Topic: Crowd-source level building

[Scyphi]

Um, no, can't say that I have. Only games I'm really familiar with that we've mentioned here is the Sonic games and of course, Descent.

[Shroudeye]

It is a custom-made level for Descent 3, that included... well, aliens!

It can be found in Dateiliste's full D3 pack... Or maybe in some level archive(s)...

[Kaiaatzl]

Yes...
I didn't like it very much though.  Roth 513 and Arrilen Po were both much better.

[Scyphi]

It is a custom-made level for Descent 3, that included... well, aliens!

*facepalm* Oh, you meant that! For some stupid reason, I had thought you were referring to some separate game, not a custom level.

Yes, I have played Alien Territory before, repeatedly in fact. It's one of my favorites. Although I might have to agree with wazzazzle, Roth 513 was slightly better IMO. I've played Arrilen Po, but not often, partly because I keep forgetting how to get through the puzzles and end up getting stuck.

Anyway, back to your original comment, I presume when you mentioned that, you were thinking of the little orb turrets the level included?

[TechPro]

I've played Alien Territory too.  It's usually listed in the level archives as "Alien Territory - Final"

You can find it at Descent3fischlein.de but if you don't read German, when you go into the Files section you'll want to select English and then go looking for the level.

You can also find it at Levels4you but you have to login there in order to get it.

You can find it at DescentValhalla.

On the other hand... I've uploaded it here.  http://www.planetdescent.net/index.php?action=tpmod;dl=item203

[Shroudeye]

@Schypi: Correct, I was referring to the turrets... Just as an example, ours will be obviously different... or not?

I think some sketching will help on this too

[Scyphi]

Next sketch! This time of the "lounge" Shoudeye referred to (hence the name "Shoudeye's Lounge", for lack of a better name) a few pages of posts ago. I'm probably the only one who even remembers it.

Anyway, there it is. Hopefully more will follow soon, but finals are nearly here, so that could delay things for...I dunno, however long is needed, I suppose.

One point I wish to bring up, though before I get much further with these sketches, and that's whether or not we're going to go for the classic exit tunnel escape or the teleporter-escape, as we're going to have to decide eventually. I, personally, am still leaning towards the teleporter, but I don't have my heart set on it, either, so that's why I want to know, so I can sketch whatever we decide to do.

[Shroudeye]

Hey, thanks for the dedication! Sorry I'm writing a little late, I've been thru some exams lately, and couldn't thorougly examine your sketches till now...

Well, my opinions about the sketches:

Schypi, I see that you have put some effort on those rooms. However, it would be better if you introduced those aliens to us first... Who (or what) are they? What are they doing in this old heap of mine? Are they extracting the remains of the mine, or what? And whatever they doing, HOW are they doing that? Please describe them to us, as you are the storyteller here, and you know the aliens better than all of us. Don't try to place them right away, just sketch and describe those aliens.

Now for the sketches in hand: I think they are a bit too focused on the individual rooms, but we don't even know if we are going to use them... As the mine has been destroyed with a powerful nuclear meltdown, a big bunch of the mine would be destroyed-mostly the lower levels... That means we aren't going to model every inch of the mine, but some part of it, probably the parts that are distant to the explosion's origin-the reactor core. I've provided an analysis of the blast, check it out.

Now, you may say that some good rooms of the mine would've been omitted... True, but remember, we are not recreating the level Europa Mining Colony itself, but the ruins of it overrun by alien beings-that means some alien vistas, as well as the ruins, and those two should be balanced!

Well, those are my opinions so far...

[Scyphi]

If I had bigger sheets of paper, I would've tried sketching the whole mine in detail by now.

But I actually like it better this way, because then it better supports the group-project idea this is all oriented around. I feel like if I went ahead and sketched every square inch of the mine, that wouldn't leave everybody else much chance to be...creative. I'd much rather do bits and pieces, leaving some areas blank so when people are building the level, they get that chance to be creative as they fill in the blanks.

