Questions about a KE-like game in development

I have been recently making an experimental Knytt Experiment-esque platformer game, which will have (assuming I finish it) a vast game world that is editable by anyone. However, I have noticed several problems with what I am planning to do, relating to how I still give level designers the freedom to create the world, but at the same time make sure that they conform to a few specifications. I was wondering, does anyone have any ideas about how to fix them? Any help would be greatly appreciated


Making sure some effort is put into the levels
Since the goal of the game is to explore and find treasure, and these treasures are probably going to be placed by other players, there is potential for someone to simply make the room a 16*1 platform, filled with treasure, in order to instantly score massive loads of points (If I add a scoring system, which I guess I will have to). I need a way of limiting how many can be placed in a certain proximity to each other, and I also want treasure to be quite rare in the game world (1/100 screens?). There will be lots of potential for making the levels look nice, and I want this to be the primary focus, not racking up as much treasure as quickly as possible.

Stopping two people editing the same screen at once
You will be able to pick any free screen in the game world (and maybe existing ones) and edit it. However, editing levels takes time, and if someone else decides to start editing that screen at the same time, stuff gets real. I was thinking of making the screens become locked after someone chooses to edit them, but then trolls could come and lock everything, so I thought of making the locks expire after a while, but anywhere I draw the line will be too short for some of the more awesmoe level designers but too long to wait for the screen to become free again...DX

There hopefully won't be more...

Anyway, any ideas or questions, no matter how small or large, are welcome

Stopping two people editing the same screen at once
You will be able to pick any free screen in the game world (and maybe existing ones) and edit it. However, editing levels takes time, and if someone else decides to start editing that screen at the same time, stuff gets real. I was thinking of making the screens become locked after someone chooses to edit them, but then trolls could come and lock everything, so I thought of making the locks expire after a while, but anywhere I draw the line will be too short for some of the more awesmoe level designers but too long to wait for the screen to become free again...DX

At first I thought you could make it so editing is done 'offline': someone downloads a screen, edits it and uploads it when s/he's finished, without locking the screen. But then if someone else chooses to edit the same screen, the one who finishes first will probably have his/her screen overwritten soon after.

You could lock the screens but make it so a user can't lock more than one screen at once; it should be fine if you add an expiration time for locks, provided it's long enough (1 day?) and the same user can't lock it again for a while.

Quote from: jimj316 on May 26, 2011, 01:20:11

-lolsnip-

At first I thought you could make it so editing is done 'offline': someone downloads a screen, edits it and uploads it when s/he's finished, without locking the screen. But then if someone else chooses to edit the same screen, the one who finishes first will probably have his/her screen overwritten soon after.

You could lock the screens but make it so a user can't lock more than one screen at once; it should be fine if you add an expiration time for locks, provided it's long enough (1 day?) and the same user can't lock it again for a while.

I was thinking of doing something like that, but some users may want to edit whole subsections of the world, since the screens themselves will probably be quite small.
I could maybe make it so that a user can flag multiple screens, saying that they want to edit them in the near future, whilst still leaving them unlocked. Hopefully, people would see these flagged zones and try to steer their projects around them; however, by flagging the zones you are effectively saying "please don't edit here", and everyone knows what happens if you tell someone not to do something, not least on the internet. Anyway thanks for the suggestion :D

On a completely unrelated matter, I should hopefully have a really early tesing pre-alpha version of the game out sometime in the next twelve years, assuming I can solve one technical problem (namely, the animated picture object not being able to change RGB coefficient at runtime; experienced MMF2 users plz?) :D

I also want treasure to be quite rare in the game world (1/100 screens?).

Sounds too rare. It also depends on the style level maker chooses. A challenge-intensive part (think of Safety ) would have more dense treasure. Treasures should have some sort of name and maybe even custom icons and values (a medal for Safety-like challenge may weigh like 10 small treasures). Names are important, because a designer may choose to move a treasure from one screen to another and players shouldn't lose their treasures.

Stopping two people editing the same screen at once
You will be able to pick any free screen in the game world (and maybe existing ones) and edit it. However, editing levels takes time, and if someone else decides to start editing that screen at the same time, stuff gets real. I was thinking of making the screens become locked after someone chooses to edit them, but then trolls could come and lock everything, so I thought of making the locks expire after a while, but anywhere I draw the line will be too short for some of the more awesmoe level designers but too long to wait for the screen to become free again...DX

How about this: when a designer chooses a locked screen he sees who locked it and when. Then he can choose to ignore the lock.
There should also be a way to move some screens from one location to another without too much effort.

Quote from: jimj316 on May 26, 2011, 01:20:11

Stopping two people editing the same screen at once
You will be able to pick any free screen in the game world (and maybe existing ones) and edit it. However, editing levels takes time, and if someone else decides to start editing that screen at the same time, stuff gets real. I was thinking of making the screens become locked after someone chooses to edit them, but then trolls could come and lock everything, so I thought of making the locks expire after a while, but anywhere I draw the line will be too short for some of the more awesmoe level designers but too long to wait for the screen to become free again...DX

How about this: when a designer chooses a locked screen he sees who locked it and when. Then he can choose to ignore the lock.
There should also be a way to move some screens from one location to another without too much effort.

Why not do it the way Excel does?

When a screen is locked, present a message that its locked by a person and allow to either: close, warn or open for read.

- close: You are sent to the screen-selection screen to open another screen (I suppose this one doesn't actually have to exist)
- warn: it opens in read only mode (see next point) and it periodically checks to see if the lock has been released. When it does it reloads the screen to get the newest version.
- read only: In this mode, you can't save, but for instance, you can copy the screen. Its discussable whether you can actually edit the screen.

