Nice modlist, but...
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- level1
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Nice modlist, but...
I'm not complaining here. I love the fact that someone went and made a modlist. But, from reading the topics, many of them seem... sub-par. Complaints, a half dozen glitch reports... better than anything I could ever possibly do (I tried.) but still...
It'd be nice if you had some sort of rating system, so the best and most awesume mods would pop up first..
It'd be nice if you had some sort of rating system, so the best and most awesume mods would pop up first..
- The GoldFish
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Anything that's near version 1.0 or higher is (usually) a good indication of containing some quality.
However, I agree that there really ought to be like a 'stamp of approval for playability' or something, just so anyone has a clue if a mod is actually a nice experience or a stealthy beta test...
However, I agree that there really ought to be like a 'stamp of approval for playability' or something, just so anyone has a clue if a mod is actually a nice experience or a stealthy beta test...
-- The GoldFish - member of former GIT and commander in chief of GALLAHAD. You could have done something, but it's been fixed. The end. Also, play bestgameever!
i'll happily add a column with a 1-10 rating, but who's gonna rate em all ?
A mod like colours i really enjoyed and would rate high, some others may say its too small and simple and rate it low.
maybe an open discussion on where to place everything is needed and i'll add the results.
maybe due to the numbers of mods, a 1-100 rating is needed instead.
i'm open to ideas and help to implement.
A mod like colours i really enjoyed and would rate high, some others may say its too small and simple and rate it low.
maybe an open discussion on where to place everything is needed and i'll add the results.
maybe due to the numbers of mods, a 1-100 rating is needed instead.
i'm open to ideas and help to implement.
- The GoldFish
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don't post an opinion, just check if it has a game_unlcokall, lights and cameras in all the levels, a decent readme, some sort of information about having to start a new profile once loaded, that sort of thing - really just a mark out of 1 for if you think it's roughly playable.
-- The GoldFish - member of former GIT and commander in chief of GALLAHAD. You could have done something, but it's been fixed. The end. Also, play bestgameever!
they are all playable. must be cos i've played em all. i started rating them too... heres what i had...
it was quite a while ago so many mods are missing and a low score doesn't mean its rubbish, with a 1-10 score some must score lower to provide a hierarchy. which is why i thought 1-100 would be better.
Code: Select all
Mod Name - Lvls - Comments - Score
StrickenSouls - 16 - Very nice. Proper level design, some new ideas. - 08/10
Droughtwinia - 08 - Nice level design with some easy but most hard. FUN! - 08/10
Hacked (tgfedit) - 04 - Its a good little challenge, nice script - 07/10
Arcade Remix - 11 - Cool idea, samey levels but a good fun challenge - 07/10
Colour (tgfedit) - 04 - Good level design, nice objectives - 07/10
Quest For Glory - 02 - Not bad. Give this a play! - 06/10
Fodder - 04 - 4th level can't be properly finished otherwise good - 06/10
Evola - 03 - Tough challenges, especially 3rd level - 06/10
The Deserts (orig) - 12 - Tough challenges, rough terrain. Check it out - 06/10
Maintenance Sys (orig) - 16 - But only 7 unique. Some good ideas. Worth a look - 05/10
Tutorial - 01 - Designed to help you understand the game - 05/10
Civil War (orig) - 10 - Hmmm, no readme, script or proper objectives? - 04/10
Siege (orig) - 01 - Survive the onslaught. Just a bit of short manic fun - 04/10
Battle - 01 - Just a bit of fun in a large enclosed area - 04/10
Survival Fittest - 01 - Not great but is at least completable - 03/10
Commando - 01 - Very short, very incomplete - 03/10
War - 07 - Impossible levels (at least for me) meaning no fun - 02/10
AutoBattle -
Contagion -
Downlink -
Enemy Within Pt1 -
Enemy Within Pt2 -
Insurrection -
Lemmings -
TBM Pt1 Maintenance Sys -
TBM Pt2 Civil War -
Siege (upd) -
Escape Darwinia -
Protologic -
The Particles Within -
WWW -
it was quite a while ago so many mods are missing and a low score doesn't mean its rubbish, with a 1-10 score some must score lower to provide a hierarchy. which is why i thought 1-100 would be better.
- The GoldFish
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See, I'd give a GOLDEN BANANA to
Colour (tgfedit)
Droughtwinia
Enemy Within P1
Enemy Within P2
Enemy Within P3
Hacked (tgfedit)
Insurrection
One begining with P which the Vista people have
Stricken Souls
TBM-MS
TBM-CW
The Particles Within
And a lesser, SILVER BANANA to
Contagion (no start cameras or lights - meaning if you leave and come back you're in a silly place)
Reprisal (if you follow the readme it's fine, but if you just load it up it'll jump you into a level and probably make the user forget to make a new profile - I don't approve of that)
And a very different, SPADE OF APPROVAL goes to
Arcade Remix
Club of dismays will be handed out at a later date (this means QOL is not good ) - they can't be automagically just given to everyone else sinec I haven't checked everyone else!