And yes, I've already acknowledged that a bigger blast radius probably would be more realistic, but when I brought it up, everybody seemed okay with that at the time, so I didn't worry much about it until now. Either way, as I already said, some of the best rooms this level has to offer would've been annihilated, and then IMO, it wouldn't be worth it so much to revisit this mine if there's so little of it surviving. I mean, take the recreation of D1 level one in D3's level 10. From a realistic standpoint, that little mine should've been evaporated entirely...but then you wouldn't have anything to go back and revisit. Furthermore, by the fact that so much of it survived could possibly explain why it's still infected. If it makes you feel better, I suppose we can work at coming up with some kind of explanation that explains why so much of it is still fairly intact (definitely not in mint condition though. Damage should be apparent all throughout, including the reactor blast, the aging of the time that has passed, and the aliens messing with it). Maybe the blast somehow got shunted somewhere else, or maybe the infected bots had put up some kind of shielding around the reactor room that somehow spared most of the mine. I dunno.

As for the aliens, I don't think I'm the one who should say so much at this point, because everybody seems to have different ideas about this should go down in that area. For me, I wasn't thinking anything THAT special, I would've just reused the aliens from Merc lvl 4, as that seemed to be the most logical, and furthermore, maintains continuity. But as I've read everybody else's thoughts on the matter, seems pretty clear that not everybody else has been thinking the same thing I have. So until we get that sorted out so that we're all picturing the same thing, I think I should hold off.

[Kaiaatzl]

Well if we do use the mercenary aliens, I may be the only person here who actually knows how to put mercenary bots into a level without messing up an entire D3 installation.

But that means we can do it.

And in terms of mercenary bots, I think the experimental tentacled ones from Merc level 5 would fit into the idea too, and so would the tractor beam bots (we might as well use as many of them as we can ).

[-<WillyP>-]

I've always thought the bots with the red lasers in Merc were the coolest.  I think they were called black stormtroopers.  Anyway...

Someone mentioned why the bots were in a certain room and what were they doing there.  Keep in mind these are mining bots infected with an alien virus.  Just like a computer infected with a virus, the may not be acting in a predictable manner. In fact it would be completely in character for some of them to be acting entirely incoherent.  Perhaps just moving around in circles, shooting at random, or other pointless, odd behavior.

[Scyphi]

Once we have it settled what we want in terms of aliens, we can use just about any robots we want, because as I explained, in addition to the aliens, there are also a bunch of ordinary (but of course infected) robots wandering around, from both D3 and D1. And theoretically any other Descent we want to include. Just wanting to make that clear.

Assuming we just stick with the Merc aliens, the explanation for their actions would be pretty simple to explain. Basically, their standing objective is to survive, and to multiply and spread, like a real biological virus. I'm also fairly confident they'll also be pulling off Borg-like assimilate other technologies and the such to integrate with their own. The infected robots are to serve as minions for these goals. Then of course, they are also building that boss robot. As I saw it, that pretty much summed up all of their actions. Didn't really think it needed to be more than that. In fact, I thought it was pretty obvious as is.

[Shroudeye]

...But I actually like it better this way, because then it better supports the group-project idea this is all oriented around. I feel like if I went ahead and sketched every square inch of the mine, that wouldn't leave everybody else much chance to be...creative. I'd much rather do bits and pieces, leaving some areas blank so when people are building the level, they get that chance to be creative as they fill in the blanks. ...

I wasn't mentioning a full-scale sketch of the mine, That would be a single-handed design. I was talking about the general layout of the level: like which room is going to connect with which room. As I recall, we are not going to use the original layout, but introduce some new passageways, rooms, vistas, etc. created by aliens... So we can determine which rooms to be used, and what other rooms should be designed... And then we can share the rooms between us, and everyone will build his/her given room.

Note that I'm not talking about the detailed design of each room, just how are they going to connect; the details are left to the editor, who will construct given room(s)...

