mrthebozerMember, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Knight of the Feywild UsersPosts: 0Arc User
edited August 2013
Jfinder,
Will this limit now be tracked along with the other asset limits in the editor? All discusson of the impact on storytelling aside, this seems like an awfully difficult thing for authors to track on their own.
The limit is actually 600 individual prompts across the whole quest. This limit was added because due to the way the Cryptic Engine handles text resources getting saved, if you had more than about 500 dialog prompts, saving and previewing quests would cause the server to stall about 80% of the time, causing you to disconnect while editing.
If you really want to have that many prompts, have you considered splitting your quest up into multiple quests? The highest rated quests are between 20 and 30 minutes, you'll probably get higher ratings if you split your 90 minute epic into three more bite-sized quests.
I had some of the best hours of my NWO game experience in Raph's quest, because it wasn't a 20-30 minute type quest. Don't we have enough of those already?
Diversity and talent should be encouraged, it enhances the player experience, which is in your favour.
Some quests are broad and flexible so they have replayability. Dialog puzzles and map markers also consume dialog resources (I have a Tower of Hanoi puzzle that has fifty or so prompts in one dialog.)
More utterly short-sighted Cryptic behavior.
Would it have killed you guys to ASK us what problems we might have with a proposed change?
Going to double check if my quests are suffering from the mentioned bug. But if not, I'm done.
Campaign: The Fenwick Cycle NWS-DKR9GB7KH
Wicks and Things: NW-DI4FMZRR4 : The Fenwick merchant family has lost a caravan! Can you help?
Beggar's Hollow: NW-DR6YG4J2L : Someone, or something, has stolen away many of the Fenwicks' children! Can you find out what happened to them?
Into the Fen Wood: NW-DL89DRG7B : Enter the heart of the forest. Can you discover the secret of the Fen Wood?
This kills my quest entirely. I have five maps with plenty of dialogue across all of them - not the duplicate bug, actual dialog.
This is so a player can look around for clues, and discuss with an NPC the clues they've discovered, all towards discovering the whereabouts of a missing child. Plus there are amusing side bits if you're willing to explore a bit. There is a bit of fighting, but the focus is on the mystery. I'm only a few weeks away from completing it, I just need to put together the final map (and it's piles of dialog).
Without the dialog, this quest is a simple hack and slash, and completely worthless. I hate being one of those 'I'm gonna quit until you fix this!' people, but I only log in for the Foundry. I have absolutely no incentive to log in if I can't use it. And right now, I can't.
I recall someone else talking about a murder mystery whodunnit-type quest that relied almost entirely on complex dialogue trees as its primary means of interaction with the player.
wow... I don't even know what to say about this... this destroys a ton of quests, and the quests that give people good and evil choices. This is a pretty serious change. I'm pretty shocked by this.
Is there no other way to solve the text resource issue besides ruining peoples quests completely?
I recall someone else talking about a murder mystery whodunnit-type quest that relied almost entirely on complex dialogue trees as its primary means of interaction with the player.
This was Mr. Tsumorow's quest.
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
The Cragsteep Crypt - BETA Ravenloft Look for@Apocrs1980 or visit the main page here or Ravenloft here
"Cryptic chief creative officer Craig Zinkievich said that wordy Dungeon Masters could ostensibly make their own full-length text adventures, with enough time and patience."
Are you sure? I thought the author's name was hawthornberry, or something like that. (Talking about a completed quest).
Edit: The Butler Didn't Do It. Not in the catalogue, but whether hawthornberry took it down, or it's been disqualified due to the limit, or still waiting to be republished, who knows?
"Cryptic chief creative officer Craig Zinkievich said that wordy Dungeon Masters could ostensibly make their own full-length text adventures, with enough time and patience."
20/30 minutes does not a full-length adventure make. 20/30 minutes might be what the majority of NW players want so they can blast through and get their dailies, but it's hardly a satisfying adventure with a nice meaty story to sink your teeth into.
I wanted to create .. not a quest, but an actual gaming experience. A "full length adventure", as implied by Mr. Zinkievich there. I wanted to tell a truly character-focused story, driven by fully-realized NPCs with complex dialogue trees that allow you to really get to know the characters in the story.
I wanted to tell a story that was more than just "this is why I need you to go into the dungeon, now go into the dungeon."
I'm a writer. It's what I do.
