Old Overworld Help

[Tyhm]

I think the overworld looks just fine the way it is. If you happen to find yourself editing a level and say "Oh, wait, we have a tile for that now", by all means, fix the corners here and there...but I wouldn't put any serious effort into it. There are higher priorities in life.

Mind, if all you CAN do is fix the tiling, then sure, go for it.

Regarding what someone said about every player uploading their own quests with their own weapons, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera...from experience, let things break. If for example Antago's Trident Quest shatters between versions, put a worker over the front door and update the weaponscript to destroy; itself (or hide itself until it's fixed, whatever). Boo hoo, it's broken - it was a sidequest anyway, it's more important that the main trunk of quests be in good repair. When someone's got time to kill, they can repair it or replace it.
The disturbing trend all through the history of Classic (and I'm more guilty of this than most) is dedicated revisionism: Every LAT, be they admin or Graphics (*coughZERO33cough*) has to leave their mark, they have to Fix things, Replace things, Improve things. So they spend the first year or so of their career going through, ripping out the Newbie House, putting in a new Newbie House, ripping out the first few quests, replacing them with Better, Prettier, More Sensible quests...and by the time they leave, we have much less progress than we would have if they'd just let it be. It's like everyone comes in on different days to paint a room and they all start at the same place. Again, this isn't criticism of the current administration - gods know I replaced the Newbie House five times on my own watch (Brother's House, Gertrude's Orphanage, newbie house, better newbie house, Tule Village...), just general advice.

Recap: don't bother repainting the world map yet. Focus on stuff like the Pyramid, like bringing back Baddies, like filling in the old quests (I'm sure they'll be Updated Old Quests, and the poor gnomes will be uprooted again, but that's just how it goes). The map can be ugly and path-y for a little while if it has to be.

[jake13jake]

Originally Posted by Tyhm

I think the overworld looks just fine the way it is. If you happen to find yourself editing a level and say "Oh, wait, we have a tile for that now", by all means, fix the corners here and there...but I wouldn't put any serious effort into it. There are higher priorities in life.

Mind, if all you CAN do is fix the tiling, then sure, go for it.

Regarding what someone said about every player uploading their own quests with their own weapons, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera...from experience, let things break. If for example Antago's Trident Quest shatters between versions, put a worker over the front door and update the weaponscript to destroy; itself (or hide itself until it's fixed, whatever). Boo hoo, it's broken - it was a sidequest anyway, it's more important that the main trunk of quests be in good repair. When someone's got time to kill, they can repair it or replace it.
The disturbing trend all through the history of Classic (and I'm more guilty of this than most) is dedicated revisionism: Every LAT, be they admin or Graphics (*coughZERO33cough*) has to leave their mark, they have to Fix things, Replace things, Improve things. So they spend the first year or so of their career going through, ripping out the Newbie House, putting in a new Newbie House, ripping out the first few quests, replacing them with Better, Prettier, More Sensible quests...and by the time they leave, we have much less progress than we would have if they'd just let it be. It's like everyone comes in on different days to paint a room and they all start at the same place. Again, this isn't criticism of the current administration - gods know I replaced the Newbie House five times on my own watch (Brother's House, Gertrude's Orphanage, newbie house, better newbie house, Tule Village...), just general advice.

Recap: don't bother repainting the world map yet. Focus on stuff like the Pyramid, like bringing back Baddies, like filling in the old quests (I'm sure they'll be Updated Old Quests, and the poor gnomes will be uprooted again, but that's just how it goes). The map can be ugly and path-y for a little while if it has to be.

Well, my major goal with rescripting systems is to make it so a million quests don't break, and also make the scripts for quests are easier. For instance, when arrows are finally rescripted, the boss of the first quest will break and a few other things as well.

My personal goal for the quality of quests is to make them less one-dimensional. In essence, I'll want the player to have to return to certain rooms in a dungeon, etc. Sardon's Tower was a good example of a well layed-out quest, although not well tiled. The layout for Kulls was also not so bad (once again, the tiling sucked), but unless we finish rescripting projectiles, the old layout just won't work.

