Fight Club: A Discussion of KotB v ToEE

Recently Axl had this to say in the Co8 in PC Gamer thread:

Naturally, after reading this I thought, "Hey, we haven't been doing much infighting here at Co8 lately. Why not kick the hornets nest again?" So here's what I think of the topic of KotB v ToEE.


On the topic of ongoing work on KotB

Now, I know that I'm not the KotB Head-Mo-Fo-In-Charge. That said, it seems to me that in order for KotB development to run more smoothly and efficiently, there should be some degree of "official" status for modders in the project. By "official" I mean simply that any modder would have to a) acknowledge that there is some need for his/her skills somewhere in the development workload; b) make some pledge to devote some percentage of his/her time to contributing in that area; c) be expected to meet reasonable deadlines as dictated by the project manager, Ted; and d) be expected to focus his/her efforts on that area exclusively. Other major mod efforts that I've seen seem to do it this way.

As it stands right now, in my view at least, the volunteer nature of the project has sort of resulted in a hodge-podge of people doing this or that, whatever captures their fancy at the moment, or nothing at all, and not particularly focusing on getting anything done with any urgency. Unless Ted quits his job and finishes the mod himself, as Allyx says, what this will likely result in is an as-yet-unfinished mod a year from now with no discernable target release date.

A good example of 'officialness' would be like so (and no messages intended to be read between the lines here):

Project Lead: The Ted
Official Coders: C-Blue, Allyx, Spellweaver, Hazelnut, etc.
Maps: Screeg
Art: Cujo, Cuchulainn, etc.
Dialogues: Spike, Old Book, etc.
Audio: yours truly, etc.
Module/Rules Governance: Kalshane, Spike

And so on and so on.


On the topic of whether or not we should still be working on ToEE

To me the answer to this is an easily concluded yes. Co8 began with the mission of fixing ToEE's bugs in order to ensure its place as the most D&D rules compliant game and engine in existence. A quick look at the bug list I carried over from Atari shows that we still have literally hundreds of bugs in existence. Will we ever fix them all? Not likely. Can we fix a lot more of them than we currently have? Absolutely. I know it's a lot more fun to mod new material, and in fact the original Co8 crew hoped that would be our ultimate destiny, but the fact is that right now we are still modding a heavily bugged game. If that's the case, and there's no escaping that conclusion IMO, then we still have work to do.

Here's a newsflash: there are going to be no other D&D turn-based games or game engines developed in the forseeable future. The ToEE engine is the only thing out there that comes close to true, rules compliant D&D turn-based gaming. So if we hope to continue playing games the way we enjoy most, we've got to perfect this engine and build our own mods for it. End of story.


[Gaear readies himself for first counter-punch . . . ]

 

Hmm, looks like I've opened a can of worms here, so I guess I should say something.

ToEE has got too much new content currently, perhaps a way to randomly enable/disable new content when a new game is started will solve the problem of new content making the game too easy? Or making the new mods options in an installer to be enabled/disabled easilly? Who knows? :shrug:

There are a lot of bugs still in the ToEE engine, these need to be squashed ASAP - however most of the problems are hardcoded ones and fixing some problems in the temple.dll has (sometimes) created more problems with other things, .dll hacking without the source code will always be a hit and miss affair.

KotB is an ambitious project, Ted is doing a great job with it, and if half of what Ted blogs about makes it into KotB it will be the most immersive CRPG ever released, with every game being different from the last. Simply bug testing this game will be a full time job, let alone coding it, and double checking everything is running smoothly and as it should be.

Each and every thing the Co8 produces to better the game is important, from new content to keep the game interesting for long time players, to bug fixing to improve the ToEE engine to peak efficiency, to creating whole new modules, not one of these can be considered MORE important than the others.

Which is why all 3 of these projects are being taken on by multiple modders across the world simultaneously and with a decent amount of co-ordination.

 

Very snesibly put Kal, people have to continue on with what they want to do. The question is, where do they want their need to create new content to emerge - on the fringes of ToEE or in the heart of KotB? (I know what the CtB is calling me at this very moment...)

I wish! Admittedly I do spend more time fiddling in new stuff than just fleshing out the damn thing, but Edwin's plot gets a lot of the kudos, and I mainly just want to add some random elements so when people replay as a different alignment they won't be thinking "ah yes, there are always 3 monsters just around this next corner" too often.

I have thought ToEE was 'full' for a while now, but I recognise people have to be allowed to add stuff to encourage them to break ground, and that is still being done. But while I would like to keep the, errr, Keep, close to the module (and not add new areas by the dozen just to indulge each person's person whims) there is simply plenty of room for people to show their creativity. Heaps. Enormous amounts.

What I mainly want is people to create stuff they want to play: multiple ways of doing things to suit different parties, intelligent thoughtful quests that need more than just 'wait til u have 10 Diplomacy then u can finish it', rich immersive dialogues that give people a reason to want to do things, not just 'XP farming'. Anyways, thats what I would like, becuase I think it would make for a good game and people would like to play it that way.

I am all for assigning people specific positions as Gaear says, but they gotta be willing to commit. Screeg, for instance, has committed to making maps: he hasn't committed to making all the maps, so his commitment doesn't mean me saying "we need a map, get off your a$$ Screeg" (in which case he should rightly tell me go to blazes) but he has made a specific commitment. He is not the only one.

If people are prepared to make specific commitments, i will find them stuff to do and the mod can hoon ahead at quantum speeds. As I have said many times, the hardest parts, a coherent plot and decent maps to put the characters on, have been done. What I mainly have atm are a lot of vague offers to "help with dialogue though I can't script", but when I ask people to suggest a character they want to do, I don't hear back. I have 'assigned' characters to people and only had limited success that way, but I understand that because at the end of the day, poeple have got to be doing something they enjoy (like a much-loved - or at least well-played - character from pnp days) or there is very little incentive to go on with it.

Despite this, it is still going forward. We currently have NPCs with dialogue supplied in part or whole by Cujo, Allyx, Ruf (haven't actually got it yet but he is good for it), EUIX, Ioannis, Lord Graywolfe and HeavyDan, among others. So people are contributing, and when I can finally put it all together I hope people will see we have come a long way (though there is still a long way to go too, just to get to the demo point). Other folks like Krunch, Cerulean, Cuchulainn and Old Book (got ur email ) are gearing up to add stuff (Cuch obviously has already done a huge amount, as have the Rogue Trader, Sherriff, Spellslinger, Ag and others).

What I would really like is for people to be chatting among themselves and getting plots going, not waiting for me to 'authorise' everything. If I have created that sort of an environment I take full blame for it, but there is no reason the person doing the Banker (Ruf) and a person wanting to do the Innkeeper can't just create a sub-plot between them. Go for it!