I do feel compelled to ask - is this 100% set in stone? Is this non-negotiable? Is there any chance we could get it buimped to.. Well, I'd love to see a cap of, say 1000 prompts? 800?
Again, it's easy to make a broad, complex, flexible mission that only takes 20-30 minutes and uses LOTS of dialog options (puzzles, multiple paths, etc.).
I think the devs might not get how flexible the tool can be. Maybe it's because of all the crud that often floats to the top of the search tabs.
Campaign: The Fenwick Cycle NWS-DKR9GB7KH
Wicks and Things: NW-DI4FMZRR4 : The Fenwick merchant family has lost a caravan! Can you help?
Beggar's Hollow: NW-DR6YG4J2L : Someone, or something, has stolen away many of the Fenwicks' children! Can you find out what happened to them?
Into the Fen Wood: NW-DL89DRG7B : Enter the heart of the forest. Can you discover the secret of the Fen Wood?
The limit is actually 600 individual prompts across the whole quest. This limit was added because due to the way the Cryptic Engine handles text resources getting saved, if you had more than about 500 dialog prompts, saving and previewing quests would cause the server to stall about 80% of the time, causing you to disconnect while editing.
If you really want to have that many prompts, have you considered splitting your quest up into multiple quests? The highest rated quests are between 20 and 30 minutes, you'll probably get higher ratings if you split your 90 minute epic into three more bite-sized quests.
That makes the decision more understandable and at the same time remarkably unreassuring. Something seems terribly wrong about a server choking on something under 100 kibbles of plaintext text & a basic logic tree that is if anything even less raw information.
:eek:
Foundry Quest: Breaking the Chain NW-DELOGH4IH
(Daily eligible! Could use more reviews. Largely complete.)
20/30 minutes does not a full-length adventure make. 20/30 minutes might be what the majority of NW players want so they can blast through and get their dailies, but it's hardly a satisfying adventure with a nice meaty story to sink your teeth into.
....
I wanted to tell a story that was more than just "this is why I need you to go into the dungeon, now go into the dungeon."
I'm a writer. It's what I do.
My two published campaigns are 30 hours long and 10 hours long, respectively. They're about 250k and 400k words, respectively.
I think I see what you're trying to say, and maybe The Foundry - and Neverwinter itself - was never going to be the ideal vehicle for quests/adventures like these. But I could make them. They weren't against the TOS. And frankly, the creation and distribution was far easier than any of the alternatives.
The Foundry is the quickest, easiest, cheapest way of making adventures for my friends. It may not be the best, it may not be the most appropriate, but if my friends want to see my work, it doesn't cost me anything, it doesn't cost them anything, it puts another seat in front of Cryptic's game. The Foundry's a great tool (even better now with the flycam enhancements), it's got a low barrier of entry, and you can make some amazingly cool things with it. And it's the best of all the free alternatives.
It may not be the most appropriate medium, but it worked. And now it doesn't.
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
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msrebel1972Member, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Knight of the Feywild UsersPosts: 0Arc User
I do feel compelled to ask - is this 100% set in stone? Is this non-negotiable? Is there any chance we could get it buimped to.. Well, I'd love to see a cap of, say 1000 prompts? 800?
Any answer to this question? Is the change set in stone? Devs?
This... is more a bit disappointing to find out on top of being locked out of the foundry for the last few days. Stack it on after the profanity debacle AND the agonizingly linear nature of the foundry and it seriously makes me want to throw in the towel.
I realize that Cryptic are not interested in writing long, intricate stories (we can see that in that the basic in-game story quality nose dives off a cliff from a professional writing standpoint just after Plaguetower (yes, i am a professional writer among other things)) but to limit the ability of something that was made FOR THE COMMUNITY in the ways they have is - to take a word a previous poster used, since it works so well - appalling.
As for the (so far phantom to everyone i know) disconnect bug with high dialog content: as a professional grade tech nerd I understand that every system has limitations, but when you are coding something THIS IS WHY YOU MAKE THE CODE MODULAR: So that when you encounter some horrific limiting factor you can fix the ENGINE CODE to make the system BETTER instead of nerfing the CONTENT.
Hoping that no more nerfs (and maybe some better written content. blargh.) are coming in the future, but hope, like plans, rarely survives first contact with the enemy.
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lolsorhandMember, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Hero Users, Neverwinter Knight of the Feywild UsersPosts: 981Bounty Hunter
Hm. Well, I think that's a little unfair. There's still lots of good authors out there writing good quests. I was going to list some, but I don't want to offend anyone I don't include, haha.. But there's still great quests out there that are fun to play. They're just not as wordy as some of us.
