Grimrock

I'm not sure where to ask this.
I just thought i wanted to hear some of you guys opinion and feelings on making custom dungeons, and modding in general.
I posted this here because many games have modding communities so my questions are not just related to the grimrock games.

from what i gather on the forums it sounds like modders might spend hundreds of hours designing a single module.
with all the scripting and heightmaps and decorations and puzzles and monsters and stuff..

but most dungeons can be played through in a 5-20 hours.
so my questions
do you feel satisfied?
do you think it was worth it?
do you do it for yourself?
do you do it for the community?
do you do it because you see it as a challenge of your programming skills?
is it like art to you? like you want to create this work of art that is your LoG 2 dungeon and share it with the world?

I mean, here's the thing, the author knows where all the items and knows all the solutions to their own puzzles so can they just make a mod for themself to enjoy and be challenged by it? so I assume the idea is to get other people to play it and feel good when they enjoy it and get challenged and stumped by it?
you obviously can't make money off of it because of the copyrighted game and everything so it's basically "free bonus content" that the players create themselves.

but hat if nobody plays the mod. or only a handful of people. what if people don't like your mod?
is it worth it?

Some people have spent over 10,000 hours playing video games, or reading books, or playing football. I've spent over 10,000 hours developing (for) video games. I'm okay with that.

If you're hoping to make yourself popular, or challenge your programming ability, there are a million better ways to do those. I don't at all believe that modding games in itself is a good way to learn programming, you need good theoretical foundations (not saying you have to take a class, but you need to be willing to do something other than just typing statements).

FeMaiden wrote:but most dungeons can be played through in a 5-20 hours.

You shouldn't measure your accomplishments in terms of how much of other people's time you've wasted. Measure it in how much pleasure you've given them, how much you've taught them, how much you've changed their opinions, how much you've enjoyed life yourself, anything, I don't care what you measure it in so long as it isn't that. If you look through released Grimrock 1 and 2 mods you'll find dozens that have certainly taken up more of players' time than mine have, but you'll also find that many of them are irredeemable crap independent of that, and the time spent playing them probably wasn't very enjoyable.

FeMaiden wrote:but hat if nobody plays the mod. or only a handful of people.

Over the course of a little over two years, I released three sets of related multiplayer levels for Jazz Jackrabbit 2; first 6, then 12, then 18. When the next year came I released nothing, and people probably thought I was done with everything. In fact, since before the release of the third level set, I'd been planning to completely re-do all 36 of these levels (plus an additional 6) using a mod for the game that I wasn't even supposed to know existed at the time (this post is the first time I've revealed I did know), and I'd built those last 18 levels with that in mind - even compromising their gameplay in the unmodded game. After the mod was released publicly, I set that grand plan in motion.
Then people pretty much stopped playing Jazz Jackrabbit 2.
So I just stopped working on the project. It was probably less than 6 months from release; I had written and tested all the code needed to make my changes to the game mechanics, completely finished many of the re-done levels, written tons of original music, made some of the additional 6 levels, and so on. But this doesn't bother me, because I accepted from the beginning that this was a possibility. I can always go back and finish it if people start playing JJ2 again.

FeMaiden wrote:what if people don't like your mod?

Well this part is easy to prevent, just make good mods. Seriously, giving half a shit about your game design and presentation will prevent this from being a problem, if there's one group with secretly low standards it's gamers, and if there's one group with even lower standards it's the gamers that play a lot of custom levels.

minmay wrote:You shouldn't measure your accomplishments in terms of how much of other people's time you've wasted. Measure it in how much pleasure you've given them, how much you've taught them, how much you've changed their opinions, how much you've enjoyed life yourself, anything, I don't care what you measure it in so long as it isn't

well, I don't want to make a 20 hour mod to "waste people's time"...
I wanted to make a mod that the person wasn't going to just beat in just a couple of hours. I wanted to immerse the player in my world and have them get invested in uncovering all the map squares and seeing what I put in there.
to idea was not to waste their time, but to give them that feeling of satisfaction they just finished an epic adventure and perhaps even a little bit of regret, that now it's over.

haven't you played mods where you just sat back and said "man that was a great 2 hour romp, I just wish it was a bit longer..."

minmay wrote:

FeMaiden wrote:what if people don't like your mod?

