My wife and I spent 4 hours playing through the mod. I let her follow my walkthrough and did the job of being the side-kick and writing down bugs, errors and flaws on yellow notes. (The desk is full of them now.) It seem that not everything that worked fine in single player works in multiplayer. Several of the key creatures AI and such don't work as supposed. The torch, lamp and other importand items suffer from the same problems as the non-working torches in the OC. Suddenly the don't provide light anymore. I have to catch up on that old topic again and see if I can make a repair function that keep those items work in all situations.
Besides the almost 150 errors we found (mostly in the Game Score System, the Take Placeable functions and in the Animation scripts) we also found a few things that could make the game less fun to play. It's not my fault :) the original game had this in it too. I'll try to correct it with changing how certain things work and add a few new ways to solve puzzles to get around it. We also learned that Zork can be a pretty difficult game to play and that I really need to prevent the players to get stuck or lose interest because of that. I'll include a in-game hint book. I need to come up with a penalty system for "cheating" first.
They play test gave a hint of the lenght of the module. I took us almost four hours to complete it. Except for the two puzzles that are left to implement due to a missing area. I'd guess it the length for a clever player that don't have the walk through would end up in between 5 and 8 hours and maybe even up to 12 hours for if you're making everything difficult for yourself. I said to my wife, that if the mod was filled with the usual encounters and fights from the DnD-world one could play it for about 25 hours! "Don't think about it!", she answered, and she's right.
Anyway, it was great to get this first multiplayer session done and it gave me a whole new view of the state of the module. Lots of things left to do. Some things works very well, others don't. The next few weeks will be bugfixing all over before I do another test. I'll try to do updates more often even if they will be shorter.
Delania and Amraphaelstarting the multiplayer play-through
Thanks for reading!
/A
6 comments:
Very cool. Can't wait for this to come out.
I know it's unfair to ask before it's even been released, but are you going to start modding again right away or take a break for a while?
:) I really don't know. I may try an easier way this time,do just like you have done and find myself a partner.
If everything works out as I've planned I'll take some time of and write a book for kids aged 6-7 years. I have never done it before so I thought it would be fun.
Sounds like a lot of work. I guess the whole thing is kind of centered around stats and points, so there would be a lot of work involved to make sure it's all adding up properly.
@nalencer
Yes, it'll take some time to fix it, but the hardest part is to do it correctly. I don't want to do this all over again just because there's one gamepoint missing at the end.
Just mirroring everyone else - getting more excited with every post to completion and playing this myself!
There is something very romantic IMO about debugging with one's wife...
I remember playing Grim Fandango a few years ago with my future wife, and it was a memorable experience.
I'm not so lucky this time around... :) She does take some interest in my work with GPS though, so I'm thankful for that.
That shot of you two guys setting out on your adventure hand in hand is also very endearing. Cut it out in a heart shape, and you've got an instant Valentine's card. :)
Sounds like you are doing well and the mod is coming along nicely. I look forward to playing this, especially since I never had the patience to complete the original. :)
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