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Re: i want to begin to learn mapping for the galaxy engine and i need someone to support me!

Posted: Tue Aug 07, 2018 7:00 pm
by Nisaba
hey,
no hard feelings!

I didn't say that your level is bad. I just mentioned that for me it's way to hard. that's all. The level of difficulty is somewhat reminiscent of the stuff that KeenRush build. a hardcore challenge so to speak. and you did a good job making it really challenging.
darkdave1985 wrote:and i didn't watch the whole video of you playing it so far but i must say that the most things by which you died the whole time, at the very beginning are by far not so hard as they come across in the video.
well, let me tell you something. as a level designer you are always way ahead of the average player, simply to the fact that you do know every tile and sprite placement inside out. looking at recorded footage like the video I was sending you (which is by now password protect!) you get a chance to see how other people manage to solve your puzzles. this always differs from your own play testing especially if it is a bind run through. it's always a good idea to give your early builds to a couple of people with different skill levels to get an idea what works and what not, so you can evaluate the game's appeal to players with different levels of experience and so on.

that said, please don't change anything only because things felt too hard for me. Check the experience others have. feedback from a beta tester give you really good insights of what people feel about your production. In my case I was just overwhelmed by all the action on a 320x200 pixel screen. others might feel more comfortable with the setting, some might save every three seconds and so on. so all in all I'd advice to let as many people as possible test your level to check whether or not your ideas work they way you've intended them in the first place.

I haven't looked into abiathar just yet, so I can't give you feedback on bugs and flaws. though I've notice one dead end trap already, but I need to check things first.



ps.:
speaking of challenging mods: make sure to check out NY00123's tests level!

Re: i want to begin to learn mapping for the galaxy engine and i need someone to support me!

Posted: Wed Sep 19, 2018 5:39 pm
by darkdave1985
hello to everybody,

so, i worked on my map and did my best to make it better. i deleted enemies and deadly tiles, i fixed all the color collisions and so on and so far. and i finally made some fair difficulty settings. you both were right and the map was too hard and looked weird in some points. i apologize to you both if i was coming across to harsh a little bit the last time but no offense meant. i will work on it further and i hope that you will like it more the next time.

and i have one question. there is a new mod out there which is called "short circuit oracle" which you both know of course and i tried to open the project with abiathar. i made it step by step like fleex showed it to me on page 3 some time ago but by the last step, abiathar says it can't find the keen4.tli file. i checked it and there is not such a file in the folder but normally it is like in all other projects.

another problem i had some months ago, was trying to load mr. blackpack's mod. when i click to finish this error appears. here is a screenshot of it:

https://www86.zippyshare.com/v/IH2DhVFi/file.html

to open other projects like b.i.o. or keen 9.5 are no problem to me.

it would be nice, if anyone can help me with these things.

thanks!

Re: i want to begin to learn mapping for the galaxy engine and i need someone to support me!

Posted: Wed Sep 19, 2018 7:39 pm
by Nisaba
Hey there darkdave,

Good to hear that you are still into modding. I was really worried that my feedback wasn't too helpful for someone who makes his first modding steps.
I'm very curious about the current status of your mod and I'm looking forward to further updates.

As said before, make sure to hand beta versions for playtesting to as many poeple as possible. There is a wide variety of taste and of course of skill level. I'm sure there are people out there who love to prove their reaction time skill.
Over the years I for one found more and more pleasure in playing games at a leisurely pace. In my younger days I was more persistent. What I wanna say is that I'm not at all the measure of all things. I can just share impressions from my point of view.

Again, I'm looking forward to news from your project. Happy modding!

Re: i want to begin to learn mapping for the galaxy engine and i need someone to support me!

Posted: Wed Sep 19, 2018 7:47 pm
by Nisaba
About the right tileinfo file for the Short Circuit Oracle:

55Aavenue renamed the original keen4.tli file into tileinfo. So you wanna search for that file instead and you should be good to go.

Re: i want to begin to learn mapping for the galaxy engine and i need someone to support me!

Posted: Wed Sep 19, 2018 7:56 pm
by Nisaba
I can't really remember the solution for MrBlack's levelpack but I'm sure @Fleex knows a way to deal with that.

BTW displaying images here in the forums is pretty easy. Just copy the path of the image and place an [img] infront and an [/img] right behind the url like so:

Code: Select all

[img]https://www86.zippyshare.com/i/IH2DhVFi/46059/Unbenannt.png[/img]
Image

Re: i want to begin to learn mapping for the galaxy engine and i need someone to support me!

