WA POTZ Editor Update

[Fluffshery]

* the editor itself will be largely unchanged from what you already know and have. It will have the new POTZ features, and a few tweaks (such as seeing Stinkers' hats and accessories in the model), but no quantum changes.
* the player will be able to play either individual adventures, or whole "games" (hubs + adventure collections) - not sure what a better word for "game" would be.
* as the level creator, you would have to manually move adventure directories on your drive to create a "game". I.e. you would make a directory "MyGame", copy the various adventures into sub-directories, the adventure that becomes the hub into a hub sub-directory, add a custom logo if wanted. Then that would all be zipped up and posted. Players would download and extract the zip, the player.exe would recognize the new "game" and off they go! (in other words, there is not separate "game compiler").

Further down the road I'd love to consider making collections of the best "games" and making them available as stand-alone downloads on the main midnightsynergy website. My thoughts on this are
a) most casual users don't want to mess around with the editor, but may be interested in playing some of the best custom adventures.
b) these would be available for sale (at a low price) to generate a (small) revenue stream to support the editor and the site.
c) authors/creators of these worlds would receive payment for their work.

Custom Content: It sounds like the global directory remains the way to go. I'll try to make sure this works well.

Level/Dialog Limits: Levels are 99, Dialogs are 999... more than enough. Smile

Well coolio.

[tyteen4a03]

Level/Dialog Limits: Levels are 99, Dialogs are 999... more than enough. Even in hubs?

Yes, since they are still adventures. There is a bug in PoTZ that kept one stinker's facial expression unchanged after you return from PoTZ, and the cause was because of the 3-command limit per adventure.

Re Scope dilemma: Why not both? The per-game content can override the global content.

[Wonderland King]

Level/Dialog Limits: Levels are 99, Dialogs are 999... more than enough. Even in hubs?

Yes. There is a bug in PoTZ that kept one stinker's facial expression unchanged after you return from PoTZ, and this is the cause.

Which Stinker?

[tyteen4a03]

Level/Dialog Limits: Levels are 99, Dialogs are 999... more than enough. Even in hubs?

Yes. There is a bug in PoTZ that kept one stinker's facial expression unchanged after you return from PoTZ, and this is the cause.

Which Stinker?

Don't quite remember. I guess you'll have to find out yourself

EDIT: Q poked me and it seems like my memory's blurry - answer fixed.

[Qloof234]

Re Scope dilemma: Why not both? The per-game content can override the global content.

Yeah, I have to say I still feel this is the way to go.

Also, level/dialogue limits. I don't think the dialogue limit will be a problem, but question - The in-editor limit of 99 levels is one thing, but will the game be able to support more than that if the user does some manual editing?

[Wonderman109]

Thanks for all the comments. Some more thoughts and answers:

Custom Content: It sounds like the global directory remains the way to go. I'll try to make sure this works well.

YAY!

Also: Will we have custom models, by any chance?

Level/Dialog Limits: Levels are 99, Dialogs are 999... more than enough.

We've had extremely few adventures with more than 40 wlvs or 40 dialogs, and given the hub option you want to include, I don't think we need much expansion. Before we start complaining about not having enough files, let's look at if we use actually all the ones we have already.

Nope?... I think MS has done enough work on this, although I have nothing against more files.

Availability: Several of you have raised good points about making the editor freely available to the community without link to WAPOTZ registration. I'll think about this more.

Before PotZ was out, making a separate MoFI editor and PotZ editor might have been an option...but that'd be more work for you of course.

Some specifics (what bugs are fixes, will old levels work on the new editor) I don't know yet...

As said before, and I'll repeat it: 1. MAVs when you click south and sometimes east of the wlv border and 2. Dialogs adding an extra interchange every time they're saved.

Also, I find stinker/thwart animations have a lot of bugs. You can't run more than a few at a time because they won't work properly, shadow stinkers MAV when frozen or killed, and thwarts can only raise their arms when they're running. (OK, that's not a bug, but it still could be improved.)

And...

given that Wonderland isn't super-popular, no offense.

I never understood how this series didn't get more popular than it has.

I don't get it either.

Not too many people know about Wonderland. 0% of the kids I talk with about games have heard of it. But, can you afford to advertise it?

