Dungeon Master Forum

I'm working on something in DSB that's quite complex. It's very time consuming, especially as it is graphically intense work and I'm also learning the ins-and-outs of DSB. It gets a little lonely working on it without feedback, so I'd love to release it incrementally to the forum to get feedback.

However, this is quite a problem due to save game incompatibility. If I released say, 2 levels of the game to get initial feedback, and then released a new version with 4 levels in it, you as a player would have to start the thing again entirely from scratch. You wouldn't be able to use your save game from the 2 level version. The final game has around 12 levels, and given how little time everyone has these days, I'm not sure this would work.

It also makes it very hard from a development point of view to make each incremental release coherent, especially when you start building puzzles out over multiple levels.

The more sensible option (to me anyway) is to not release anything until there is at least a completable game for you to play. However, this limits the amount of feedback I can get from the forum and it might also take me a very long time to build the first version of entire adventure. I'm also really keen to show off some of what I've done to show what DSB can do, but at the same time I don't really want to put out a "too-simple" demo that spoils your ultimate enjoyment of the full game.

Thoughts?

You could release a demo of two levels, just to show what is happening. So long as people know in advance I don't think not having save compatibility would be a problem.

But of course releasing levels two by two for a long period wouldn't work -- I would say one demo followed however long later by a full game.

I tend to agree with OB.

Although there is 1 way I can think of that could allow an incremental release to work... even though saved games may not be compatible, you could still simulate some sort of continuity by having the player import parties from the previous part, and thus at least retain your levels and equipment gained. You could then release the dungeon in more manageable 2-3 level segments, and then when you're done, release the whole thing as the full 10-12 level dungeon.

EDIT: the only thing I can think of that you may need to take into consideration is for the 2-3 level dungeon segments you might need to add some reason why you can't go back up a level when you're at the top/transition level, which you could easily remove for the full version.

So, basically you are looking for some play testers?

@Phoenix: I'll certainly need play testers at some point, but that's a separate issue.

@SU: There's currently no way of importing save games from one adventure to another in DSB, so that wouldn't work.

Really I was just wondering if it's possible to get feedback on the overall look-and-feel of what I'm building. So in fact, to do that, it would really only make sense to release a small "teaser" demo (if at all), rather than any kind of fully playable level. Thanks for your input guys, that's helped me to see the issue more clearly.

Gambit37 wrote:@SU: There's currently no way of importing save games from one adventure to another in DSB, so that wouldn't work.

Ah, I didn't realize DSB doesn't have an import parries feature. That might be something to bug Sophia about adding...

He he, the amount of stuff I've bugged her with, I imagine importing saves games is quite low down on the list. We need some DSB dungeons first anyway, which is what I'm trying to recitfy

Importing saved games would be nice, but I was thinking more along the lines of importing party members. Of course, the type-o in my post last post may have obscured my meaning...

I wonder if some sort of party member importation could help this.
They might have to keep their items, which would be strange, but doable.

Of course, if you have an archetype with the same name that does something totally different (i.e., if for some reason you have a monster called "sword") that item-keeping thing would cause pandemonium.

How about running character's inventory through some sort of filter function that checks if any items match anything isn't a valid inventory item like a monster, wall decoration, etc, and automatically deletes anything that isn't valid, while all valid items are left alone? Would that be very doable in lua>

Yes, that's doable and reasonable.

But it's not as fun!

yes, we all need inventories gone crazy don't we

I love Gambit's idea... In fact I thought of it myself

I suspect that the only way to really do this is release a full adventure, but perhaps enhance it over time, like Zyx did with Conflux.

Sophia wrote:I wonder if some sort of party member importation could help this.
They might have to keep their items, which would be strange, but doable.

Of course, if you have an archetype with the same name that does something totally different (i.e., if for some reason you have a monster called "sword") that item-keeping thing would cause pandemonium.

But a lot of dungeon state is needed too, all those opened gates, teleporters, monsters alive and dead.
The only chance that I see is, that the editor would need some kind of lockfunction, so that all things that have been developed in an early version cannot be changed anymore without having to announce that savegames are obsolete.
And then the whole save/load-sequence would have to be reworked. Surely not an easy task.
Another way to create some kind of default party all the time would be kind of a playback-function like in CSBwin.
A lot of work too...

Bit wrote:But a lot of dungeon state is needed too, all those opened gates, teleporters, monsters alive and dead.

I was just talking about how to transfer a party from one game to another more or less intact.
You're right that to actually "continue" it would require all that, which is quite a task.