I guess 'good' is subjective anyway
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
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msrebel1972Member, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Knight of the Feywild UsersPosts: 0Arc User
Hm. Well, I think that's a little unfair. There's still lots of good authors out there writing good quests. I was going to list some, but I don't want to offend anyone I don't include, haha.. But there's still great quests out there that are fun to play. They're just not as wordy as some of us.
I guess 'good' is subjective anyway
You're right. There are still plenty of great quests to play. I revise my statement and say "some of the good quests are broken". Also, my apologies to anyone I offended. It was unintended.
I was never in this game to put down other authors, or to make out that my quests or even my -style- of quests are the be-all and end-all of quest-making. They're not better or worse than anyone else's quests. They're just my preferred style. Some people like them, some people don't. It's all good.
As Abraham Lincoln famously -didn't- say (even though people keep attributing it to him): "People who like this sort of thing will find it just the sort of thing they like"
Up until this patch I was able to provide those people with "just the sort of thing they like". Alas, even if I continue, it'll be a far more watered-down version.
This is actually an opportunity in disguise. This means we don't have to write as much dialog for your quests now, nor can we be faulted for having limited dialog :P
I have to admit that I'm a little worried about this myself. I'm writing dialogue-heavy quests, and it would be a shame if I run into an artificial limit that forces me to redesign my entire quest.
I don't even know if this would affect my quest. I started it before the Foundry went down; spent all of my spare time over two weeks writing (and loving it) directly into the editor (do not love writing in Word). I hit the 1000 character limit at least a couple times in my dialog boxes. My worry right now is that if a new limit is set, will my current data get clipped?
In my predicament, I feel like I am at the end of the line for any kind of resolution - I was about 2 hours away from hitting the publish button, so I've got nothing. I'm not even sure that I will recognize if something is broken, because I lack experience using the Foundry. Honestly, I had teleporting problems before this patch, and I assumed it was something I was doing wrong. Meaning, I have never been able to put teleporters and spawn points near walls, or I just fall -500 feet to my death. I thought it was a Foundry limitation or some setting I would eventually find, but now it's listed as a post-patch bug. What was it called beforehand?
It's hard not to be discouraged. I just wish there was a way to get my script out of the program. I doubt I'd ever use it again for anything, but it was a lot of work (and it doesn't even use dubious words or phrases like "child", "master", or "me in" anymore!), and it's the first [fictional] writing I ever finished - I always wanted a 3D story builder.
Comments
Will this limit now be tracked along with the other asset limits in the editor? All discusson of the impact on storytelling aside, this seems like an awfully difficult thing for authors to track on their own.
I had some of the best hours of my NWO game experience in Raph's quest, because it wasn't a 20-30 minute type quest. Don't we have enough of those already?
Diversity and talent should be encouraged, it enhances the player experience, which is in your favour.
More utterly short-sighted Cryptic behavior.
Would it have killed you guys to ASK us what problems we might have with a proposed change?
Going to double check if my quests are suffering from the mentioned bug. But if not, I'm done.
Wicks and Things: NW-DI4FMZRR4 : The Fenwick merchant family has lost a caravan! Can you help?
Beggar's Hollow: NW-DR6YG4J2L : Someone, or something, has stolen away many of the Fenwicks' children! Can you find out what happened to them?
Into the Fen Wood: NW-DL89DRG7B : Enter the heart of the forest. Can you discover the secret of the Fen Wood?
This is so a player can look around for clues, and discuss with an NPC the clues they've discovered, all towards discovering the whereabouts of a missing child. Plus there are amusing side bits if you're willing to explore a bit. There is a bit of fighting, but the focus is on the mystery. I'm only a few weeks away from completing it, I just need to put together the final map (and it's piles of dialog).
Without the dialog, this quest is a simple hack and slash, and completely worthless. I hate being one of those 'I'm gonna quit until you fix this!' people, but I only log in for the Foundry. I have absolutely no incentive to log in if I can't use it. And right now, I can't.
So... yeah. I'm done unless this is changed.
Is there no other way to solve the text resource issue besides ruining peoples quests completely?
@Moonchips
This was Mr. Tsumorow's quest.
Ravenloft
Look for@Apocrs1980 or visit the main page here or Ravenloft here
"Cryptic chief creative officer Craig Zinkievich said that wordy Dungeon Masters could ostensibly make their own full-length text adventures, with enough time and patience."
