Greetings, citizens. With all the new gadgets in 1.0.10, I decided it's time to suggest the idea I've been kicking around for a week or two: a community mod. Conceptually, we each develop a section of a unified themed mod, then combine it to form a mod the likes of which the internet has never seen. If this takes off, I think a suitable scale would be adding an additional deity, perhaps a fickle spider goddess named Lawlth. This would give us a number of areas to work with, and each area isn't restricted to a single modder's attention: Skill trees Monsters Items Rooms Sprites Anybody interested? EDIT: The google doc page that Meat provided is available below. We have been using this to organize tasks, track progress, communicate specifics, and share finished work. The FAQ, by Meat What is this project? A community effort to create our own "expansion pack" filled with new items, monsters, and rooms to enrich the playing experience, especially for people who've already beaten the game once or twice and would like to see different content. How's it coming along? We've just started! There's a lot to do, but we're chipping away at it steadily. You can see our progress at the following URL: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AlCkkeUwgmZ3dHZLU2pZSUltYnhHY19SVVZJRFMtUHc#gid=0 Can NON-MODDERS get involved? I don't know how to mod, or I don't have the time! While at first we need the most help from modders, we're also going to need severalplaytesters later on. We'll be depending on you to give us unbiased feedback on our stuff! The best kind of feedback comes from people who have not participated in creating the mod, as they have less personal bias. We're also going to need a lot of art assets if you're a Photoshop or Gimp junkie! Can inexperienced MODDERS get involved? Of course! Every kind of modder is welcome, from the noobiest to the most pro! We're going to need icons, animations, indexing, spells, items, sprites, glints, monsters, room layouts, testing, and even the occasional brilliant idea! (Although we currently have a huge pile of ideas to work on, we're not closed off to adding new stuff after we're done with the current stuff.) Great! How do I sign up? Give your email address to someone who's currently involved, such as Blind Piper or Rarefied Horse Meat. You'll be invited to the project tracking spreadsheet mentioned above. Self-directed workers and autodidactic learners are welcome to claim and get started on anything they wish. If you would prefer to be given an assignment, ask here or on the project tracker and we'll be happy to hook you up with some of this workload!
Yes. As soon as I learn how to mod. I have doubts about the productive power of this community, though- we're not ponies and we're definitely not Homestuck.
Well, productive power is sufficient, Kazuhiro. It's just that most of us still have things of our own that we work on.
There's not a great deal of incentive to work on an idea someone else has pitched, when one could be spending the same amount of time working on one's own pet projects, Kazu. Most folks come up with new ideas faster than they can code, so the idea pipeline never has the room for outside interjections. I'll keep an eye on this, though. It's a manly ambitious undertaking. If it has any momentum, I might hop on board for a bit.
I apologize if I gave the impression of "Hey, guys, I got this great idea for a deity, let's all work on it together!" I meant for more back and forth, developing an idea we're all interested in, so it's an idea that we've all "pitched." I simply suggested something in hopes that it would get the ball rolling and someone would say "That's alright, but what about this?" In addition to the typical "builds community and solidarity" idea, it could also let us tackle a project that we may not have time for individually. When I sit down to work on a mod, I like to give myself at least a two hour block of time (which is whittled down by extraneous circumstances). There are times in which my other responsibilities prevent me from devoting a large amount of effort, but I could still stop by the forum and discuss areas of development or jot down some notes. Then, when I do have time to do the dirty work, I could have the insight of my fellow community members to give the project more direction. I'm sure other forum-goers here have lives as well; this could be mutually beneficial.
You suggested something that would be kind of like a "total conversion" - one mod that is created by a group of many modders working together that really adds a lot of stuff, each bit of it balanced with all of the other stuff in the mod and similar in theme, that would be "the mod" - one grand package that would be like another DLC. Personally I think the idea is great (it kind of reminds me of the Aether project; those who are into Minecraft will get the comparison), and I *would* join it if not for one thing - lack of time right now. With how hectic my life is at the moment, I barely have enough time to work on the two skill trees that I want to release. That, and since everything I'm working on has yet to be released, it's possible that some of you mind my presence near the project. However, if you don't mind someone whose style is still mysterious to anyone, and who doesn't have that much free time to work on it (with said time "happening" randomly), then I'll be glad to join the project. That being said, I think it would be good to wait for any other responses, and then start discussing what kind of mod do we exactly want to create.
Okay! "New deity" is alright, but what about this: I've been toying with the idea of No Lutefisk for the Lutefisk God - we give the player an alternate option for using their lutefisk. So your new deity, Lawlth or whoever, delights in denying the Lutefisk God his Lutefisk. Partly inspired by Runecaster, this is represented by the ability to craft 4 lutefisk into a "Wad of Deific Favor" which can be used to "purchase" various items and blessings via the crafting interface. 4 Favor Wads make a Favor Mound, 4 Mounds make a Favor Katamari - for purchasing bigger-ticket stuff. This is a hacky way to bring "favor points" from other roguelikes into Dredmor. It's a modular concept, too - once we have this system in place, someone could create a Binlor Ironshield skill mod that rewards you lutefisk for doing something Binlor would approve of, such as destroying 10 sections of dungeon wall. I don't think there's any way to build functional shrines that do anything, but we can at least put some sort of image of Lawlth in for fun. I feel that there are plenty of skill mods, with more being added every day, so whether or not we use Lawlth, whether or not we use lutefisk-repurposing, I suggest that we focus on items, monsters, recipes (some hidden, some not), and rooms.
I love it! It looks like it would have a lot of open design space to make something interesting and flavourful! While I don't want this to be a package of numerous skill mods, I wouldn't mind including a skill tree that matches the theme. What about a divine character that consumes Wads of Deific Favour to use skills? 1.0.10 patch notes said something along the lines of generic item sacrifice abilities. EDIT, missed a post: Kazeto, I mentioned part of my motivation was producing something beyond what I had time for. If you have even a little time to offer, or even just input, I'd love to work with you on this.
