The Dink Network

What should I consider as my next dmod project?

January 16th 2020, 10:22 AM
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SlipDink
Peasant He/Him United States bloop rumble
2nd generation. No easy way to be free. 
I intend to take a break from building dmods for a while. However, I also DO intend to come back to this sort of effort, a little later this year. So, what should I consider as my next dmod project?

[#1] Develop a small scale (romp or small quest size) dmod that has a whimsical aspect to it, which takes Dink into a new strange world when an old enemy takes his vengeance against Dink. Something about this world will be oddly familiar, even though Dink has never been here before.
[#2] Accept the invitation to finish the "Northern Lands" dmod, giving it the same level of respect as I did Valhalla, while re-making it and expanding it into something "of my own"?
[#3] Accept the invitation to finish the "Fate of Destiny" dmod, giving it the same level of respect as I did Valhalla, while re-making it and expanding it into something "of my own"?
[#4] Do something else entirely, as suggested by one or more Dinkers.
[#5] Go away and leave the Dink Network alone because my dmods are boring and/or repetitious, or whatever.

I look forward to "hearing from the community" on this subject.
January 16th 2020, 12:33 PM
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Bluedy
Peasant He/Him Romania bloop rumble
I like Frutti Fresh 
Well obviously I'd like you to go with any of the first 4 options, with a preference towards the second one (and if you do I'm glad to tell you more about where northern lands was planned to go, if you care about that, that is. if not, you can still take it and do what you want with it).
January 16th 2020, 01:00 PM
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Silberfarben
Peasant She/Her
Lady Silberfarben, mighty ruler of the Silbershire 
well...

what if you make a big scale dmod of your own!
maybe A big quest if you are not interested in epics.
I look forward to a big dmod all yours.

however, it is you who will do it, so you decide.

Im sure bluedy will be very happy if you finish northern lands

January 16th 2020, 01:48 PM
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Bluedy
Peasant He/Him Romania bloop rumble
I like Frutti Fresh 
I'm also an artist and know my way a bit around blender, so i could definitely help in the art department if you want. and that doesn't go only for northern lands.
January 16th 2020, 04:48 PM
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toof
Peasant He/Him
I disagree. 
Try small romp in a way no one did before. Team up with someone.

Also, I have a small request. I have issues unpacking your dmod with the installer (probably due to my pc). Can you please upload a zip file somewhere?
January 16th 2020, 06:25 PM
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Silberfarben
Peasant She/Her
Lady Silberfarben, mighty ruler of the Silbershire 
Try small romp in a way no one did before. Team up with someone.

sounds like dink hotel
January 17th 2020, 08:26 AM
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SlipDink
Peasant He/Him United States bloop rumble
2nd generation. No easy way to be free. 
@toof:
Try small romp in a way no one did before. Team up with someone.

Hmmmm. I'll think about that. But I'm waiting for lots of other comments before I decide.

Also, I have a small request. I have issues unpacking your dmod with the installer (probably due to my pc).

How odd.

Can you please upload a zip file somewhere?

Which dmod is it that you would like me to make available in zip format?
January 17th 2020, 08:30 AM
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SlipDink
Peasant He/Him United States bloop rumble
2nd generation. No easy way to be free. 
@everyone:
Thanks for your comments so far.

I look forward to hearing from more members of the DN and will take all offers of help seriously.

But please keep in mind that it will be some time before I start any of these projects.
January 17th 2020, 03:29 PM
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toof
Peasant He/Him
I disagree. 
@SlipDink
Crowns of Stone
January 17th 2020, 04:24 PM
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SlipDink
Peasant He/Him United States bloop rumble
2nd generation. No easy way to be free. 
@toof:
Please let me know what it is about your setup and/or version of the Dink Engine that might be interfering with your normal use of the .dmod file format.

You have room for the temp file that dfarc makes while extracting from the .dmod file, as well as about 168M for the crwnston directory itself, right?

Anyway, I've uploaded a crwnston_1.00.zip to my google drive for you to download. Enjoy!

I'll leave it up on my google drive for a few days or until you tell me you have successfully downloaded it, whichever comes first.
January 18th 2020, 06:56 AM
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toof
Peasant He/Him
I disagree. 
@SlipDink

Downloaded and fired up successfully, thank you very much.