Are you sure? I thought the author's name was hawthornberry, or something like that. (Talking about a completed quest).
Edit: The Butler Didn't Do It. Not in the catalogue, but whether hawthornberry took it down, or it's been disqualified due to the limit, or still waiting to be republished, who knows?
20/30 minutes does not a full-length adventure make. 20/30 minutes might be what the majority of NW players want so they can blast through and get their dailies, but it's hardly a satisfying adventure with a nice meaty story to sink your teeth into.
I wanted to create .. not a quest, but an actual gaming experience. A "full length adventure", as implied by Mr. Zinkievich there. I wanted to tell a truly character-focused story, driven by fully-realized NPCs with complex dialogue trees that allow you to really get to know the characters in the story.
I wanted to tell a story that was more than just "this is why I need you to go into the dungeon, now go into the dungeon."
I'm a writer. It's what I do.
I do feel compelled to ask - is this 100% set in stone? Is this non-negotiable? Is there any chance we could get it buimped to.. Well, I'd love to see a cap of, say 1000 prompts? 800?
I think the devs might not get how flexible the tool can be. Maybe it's because of all the crud that often floats to the top of the search tabs.
Wicks and Things: NW-DI4FMZRR4 : The Fenwick merchant family has lost a caravan! Can you help?
Beggar's Hollow: NW-DR6YG4J2L : Someone, or something, has stolen away many of the Fenwicks' children! Can you find out what happened to them?
Into the Fen Wood: NW-DL89DRG7B : Enter the heart of the forest. Can you discover the secret of the Fen Wood?
I know of at least one 2-hour opus quest that has very minimal dialogue.
:eek:
(Daily eligible! Could use more reviews. Largely complete.)
Right tool for the job and all that.
The Foundry is the quickest, easiest, cheapest way of making adventures for my friends. It may not be the best, it may not be the most appropriate, but if my friends want to see my work, it doesn't cost me anything, it doesn't cost them anything, it puts another seat in front of Cryptic's game. The Foundry's a great tool (even better now with the flycam enhancements), it's got a low barrier of entry, and you can make some amazingly cool things with it. And it's the best of all the free alternatives.
It may not be the most appropriate medium, but it worked. And now it doesn't.
I realize that Cryptic are not interested in writing long, intricate stories (we can see that in that the basic in-game story quality nose dives off a cliff from a professional writing standpoint just after Plaguetower (yes, i am a professional writer among other things)) but to limit the ability of something that was made FOR THE COMMUNITY in the ways they have is - to take a word a previous poster used, since it works so well - appalling.
As for the (so far phantom to everyone i know) disconnect bug with high dialog content: as a professional grade tech nerd I understand that every system has limitations, but when you are coding something THIS IS WHY YOU MAKE THE CODE MODULAR: So that when you encounter some horrific limiting factor you can fix the ENGINE CODE to make the system BETTER instead of nerfing the CONTENT.
Hoping that no more nerfs (and maybe some better written content. blargh.) are coming in the future, but hope, like plans, rarely survives first contact with the enemy.
This. Also this killed my quests
Brethren of the Five, Campaign. - Story focused
The Dwarven Tale - Hack 'N Slash
Another one bites the dust.
All of them?
I guess 'good' is subjective anyway
As Abraham Lincoln famously -didn't- say (even though people keep attributing it to him): "People who like this sort of thing will find it just the sort of thing they like"
Up until this patch I was able to provide those people with "just the sort of thing they like". Alas, even if I continue, it'll be a far more watered-down version.
@Moonchips
In my predicament, I feel like I am at the end of the line for any kind of resolution - I was about 2 hours away from hitting the publish button, so I've got nothing. I'm not even sure that I will recognize if something is broken, because I lack experience using the Foundry. Honestly, I had teleporting problems before this patch, and I assumed it was something I was doing wrong. Meaning, I have never been able to put teleporters and spawn points near walls, or I just fall -500 feet to my death. I thought it was a Foundry limitation or some setting I would eventually find, but now it's listed as a post-patch bug. What was it called beforehand?
It's hard not to be discouraged. I just wish there was a way to get my script out of the program. I doubt I'd ever use it again for anything, but it was a lot of work (and it doesn't even use dubious words or phrases like "child", "master", or "me in" anymore!), and it's the first [fictional] writing I ever finished - I always wanted a 3D story builder.