I've omitted TBM-TD because it has lots of levels without lights and start cameras (or any cameras it seems), no readme, etc - it probably will get a club of dismay.
Note, THE PRESTIGEOUS GOLDEN BANANA IS NOT AN INDICATOR OF STORY QUALITY OR HOW MUCH FUN WILL BE HAD ETC, it's just 'does it pass through TGF's strict quality of life standards' - In order to obtain one you need to be
a) A campaign
b) All played levels must have lights
c) All played missions must have start cameras for if the player leaves and returns
d) Scripted levels (intros mainly), acknowledgements of progress etc
e) Objectives
f) A Readme
g) Unless it changes, an indication of if the player needs to restart Darwinia or not, and if they need to create a new profile, ideally as part of the 'alwaystrue' event
h) Not include many unused/unchanged graphics to pad file size (eg including the original sepulveda graphics or lots of unchanged textures)
i) Include a version number
l) Not include other people's content unless you have permission to do so
k) Have a game_unlockall.txt - it doesn't matter what's in it, you just need to have one.
l) No land tiles spanning off of the end of allocated map
Possibly more to follow... anyway, ANYONE can give anyone else a badge provided they meet the criteria, I'm not the judge or anything. If they get most, but miss a few, and are no longer around any more they get a silver one.
I'll point out that scriptmaster 5000 will auto award you a badge when finished, if it can understand your mod.
Here's some graphics if you want to use them;
Colour (tgfedit)
Droughtwinia
Enemy Within P1
Enemy Within P2
Enemy Within P3
Hacked (tgfedit)
Insurrection
One begining with P which the Vista people have
Stricken Souls
TBM-MS
TBM-CW
The Particles Within
And a lesser, SILVER BANANA to
Contagion (no start cameras or lights - meaning if you leave and come back you're in a silly place)
Reprisal (if you follow the readme it's fine, but if you just load it up it'll jump you into a level and probably make the user forget to make a new profile - I don't approve of that)
And a very different, SPADE OF APPROVAL goes to
Arcade Remix
Club of dismays will be handed out at a later date (this means QOL is not good ) - they can't be automagically just given to everyone else sinec I haven't checked everyone else!
I've omitted TBM-TD because it has lots of levels without lights and start cameras (or any cameras it seems), no readme, etc - it probably will get a club of dismay.
Note, THE PRESTIGEOUS GOLDEN BANANA IS NOT AN INDICATOR OF STORY QUALITY OR HOW MUCH FUN WILL BE HAD ETC, it's just 'does it pass through TGF's strict quality of life standards' - In order to obtain one you need to be
a) A campaign
b) All played levels must have lights
c) All played missions must have start cameras for if the player leaves and returns
d) Scripted levels (intros mainly), acknowledgements of progress etc
e) Objectives
f) A Readme
g) Unless it changes, an indication of if the player needs to restart Darwinia or not, and if they need to create a new profile, ideally as part of the 'alwaystrue' event
h) Not include many unused/unchanged graphics to pad file size (eg including the original sepulveda graphics or lots of unchanged textures)
i) Include a version number
l) Not include other people's content unless you have permission to do so
k) Have a game_unlockall.txt - it doesn't matter what's in it, you just need to have one.
l) No land tiles spanning off of the end of allocated map
Possibly more to follow... anyway, ANYONE can give anyone else a badge provided they meet the criteria, I'm not the judge or anything. If they get most, but miss a few, and are no longer around any more they get a silver one.
I'll point out that scriptmaster 5000 will auto award you a badge when finished, if it can understand your mod.
Here's some graphics if you want to use them;
Last edited by The GoldFish on Mon Feb 19, 2007 3:02 pm, edited 1 time in total.
you're stressing too much technical stuff though TGF - I'm fairly sure most darwinia players don't give a damn about lights if a level is fun, then if a level looks nice without lights why bother??
alsom hitm4n, the idea of war was that the levels are impossible - it's meant to test how good you are
alsom hitm4n, the idea of war was that the levels are impossible - it's meant to test how good you are
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- The GoldFish
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Adding lights takes, what a minute? and stops the terrain going INVISIBLE when you look down. It's VERY annoying to say the least.
And Yes, I really do think people care. If a mod is fun, it can *easily* be spoilt by all sorts of things, such as quitting and coming back to it and realising you've lost all your progress. Or you blow up all your Darwinians because you didn't see a hill and all your grenades catch on it. Or you make it the player's job to work out what the objective is, turning it into a crypic pass/fail quiz with barely any clues. Or you require the player to kill every last enemy, including the ones stuck up an inaccessable hill. Scripts firing off in the middle of a key fight making you lose all your units. Do I really need to go on?
