The Winner of Dr. Aeon's Challenge!

Too true, Tangler. In my own submission I had two seperate outdoor boss battles that would spawn in some unreachable, unfindable location. Perhaps somewhere beneath the geometry of the map. Quitting and replaying would usually fix the problem, but that can be a pain when you're almost 4 out of 5 missions. Still, this is a problem far beyond the control of architects, so I wouldnt hold it against any authors if it happens.

Just a note for those who don't know: you don't have to quit the arc itself to reset a mission, just log out and then back in.

After going back and checking, I have no idea if my submission even got played. I am sure I submitted correctly but all of the plays are accounted for with comments from people I know played the mission.

There needs to be some sort of system to acknowledge an entry was received and played. I completely understand that Dr. Aeon may not have time to write and post a full review of every entry, but a simple "Hi, just played your entry." might be enough to set people's minds at ease that they didn't waste their time and they at least had a chance. No matter how slim that chance may have been.

I would love to see a list of the entries myself.

Gratz to minimalist, this will obviously have to go on my must-play list.

[snipping OT rant]

Congrats to Minimalist. These contests are an excellent idea to challenge and strengthen the writers here.

Gratz Minimalist!

Congrats Minimalist!

I haven't been able to get to that mission yet (I'm willing to bet everyone who entered an arc have been just as busy debugging their own monsters up till the deadline), and hope to be able to go through it very soon!

I agree it's disheartening to have the impression that your submission was never even looked at, especially one you have spent a great deal of time and effort on (welcome to the world of game developers, where a 6-month project can get dropped without notice or a 'thank you for your efforts'). However, ultimately these arcs are for the enjoyment of the players themselves, and how many players played -every- arc?



Thanks to everyone who participated, and hope to keep running through these excellent arcs!

Congratulations to the winner. I will have to play the arc soon.

As to several posters questioning whether or not their arc had been played: It's my understanding that to enter the contest, submissions had to include all the .storyarc and .critter files etc. in the e-mail. My guess is that the reviewer loaded those files and played each arc "local" (ie. Test Mode), which would not affect the published version's play count and rating, and would not facilitate feedback comments to the author.

Just throwing that out there.

According to the official rules, no, we did not have to submit a copy of the actual arc and its files this time.

As for why the count didn't go up, I've not experimented with whether actually FINISHING the arc is the requirement to increase the count. What happens if you get all the way to the end, but you don't rate it, don't comment, and don't click FINISH, but instead just close the window? Would it not count?

Michelle
aka
Samuraiko/Dark_Respite

Okay, I'm playing through the published version now, I'm really concerned about this.

I'm not sure how up-to-date my latest local version is, but I'll use that to run through the last mission a few more times afterward.

Thanks for bringing this to my attention.

Okay, I played through it 6 times (once on the published version, 5 with a local, identical version of mission 4 alone).

First two times (including the published version) completed just fine.

Second two runs were, indeed, broken. The first one didn't even spawn Neutrina, as far as I could tell.

Last two runs were fine.

It may be that there are a few broken spawn points on the Grandville map -- I'll /bugreport it, and mention it directly to Dr. Aeon when I meet with him.

This is so frustrating. It worked just fine on all my playthroughs before publishing, though I did add a couple of things after publication (the battles). For the time being, I may switch to a less buggy map. Shame, because the Grandville map was so appropriately apocalyptic.