raocow's talkhaus

Rockythechao wrote:The

Pal is the Artist

twist is something that we've been discussing since at least the beginning of December and it's something a number of folks in the chat are excited about.

What. I wanted to suggest a plot twist for ages but have been waiting for an appropriate time e.g. after raocow has LPed Episode 2 and we felt ready to start on Episode 3.

How is that going to work from a gameplay perspective? Is the cart in front of the horse? In other words: if you create the story first, then the levels have to be designed around the story and you have to let level authors know that their levels have to conform to the story. Are we going down this route or is the story going to be subservient to the levels?

Sorry for the delayed response.

The thing is, with Ep. 2 we held off on making the the castles, towns, tutorials and other story-related stuff until after the worlds and general plot of the game were fleshed out so that some castles could be built around certain scenarios and we could thus ensure the game would have a more cohesive story overall. Assuming we continue with that practice for the other episodes, we should have a slight bit of leeway to plan out rough, high-level story elements without regulating the rest of the games' levels for narrative stuff.

Granted, having

the characters be captured

is probably pushing it, but I imagine it's something that could be set up through the final level and cutscenes of Ep. 3 and resolved before the player has reached W1 in Ep. 4. The part that's most widely agreed upon by the chat is specifically

Pal = the Artist

, which should theoretically have even less of an impact on regular levels.

Even so, there is always the chance something in a self-contained level could conflict with pre-planned plot points, and in such an event the level should generally take priority; the story should change to accommodate the level, not vice-versa (except arguably in cases where the level creator is specifically trying to impose their own canon and force the story in a certain direction). Most of all, you make a very good point in that it's not fair to the people who wait patiently to offer their input for others to discuss ideas and get excited about them in a relatively private channel. You're right to be upset about that.

For the sake of transparency I'm going to post more details and chatlogs about the

Pal/Artist

stuff and some other ideas we've been half-jokingly bouncing around on Skype in the story thread. We don't expect them to be taken as definitive canon, only possible options we can revisit when it comes time for Ep. 3's development.

Rockythechao wrote: The thing is, with Ep. 2 we held off on making the the castles, towns, tutorials and other story-related stuff until after the worlds and general plot of the game were fleshed out so that some castles could be built around certain scenarios and we could thus ensure the game would have a more cohesive story overall. Assuming we continue with that practice for the other episodes, we should have a slight bit of leeway to plan out rough, high-level story elements without regulating the rest of the games' levels for narrative stuff.

We probably won't, since pretty much all of that stuff can can be done with cutscenes anyway. Levels and bosses people can make whatever they want and we can make work, towns we would have to wait a bit in order to see what world themes crop up (if we stick with world themes and not go back to a general sort by difficulty like in ASMBXT). Cutscenes would probably still be developed near the end, but that stuff should be small compared to the levels themselves, and mostly be making sure anything written up during development doesn't clash with something else.

Rockythechao wrote:The part that's most widely agreed upon by the chat is specifically

Pal = the Artist

, which should theoretically have even less of an impact on regular levels.

That sentiment might change though, when people eventually filter out of the project and others filter in. I'd rather we wait until we start discussion on Episode 3 to decide on stuff, to allow for new people (who might be interested and join the project after raocow's LP) to have a say.

Rockythechao wrote: Even so, there is always the chance something in a self-contained level could conflict with pre-planned plot points, and in such an event the level should generally take priority; the story should change to accommodate the level, not vice-versa (except arguably in cases where the level creator is specifically trying to impose their own canon and force the story in a certain direction).

100% agree. This project was started a collection of levels made by talkhausers and raocow fans, for raocow to play; I'd like to try and keep it that way as much as possible; if at all possible, nothing should take precedence over levels.

So a quick update regarding the lua stuff: Red's in the process of implementing pnpc in the LunaLua core and CinematX now has a working npcParse mode (see the npcParse.lua thread for more info). Tomorrow I'm going to try to finish up the word bubble functionality in textblox, then maybe record a video of the tech applied to an Ep. 1 town.

We can also embed movies in levels now. We're not going to use them for cutscenes as that would drastically inflate the episode's filesize, though folks have been talking about something similar to JUMP's movie solutions to tough levels. But whether they would or should fall under the feature lock needs to be discussed, and they might be something worth saving for Ep. 3.

Rockythechao wrote:We can also embed movies in levels now. We're not going to use them for cutscenes as that would drastically inflate the episode's filesize, though folks have been talking about something similar to JUMP's movie solutions to tough levels. But whether they would or should fall under the feature lock needs to be discussed, and they might be something worth saving for Ep. 3.

Surely, we could just make a duplicate level with autoplay code?

Rednaxela wrote:*ping*

Also, now that I think about it, is there any news on that Lanalua fix that'll make Willhart's Dark Prince level playable again?

ztarwuff wrote:Also, now that I think about it, is there any news on that Lanalua fix that'll make Willhart's Dark Prince level playable again?