As for the installer problem, it's probably due to my PC ancientness and occasional weirdness. It took 20 mins to unpack the file, then the installer just vanished from the process list. I haven't bothered to try again. Additionally, save game slots are in cyrillic, which doesn't bother me, since it's my primary script... but it's still weird
January 18th 2020, 12:58 PM
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SlipDink
Peasant He/Him United States bloop rumble
2nd generation. No easy way to be free. 
@toof:
Downloaded and fired up successfully, thank you very much.

You are certainly welcome. Let me know what you think about it!

As for the installer problem, it's probably due to my PC ancientness and occasional weirdness. It took 20 mins to unpack the file, then the installer just vanished from the process list. I haven't bothered to try again.

Sounds like Dfarc may have crashed, perhaps due to running out of ram or some kind of "timeout" due to relatively low processing power?

Additionally, save game slots are in cyrillic, which doesn't bother me, since it's my primary script... but it's still weird

Hmmm. I admit that I'm surprised that only the save game slots show up that way. I'd expect either all of the text the Dink Engine uses or none of it to be affected in this way. I guess some kinds of system defaults are used for some of the text that are not used for other uses. Life is full of surprises.
January 19th 2020, 12:56 PM
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RangerLord
Peasant He/Him Hungary bloop
The nation above all 
I would like to see Fate of Destiny being continued - no offense Bluedy, I just find it's premise more interesting. If you want to, I would like to see a D-Mod that actually twists the traditional Dink formula with something, like a good gameplay mechanic or a very interesting story. Well, okay, a romp might be not enough for that. But if you choose to do so, I would be interested in finishing Northern Lands too. Maybe have a collaboration with Bluedy. Also, sorry for not testing the newest version of Crowns of Stone. I just didn't have the mood for it. That, and I have an exam period - I have less time.
January 19th 2020, 05:24 PM
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SlipDink
Peasant He/Him United States bloop rumble
2nd generation. No easy way to be free. 
@RangerLord:
I would like to see Fate of Destiny being continued - no offense Bluedy, I just find it's premise more interesting. If you want to, I would like to see a D-Mod that actually twists the traditional Dink formula with something, like a good gameplay mechanic or a very interesting story.

I like to think that I've made some dmods that have interesting stories, but I'm not sure what you mean when you talk about a dmod that "twists the traditional Dink formula with something". Can you give a few examples of the kind of thing you are talking about here?

Well, okay, a romp might be not enough for that. But if you choose to do so, I would be interested in finishing Northern Lands too. Maybe have a collaboration with Bluedy.

Well, if I decide to not take "[#2] Accept the invitation to finish the "Northern Lands" dmod..." as my next choice, I'll certainly look forward to whatever you and Bluedy come up with!

Also, sorry for not testing the newest version of Crowns of Stone. I just didn't have the mood for it. That, and I have an exam period - I have less time.

Real Life comes first! I understand.

Hmmm. So far there is not much of a consensus as to what I should do next. Oh well, I'm in no hurry. I look forward to hearing from other members of the DN.
January 20th 2020, 02:56 PM
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ExDeathEvn
Peasant He/Him New Zealand rumble
"Skinny Legend" 
Mc'scuse me <censored> but I don't remember ever saying Fate of Destiny was available as an open-source story that someone else could complete.
Thank you very much.

Respectfully,
Fate of Destiny's author

PS: Who the heck ever said I wasn't planning on finishing it anyway?
January 20th 2020, 03:27 PM
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RangerLord
Peasant He/Him Hungary bloop
The nation above all 
@ExDeathEvn
Well, good to see you are still around. Redink1 should probably take it out from the unfinished category. How are you doing with it? Maybe I should have checked before accepting SlipDink's listing as gospel.

@SlipDink
This crosses of one possibility from the list. As for a twist, I mean a mechanic like the the desert survival in Before..., or maybe something strange like an armor system - yes, I know it was done before, but that wasn't a D-Mod with a story, just a development showcase.
January 20th 2020, 03:41 PM
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ExDeathEvn
Peasant He/Him New Zealand rumble
"Skinny Legend" 
It's marked as unfinished because I released it that way; The demo version doesn't have a definitive end-point and I originally planned to make a complete demo up to a 2nd boss.

And ofc I'm still around. I just ghost the crap outa this place nowadays; I helped with the Dink Hotel project even and am on the discord.
January 20th 2020, 03:57 PM
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SlipDink
Peasant He/Him United States bloop rumble
2nd generation. No easy way to be free. 
@RangerLord:
This crosses of one possibility from the list.