Well this part is easy to prevent, just make good mods. Seriously, giving half a shit about your game design and presentation will prevent this from being a problem, if there's one group with secretly low standards it's gamers, and if there's one group with even lower standards it's the gamers that play a lot of custom levels.

the point of my questioning is why DO modders do it?
it's a lot of work and if nobody plays it, or if people do play it and don't enjoy it, did you just waste your own time?
especially if you put 500 hours of you life into it and people think it sucks, wouldn't that hurt?

in your words I do give more than "half a shit" about my game design. I give "one and a half shits", perhaps I care too much about what other people think?

I mean, perhaps I'm trying to figure out why I myself am compelled to do it.

I just played a whole bunch of other people's mods and thought "hey! I want to make a map too and share it with the world"

on a side tangent...

this takes me back to when I played pen and paper D&D with some group in high school, and I was preparing to be a DM ad made my own world, a huge continent populated with towns and dungeons and beaches and caves, and I finally unveiled it and we started our first session and the players said " we want a boat, we want to sail to a different continent and have adventures there!"
and I said, I already made a continent to explore , why do you want to go to a different one? and I just pulled something out of my butt like...oh the port is closed, you can't get on a ship, sorry you gotta go someplace else. ( i realize I could have let them do it and then just secretly had their ship land on the other coast of my continent) I even considered letting them have the ship and then making a kraken attack and sink it...but everybody lost interest after that first session and it left a bad taste in my mouth like, why the fuck did I waste my time with these people? and I never playe pnp D&D again.(partly because all my DM knowledge ruined the "player" experience, it's hard to enjoy fighting an unknown monster when you have the monster manual memorized...)


I guess I just wanted to make something that the gaming community would enjoy...but, is there even a LoG 2 gaming community anymore?
do people still play this?
I asked this question on steam forums and someone responded "wtf does it matter if other people play, it's a single player game" and I responded, "no it's not, not if you make mods"



p.s. @minmay
which mods are yours? are they in steam workshop? the nexus?

FeMaiden wrote:which mods are yours? are they in steam workshop? the nexus?

check my signature

minmay wrote:

FeMaiden wrote:which mods are yours? are they in steam workshop? the nexus?

check my signature

okay, well I just downloaded "artifacts of might" so I can see what kinds of fun stuff you did .
do you have any other LoG 2 mods? I see a LoG 1 mod and some asset packs which I already downloaded.

I must say I myself have a great respect for anyone that puts their time to make a mod.
but I couldn't help noticing .."92 unique downloads" I must be #93...that's kind of what i was talking about earlier.
am I gonna spend 500 hours making my mod only to have like 10-20 people play it?

another thing I noticed...I hope i'm not spoiling the game for myself. sometimes I play someone else's mod and find myself looking at things and saying "they could have filled in that ugly gap by putting a beach rock there..." or they have a room that locks you in with monsters and it doesn't let you out until they are dead and I think "they should have scripted a boss fight entity for that encounter..."
I hope i'm not getting too anal and overly critical of other mods.

I know some people might say "try making one yourself, then you earn the right to criticize"

but I dunno

FeMaiden wrote:okay, well I just downloaded "artifacts of might" so I can see what kinds of fun stuff you did .
do you have any other LoG 2 mods? I see a LoG 1 mod and some asset packs which I already downloaded.

no, it's just the one grimrock 1 mod. you can count artifacts of might too, but it's just an example dungeon for an asset pack. i'm working on two grimrock 2 mods though

FeMaiden wrote:I know some people might say "try making one yourself, then you earn the right to criticize"

then those people are stupid. you don't have to make movies yourself before you can point out that Gigli is a terrible movie, it's no different for video game mods or anything else.

minmay wrote:

FeMaiden wrote:okay, well I just downloaded "artifacts of might" so I can see what kinds of fun stuff you did .
do you have any other LoG 2 mods? I see a LoG 1 mod and some asset packs which I already downloaded.

no, it's just the one grimrock 1 mod. you can count artifacts of might too, but it's just an example dungeon for an asset pack. i'm working on two grimrock 2 mods though

FeMaiden wrote:I know some people might say "try making one yourself, then you earn the right to criticize"

then those people are stupid. you don't have to make movies yourself before you can point out that Gigli is a terrible movie, it's no different for video game mods or anything else.

