, has some serious restrictions: for the next one I wanted to explore cinematics I'd seen at the start of CSB, and see if I could use to tell a story. So plot organised, this time tings take place just before Dungeon Master, and you are an Ant, leading a band of bad guys with instructions from Gothmog (Lord Chaos's minon, natrually) to help him fill the last of the 24 champion mirrors. Quite cool, playing with the mechanic of an Ant character who could CLIMB as an inherent ability. Quest was to build party, kill off humans, capture Zed, amazon girl, Linflas and a dwarf. Big showdown at end, change of heart, push Gothmog into final mirror. Another 3/5 dungeon to be enjoyed by 7 people and a cat. :)
I setup a yahoo group at this time to host my files... (it was olden times, before dropbox)

So 2014, Ben, or Chaos Shaman, or CS, contacted me about DM. I had not even visited my own yahoo group for about 5 years, let along the DM forums. I am sure you all know the spiel: 'I have a vision, I have a dream, RTC has a future, and I'm looking for help, etc'
I was bored, to be honest. So I returned to the forums, and pinged a couple of people to find out a bit more about what has been going on. Lots of rumours, a sense of bad-blood somewhere on the forum...

<<rewind

Now in 2012, I stumbled across Grimrock (Cowsmanaut) and one Steam Sale later, boom, am having a blast again. Prisoner of the Six launched, to 5 men and a nexus forum community. Average rating 3/5, and one youtube review: big time success! Also had a small room on ORRR2, which was a delight to work on, real community spirit.

So 2014, and among CS rantings, DSB is mentioned. DSB and Grimrock share a common lua-scripting base. So naturally I thought to investigate. DSB is an absolute dream to use next to RTC, suits me well and picked up the basics immediately.
So as an acid test, and rebuilt my 2006 dungeon in DSB. Somethings DSB cannot do by default, and the initial idea of monsters a versus monsters b had to be changed: monsters a became trapped prisoners instead. I resolved to keep in the terrible top-level layouts, however it did evolve, as I was having fun. Hell, I created over 20 cinematic screens, adopted a true 80s font, created a full music library and sound FX, all re-sampled at glorious 16MHz to give it that authentic ST feel. It was insanely fun and filled up my daily commute for about 3 months. so 16MD of work. A record. As one of like three DSB scenarios, thought at least someone would comment on it: CS did, and that was it really. DSB team were fantastic with the technical support, but got the feeling no-one cared - or expected at least, an actual deliverable.

Well I showed everyone DSB is dead easy and yes, you can just bang one out quick enough. Boom. I added sparkles and everything. Well I liked it.
With more time could have added some actual lua customisation... but I wanted sparkles instead, and just to see what people thought, if I am honest.

Chaos Shaman played it. He played both - probably only the two of us have - and preferred RTC version.

At this point I reasoned the following to be true:
DSB can work, it has the ability to grow and is a candidate for cross-platform. But frankly no-one cares. EVERYONE comes to this site for the RTC dungeons. That creaky old beast is unkillable, despite the GG head being cut-off in 2007 - and hey it is still fit for purpose.


Playing DM again made me realise how much fun the game is. Grimrock 2 was such a disappointment that I was sulking with it, so returned to the tons-of-fun first generation.

So I now had that itch again. To heck with it, I would realise that DM dungeon. dun dun dunn.
So I played some maps and am playing Dark Reign 2 and playing CS's Banville (and related projects before, etc)
And guess what: Dark Reign 2 is grey, no frill, hard-as-nails wall-knocker. It feels like 1989 when I'm playing it.
CS's demo was a bit blousey but had a decent core idea. But it wasn't at it's heart DM for me.

Ah god, look I'll just tell the story: this is not what I wanted, but will tell it.

CS is friendly enough and I thought as a professional project manager, I would help him achieve his goal of publishing a mission featuring this stuff. I have played his AI demo too, and yes you can control NPCs wiht dialogue - so the guy has a quirky but astute eye for cool things. Treat him like a client. Ben is nice and completely committed to DM. I don't agree that we should discourage that: certainly the community is past it's prime, but if those that stay want to be fanatical then that's not a terrible idea.

So agreed to help.

But, everytime we chat online, RTC v DSB is always raised by CS. I don't care. SERIOUSLY, I DON'T! I am here to spend my FREE TIME on something FUN.

Upon being introduced to Clodius, who is the writer, I was given a lot of files, two pngs to explain how AI works and only Clodius' maps for the story. Bit basic, but we can build on this. (@ Clodius, I am happy to help those who have English as a second language to translate stories - I love writing too, so that offer still stands... hello just write the story and publish that! We will love you forever for it.)

Now I am bossy. Cards-on-table, no-nonsense bully. Bit of an ass often in these things, but frankly if you want to deliver an epic seemingly intent on rivalling lord of the rings, you need a plan. Any plan. Naturally I 'advised' a few things: shared repository options, basic story-arc, deliverables, timeline etc. I also said that I'm not here to be part of this DSB v RTC battle nor will I participate if we need George Gilbert to fix something in the engine to deliver the final piece. Blunt but I'm not messing around as I will not join in to be let down later with this nonsense.

And then I was swiftly of the team again as, it seems, these are requirements: GG will return! (ok, that's unfair, but not far off)

I will still advise that CS and Clodius deliver a series of small contained episodes rather than something massive. I've made my feelings clear on the balance of dungeon stuff versus CS stuff too. Ah well, have seen the mythical AI stuff, don't ask me for it - out of respect of CS's IP, it is deleted and not shared. No really. It is, and has not. Really. Really-really.


And now this thread. Like an old soap opera you used to love as a kid, I returned to find out the state-of-play: a lot of you will know I asked a lot of questions.
This thread and final few comments are my absolute worst dreaded fear - me coming back has not produced anything of worth and has just re-opened old arguments.

There is real anger here, and if it continues people will leave or be pushed out. CS you have every right to be angry with me and this post, but I hope you see that I don't have a lot of choice here! So please stay cool, okay? I do have to explain how things ended up here and I have a right to defend myself against some awful allegations.


So please can this thread be closed. This is not productive or healthy for anyone.

Agreed?
The stonework walls? Pristine. The floor? Level. The waterworks? Flowing. Central heating? The Dragon in the basement was grumpily heating the pipes. Lord Chaos consulted the blueprints again, looking for the bathroom. #playmygame!
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