No news at the moment. I'll try to get that in place soon though.

ztarwuff wrote:Surely, we could just make a duplicate level with autoplay code?

It's certainly possible -- heck, we can load level-specific scripts as APIs via lunaworld.lua so we wouldn't even need duplicate levels -- but it'd likely be a good deal more work to implement. The system would have to be programmed in a manner that avoids clashing with any complex lua stuff, and there would need to be a good deal of additional testing to make sure a given autoplay routine always works in cases where the level has randomized gimmicks or enemy behavior (and/or refine the randomization of those elements). If we opt to develop an autoplay system, it'd be best to focus on having the tech ready by the time we start Ep. 3's development rather than try and rush it to fit it in Ep. 2.

Using pre-recorded footage, on the other hand, would be a matter of weighing the pros and cons of tech we already have; it would be much easier to implement a simple video player and we wouldn't have to worry about any of the issues with autoplay mentioned above... but again, filesize is a concern. Some folks on skype have suggested editing the videos into old-timey silent films to reduce the filesize: lower resolution, slight compression, sepiatone, mute the video and play ragtime music in the level, etc... but idk how much that would help. And if a level is changed after a video is produced, the video would have to be completely re-recorded and edited.

Rockythechao wrote:

ztarwuff wrote:Surely, we could just make a duplicate level with autoplay code?

It's certainly possible -- heck, we can load level-specific scripts as APIs via lunaworld.lua so we wouldn't even need duplicate levels -- but it'd likely be a good deal more work to implement. The system would have to be programmed in a manner that avoids clashing with any complex lua stuff, and there would need to be a good deal of additional testing to make sure a given autoplay routine always works in cases where the level has randomized gimmicks or enemy behavior (and/or refine the randomization of those elements). If we opt to develop an autoplay system, it'd be best to focus on having the tech ready by the time we start Ep. 3's development rather than try and rush it to fit it in Ep. 2.

Would the built in SMBX stuff really clash with Lunalua? I'm talking about something similar to A Day in the Life of raocow. Obviously, yes, anything with randomised elements would be difficult to replicate, but I only imagine we'd need to do these for puzzle sections and surely puzzles sections wouldn't be randomised?

Sooooooooooooooo what do we need to do on this to get it finished? Seems like it's been pretty dead the last few months.

Do we have a list of everything that still needs to be made? I know we need towns and cutscenes and stuff.

If there's too much crap that needs to be done, maybe we can cut all the "unnecessary" stuff and just make what we need to get the game playable. After that we can always add things back in that were planned.

Holy wrote:Sooooooooooooooo what do we need to do on this to get it finished? Seems like it's been pretty dead the last few months.

Do we have a list of everything that still needs to be made? I know we need towns and cutscenes and stuff.

If there's too much crap that needs to be done, maybe we can cut all the "unnecessary" stuff and just make what we need to get the game playable. After that we can always add things back in that were planned.

There's been a lull for a number of reasons. There are still some bosses, towns, and cutscenes to be made, then there's a small amout of Lua such as the hud and leek sanctuaries that are on me, and there's some raocoin rebalancing for each world (which probably requires adding raocoins to levels that didn't previously have them). Aside from that, that's pretty much it.

The main issue is that the towns and bosses are waiting on things that are waiting on things being pulled by SMBX2.0 dev. Once the new beta for that is released, it makes sense to port over what we have to that build (which is minimal effort for a lot of gain), then we should have the tools we need, on an engine that isn't in flux.

One of the issues with the development has been the tools constantly changing. Porting to 2.0 beta 3, when it's released, should give us what we need and a platform we can more or less lock down in order to finish up the game.

Huh, alright. Any word on when the new beta's coming?

Holy wrote:Huh, alright. Any word on when the new beta's coming?

From what I know it should be in a week or two. There have been some progress videos on Horikawa Otane's youtube channel.

Hoeloe wrote:

Holy wrote:Sooooooooooooooo what do we need to do on this to get it finished? Seems like it's been pretty dead the last few months.

Do we have a list of everything that still needs to be made? I know we need towns and cutscenes and stuff.

If there's too much crap that needs to be done, maybe we can cut all the "unnecessary" stuff and just make what we need to get the game playable. After that we can always add things back in that were planned.

There's been a lull for a number of reasons. There are still some bosses, towns, and cutscenes to be made, then there's a small amout of Lua such as the hud and leek sanctuaries that are on me, and there's some raocoin rebalancing for each world (which probably requires adding raocoins to levels that didn't previously have them). Aside from that, that's pretty much it.

The main issue is that the towns and bosses are waiting on things that are waiting on things being pulled by SMBX2.0 dev. Once the new beta for that is released, it makes sense to port over what we have to that build (which is minimal effort for a lot of gain), then we should have the tools we need, on an engine that isn't in flux.

One of the issues with the development has been the tools constantly changing. Porting to 2.0 beta 3, when it's released, should give us what we need and a platform we can more or less lock down in order to finish up the game.

