This week was a mildly large fail....

Yeah, it's kind of like the IO ended and now no one feels like they have a reason to post anything. Perhaps the results being released will put an end to this activity slump. That should be coming soon, RIGHT JUDGES?

It better be, or I might just have to kick a puppy.

I posted this in the chat box earlier this week. Here's the activity level:

I like this

if that's the case then we're heading towards a good active time!

also there ya have it, a post of the week to next week

What do you mean we're heading up? The graph just ends and it looks like it's going down...

Was 2010 really that consistent all the way through or you just can't remember what happened?

I need to know how everybody would feel about a project like this:

The HatPC 2.0 competition series. While most of our levels are great as stand-alone levels, they are far too difficult for main game levels such as Aeon. So to practice more with making such easier levels, I plan to organize a series of competitions to make levels for a sequel to HatPC.

The basic set up is this. Every competition will be for a single level. So the first competition will be for level 1, the second competition for level 2 and the 20th competition for level 20. For time reasons I think it would be best if each competition lasted only a single week, although 2 weeks might also be reasonable. I plan to do 25 levels, although this can also be changed.
Furthermore, every level will have some sort of theme. For example the first level will be a tutorial level, where the player will learn about all the basic concepts of the game, and the fifth level will be an aquatic level.

As for judging, because this is an full Interguild project, so I plan to do something different for that too. Instead of a team of three or so judges, every member of the Interguild can rank the levels inside the competition thread once the competition has ended. Then once the next competition ends all these rankings will be averaged to make the final scores.

If I were to start something like this, would you participate?

Yes. This is a perfect idea in my opinion.

However, the comp details will have to be very elaborate; I mean, Aeon is going to have lots of stuff, including characters, platforms, tiles etc etc. So each level will have to be seriously specific about its contents; and we might have to do, besides the 25 levels, some 10~ levels of tutorials I think. one level of tutorial will not do - it's too much information in one bunch. we'll have to split it up, and each tutorial will be something else. Neopets did quite well with their tutorials, I think, so something alike would be convenient in my opinion.

oh and we'll definitely need two weeks; despite the ease of making a level in that, almost all of us are struggling to find time to do stuff like that I assume, so one week won't be enough.

These levels will be for HatPC, so we won't have to worry about all the different characters. I also think all of us agree that the text boxes in the Neopets levels were very annoying. So in my opinion it would be best if the tutorial were only a single level, but that you still encounter all the basics in such a way that it is obvious how to interact with them. For example a situation like this:



You arrive here at the #. There is nowhere you can go, except up. So it quickly becomes obvious that you can jump through the platforms like in Mario. Once you reach the top you can again do nothing except push the boulder, which in turn drops down and smashes through the platforms. From this simple part it becomes clear how platforms work without needing any annoying text pop-ups.

I think shos thought we were "heading up" in activity because people are posting again. I'd disagree there though because this doesn't feel very natural right now. I mean, things are so bad that we have to actually discuss activity. He could also mean that based on the past few years, the activity level will go up again.

Well I was not here for about half the year (February - July) in 2010 but from what I remember a lot happened in that time and even when I came back. Livio got a lot done on the site that summer and what has he done this summer?? Nothing much. There were five pages of news posts in 2009, six in 2010, only just three pages in 2011 and we've only just made it to the second page of news posts here in 2012. 2010 was most certainly the most active year.

Discussing activity is still discussion, though.

Anyways, I'd be up for participating in those competitions. I'd also prefer to playing those types of levels as it would actually be possible for me to beat them.

not having popup messages is bad. space for jump is something that must be mentioned, at least, lol. Did we not agree on having a checkbox of 'show messages'?
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What I meant by heading up is, think of the activity as an approximately periodic function of time, with boundary conditions f(t)=f(t+1*year). and so, looking at the graphs in 2010 and 2011, now it is time for df/dt to be positive!

/nerd
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returning to jell now.

think about uh...N, for example. suppose you have a reaaaallly wide level, introducing you to every single thing in the game just once. when the level is won, do you think you'll remember everything? it's like basic math and physics, once you're given the law, it doesn't mean that you automatically are able to solve the course's test in half an hour; you have to practice stuff, let them sink alittle and diffuse into your mind, and only then when you know them well enough, you go on, making sure that you can contain the amount of information you recieve.

That is why I think that making a set of levels like the one you posted is better.



This, for example, is too much info in one level. a player can see that, wonder what the hell just happened here, and then it's worthless.

there are also stuff that presenting them just like that without a message can be realllly hard. suppose we're trying to explain fake crates. how on earth are you going to do that. or disappearing arrows, or the fact that boulders fall to the left if they bounce with no horizontal speed, or even the basic duckjumping..

I don't think we should have to make imaginary pop-up messages for the first level. That would just be annoying and I would be less motivated to do that one level if I had to act like I was making an actual tutorial for hatpc. And who even says that you should be using fake crates in the main level anyways?

And all of those things you listed shouldn't need to be explained anyways if you did a good job at level design. I didn't even know offhand that boulders by default would roll off to the left, but I was still able to go through the main levels of hatpc with no problems.

Well yes but then what's the point, after we make the game, we *will* need to explain those stuff.

So much for hoping to see the IO results. When I read Thomas's graph, I assumed the the blank part was the current activity, right?

explanation for Le Quirvy.

We are building a game, not for profit purposes. For our fun purposes, and probably for having experienced the collaborative process of actaully making a game, including graphics, planning, etc etc.

point is, that after the game is built, we're going to make levels for it, utilizing our ideas. Some of those ideas, I believe, we might want to use in our levels. a player encountering stuff for the first time without knowing what they are or how to do/use/pass them, might be confused.

so we will eventually need to explain those stuff.

Well I was just talking about jell's competitions idea, and not Aeon. When we get closer to that point in Aeon's development, I'll worry about that stuff, but we are a ways away from reaching that point.

I'm just saying that if we're making a tutorial level for Jell's competition, I'd much prefer to not have to do fake pop-ups messages or anything like that

Where did Thomas mention the try to not be active thing?

In the chatbox.

Thu. 11:57pm - Curvy Stop posting. We need to set a record.

Fri. 12:00am - Curvy Tomorrow let's go for under two posts in the day.

Fri. 1:00am - Curvy Only one more post today.

Sat. 2:04am - Curvy Today let's not post at all.  

that's not a good record thomas :\

@Jell, sounds good.

How about instead we let the level maker decide if he wants to try imaginary pop-ups or a intuitive approach to the tutorial. Then the voters can decide which level they like the best.

alright then, I thin we can have this comp. together with Soccerboy's FR2 idea, that'll give me stuff to do on my spare time until I can manage to run GTA IV lol