Tanks for the responses guys! I was worried people had forgotten about this.

Sounds too rare. It also depends on the style level maker chooses. A challenge-intensive part (think of Safety ) would have more dense treasure. Treasures should have some sort of name and maybe even custom icons and values (a medal for Safety-like challenge may weigh like 10 small treasures). Names are important, because a designer may choose to move a treasure from one screen to another and players shouldn't lose their treasures.

I'm not sure about whether I will make the game challenging yet; there will be puzzles, and dangers, but I don't know what, or how hard, they'll be.

I quite like your idea about named treasures and trophies Since the game is online, I could make the server make the trophies that have proven to be rarer worth more, and the ones that everyone has (>50%) not show up at all

1. How about this: when a designer chooses a locked screen he sees who locked it and when. Then he can choose to ignore the lock.
2. There should also be a way to move some screens from one location to another without too much effort.

1. But if I allow people to avoid the lock, griefers will get in...
2. There will be!

Why not do it the way Excel does?
When a screen is locked, present a message that its locked by a person and allow to either: close, warn or blah blah blah etc.

I'm not really sure that that'll be suited to live editing, since I assume that editing will not take longer than 5 minutes.

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In other news, Development is Going Well^®. I hope to have a really-early-pre-release-alpha-totally-wip-you-guys ready soon, since I'm really not sure which direction to go in once I finish the base game engine (challenges? puzzles? enemies? rewards?). In the meantime, here's a screenie of a really simple scene, rendered in 4 different colour schemes:

(apologies for massive wall of text, everything I write turns out this way)

I'm back! :D

Development is proceeding slowly but surely, although I have some more problems that I'm not sure how to resolve. I would appreciate it greatly if some people could help me out on these:

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Making the game editor not require a PHD
So far, I have been trying to make the game so that as much of the game world as possible is as customisable as possible. Editors can make their own tilesets (and use up to 1000 different tilesets in a level, if they wish), create complex logic systems using a quasi-boolean algebra system, (in the future) make crazy, intricate puzzles using a wide selection of building blocks, and make hopefully awesome graphical effects using the dynamic colour palette thingy, which is a system that even I cannot understand (I swear it programmed itself).

My worry is, that no-one will be able to understand any of these crazy features. I'm thinking of releasing a super-early-totally-wip-prerelease-alpha, with no explanation, and asking volunteers to try to make a basic level, but I'm not sure if that'll tell me anything :/

Adding NPCs/critters?
I've been thinking of how to add critters to the game. I could allow editors to choose from a library of things, like Nifflas did with KS, but I'm terrible at animating, and I don't have the time to make loads and loads of things, or even come up with ideas for them DX

Also, I'm having a mental fist fight with myself whether to add NPCs of some form to the game. I like the atmosphere of you being the only person in the world, exploring the ruins of some forgotten civilisation, and I think adding NPCs would mess with that. Also, since the purpose of the game basically amounts to stealing shiny things, I don't think the locals would react very well.

However, I also think that quite a few people will be wanting to tell stories with their levels, and if there are no NPCs, and since all these stories will be smushed together into one big world (something that I am beginning to have second thought about), it could become a weird patchwork of indistinguishable stories, and everything becomes confusing and people cry and then a ninja dinosaur eats everybody T_T

Music?
I have no idea about what to do about music, sound, or ambience at all :( I have absolutely no experience or taste in music whatsoever, and I don't have any friends who would be willing to cooperate, and I doubt I would be brave enough to ask them even if I did. If anyone knows where I could find free music, or someone who could make free music, or would be willing to contribute music of their own, I will love you forever if you help me <3

Downloadable levels as well as/instead of online world?
To help fight the crazy-story-dinosaur-eating scenario outlined above, I thought about adding downloadable levels, like in KS, alongside the "patchwork" online world, but I'm not sure about this.

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That's about all for now. One again, I would be really happy for any suggestions regarding these, or anything else about the game. If you help lots (or even a bit) then you get credited, and get imaginary cookies :D

Hey, I'm back, after a 4 month hiatus. I got bogged down in college work, and never got anything done. My exams are coming up soon, so I might not be able to work on this again for a while either. I'm just posting it here so that it doesn't die.

Anyway, this is the very first version of Vespertine (which is the game's name now). It comes with a really really small test world (that looks terrible and doesn't actually have an end), and the currently undocumented level editor. There isn't much to see at the moment, but I hope that there is a lot of potential.

As said (very) previously, I am not sure where I want to take this game, so I came here for ideas. Try out the game engine, and see what you think!

Download 4.41 MB

Doesn't look terrible, but in the example level I was very confused for some reason, specially when I went underwater in the begging, I kept feeling very disoriented.
The editor looks good but of course it's hard to get started without any documentation, just like most editors. But it has some interesting features, like setting the base colors and making adjustments to the tileset in the editor, that would actually be very useful in KS.

Yeah, I made the test level in about five minutes. I think some of the problem is that the screens are very small, meaning that for swimming areas the level designer will almost certainly need to do some weird things with the corners of the screen. Also, I don't currently like how swimming works, but I haven't thought of a better way to do it yet.

Thanks for the feedback!

EDIT: A few things to note:
- I will be adding support for up to seven layers, as opposed to the two currently in the game.
- Sound, music and ambience are not in yet. Some very nice musics have been donated my the awesome bumperpower64, so this is what I am working in currently.
- You can use as many tilesets as you want on a single screen (but can only have two in the editor's palette at a time).
- The screens will be bigger.