EDIT: I'll give an extra example on how important the system working properly is to adding quests. I had to rescript the damage system and the movement system for the Castle Dungeon quest to even come close to any functionality. The now resolved bugs with that quest were caused by reused scripts from the previous system. (ie. I'm not going to put up new content if that content is going to be empty)

[BruceLee2000]

Tyhm ...plz come back to us

<3 tony

[Tyhm]

Yeah...I can't comment on how to script a system...we've all seen my Clientside attempt, it sucked...and it had Stefan's core system to fall back on, at that.
*shrugs* If everything's gonna change, then everything's gotta wait on the system. That's all there is to it. Unless you can make a super-clever Join script such that you can script everything in the game to emulate, and thus update every script in the game at once...like, join standardcommands;, which has IfIWasShot() or something.

I dunno, you're the scripter, I just advise blindly. :-P

Tony, there's no coming back. Sorry. I don't have it in me to take the reins again.

[jake13jake]

Originally Posted by Tyhm

Yeah...I can't comment on how to script a system...we've all seen my Clientside attempt, it sucked...and it had Stefan's core system to fall back on, at that.
*shrugs* If everything's gonna change, then everything's gotta wait on the system. That's all there is to it. Unless you can make a super-clever Join script such that you can script everything in the game to emulate, and thus update every script in the game at once...like, join standardcommands;, which has IfIWasShot() or something.

I dunno, you're the scripter, I just advise blindly. :-P

Tony, there's no coming back. Sorry. I don't have it in me to take the reins again.

Well Tyhm, the largest problem I'm having with LAT is that I assign project leaders and the project leaders can't take charge for themselves. I say, okay, gnome caves, these are my basic instructions, complete them, make everything as good as you can, make your own decisions on how these instructions should be executed. Make sure to reuse some of the old stuff, though I don't want that to be the major focus. Project leaders just don't know what there is to do on the project? Just make up stuff to do, my god. I don't even care if the project leader does any work on the project, just to make sure the work gets done. For such a position you, Tyhm, would certainly be qualified. It's just a pain.

[maximus_asinus]

When I was LAT back in December - January you asked me to finish Gnome Caves (and when I seen the work Floydian did, I was forced to scap everything and start from scratch), you didn't give ANY guildlines. You said make these caves to resemble this poorly drawn out map. I hadn't the slightest idea what to do, and I came back to you for input, and direction several times, and wasn't helped out in the slightest, so I quit and you screwed around with my character. You expect people just to pick up something, with no motivation at all, and create a masterpiece. I think if you want something done, you have to give some detail of what you want. You're the LAT Admin.

[jake13jake]

Originally Posted by maximus_asinus

When I was LAT back in December - January you asked me to finish Gnome Caves (and when I seen the work Floydian did, I was forced to scap everything and start from scratch), you didn't give ANY guildlines. You said make these caves to resemble this poorly drawn out map. I hadn't the slightest idea what to do, and I came back to you for input, and direction several times, and wasn't helped out in the slightest, so I quit and you screwed around with my character. You expect people just to pick up something, with no motivation at all, and create a masterpiece. I think if you want something done, you have to give some detail of what you want. You're the LAT Admin.

I'm trying to make development more efficient. I have many projects to worry about, and many projects that I have to face on my own. I give loose guidelines, yes, but in general I'm just worrying about the concept. I wonder how many guidelines Tyhm got when he was told to make Babord... Put this house there, put that house here, make sure there's this and that.

I'd sum up what I'd like to see like this:
We need to make the Gnome Caves. These are the things we need in here for a storyline, other than that I'm giving you the freedom to make all the decisions of what to do and what not to do. You don't have to do all the work yourself; you can assign other LATs some work within the Gnome Caves since you're in charge of the project. Use your own vision here.