[Qloof234]

Honestly I don't have a problem with the 99/999 Editor limit. What I want to know is if having more than that via renaming files will cause the Player to freak out.

I'm still plugging away at Hidden Realms (albeit slowly), and the hub already has 52 levels. I'm a bit over halfway done with the main story, and that's not including any side areas or other fluff that could get added later.

I don't mind having to rename the level files so the Hub can have over 100 rooms, but I'd still like to ask and make sure that things will work fine in the new player.

[Master Wonder Mage]

If my plans ever resolve themselves, they probably would get well over 99 rooms. But, even if I do have enough time to finish one of my plans, renaming the lvl files isn't too much trouble.

[Pawelec]

Re Scope dilemma: Why not both? The per-game content can override the global content.

Yeah, I have to say I still feel this is the way to go.

Also for me this still seems to be the best solution.

[dig 222]

Hubs are going to be for sale?
Blazeknight and Qloof are going to get rich lol

@Wonderman109
Wonderland isn't like CoD? Remember the april fools
update picture for POTZ?

[Jutomi]

Thinking about it...

I get to wondering as to what happened to operation mecha and the witching hour.

[Wonderman109]

Hubs are going to be for sale?
Blazeknight and Qloof are going to get rich lol

@Wonderman109
Wonderland isn't like CoD? Remember the april fools
update picture for POTZ?

Wonderland has hundreds or thousands of active players, games like CoD, Portal, TF2, GTA, Miencraft, etc. have hundreds of thousands if not millions.

As some people mentioned, it's not an entirely bad thing though. It's easier to get to know everyone with a smaller board like this. But I'm getting off-topic again...

[StinkerSquad01]

Re Scope dilemma: Why not both? The per-game content can override the global content.

Yeah, I have to say I still feel this is the way to go.

Also for me this still seems to be the best solution.

Eh, I don't see the point in it. Why override it when you can just have a collective pool of content? Either way, I don't really care, I'd be happy with both. I just want the editor to come out!

[Qloof234]

Well, for example, as I've mentioned before I'm giving the WA1/MoFI textures an overhaul for HR. The overhaul is needed for HR to appear correctly, as part of it adds new tiles.

If people don't like the overhaul, it'd be easier to have a local content folder that HR gets the new textures from, so users don't have to overwrite the stock ones in the Editor/Player.

[StinkerSquad01]

Hmm. Okay, that makes sense.

[Wonderman109]

MS, do you have a possible release date in mind?

[Sammy_P]

FOR THE PEOPLE WHO APPARENTLY DIDN'T READ THIS SENTENCE: SAID SENTENCE

I hope I should have this all done later in February.

[Wonderman109]

'Date' would mean what date of February in this case, because I did read. I guess MS is probably aiming for the 24th again (wild guess?)

[tyteen4a03]

FOR THE PEOPLE WHO APPARENTLY DIDN'T READ THIS SENTENCE: SAID SENTENCE

I hope I should have this all done later in February.

Is an all caps reminder really necessary?

[Jutomi]

In some cases, it comes in handy...
but, on a forum, I am not so sure.

[Midnight Synergy]

Just because I love these little teases, here's what currently on my screen:

[Midnight Synergy]

Magical? Or Lost?

OR MAYBE BOTH!?!?!?!?

(dun dun duuuhhhn!)

[yot yot5]

Just because I love these little teases, here's what currently on my screen:

Whoaoaoaoaoaoaoa. This is far too much awesome to be crammed into one little picture!

[Jutomi]

I might faint...

but before I do...

I am guessing magical.

[Fluffshery]

It's magically lost!

I like how the logo shows up when you cook on a hub.

EDIT: I mean click. I generally do cooking in the kitchen, instead of hubs.

[Qloof234]

Ohoh, interesting!

Question - I see a line in the Blitz window that catches my attention, specifically; "... also Hubs/Textures/Mod[els?]"

What's going on there?

[Emerald141]

‎

[Midnight Synergy]

No, just hubs.

[Emerald141]

‎

[Midnight Synergy]

Ohoh, interesting!

Question - I see a line in the Blitz window that catches my attention, specifically; "... also Hubs/Textures/Mod[els?]"

What's going on there?

That's from ages ago, custom models was always the plan at the beginning. I haven't programmed it yet, so no promises, but if things go well otherwise I should have enough time to put that in.