Fall 2009 Design Contest

[nologgie]

Welcome back!

I've been thinking of moving, but then I remember what moving is like. I guess I'm waiting for my house to burn down. That should make it comparatively easy!

Thanks for opening the Yahoo group! I'm downloading the modules now.

I've played at designing in DC, and it seems promising. My main problem with the dark side is that with my current monitor, I can't see squat!

[Uatu]

I do think Olivier's long experience with FRUA definitely helped in his DC mod - you could see that he knows how to make a game, with a story even!

Like Dinonykos, I do want to record some of my own sounds soon... I've got to think of a way to do it without all that nasty background noise, though

I will also try to compose something that will not break everyone's ears

Unfortunately, I have very little time for DC these days...

I guess you are using a CRT monitor, nologgie? I had one until about a year ago (before my iMac) - I had many similar problems! Art I made would appear rather light on the now ubiquitous LCD monitors around... But I liked CRT in that it appeared mostly the same from whatever angle you looked at it...

[Dinonykos]

Originally Posted by Uatu I will also try to compose something that will not break everyone's ears

Are you going to use MIDI sound? I may not have the time to compose something completely new at the moment, but I have some MIDI files which would only need some refinement.
Maybe we could do a kind of "music library" then, with short pieces for combats, encounters, cities, overland and so on, which can also be used by other designers...
So, if you e.g. planned on composing something suited for action/combat, I would know that I should rather focus on something suited for tavern events a.s.o..

[manikus]

I love my monitor. The LCD is very nice and I have a wide angle of viewable area.

I've been told that 3 moves is equivalent to a house fire. I may be moving again in the very short term which may make it 3 times in a year. And I wish I'd just had a nice fire with some s'mores instead. I wouldn't wish moving in my enemies, well okay, I would, but you get the point.

[Uatu]

My monitor is pretty nice - actually, my baby loves my iMac, I think...

I am thinking of composing in MIDI and then recording just normal sounds some other way... Like I said, I am not sure that I will be able to compose anything that is not dissonant, but I will try...

I would love to hear pieces by you guys, but that will have to wait for a while later (I am in no-sound mode again)...

Smores are better without the chocolate

[manikus]

S'mores are better without the marshmallows and with the chocolate on the side and no fire involved.

[olivier_leroux]

manikus, I'm currently trying to install your mod on my own PC and sadly it isn't displayed correctly on my new monitor. That's probably due to my settings and not your fault, but all other mods work fine for me. I'm not sure if it's the high resolution of yours or the changes to the frame, in any case the left side of the screen is cut-off when I play your mod and I can't read the beginning of a sentence...

Any idea what's happening? Unfortunately I know so little about computer technology and then there's the language barrier... I wouldn't know what information about my monitor and settings to tell you to give you an impression.

[olivier_leroux]

Unfortunately I'm not able to test manikus' design at the moment, but here are my reviews for "Friedrich's Quest" and "The Thieves' Guild of Grobben". I hope there's something helpful in it.

[olivier_leroux]

* SPOILERS FOR BUDZO'S DESIGN - BUDZO READ ON*

Budzo, I probably didn't see all of your design, since the Window of Knowledge didn't work - I guess my 0.914 is not the 0.9140032 version - and I didn't know what password to give Sedric. In the secret room with the one-way mirror, is the party supposed to walk through the western wall instead of the southern mirror?

[Dinonykos]

Thanks for the Reviews, Olivier!
Concerning my design:
I will work on the gameplay-problems at least a little before I make the Design accessible for everybody. I think its okay that the game ends when the main character is defeated. To give the option to reload a savegame after a lost battle is somewhat difficult in DC... Anyway, I agree that especially in the beginning, the game is too unfair, and dying happens too often. I will change that.
The sounds are mainly from a sound effect CD and from sites with free sound effects. However, I cut and remixed several of the effects. One problem I see is that the volume of the sounds is not consistent at the moment. I consider your design better


Budzo's and Manikus' design:
On the first view, it may seem strange that I gave a 7 in the story category to Budzo's design, while Olivier gave a 0. However, I gave the 7 rather for the implemented background story than for the main story arc, and for the "academy feeling" that was present all the time playing. Olivier decided not to give a mark at all, which was perhaps more reasonable.

I gave a worse mark to Manikus' design concerning the story, since it seemed even more preliminary to me than Budzo's. However, maybe I should not have given marks at all for the story aspect for both designs...