It seems that Dungeons(contained quests) are the underdog medium of graal.
The way I see it, it is as much a thing as gani building, graphics and npc scripting.
In fact it’s kind of the apotheosis of these three elements important to graal.
My suggestion is that we add a Dungeoneering (dungeon creation) subforum [in the Development section] where a list of already made dungeons would be kept available for the inspiration of the community and to be used by noob server hosts who need content.
Of course it would be considered bad style to use these dungeons on servers in their entirety and without modifications. It appears though that most newbs don’t care yet about bad style and we could flatten the content creation curve for the newcomers with this subforum. It would also be good to have a way to encourage newcomers in the creation of more complete pieces [without them necessarily being servers].
Dungeoneering could be a sub-subforum matching my description for mostly complete dungeons while its parent would be like the other content creation forums, a discussion and way to submit unfinished work.
_
As a side to this suggestion I’m proposing the establishment of a small team that would revise/find-dungeons-in the existing material (composed, hopefully, of those of us who have experience playing/creating our archived servers) and put it up on said forum. [I’m thinking of GOATSE, particularly.]
Since I came up with the idea I propose myself to be the curator of the ensuing collection (main mod of the Dungeoneering subforum).
Set that I will try to edit first posts to keep the same style for the description of the Dungeons that are part of the collection.
First posts on threads would contain information about which level is the entry level, quantity of levels, if there is a boss/npcw/chests in the dungeon (where they are, hidden with spoiler tags), option of listing the used flags (with emphasis for the creators of new content that the flags should be preceded with their board nick)… and much more I haven’t thought of yet.
I gave it some thought and so far I find this is an exciting prospect.
Can’t this Dungeon subforum just be a pinned thread with a list of dungeons/links to them?
As for a place to post said dungeons, couldn’t that just be the main forum(development),
or levels seeing as it’s still a bunch of levels?
I thought it would be easier to offer the possibility instead of trying to have people do something. As far a dungeon submission goes.
Dungeoneering also deserves a better visibility than just a pinned thread :\. I was also under the impression that the goal of a structured dungeon list we can all comment on individually would be more encouraging to compile than a mere thread. It also seems to be a subject that can be discussed in as many ways as npc scripting and that a place to discuss such a wide subject will bring more discussion about it.
And yeah, it’s just a bunch of levels. But it has the difference of having an intended structure, maybe story, and using npcs/npcws + graphics (which isn’t actually the purpose of the LAT subforum). Which brings the idea that a sticky on the level subforum about dungeons and the addition of a subforum to it with finished dungeons could also be an option… but I think the “purity” of the level subforum would be corrupted, I like it as it is now, with its main focus on level design. I’m suggesting something focused on dungeon design, which happens on a different level.
Maybe I’m just delusional though, I don’t want to promise the holy graal and end up being the crazy guy who : pushed the creation of something awkwardly inefficient / sold a stupid idea. In life, I’m known to build crafty ideas that, from time to time, have fundamental flaws.
Btw, tricxta, I think your opinion can be very helpful, whether or not you’re willing to read the whole OP (it’s just a sales pitch after all, the title is already enough to know what this is about).
Maybe instead of a dungeon(eering) sub-forum there should be a “Project Gallery” subforum.
Kind of like the script showcase subsubforum, but moreso for complete projects that involve multiple kinds of dev.
I think a dungeon generator would be a very valuable asset for dungeon creation. I always get bored having to build the whole framework. If a program did that for me by randomly generating or using a line image it would be so much easier. It could use the castle tiles, cave tiles or maybe that awesome dungeon tileset by Raiks (sorry if I got your name wrong). Some scripts and images for bosses would be pretty good too, or just some easy to modify baddy NPCs. A good collection of dungeon puzzles and obstacles would be a valuable asset as well.