JohnWordsworth wrote:Good luck with your modding endeavours! My advice is to start small. I am much more likely to download and try out a really well-crafted 6-level dungeon than play a 32-level dungeon padded with repetitive puzzles and too any fights!
Have fun
I suspected as much. I figured a lot of you guys would rather be stumped by tons of puzzles than swarmed by enemies...
I played several mods and I recently played isle of the deranged the author used the available space so efficiently, he has like 15 puzzles and 8 secrets just on the first map...it took me 2 hours to to play through the first map and the mod has 21 maps, and i didn't even find everything on the first map yet because apparently, i'm supposed to backtrack to it later....it's very challenging and somewhat frustrating at times because every lever i pull and every pressure plate i touch always manipulates something outside my visual and hearing radius so I never know what it triggered.
some of the stuff looks totally random...not in a bad way it's just like "why was I supposed to put a power gem in this particular alcove and there wasn't even a hint?"
I have not found myself *stuck* in it yet though, as i managed to keep making progress.
but I digressed
I might not ever finish my mod anyway.
I would love to finish something in my life but perhaps, a LoG 2 custom dungeon that maybe 10 people might play and half of them might hate it...might not be the right choice for my Magnum Opus...
i'm considering taking my mod into a different direction, and instead of having the overworld be the whole mod, having the overworld area more like transitional zones in between the dungeons and that will mean i finish the overworld much quicker and then I can devote my time to try to make logical classic dungeons with multiple secrets and puzzles .
but I dunno.
the way I have it right now is i have a huge sprawling overworld and lots of loot scattered about, and lots of monsters. but all the monsters are in logical places.
I put some thought into the encounters and what types of enemies i'll have. i'm not gonna throw dark acolytes at the player in the middle of a beach...
i'm not just painting mobs of enemies across the landscape.
i'm spending a lot of time working on the height maps so everything doesn't just look flat, i plan to have mountains to climb, bogs to swim through, even a romp through the elemental plane of air full of invisible walls and floors(i discovered if you put the forest_sky asset without a forest_heightmap, it looks like the party is walking on air. so I could simulate the party going to the elemental plane of air)
I will not have that many puzzles, but I do have some and I do my best to make each puzzle different, i made it a goal to make sure every overworld map has at least 1 puzzle, 1 secret and 1 or more boss fights, and every map has notes scattered about, giving insight into the back story. explaining why some loot is in certain spots.
one of my favorite parts of the game was the boss fights, i'm planning out boss arenas in each level, sometimes in unexpected places.
one reason it's taking so long is that I am putting a lot of thought into making each puzzle unique and different; they are not difficult, but i don't want the puzzles to be boring.
I know 1 secret per map does not sound like much...a 32 map level mod with only 32 secrets? but 20 of those maps are the overworld. with a minimum of 1 secret, 1 puzzle ,1 boss per map but the overworld maps are meant to be finished quickly so the player can get to the dungeons
my map might end up with 50 or more secrets, but I don't want to just have secrets for the sake of having a secret where the player pushes a button and the secret sound plays and theres just like 3 rocks in there...
I do plan to have dungeons and those will have more secrets and traps and stuff but i'm not even attempting the dungeons until I complete my overworld.
i'm learning how to work with all 3 dimensions of the map by placing tiles at different heights.
I'm learning how to make philosopher stone puzzles and combination locks.
one dungeon will have a system of magic bridges that the player will have to activate to escape from the area.
I worry that my overworld is too big. I considered making it smaller but i'm not sure how it will alter the story. I wanted there to be logic with how my zones are laid out, with the themes of what terrain each one has. it's not random.
so far
some of my monsters create unpredictable results when you kill them, others behave in odd ways.
i have buried treasures and hints to help find them.
i have 3 different endings planned and amostly implemented, and a "secret" area that can only be completed with an item you get from defeating the final boss.
the mod does not end after the end boss, there is still one more puzzle to solve.
I also tried to add a lot of meta humor and references in the form of notes and party dialogue/banter to my mod.
if I ever finish it, i'll upload it to steam workshop and perhaps the nexus and you can judge for yourself if you hate it, i'll accept that