Posted: Thu Sep 20, 2018 6:06 pm
by Fleexy
Using the newest release of the MrBlackPack downloaded from KeenWiki, I was able to open it with these settings:
  • Template: Keen 4
  • Containing Folder: [select whichever folder you extracted the mod into]
  • Level Source: start from existing level files
  • Level Files: the defaults are correct - GAMEMAPS.CK4 and MAPHEAD.CK4
  • Graphics Source: original game graphics
  • Tileinfo Source: create or load a separate tileinfo file
  • Tileinfo File: the default is correct - load from the pre-existing resource, KEEN4.TLI
If these settings still cause the error message, please choose to save an error log, then upload the created file so I can see what exactly is going wrong.

Re: i want to begin to learn mapping for the galaxy engine and i need someone to support me!

Posted: Fri Sep 28, 2018 11:33 am
by darkdave1985
i tried to open short circuit oracle but it didn't work. i think i did everything correct, including take the tileinfo file instead of the keen4.tli. but the screen goes nuts, when i try to complete the settings.

Image
Image

Re: i want to begin to learn mapping for the galaxy engine and i need someone to support me!

Posted: Sat Sep 29, 2018 8:15 pm
by Fleexy
Ah, garbage graphics usually means there's an issue with graphics decompression. Specifically, you need to use the EGADICT provided with the mod. On Graphics Files, all the default names are fine. Make sure "this game uses compressed graphics" is checked and that "use the game's default EGA dictionary" is not checked. Then things should look normal.

Re: i want to begin to learn mapping for the galaxy engine and i need someone to support me!

Posted: Fri Oct 05, 2018 11:52 am
by darkdave1985
so, both mods are working now in abiathar. thanks!

Re: i want to begin to learn mapping for the galaxy engine and i need someone to support me!

Posted: Sun Oct 07, 2018 10:29 pm
by Nisaba
what's the status of your project?

Re: i want to begin to learn mapping for the galaxy engine and i need someone to support me!

Posted: Mon Oct 08, 2018 10:03 am
by darkdave1985
more or less it's finished but i have to check everything one last time before i release it once again for playtesting. that not every enemy is available on every difficulty mode is annoying and makes it hard to choose, what you take for what. i wished all enemies would be available on easy, normal hard and then it would be easy but it's not like that. i didn't work much on it the last few weeks but i continue with it soon.

Re: i want to begin to learn mapping for the galaxy engine and i need someone to support me!

Posted: Wed Oct 17, 2018 12:44 am
by levellass
If you're starting a project it's (now) a simple matter to patch the enemies and such so that all enemies and even things like items can be given 3 levels of difficulty. But doing so on a nearly completed project requires redoing all the enemy placements.

Re: i want to begin to learn mapping for the galaxy engine and i need someone to support me!

Posted: Thu Oct 18, 2018 4:12 pm
by darkdave1985
the level is not big and so the new monster placements wouldn't be that much work. most of the enemy placements are ok in my map, there are just a few which i would change. some mimrocks for example, i would put in earliest at normal but i can't because they are just available on all 3 difficulties at the same time. this thing with that patching would be very nice but i would need someone who can do that for me. also having all the items for all 3 diffuculties available, would be very nice. i often thought about that this would be cool but i also thought at the same time, that it's just not makeable because the game can't do that. but when someone can do scripting and patching and all these things, you can do nearly everything what you want. but i never learned that and it's too complicated for me.

what would be also very cool is, if all walls would be available as solid tiles but also a second time as not solid tiles for secrets. i often thought about asking someone for that and i saw that it's possible, because 55aavenue made in his new project s.c.oracle. i always hated, that the brown walls for example have just the half of it's tiles a second time available, for going behind them for a secret. so, when you look closely in maps, you can always see the secrets which are in the brown walls. or the red walls for example, are all available a second time for making a secret but they have automatically this climb up feature at the same time and i don't want that. having all walls available 3 times would be perfect. once for solid tiles and second time for going behind them, and a third time with that climb up feature. then i could rebuild all my secrets in my map and nobody could see them before really finding them by jumping or runnin. maybe someone can help me with this all, that would be very nice.

thanks!

Re: i want to begin to learn mapping for the galaxy engine and i need someone to support me!

Posted: Fri Oct 19, 2018 8:33 am
by Nisaba
@Levellass can tell you more about the enemy patch

concerning your second question we having two options to choose from:
a) I could setup things for, simply hand me your latest version and I'll tweak some files for you.
b) you want to learn how to do this yourself. choosing this path you gonna dive even deeper into the secrets of Keen modding.

so it's up to you how we gonna proceed.

(by "climb up feature" you mean the pole tiles, right?)