My main criteria for pondering this was simply to get work-in-progress feedback from the forum. Upon further thought, it may not be advisable for several reasons:

1) I don't want to release half-finished work
2) I don't want to set any kind of expectation of delivery that the forum then holds me to
3) I don't want to "spoil" the surprise of the full game

Of course, there are also good reasons for showing work in progress:

1) It's easy to miss obvous problems when you work on something alone for long periods of time
2) Encouragement can help when one is feeling creatively stuck
3) DSB has very few dungeons, and I want to rectify that - showing demos might encourage people to start using it more
4) And selfishly, it's always nice to hear when people like what one is working on.

Point 2 and 3 against the wip are very strong ones and i think they make the decision.

2 and 4 pro pre-release can be made less harder if you give some information, even if you reach a point being pretty down - you know, the people here can spend some energy, and so they love also each fresh news.
Point 3 is not because of you, and it probably needs some new people finding this community. It's hopefully just a matter of time. Point 1 cannot be avoided completely, but as much as i read, no one ever mocked on such a problem.

So - keep the surprise and make us hungry with some posts. Those are my 2 cents on this.

Gambit37 wrote: 2) I don't want to set any kind of expectation of delivery that the forum then holds me to

Too late for that, I am afraid!

I think OB is right about that.

Gambit37 wrote:1) It's easy to miss obvous problems when you work on something alone for long periods of time
2) Encouragement can help when one is feeling creatively stuck
3) DSB has very few dungeons, and I want to rectify that - showing demos might encourage people to start using it more
4) And selfishly, it's always nice to hear when people like what one is working on.

I completely agree with point 1, there are many things the developer just can't easily test on his/her own dungeons. For 1 thing, you know the solutions to all the puzzles and the locations to all the items so you can't tell if the general player can solve these from the info provided within the game. Get this wrong and you'll find your dungeon's thread clogged with "how can I solve..." posts. A little 3rd party beta testing can uncover these problems and give the developer a chance to fix them by adding in game clues and help get the game balance right.

Point 2 is also very valid, encouragement and feedback are excellent motivators.

Point 3 is probably DSB's biggest weakness ATM, and one of the things that's holding it back, and keeping people in RTC. IMO as Sofia continues to develop and improve the engine, and especially to develop and add more functionality to ESB, so more can be done in the GUI editor, I think you will see more custom dungeons being made for DSB. IMO the need work in LUA is probably the biggest thing that intimidates many dungeon developers from using this engine and why so many end up going for RTC instead.

Point 4 kind of ties into point 2 and I feel the same way.

Just to comment on your comment on #3: It's perfectly possible to build custom dungeons for DSB without ever touching a line of code. Perhaps Sophia needs to re-market DSB and put that message out there as I think it's got lost in all the talk of DSB *requiring* coding to do anything, which is plainly not true. (ESB lacks some handy visual UI elements of RTCs editor, but it's still very powerful and can build complete (and complex) dungeons without requiring any extra coding knowledge)

As for my own project, I'll make no further comments about it until I have something that I'm happy to show.

Well, ok, fair enough. I am aware of ESB, but haven't used it yet, still working out finishing off my RTC Dungeon so I'd rather start learning something new and seeing what ESB can do after I've done that.

Of course, we are holding you to getting this done, so if you don't have any comments about something being done, you will have some ornery members on your hands.

I have a long history of not getting things done, so please don't hold your breath

Don't worry, I won't, I'll just get ornery and pressure you and browbeat into finishing it.

I like the idea of Incremental releases.
Indeed the main issue is saved game compatibility.
However ,with simple constraints, I think this is doable.
For instance:
Let's say we have released a 20 levels dungeon and we want to add a 21th level.
Let' s say the 20 levels dungeon only communicates with the 21th level by stairs.
Some merging program, using the 21th level dungeon increment, would process the 20 levels old savegames and dungeon to produce the 21 levels new savegames and dungeon .
We could have stairs going nowhere ( that have no coresponding stair at the other level ) giving a warning in the editor, but accepted to be blocked stairs. They would unblock when the added level is merged.
All this is based on the fact that a savegame is exactly like a dungeon, the only difference is, there have been some changes. And I assume, no fancy interactions between the old dungeon and the dungeon increment.
This would be a scheme where, the author releases Act I, then Act II, and so on.

BTW:
With CSBwin Dungeons and Savegames are loadable with CSBuild. This looks perfect to me.
However, with RTC or DSB, that is not the case, the editor loads dungeons, but doesn' t load savegames. Why ? Is this intentionnal ? How come a savegame is not another dungeon ?