[Open / Signup] One Room Round Robin 3 - Calling All Modders

[AndakRainor]

Hi! I never proposed to participate to this project because I have no real previous experience in modding and was just a player during Grimrock 1. But if the project continues and needs some more contribution, may be I could add a room

Just to be sure if I can do it at a high enough quality compared to the other people creations, I would like to see the current files... (and sorry, I am also very new to blender...)

[Eleven Warrior]

To Jgwman.

I am quite happy for you to take charge matey Not a easy task, but you can do it

Maybe some of the other rooms could be reoffered to the community??

[Jgwman]

Hey everyone, time for a (maybe not so quick) update.

First off, received PMs from the three modders very quickly - Zo Kath Ra does not currently have the time, minmay should be ready to implement hopefully in a couple weeks and Isaac is progressing when he can.

So let's talk a bit about what's left to do:

Town of Bardwell (has places for Store and Blacksmith which need to be completed or removed, etc)
Story (more below)
Final encounter
Cut rooms (Bog: 2, Towers: 2, more below)
Implement remaining rooms (Dungeons, Labs, Towers, Bog)
Cinematic design
Testing

The first major thing here is the overarching story to glue the rooms together. Let's look at our options:

First, some of John's early ideas of progression:

1. The party starts in the Cemetery/Graveyard Area (Easy Area). They have to do a few tasks here before they can get out of the area. But there are also "special bits of ore" lying around (see next section).

2. You then reach the town. The world is a bit open (Medium Difficulty) here as you need to go around and collect special ore from the Bog, the East part of town and the Asylum (and the rest of the Cemetery). There will be about 15 bits of ore (Mithril / Meteorite Metal ?). You need a certain amount to make a special weapon to get into the Twisted Forest (harder area). [Twisted Forest might always be open, just very tough without the special weapon].

3. In the Twisted Forest, there are remains of tortured souls who are now ghosts that guard the Castle Entrance. It is expected that you get 2 sets of remains to placate the ghosts guarding the tower.

4. You enter the tower. In the tower you must collect 5 of 6 <items> to open the way to the final fight. Depending on what people want to do, the Dark Tower could be spooky/gritty/high magic.

5. Walk along the beach to a boat to leave?

This doesn't seem like quite enough info to build the whole mod around, but could be expanded on.

Isaac and I discussed a few concepts by PM. First, I drafted something in which the four party members are retired adventurers who had previously worked together, and are surprised with another sudden adventure. You can read a bit more here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Gws ... sp=sharing

Isaac thought that, with the party being Lv 1, this story of them having been adventurers doesn't really fit, and that many people would rather have a very minimal background for the characters for roleplaying purposes. Additionally, given the ORRRs previously did not have much background info, Isaac thought we should follow that pattern for ORRR3.

Isaac's suggestion draws from a couple source materials:

There are two dark tower stories that come first to mind [to me] as simple enough for a game... One was an episode of D&D [animated series], and the other was an episode of Thundercats. I originally wondered (when there was nothing planned), if we could have combined elements of both as a seed for the ORRR3 scenario.

http://www.dungeonsdragonscartoon.com/2 ... orrow.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BaJZpoC2_34
_____
http://thundercats.wikia.com/wiki/The_Tower_of_Traps
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=moTGC07LSaU

Feel free to let me know your thoughts on all of these ideas, and your own. We need to decide what we're doing regarding story to determine exactly what to do with leftover rooms, etc. The final encounter itself is also somewhat dependent on this.

Next, let's have a look at the remaining rooms:

First, the remaining implementations needed are from minmay, Isaac, and AndakRainor. This is two more Dark Tower rooms and one more Bog room.

That leaves a few things. There is an Asylum Lab room. If anyone has interest in doing a second room, let me know and you can have this one. It doesn't have to be very big or complicated, just a lab themed puzzle. Have a look at sps999's room to get an idea of what he went for. I can do this room if no one else is interested.

There is an Asylum Dungeon room which currently belongs to John. I don't want to do anything with it yet since it's his, but if we haven't heard more from him once we get closer to done, we can do something with it.

There is an extra room in both Catacombs and Town East. If we have extra volunteers to make a second room, these are the rooms you'll be doing. More likely, these rooms become something specific to building the story/lore (of whatever story we decide we want to do), which are optional rooms, maybe with small puzzles and treasures.

Both Dark Towers and Bog are going to have two rooms left open. It seems very unlikely that they will be filled as intended. My idea was to have Dark Tower's two rooms become "challenge" rooms (for example, the Arena from ORRR2, etc). However, I don't have any good ideas for the Bog. Suggestions are welcome here - if I don't get any, these will likely be cut.

What's left:
Once the story is worked out, I'd like to get a cinematic done similar to ORRR2's. I didn't work on ORRR2 so I don't know who made the art for that, but if someone here likes to make concept art, assistance in the future is welcome. I'd like to make a trailer for the mod, and I should be able to do that part myself once we have everything else ready.

Other than that, the mod will need extensive testing and quite possibly a lot more work from there. But first we need to decide what to do about everything else here, so anyone who reads, please leave your feedback/opinions about everything I asked.

One final question: is a new thread a bad/good idea? In one way, it might get a little more attention to renew our progress, but it also would no longer notify anyone subscribed to this thread (though that hasn't personally been working for me for months now).

Everyone please leave feedback/opinions/ideas on: Story, Cut Rooms, New Thread, What Can You Help With

[minmay]

The ORRR2 intro didn't have original art, just screenshots and permissively-licensed preexisting art with cheesy filters run on them. It did have original music, however.