[maximus_asinus]

Originally Posted by jake13jake

I'd sum up what I'd like to see like this:
We need to make the Gnome Caves. These are the things we need in here for a storyline, other than that I'm giving you the freedom to make all the decisions of what to do and what not to do. You don't have to do all the work yourself; you can assign other LATs some work within the Gnome Caves since you're in charge of the project. Use your own vision here.

I wish you went into even that amount of detail when I was working on the levels. You never said anything about a storyline, you just gave me a sketch you did in mspaint, which was both confusing, and horribly laid out. As for assigning work to other LATs, at the time we barely had anyone else on the team, Floydian had just quit, and two or three others were just inactive. Nobody had worked with my styling either, so I would of had to go back and redo everything they did.

[Luda]

I'm looking for help, not some discussion about caves.

[Tyhm]

Luda-I hadn't thought you needed it specifically spelled out for you, but those of us who haven't volunteered are saying No. In fact, we're delineating the reasons we suspect it's not the most important thing to focus on and discussing whether or not we're right. If you have some input as to why retiling and reconverting the overworld are important, perhaps more people will be able to help.

Regarding Babord - Rag asked me to put a town there, and walked me along the coast where the world ended. Said 3x3, with an ocean and a harbor. That's why it was always so boxy - I've never been a good tiler (that was Floydian's forte and I was sorry to see him go), and my scripting aptitude was primarily in the form of stubbornness - I won't find an elegant solution, but dammit I'll tweak it until it works. Thus I decided there should be a warehouse district, because I can do warehouses, and a cave, because I can do caves, and LordChimp decided on the pirate ship, and the newbie's ghost's house was just there because big houses take less work than many small houses. I took some house submissions, slapped 'em in there, and it was done.

Then I had to work out a quest involving a cave and some gnomes...for no easily discernable reason...and a moving wall...I think I wound up putting something Behind the moving wall...then there was supposed to be a way to get to Avalon, so the Barrel Ride got badly-scripted in there...notice that there's a rock at the level edges, that was to keep people from drowning on the loading screen...those were the days.

Anyway. Regarding delegation: There are two ways to do it. One, you have a clear picture in your head and have to communicate it exactly to the team leaders. Hopefully they'll get it and make it to specifications. The other, which I learned after two or three years, is to stringently avoid getting any ideas as to what it should look like and telling them so. For instance, Nimda Island had practically no specifications, and came out pretty nice...likewise Floydia Island. On the other hand, I went through 4 or 5 graphics admins trying to get a spire with a cave in it, so the Lizardon Shield Quest could be continued with the second half of the dungeon rising from the dirt near Brothers' House (where, for the purists, the original was. I think.)

IMHO, tell the team where the fences are and how it hooks up. Think Pipe Dream, or any of the clones of the game-where-you-put-together-a-bunch-of-pipes-to-conduct-the-Flooz- from-start-to-finish-with-bonus-points-for-loops: "I need you to build a quest, starting in Graal Castle, working with the Ninji Castle area, it gives the player a L2 sword, and ends back in Graal Castle. The player will have the bow, bomb, L2 gloves and hammer by this point, and since they just got the hammer try to work in plenty of chances for them to use it. The hammer triggers the action wasHammered(), and since I'm still working on the throneroom, lets say the king will say some text and set the flag clientr.StartNinjiQuest when the quest starts, and you can have the quest set the flag clientr.EndNinjiQuest so he'll say something different when they get back."

This is why I never delegated. It was less effort to do it myself. Seriously, all the best stuff from my reign was from when the rest of the LAT got pissed off and threw stuff at me - honds' ship wasn't comissioned, it was hurled at my head. The magic quest went through 3 teams over 2 years, because I kept asking people to work on it; the Ninji Barrel Run was someone's LAT Application if memory serves...I made Bowling as a joke...I think I got Sword to do the gaffing on it (sound work), and he just went out back with a bunch of old bottles and a hammer...