Can you take care of that? At this point, I'm way out of the loop on everything, and at this point, stuff like that should probably be handeled by someone like you or rocky, who what they're doing.

SAJewers wrote:

Hoeloe wrote:

Holy wrote:Sooooooooooooooo what do we need to do on this to get it finished? Seems like it's been pretty dead the last few months.

Do we have a list of everything that still needs to be made? I know we need towns and cutscenes and stuff.

If there's too much crap that needs to be done, maybe we can cut all the "unnecessary" stuff and just make what we need to get the game playable. After that we can always add things back in that were planned.

There's been a lull for a number of reasons. There are still some bosses, towns, and cutscenes to be made, then there's a small amout of Lua such as the hud and leek sanctuaries that are on me, and there's some raocoin rebalancing for each world (which probably requires adding raocoins to levels that didn't previously have them). Aside from that, that's pretty much it.

The main issue is that the towns and bosses are waiting on things that are waiting on things being pulled by SMBX2.0 dev. Once the new beta for that is released, it makes sense to port over what we have to that build (which is minimal effort for a lot of gain), then we should have the tools we need, on an engine that isn't in flux.

One of the issues with the development has been the tools constantly changing. Porting to 2.0 beta 3, when it's released, should give us what we need and a platform we can more or less lock down in order to finish up the game.

Can you take care of that? At this point, I'm way out of the loop on everything, and at this point, stuff like that should probably be handeled by someone like you or rocky, who what they're doing.

There are a couple of people including me and rocky who can handle getting this all sorted out, yep, no worries there.

Perfect. If you need help with coin balancing, give me a shout.

Any levels/bosses/whatever that need to be made for this? I'm in a SMBX mood.

I guess somebody still has to like, make this work with smbx2.0 or something?

I think we're still missing a boss for W5-1, and we haven't heard back from Mabel yet regarding the W5-2 castle and boss. We've been holding off on poking folks about their bosses and levels until we've got the devkit ported to 2.0 and some assorted lua stuff wrapped up, though.

I'll PM you an invite link to the dev chat on discord. Anyone else who'd like to keep up with this project's progress, just PM me or Hoeloe.

I think you're also missing either 1 level in 3-1, or the 3-1 castle level. Also, feel free to continue work on the 7-1 castle.

The 3-1 castle level is the reworked version of Busty Cave you sent me (still haven't come up with the final name for that, going with Dusty Grave for now). Like most of the other castles the vanilla work for it is done and we're still working on the lua parts.

The wiki does show a couple other claimed slots in W3-1, though. I remember seeing bits of Sturg's level forever ago but I think he ultimately ended up handing the slot over to Pyro? Still looking into that. Dunno about Minna's.

But yeah, other than those and the 5-2 castle, all regular levels should be accounted for; Wasabi and Hoeloe have mostly been working on the 7-2 boss but I believe Wasabi still plans to do the level after the boss is finished, and as far as I'm aware the W8 and W9 castle relays are waiting on the devkit update and transition to github (which I forgot to mention in the previous post but is outlined in the stickied "THE PLAN" thread.)

Yeah, I couldn't remember if Busty Cave was supposed to slot in as a level or the castle. As for the 2 claimed spots, there is Cave of Stupid that can slot in for one if needed IIRC.

yeah, 5-2's Castle and Boss are still on my list of things. I still have some other todos like Town 7 as well, yeah? I think ill give some touch-ups to my world 3 level too.

So, just as a thing, we're working pretty hard on getting the devkit sorted out right now, but there's a slight issue with the levels. Most of them we have, but a few are missing, and I can't be certain those we do have are the most recent versions.

I've copied over what's on the OneDrive to the current build, but the following levels are missing: Some of these I'm not too worried about, as they have people like Rocky involved, who is pretty involved in the development, but a few of these seem to have just vanished.

My plan is to release a download of the current levels alongside the devkit, so people can verify that theirs are up to date, and hopefully we'll be able to track down copies of those we don't have.

I'm not sure how many people who've made levels still frequent the talkhaus, so that may be an issue.

Also, If it's not on OneDrive, I'm not sure I even have it anymore.

*unlurk*

Pretty sure this is the most recent version of my level. https://mega.nz/#!tUZWSCxA!vYfJt67NC02_ ... ydBW1Kwt3M

SAJewers wrote: ↑6 years ago I'm not sure how many people who've made levels still frequent the talkhaus, so that may be an issue.

Also, If it's not on OneDrive, I'm not sure I even have it anymore.

Well it's not a disaster if we don't get a few updated versions, since we're planning to give all the levels a polish pass. It's more of a problem if we lose a few, which will be a shame.

We're keeping the project on a github repo at the moment, which is a whole lot easier to manage and maintain than a simple onedrive folder, so if we can get the levels together we can avoid this happening again, and hopefully prevent it for future episodes too.