Alas, yes. It would seem to be so.

As for a twist, I mean a mechanic like the the desert survival in Before..., or maybe something strange like an armor system - yes, I know it was done before, but that wasn't a D-Mod with a story, just a development showcase.

Ah, I see what you mean now.
January 20th 2020, 04:04 PM
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SlipDink
Peasant He/Him United States bloop rumble
2nd generation. No easy way to be free. 
@ExDeathEvn:
I'm as glad as RangerLord (and everyone else I suppose) that you are still around too!

Mc'scuse me <censored> but I don't remember ever saying Fate of Destiny was available as an open-source story that someone else could complete.
Thank you very much.

Respectfully,
Fate of Destiny's author

PS: Who the heck ever said I wasn't planning on finishing it anyway?

It's marked as unfinished because I released it that way; The demo version doesn't have a definitive end-point and I originally planned to make a complete demo up to a 2nd boss.

As I looked over my notes just now on the unfinished dmods I reviewed, I could not be certain why I thouight of [Fate of Destiny – Demo] was one where the author invited others to finish it. The Description on the https://www.dinknetwork.com/file/fate_of_destiny_demo/ page says "Ex-Deathevn's first Dmod, albeit a demo version to a full scale epic-in-progress." Perhaps I just assumed that a nearly 10 year old description as being in-progress meant that it was not really in progress. But of course, that does not mean that there was truly an invitation to have someone else finish it.

But by all means complete it in any way you want to, and do it soon! Your fans await!
January 20th 2020, 04:23 PM
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Marpro
Peasant He/Him bloop
 
You need to raise your bar man - Take it to the next level!
Organize your work into sprints, make a trello board for it, hire a whole team of developers. Think "cloud castle"; azure devops, ci/cd, git, 2fa etc etc etc.
Also hire a really smug scrum master (which would be the default ) .

Or you could just make a sweet romp I guess.
Another really cool thing would be revitalizing Dink in Unity.
January 20th 2020, 06:19 PM
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JugglingDink
Peasant He/Him United Kingdom
Streetfish 
@Marpro, funny you should mention Unity...

My personal project the last couple of weeks has been exactly that. I currently have a working, interactive build of Stonebrook running, in 3D using a mixture of world geometry and the original game's sprites. It's pretty cool. Will hopefully get a gameplay video and "official" announcement thread up by the end of the week.

I'm unsure how far I'll go in recreating the whole game, as Stonebrook alone has taken a significant amount of time and only amounted to 6 screens in the original. Could be it ends up just being a small section of the game, only time will tell.
January 20th 2020, 06:59 PM
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toof
Peasant He/Him
I disagree. 
@Marpro

Lol, you're still around ... Maybe we should make a thread called "bump", so you shameless ghost lurkers can bump into it and show the world, the universe and god/gods that this place isn't as quiet as it seems.

You need to raise your bar man - Take it to the next level!
Organize your work into sprints, make a trello board for it, hire a whole team of developers. Think "cloud castle"; azure devops, ci/cd, git, 2fa etc etc etc.


Speaking in buzzwords, is it possible to get dmods (and other files) on git/hub/lab? Dink Gitwerk or something...

@JugglingDink
What I've wanted to do, is to make a language server for DinkC in Visual Studio Code... Until I saw the documentation for the implementation... Frankly a thankless task...
January 20th 2020, 07:13 PM
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JugglingDink
Peasant He/Him United Kingdom
Streetfish 
@Toof

Haha, that sounds like a nightmare! I wouldn't even know where to start on something like that, but it'd be cool to see. I realised earlier I've never even looked at the proper source code on Dink. I've pretty much rewritten the diag brains and stuff from scratch so it's a miracle they even work lmao
January 20th 2020, 11:13 PM
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@SlipDink i'm currently playing Crowns of Stone and enjoying it so don't do #5!
January 21st 2020, 02:34 AM
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toof
Peasant He/Him
I disagree. 
@JugglingDink
Well, porting to Un sounds like a nightmare too. Reimplementing every function... say(), sp_move(), sp_xy(), whatever()... That is a ton of work...
January 21st 2020, 09:58 AM
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SlipDink
Peasant He/Him United States bloop rumble
2nd generation. No easy way to be free. 
@Bunniemaster:
i'm currently playing Crowns of Stone and enjoying it so don't do #5!