...I mean, take the recreation of D1 level one in D3's level 10. From a realistic standpoint, that little mine should've been evaporated entirely...but then you wouldn't have anything to go back and revisit. Furthermore, by the fact that so much of it survived could possibly explain why it's still infected. If it makes you feel better, I suppose we can work at coming up with some kind of explanation that explains why so much of it is still fairly intact (definitely not in mint condition though. Damage should be apparent all throughout, including the reactor blast, the aging of the time that has passed, and the aliens messing with it). Maybe the blast somehow got shunted somewhere else, or maybe the infected bots had put up some kind of shielding around the reactor room that somehow spared most of the mine. I dunno.

Well, it is okay if we can explain the reduced damage and suprisingly intact rooms somehow. But lets say the overall amount of the damage should be at least look realistic to be convicting enough.

...As for the aliens, I don't think I'm the one who should say so much at this point, because everybody seems to have different ideas about this should go down in that area. For me, I wasn't thinking anything THAT special, I would've just reused the aliens from Merc lvl 4, as that seemed to be the most logical, and furthermore, maintains continuity. But as I've read everybody else's thoughts on the matter, seems pretty clear that not everybody else has been thinking the same thing I have. So until we get that sorted out so that we're all picturing the same thing, I think I should hold off.

I'm afraid the overall character of the aliens are the major element that is going to shape the level... After all, they are re-shaping the ruins of the former-Mining colony to their needs. I'm not debating whether we should use the Merc's alien bots or some other Whateverisidoid alien being to be separately modelled. I'm simply asking WHAT are their agenda in the mine, and how do they do it, so we can determine a general standard to reflect that when designing the rooms. And, as you are the creator of this idea we have VOTED to follow, you are the person that should tell the most about the aliens, and provide the guidelines that we should follow.

In other words, YOU are the LEAD designer here.

[Shroudeye]

EDIT:
Sorry, didn't saw the last message you got:

...Basically, their standing objective is to survive, and to multiply and spread, like a real biological virus...they'll also be pulling off Borg-like assimilate other technologies and the such to integrate with their own. The infected robots are to serve as minions for these goals. Then of course, they are also building that boss robot.

Let me see if I got it: Okay, we have our alien, and their motives. And I guess from your sketches, and the overall lean to the Merc L4, their "architecture" is organic.

So here is a variation of their "life" in the mine: They "eat" the remains of the mine, and convert it into their use-for this matter, they have built several key facilities into the mine, and turned the mine into some "organic" processing facility, and a factory to build the bossbot. The heart of this processing plant is the old reactor core itself, where they built a new, toothy "reactor". The reactor area is also the Boss bot's construction zone. The rest of the alien "construction" is focused to the areas that damaged the most, and recede where the damage is less...

So we have a level, that starts out as a ruined mine, and slowly blends into an organic alien processing&production plant, right?

[Scyphi]

Yes! Exactly!

As for when the alien portions start and stop, I was more thinking about having the original mines tunnels be there, and then the new alien portions be kind of interwoven in-between those original tunnels, on occasion overlapping when the old tunnels have suffered more damage, or parts of the old mind have collapsed and sections are no longer accessible. Granted, I haven't been portraying this too well in the sketches, but that's partly because the sections I've chosen to sketch thus far haven't always fit too well with these specs, and furthermore, I haven't been entirely sure how to accurately portray the interweaving of the newer aliens tunnels with the old.

Well, it is okay if we can explain the reduced damage and suprisingly intact rooms somehow. But lets say the overall amount of the damage should be at least look realistic to be convicting enough.

Yes, this goes without saying. The surviving tunnels by all accounts should not be pristine in appearance. They should be very damaged in a lot of areas...but whether or not they're navigable is to be determined, which leads me back to the sketches. I see now what you're getting at, and I'll attempt to produce a brief but overall view of the entire mine for my next sketch.