hi, I see, so you have mods you haven't finished yet too...wanna race? just kidding.
I actually had a second one that I started on, just to see if it could be done.
it's inspired by the horror movie "The Cube" and it *will* feature 1 dungeon level with 125 rooms stacked in a 5x5x5 pattern, full of traps and assorted nasties.
there are references to the cube movie and other horror films such as cabin in the woods and friday the 13th
but i took a break from it as it required me to stack bridge panels on EVERY square, 6 times (once for each elevation). and then I am stacking castle gratings on the squares in between to create the "walls" of the rooms. there are literally thousands of objects packed into this 1 map level

that's not gonna create performance issues will it? do I have too much going on?

the player will need to find a way to escape the cube and then will be asked one final question...

if this idea has already been done, then let me know and i won't steal someone else's idea.

placing all the squares only took a few hours but it was incredibly tedious.

I got annoyed and went back to my original mod because with the height differences, the doors were not opening correctly. I think I figured out the problem.
you can not have a door above another door at a different hieght. because opening one "moves" it up, which in turn moves the doors above and below it. maybe the problem is
because i'm using castle portcullises for the doors. perhaps I should try a door that opens sideways. or I could move the portcullises on each height of the cube to be in a different section of wall, there's just enough space to do that, but...it will take more time lol


p.s.

if someone else likes my cube dungeon idea described above and wants to steal it...go right ahead. if you want to do this, then have at it lol.

@minmay just gotta say, your dungeon Artifacts of might is the most insanely difficult dungeon I ever played...

do not misunderstand. I am VERY impressed by what you were able to do and how efficiently you squeezed all that content into just 8 maps.
and your scripting skills, I suspect you may be better at it than the game developers themselves...

I'm not exactly "stuck" there are still a few paths i have not explored.

however,
I've been to all 8 levels and I was wandering around for hours and only found 1 secret.

I cheated and opened your dungeon in the editor from germanny's asset pack and some of those secrets...I don't know how anyone would find them through legit play.

but wow, you have my respect, your scripting skills are leagues beyond anything i've seen in any other mod. it's like i'm not even playing the same game as you.
you have a room where you scripted a light blob to follow the player and "home in" on them.
another room with a trap that lobs ball of blindness at random spots like grenades while ghouls randomly spawn but they give 0 xp when I kill them... I tried to read the script for that grenade room and I didn't understand any of it.

I'll admit one of my major peeves

there is something I hate when modders dos, even the main game developers did this thing a lot in the first grimrock game. is when you lock a player in the room and immediately surround them with enemies that pin them against the wall so they can't sidestep of dodge them and all they can do is stand there clicking the greyed out weapons in their champion's hands waiting for cooldowns to finish while the monster attacks them 8 times in the time they are allowed to attack just once and it becomes a battle of attrition hoping they can kill the enemy before it kills them and then they kill it and there's just another one behind it pushing on the same space and it just moves into the space and continuing to keep the player pinned, and then another one and another and another.

the devs balanced the power of the monsters and made the smarter a.i. specifically to counter the tactics of sidestepping the monsters. they know that in old game like EoB the player could just sidestep even the final boss (that boss was impossible without sidestepping him), but then when you go ahead and decide to take away the player's ability to sidestep, it ust becomes about trading blows, facetanking, with no skill whatsoever. and when i'm sitting there, and I didn't even find any armor...not even a tattered shirt..even the weakest monsters can tear me apart in seconds. the player is NOT supposed to facetank the mobs in this game, when you force them to do it by design, i think it's bad and unfair

my rant about being pinned against the wall by monsters was not totally directed at you lol.
it's just a gripe in general, I mean, they do it in the main game like when i picked up the arquebus, but at least those enemies were fairly easy.

I actually killed all the uggardians and fire guardians in the crypt, despite the warnings that my party was not strong enough...but the "mold colony"
I might have a bit of PTSD from that one....

but now I think i've gone off the rails in this thread

There aren't any points in Artifact of Might (or Lost Halls of the Drinn, for that matter) where you're required to get hit. It does lock you in rooms fairly often to make gameplay faster (so that you can't kite every monster back to a safer place) but the party is always given room to move around. Of course, if they sit in one place or make bad moves, they can get cornered, but that's intentional; otherwise they'd never be able to die!
The Mold Colony, Ratling Raiders, and Nine Rangers fights favour high damage output and constant movement, whereas the Fallen Champion and Guardians of Fir fights are more about precise dodging and attacks. Ossuary of the Northerners and Chamber of the Inquisitor are a mixture of both (these two are extremely similar actually...).