I wouldn't be that interested in playing an SP NWN module that was just a collection of areas with enemies with no story, started me off in the middle of nowhere every time, and radically changed from very easy to very hard for no reason and then warped me off into the distance every time I was about to do something. I would say that campaign style mods are easily the most popular (look at EW and Insurrection), and, if you want people to actually COMPLETE them, you need to not piss the player off with something *you* couldn't be bothered doing properly.
Quality of life is important, period. Why don't you make your own badge of approval and see how many people would want one. I'm not rewarding crafty map swapping, I'm not rewarding new shiny graphics, I'm simply noting where the modder has taken the time to try and ensure the playability of their mod.
And Yes, I really do think people care. If a mod is fun, it can *easily* be spoilt by all sorts of things, such as quitting and coming back to it and realising you've lost all your progress. Or you blow up all your Darwinians because you didn't see a hill and all your grenades catch on it. Or you make it the player's job to work out what the objective is, turning it into a crypic pass/fail quiz with barely any clues. Or you require the player to kill every last enemy, including the ones stuck up an inaccessable hill. Scripts firing off in the middle of a key fight making you lose all your units. Do I really need to go on?
I wouldn't be that interested in playing an SP NWN module that was just a collection of areas with enemies with no story, started me off in the middle of nowhere every time, and radically changed from very easy to very hard for no reason and then warped me off into the distance every time I was about to do something. I would say that campaign style mods are easily the most popular (look at EW and Insurrection), and, if you want people to actually COMPLETE them, you need to not piss the player off with something *you* couldn't be bothered doing properly.
Quality of life is important, period. Why don't you make your own badge of approval and see how many people would want one. I'm not rewarding crafty map swapping, I'm not rewarding new shiny graphics, I'm simply noting where the modder has taken the time to try and ensure the playability of their mod.
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- level1
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The GoldFish wrote:*totally correct stuff*
I agree with all of that, but I mean some finishing touches aren't needed, like you considered all my simple levels on MS boring (ok, most of them were) but some of them worked fine just a blobs of type 0
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- The GoldFish
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And a properly scripted blob of type 0 with objectives and a clear idea of what the player should be doing would happily fill the requirements to deserve the badge.
-- The GoldFish - member of former GIT and commander in chief of GALLAHAD. You could have done something, but it's been fixed. The end. Also, play bestgameever!
The GoldFish wrote:And a properly scripted blob of type 0 with objectives and a clear idea of what the player should be doing would happily fill the requirements to deserve the badge.
Ok, it didn't sound like that but that's cool then; because I would rank storyline above pretty lights etc I mean obviously lights are important - but the most beautiful level ever could be considered rubbish with no storyline.
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- shinygerbil
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And vice versa.
The levels don't have to be pretty, just functional - and not the kind of "oh, by the way, don't look behind that hill cos it doesn't work, oh, and don't leave a level halfway through or you'll break my scripts" functional, but the kind of functional where someone who has just bought the game off Steam who is not necessarily someone who wants to download a mod, fiddle with mission files and profiles then finally bastardise and hack their way through a mod can just download it, put it in the game and enjoy what is essentially another single-player campaign or map that - aesthetics and other design choices aside - could have been made by Introversion themselves.
The levels don't have to be pretty, just functional - and not the kind of "oh, by the way, don't look behind that hill cos it doesn't work, oh, and don't leave a level halfway through or you'll break my scripts" functional, but the kind of functional where someone who has just bought the game off Steam who is not necessarily someone who wants to download a mod, fiddle with mission files and profiles then finally bastardise and hack their way through a mod can just download it, put it in the game and enjoy what is essentially another single-player campaign or map that - aesthetics and other design choices aside - could have been made by Introversion themselves.
Here is my signature. Make of it what you will.
shinygerbil wrote:stuff
I agree, if it's that broken then obviously it's pretty bad; but things like lights have got to rank below story unless the lights (or lack of) make all the levels totally unplayable (unless that's deliberate )
GENERATION 22:The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation. Social experiment.
martin wrote:shinygerbil wrote:stuff
I agree, if it's that broken then obviously it's pretty bad; but things like lights have got to rank below story unless the lights (or lack of) make all the levels totally unplayable (unless that's deliberate :P)
Forcing a player to fight the interface is not a good way to make a level. I learned that when I first released Insurrection. I modified the first two levels greatly in order to cut down on the interface fighting that was going on, because people didn't like it. Your all black, all white, and lightless levels are no fun because the user can't actually play the game. They have to fight the interface. There is no real skill involved, other than irrational patience and the ability to use trial and error methodology. I have yet to see a level without lights where the lack of lights was (a) intentional and (b) actually added to the structure of the level, and made it more interesting or more fun to play.
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