I love this idea, and I'll be happy to offer code/balance related advice to anyone who decides to participate. I've got enough big mod-related projects on my plate already (unless this is still going strong in a month or three), but I think this is a good project and I encourage anyone interested in modding at all to start by doing something related.
Well... I have been interested in gettin ginto the gaming field. I've taken some programming classes and learned a language or two. I suppose I could help but I have one failing. I seem to enjoy playing games more than working on making them.
At the very least that makes you a great playtester! I have the opposite problem, where once I start tinkering with mechanics I don't find playing as engaging anymore. I will hold you to that! I've never made a monster, a recipe, or a room yet, and recipes look easy but I'm not looking forward to the other two!
You can help with beta-testing then (not that it means you can't code too if you desire to do so). And, since you know "a language or two", you will be more capable of doing that than an average player. Edit: Ninja'd by RHM. But he said the same thing.
skillsets: My preference is for everything that's not a skillset to come first... or even for skillsets to be individual pet projects that we show to the group for critique. As for the concept itself, sure why not? The whole point of Wads of Favor is to turn lutefisk into an additional resource system to be used by modders for whatever we want. Just keep in mind that a lutefisk-based system is going to have more in common with Zorkmids, not Mana - you have a lot of it, but it's not quite infinite, and the player might want to use it for other things, too. You can abuse burglary lockpicks and skip turns to slowly produce more of it, but it would be at an extremely slow rate and we can't really afford to balance the system around abusive gameplay exploits. Any skillset that uses lutefisk/favor as its power source is either going to have to be inexpensive, probably using a single piece of lutefisk for the majority of its spells, or powerful with long cooldowns. recipes: I'm going to get started on coding up the core Favor recipes; that part should be easy. Here are my ideas for the system so far: Basic resource system is Favor Wads/Mounds/Katamaris worth 4, 16, and 64 lutefisk apiece. They are non-hidden recipes. A handful of non-hidden zero-skill-Alchemy recipes exist to transmute your raw, foul-smelling Deific Favor Wads™ into useful stuff - nothing super exciting, but handy. Hidden recipes exist to transmute Mounds into blessings - consumable items, whether potion shroom or otherwise, that give you cool new buffs (as designed by us) Rare recipes exist to cash in 1 to 4 Katamari for great power. Powerful items, for sure, probably also extremely long-duration blessings (like a few hundred turns). Maybe phone up one of the other two deities; is it possible code-wise to spawn a krong or inconsequentia altar at the player? Anyway, I'll throw together the basic resource system recipes and I look forward to criticism, fresh ideas, etc! Since this is a big bad game pack, sorta like a mini-expansion or Interior Dredmorating, we hardly need to limit ourselves to lutefisk recipes. What is the game missing that isn't already covered by ID/megacrafts? monsters: No ideas yet from this corner. How about you guys? The game needs a lot more variety than what it has now! I haven't tried out the MonsterPak yet - should we respect its territory in the way we respect established, balanced mods like Dredmorating/Megacrafts? Or is it a niche, unpopular product with the right ideas but the wrong numbers, which we can learn from? rooms: I think rooms are going to be fun, but I don't know how they work yet, which makes ideas harder to come up with.
Alright, makes sense. I haven't worked with recipes much, so I'm a little out of my area here. What about wands that can only have a single charge, but bigger effects? I'll look through the items files and see if anything feels like it hasn't been touched yet. I have a bit of experience with monster sprites, so I can take a look at that. It's slow going, but it isn't too difficult. I haven't used the MonsterPak, so I can't really speak on that. That was Fax's mod with Clones and Diggle Mages, right? Maybe we should look at older Roguelikes, such as Nethack, and add Dredmor-ized versions of monsters. Unicorn that drops a consumable Unicorn Horn to remove status conditions? I have a tiny amount of experience with rooms. I can build something nondescript pretty easily. With a bit of work, we could put together shrines. Maybe we could make a series of rooms similar to the Tome of Fire or Ice. EDIT, missed badboy: That would be great! Do you mean animated sprites (for monsters), icons for buffs, or item pictures?
Would additional floors be out of the question? Curious if that would make beating Dredmore too easy (assuming you get through all floors) assuming it's even possible at all.
I don't mind doing any of those. Preferably icons though, but I would be happy to try a few monsters.
I think we should have 1 skill set that would relate to mod's theme. Other than that, skills are likely not to be a focus of this mod, so I agree with you. Nothing more to add on the recipe ideas, I like them. We can add a few funky traps to that, with lutefisk-derived items being part of the recipe. Other than that we can try creating a few generic items, and perhaps one or two artefacts, but we need solid concepts for the latter. I think we should simply ignore Monster Pack there and try to aim for monsters that match the theme of this mod. Personally I haven't actually tried the Monster Pack, but regardless of its quality we should simply make creatures that fit the mod, and that means MP's content is kind of irrelevant. I propose adding creatures with existential and righteous attacks - there aren't many of those in the game, so there is a place for them. Unless you want to do something similar to what Megacrafts does (and I don't think we have to do that), it's not that difficult. That being said, I think that we should add a few variations of the basic room{s} with added random traps/monsters from the pack. Additionally a room with the shrine of our "god" and one or two rooms with a hidden mini-shrine.
How about a Lutefish, that drop Lutefisk? Differen't species could drop differen't varieties of Lutefisk, e.g. Freshwater Lutefisk
I like that idea. And we would get more food items to clutter the inventory that way, which is always neat even though we hate it (and if we kept the amount of new food junk low [3~4 such items], it wouldn't even be that bad).
