A few thoughts and questions.

[Ryeath_Greystalk]

How does one stay motivated when it seems like every idea you come up with someone does first?
So I'm making my dungeon and one thing I come up with that I think is going to be unique, spend two days working on this room, and a very similiar room ends up being in the one room round robin dungeon.
And if I finish my dungeon and put it out there for others then every one is going to think "oh he just copied this other modder."

And on one level of my dungeon I've been painstakingly mixing the temple and prison wallset for a new look, and I see someone, forgive my lack of memory on who posted, made a wallset very similar. It looks really nice, but now I don;t have anything unique again.

Not complaining, just wondering how one keeps motivated when they see someone else using the same idea?

One other thing, can anyyone point me to a clear explanation, written so a three year old can understand it, on what all I need to do to use the new graphics. I tried to use Akroma's red spider. I copied & pasted the monster.lua and the definematerials.lua and I copied the redspider.model but the dungeon editor won't load the game. it say it can't find the model or something like that. I did notice a .dds but I didn't know what to do with it.

Thanks.

[Grimfan]

Your first question is too big to answer effectively in a simple post. First you have to decide what is original, then decide whether there is such a thing as an original idea anymore. There are always going to be similarities between peoples mods simply because there is a limit to what most of us can do with the editor. Indeed, even the best modders around here can't claim to be totally original (if you mean the idea has never been thought of anywhere else ever). Execution is more important than whether your puzzle is original, and most players will forgive a lack of originality if it doesn't impede their fun. One of the biggest hurdles people like you and me have is our unfamiliarity with programming and modelling. Remember, some of the modders for LoG are far more experienced than us and have modded for other games before, giving them more scope in their mods for innovative scripting tricks and cool models. I believe as long as you try your best, don't openly plagiarize from other people (just borrow heavily ) and treat your potential players with respect you should be fine. But that's just my thoughts.

I could go on and on about this, but you're second question may be a bit easier to answer.

The dds file you mentioned would be the textures file for the spider, and would need to go in the textures folder in your mod_assets folder. You also need to put an entry in your init.file as well (it's a script file). That's the file that the game reads to extract and use your scripts and therefore your models and textures (or something like that... I'm a noob still). The entry would be something like import "mod_assets/scripts/monsters.lua".

Others around here might be able to answer both these questions a lot better than me.

[Grimfan]

A few more suggestions:

1. Play a lot of mods and try to learn from them. Take mods you have played and see if you can do things like combine a few puzzles from them to create new puzzles. Also take a look at the source files. I read Phitt's source files (The Mines of Malan Vael) and saw how counter scripts can be used for pit traps and teleporters. Now that I know what can be done with them I intend to use them for my own puzzles.

2. Download gaming mods from the Nexus and implement them in your dungeon. Modders put their work up there because they want other modders to use them. I know that if I had the talent that's exactly what I would be doing. Use the different wall sets available, try the new weapon and texture packs, the alcove packs, the glass wall pack - anything you can to make your mod look a little different from the others out there. I can tell you that my list of credits will be freakin HUGE!

[Neikun]

There's no harm in seeing the same asset twice, so long as you use it with your own personality.
Don't spend too much time analyzing your work on a micro level. The players should see it for what it is as a whole.

[Ryeath_Greystalk]

Thanks for the encouragement.

[odinsballs]

i once had a similar problem with a retextured creature, in my case i retextured a tentacle to look completely different from original ones (so it needed a custom normal map) so i cloned the model, replaced material in gmt, and saved it to new model, but when i had scripted it together and used it in editor it worked in editor, but when i exported it to dat file the game would launch but when i loaded my dungeon the whole thing ctd'd with a rather lengthy error list. anyhoo in my case it would seem that the presence of original monster obj and material scripts/assets in my mod did not sit well (at all) i.e i had to ram that custom normal down this games throat by means of replacing original normal with custom normal named the same as original in log asset folder (wich is fairly odd)

also when scripting materials always make sure that your texture has correct name i.e :texturename_dif , texturename_normal , texturename_spec .

also the textures are in .dds format but for some awkward reason in the material script they are refered to as .tga
so in your script the definition should always refer to:
texturename_dif.tga
texturename_spec.tga
texturename_normal.tga

also check the file layout of texturepacks before scripting since all people have vaious workflows
it might be you simply skipped something in the defenitions like a , or a " " or such a small thing (this game is realy precise in this kinda thing) or even just a textures directory (for example a texture is in mod_assets\textures\monsters\ but is scripted to mod_assets\textures\) the editor wil look for the texture in wrong directory.... and there's your editor load fail!

and as for creativity/originality there's so many people who are like "im gonna remake this game or i'm gonna remake that game" wich is good (i dont mean to criticise anyone) but kind of lacks creativity in itself (since its all derived from memories of games we once played). sometimes you just have to sit back and relax a while (never force your creative process, its counter productive) and since i have been lego/patchworking various wallsets together myself for my dungeon its not as much a creativity problem, but anengine limitation of sorts (i had to scrap various projects just because by the time i had finished building /decorating the damnable thing to my liking, the game had turned in to a friggin slide show. so you might not wanna get to overzealous in creative aspect (it can handle only so much)

[mahric]

How does one stay motivated when it seems like every idea you come up with someone does first?

I know precisely what you mean, I've been there too.

The way I try to solve this, is by not focussing on the assets in the mod, but on the story. Think of dialogs, plot, character-building and such...
If you make up your own story and are able to suck the player right into it, he doesn't care if there is a tileset that he already saw before.

And believe me, it's easier to make up a story than to make your own assets...

[odinsballs]

mmh as for custom assets there are some pretty nifty free sites out there wich have quite usefull models (takes some work of course)
but some verry skilled people have put up some great stuff (exept little uv wrapping with nifscope and importing with gmt) i have no 3d moddeling skills myself but that doesn't stop me from creating a exterior deco pack wich is coming along nicely (a bit hefty but nice looking) so with about a million free models out there it should be posibble to find some things that others havent found yet.
just google free 3d models and there you go (forget about turbosquid there are tons of other truly free sites)

[Skuggasveinn]

What is original ?
what has never been done before ?
Are we all here because we have never played a grid based dungeon crawler with a party of 4 before LoG ?
How many times have you heard a game developer say that there next game will be unique and revolutionize the genre ?, if it falls into a genre it has been done before and therefore can never truly be unique.

Everything I design is based on the works of people that came before me, every idea I have is derived from something else, something that somebody else did, it can be a song, movie, painting, game or a novel to name a few.

Creating someting new and unique should not be your goal, your goal should be to create someting fun, something that people will enjoy to play, and creating something that everyone likes is impossible, so if a handful of people liked it, you have been successful for a handful of people and in there eyes it was great.

Skuggasveinn.

[Diarmuid]

I totally agree with skuggasvein's comment. Extremely rare are the true original things, being inventive is rarely about creating new things but rather combining existing things in new ways. (I teach contemporary music history, esthetics and art philosophy at a university level so I know something of the subject, in addition to my own experience as a contemporary music composer).

As for modding experience... I had never done any modding before Grimrock, and had never heard of lua before last november. I had some programming experience, but that was trying to make some basic games in basic when I was a teen more than a decade ago. I just threw myself with passion into this wonderful community, aiming to help and it helped me back. I learned, and developped skills from scratch - others can do it too!