I don't feel like composing something new but maybe this could work with some minor modifications? I originally wrote it for another Grimrock 2 mod, but realized that 1. I didn't have any idea how to continue it (you can hear me run out of ideas at precisely 1:14) and 2. it didn't really fit the level I wrote it for, so I'm not using it. It'd be easy for me to remove the ambient background noise (doesn't make much sense for an intro cinematic), change the lead melody to the Grimrock 2 main melody (it's currently my mod's main melody which is probably not what you want), etc.

minmay should be ready to implement hopefully in a couple weeks

I responded to your PM a week ago, so it's not a couple weeks anymore, it's one week. I can implement the week of May 30-June 5, unless something very bad happens. Of course if you want to give me an extra week anyway I won't complain lol.

I wouldn't worry too much about room count. ORRR1 had 18 rooms, ORRR2 had 22 rooms, ORRR3 doesn't need to have 25.

About the storyline: it is much better if you do not provide a specific year (or a range of time at all). It's doesn't add to the story at all, and unless you explicitly say the mod takes place in a different universe from Isle of Nex, it suggests to the player that the mod takes place at a specific time in relation to Isle of Nex (because Isle of Nex gives a specific year), which I assume is not wanted in this case. It sounds good other than that.

[Jgwman]

Great, I'll plan on sending you the file then. Just mis-mathing in my head

I'll listen to that in a bit. I imagine it'll work fine, and if not I should have time to write something anyway. It'd be cool to have custom art, but if we didn't have anyone want to do that last time chances are we don't now; no big deal.

I had forgotten LoG2 gave a specific year, and in any case, mine was a random number thrown in there, definitely can be removed

[Isaac]

Isaac's suggestion draws from a couple source materials:

There are two dark tower stories that come first to mind [to me] as simple enough for a game... One was an episode of D&D [animated series], and the other was an episode of Thundercats. I originally wondered (when there was nothing planned), if we could have combined elements of both as a seed for the ORRR3 scenario.

http://www.dungeonsdragonscartoon.com/2 ... orrow.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BaJZpoC2_34
_____
http://thundercats.wikia.com/wiki/The_Tower_of_Traps
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=moTGC07LSaU

Just to be clear, my suggestion was not meant as verbatim copying of those as the story, but to consider them for inspiration.

I think it is a positive feature to have totally self contained rooms ~for the most part, each designer makes a room; rather than a group of designers making the rooms (under a common theme). IRRC, the developers who worked on 'Fallout 2' made separate maps and later tried to cobble it all together at the end ~with debatable success. I don't know that a connected set of rooms is that good of an idea per se... The principle connection of the rooms in the ORRR2, was simply the 'swirl keys' needed to progress through the main halls; need another key(?), go explore another room. This is not a bad mechanic IMO, perhaps that's all we really need ~leading up to the end. Ideally [IMO], the player should be able to skip rooms, and weave their own path through the game; rather than have it be a linear, or semi-linear track through each location.

(Yes this means that some players might miss a designer's room; by chance or whim.)

________

Something else (possibly going unmarked) is that of scripting tools. In ORRR2 we had a really neat function library available to all designers, and extensively used in the outer halls, as well as many of the personal rooms. Will anything similar to this exist in ORRR3? If not, then I think that we should consider that being a priority; if not just for the great utility of it, then consider just the safe[er]-versions of common functions like :destroy() [that included conditional safety checks before erasing objects]. This alone could prevent bugs in the rooms of novice and seasoned scriptors alike.

[Jgwman]

Just to be clear, my suggestion was not meant as verbatim copying of those as the story, but to consider them for inspiration.

I know, I actually thought that was clear from where I quoted you

I'm not sure what you're getting at with the bit about rooms - you mean where I suggested "story specific" rooms? I'd be glad to just cut those rooms instead, it just means the mod is a bit smaller (which is fine with me). Like I said, I wasn't suggesting that those rooms would be required, but rather a little extra lore flavor and some extra loot, but would be fine with not doing that also. In fact, I would fine with not putting any lore/story info in other than the intro, basic exposition in the first town, and the final boss, though I personally think it's a more enjoyable experience to add bits of lore info (to build the character of the final boss and his realm, in a style similar to Dark Souls for those who've played it - for the most part, items with flavor text just to add a little detail, similar to ring descriptions, etc., in LoG).

I'm sure we could set up a function library for the mod, but we're close enough to finishing initial implementation that it'd probably be something to implement after first rounds testing for basic bug fixing at this point. Can definitely start gathering ideas for functions we might need, especially anything in ORRR2 that might cross over.

[aaneton]

> That leaves a few things. There is an Asylum Lab room. If anyone has interest in doing a second room, let me know and you can have this one.

I will create this lab room (I did two rooms for ORRR2 also so it's almost tradition ), it will be called the Rat Laboratory. It will be simple and contain only one puzzle. Which room is it? (haven't looked at ORRR3 file in a while). I could pre-implement it into the latest file I have so transferring it into the main file will be easy.

[Diarmuid]

Minmay is right, for the intro of ORRR2 I took some screenshots from the mod and some stock photos, and filtered them with a "paint"-like filter, nothing fancy.

I did compose the music however.

[Jgwman]

Aaneton - room 9. I will plan on giving you the main file the week after minmay, around June 6, if you think you'll be ready then.

Diarmuid - gotcha. We may well employ your services again (for the screens/photos) if you've got time when we get to that point.