Grimrock

Skuggasveinn wrote:If you download a pack with 20 custom slime monsters just because you want the lava one and you leave the other 19 in there, that's a no no.

oops, guilty! My Mod is not very large, and my custom asset usage is extremely limited (moreso now after Lord Minmay informed me of the sx_town issues); but I definitely need to do some serious cleanup before I publish my final version.

THOM wrote:So I would like to know, why moders are interested in building huge mods and what kind of concept for playing they have in mind?

Some time ago I posted a link to articles regarding Game Design:
http://grimrock.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=9558

What makes a Good Game?
http://serc.carleton.edu/introgeo/games/goodgame.html

7 Sins of Bad Game Design
http://lumiaconversations.microsoft.com ... me-design/

More to your point, if someones goal is simply to create a big dungeon for the sake of a big dungeon, then there is likely a chance they are falling in to number 6 and 7 from the 7 Sins of bad game design. Super large Mod's and custom assets really are not essential to creating a fun and memorable game experience.

Azel wrote:

THOM wrote:So I would like to know, why moders are interested in building huge mods and what kind of concept for playing they have in mind?

Some time ago I posted a link to articles regarding Game Design:
http://grimrock.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=9558

What makes a Good Game?
http://serc.carleton.edu/introgeo/games/goodgame.html

7 Sins of Bad Game Design
http://lumiaconversations.microsoft.com ... me-design/

More to your point, if someones goal is simply to create a big dungeon for the sake of a big dungeon, then there is likely a chance they are falling in to number 6 and 7 from the 7 Sins of bad game design. Super large Mod's and custom assets really are not essential to creating a fun and memorable game experience.

The links are interesting, I think that the story is essential, not the amount of levels. In a single level, you have 961 cells: even if the static objects take 50% of it, 480 cells remains and the number of possible paths for the party is huge! The same place could be seen in different ways if the story suggest it, and secrets and puzzles could be linked to these ways (by example, same place at night could reveal things invisibles in daylight).
Create a new level means that a new staging is needed by the story or to perform some side quest. Adding a new level suppose to take care of the playing time: if the interest of gameplay goes decreasing, don't do it!

hello all,
sorry I ve been busy!

JKos wrote:It's really hard to guess what's wrong without seeing the sources. But one possible cause could be some recursive or looping script which stores something in memory.
And 105 levels is a lot, the original dungeon has 34 levels, so maybe you just have too much stuff(objects) in your dungeon.

Here is a simple script which prints out the amount of objects in your dungeon. Copy paste this to a script entity named debug (or whatever)

Code: Select all

function countObjects(componentName,callback)
    local objectCount = 0
    for mapIndex =1, Dungeon.getMaxLevels() do
	    for ent in Dungeon.getMap(mapIndex):allEntities() do
			objectCount = objectCount + 1 
	    end
    end
    print(objectCount)
end

Start your dungeon and type in console: debug.script.countObjects()
For a reference the original dungeon has 58922 objects (just tested it).

well, I finnaly can run the mod, with all details set to low, and after trying the debug script, it says that I have 140058 objects.
pretty big, isn't it? So, that means that this kind of mod is completely irrealisable?

Azel wrote:Why not make it 1,000 levels? Go for the Gold!

roger that! I have discuss of that with a friend, and we both agreed that 2500 levels would be a better challenge for the gold medal!

petri wrote:A good way to free up some memory is to not import standard_assets.lua which loads all LOG2 assets into memory. Instead import only the stuff you need in your mod. See standard_assets.lua in the asset pack.

I ve already done sort of this:
there is about 159Mb of models and textures that I have removed. And "cerise sur le gateau" I use the tomb ceilling for the castle wallset and the catacomb ceiling for the dungeon wallset. I find the different ceilings too complicated to use.

Making multiple mod is a good idea, but actually I don't think this will work correctly for mine. How I see that, I can separate the mod in 2 parts. I'm currently texting 1st part, works well so far, with high details, but 1450Mb used in memory. About 59 levels, with 2 custom wallset and custom assets, that takes about 95Mb in the mod_assets, the exported mod take 54Mb.
However for the 2nd part, I can remove one of the custom wallset. All other are used. About log2 wallset, I still need the castle, dungeon and mine and all outdoor objects. Maybe the tomb wallset can be removed, but I use the tomb models for a custom wallset. However that will make approximately 50 to 80k of models no more spawned from the part 1 (I don't know how many exactly, did not run the debug script), maybe this will greatly reduce the amount of memory used. Of course after some time, I guess it would be possible with making some "sacrifice". Not sure.

I don't think I will continu the mod like I wanted it to be, large. Maybe I will reduce things a lot, and even remove some wallset.

Anyway, for the savegame import items and xp, can some experienced scripters make some example scripts on how to export/import a savegame please? This may be easy for some, but I can't do something like that, I don't understand that scripting vocabulary.
Or as msyblade talk about it, does that mean a huge script with tons of lines of codes? Sounds pretty scary!

Can we expect a x64 version of log2 for windows? As AH has done a mac os version and mac os is a 64 bits platform, is the mac version a 64bit application?

You should consider release a small demo of your Mod. To get some feedback of the first few levels or so; that may help guide your continued efforts

This doesn't help your memory problem at all, but in general, I tend to avoid any mods more than about 15-30 levels. It took AH about 2 years (?) to make a finely crafted adventure across 35 or so levels. I would rather play a mod that's 5-10 levels big and compares to the quality that AH delivered rather than a 50 level mod that's sparse. I'm not saying your mod won't be great, but experience tells me that NORMALLY the smaller mods are more polished, and I am never going to get the time to play through 100 levels of game.