Well, feel free to play any of these other SlipDink dmods after you finish Crowns of Stone.

o Before...
o The Last Quest Part 1: The Oraculum
o THE LAST QUEST (part 2): The Iron Ring of Destiny
o All that Glitters!

Okay, so you told me which option you don't want, which of options #1 through #4 would you prefer?
January 21st 2020, 10:15 AM
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JugglingDink
Peasant He/Him United Kingdom
Streetfish 
@toof
No kidding, even just re-implementing say() took me a day by itself I'd probably consider this more of a remake of the main game than an actual port of the engine. I'll probably only rebuild the methods I actually need as I come across situations calling for them, rather than porting everything. At least for the time being.

And, back on topic
@SlipDink
The first idea sounds cool! Big fan of mystery style stories. Do you have a plan for the plotline already or is it more of a concept?
January 21st 2020, 10:28 AM
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Silberfarben
Peasant She/Her
Lady Silberfarben, mighty ruler of the Silbershire 
SlipDink

Thanks again for your continuing help.

while making your Dmod, please know that if you need any kind of help, im here. despite being a noob, i can do some repetitive mindless slug work if you want .
January 21st 2020, 10:41 AM
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SlipDink
Peasant He/Him United States bloop rumble
2nd generation. No easy way to be free. 
@Silberfarben:
SlipDink

Thanks again for your continuing help.

You are certainly welcome.

while making your Dmod, please know that if you need any kind of help, im here. despite being a noob, i can do some repetitive mindless slug work if you want .

You are definitely a great beta-tester. Thanks for volunteering.
January 21st 2020, 10:46 AM
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SlipDink
Peasant He/Him United States bloop rumble
2nd generation. No easy way to be free. 
@JugglingDink:
The first idea sounds cool! Big fan of mystery style stories. Do you have a plan for the plotline already or is it more of a concept?

I've been developing the first few chapters of a plot outline over recent months. I'm not sure I'd call it a "mystery style" story, though I was planning on having Dink have to solve a mysterious problem as part of the story.
January 21st 2020, 01:48 PM
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RangerLord
Peasant He/Him Hungary bloop
The nation above all 
Okay, so far the consensus is that you should make a new D-Mod. I think that's a good idea.
January 21st 2020, 06:56 PM
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Marpro
Peasant He/Him bloop
 
That sounds really cool, JugglingDink.
Are you working local only, or do you have a public repo? Would love to browse some code for it (and perhaps even contribute)!
January 21st 2020, 08:06 PM
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JugglingDink
Peasant He/Him United Kingdom
Streetfish 
@SlipDink Mate, if you've been planning out the plot already I say go for it! Keen for that.

@Marpro For now it only exists locally. I think Unity projects can be made public through UnityTeams Basic/Advanced? Although that isn't something I've tried, so I'd need to look into it properly. It's still pretty prototype-y at the moment but basic functionality like void talk, freeze, say, and say_stop are all in there and working.
January 22nd 2020, 04:58 PM
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SlipDink
Peasant He/Him United States bloop rumble
2nd generation. No easy way to be free. 
Thanks everyone, for letting me know what you think I should do next in the way of expanding Dinkdom.

It seems that some variation on option [#1] (*) is the most popular choice, though (so far) we certainly don't have a truly solid consensus.

But fans of SlipDink, please realize, that option [#1] (*) is likely to take the most time to come to fruition.

Yes, I've already started a few notes and done (a very tiny amount) of setup for option [#1] (*). And it is (at the moment) the idea most appealing to me. And it is (at this time) planned to not be full epic size. In fact it may not even be quest size. But choosing option [#1] (*) still means you will have to wait a surprisingly long time to see my next dmod creation. Remember, I plan to take a hiatus before officially starting my next dmod, no matter what it is, so that an (as yet unpublished) amount of time is also time you will have to wait.

Life is Short.

(*)Develop a small scale (romp or small quest size) dmod that has a whimsical aspect to it, which takes Dink into a new strange world when an old enemy takes his vengeance against Dink. Something about this world will be oddly familiar, even though Dink has never been here before.
January 27th 2020, 05:18 PM
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SlipDink
Peasant He/Him United States bloop rumble
2nd generation. No easy way to be free. 
Given that it seems it is (just slightly) more popular than the other options, in a few weeks I will be proceeding with #1.

Thanks for your input.

[#1] Develop a small scale (romp or small quest size) dmod that has a whimsical aspect to it, which takes Dink into a new strange world when an old enemy takes his vengeance against Dink. Something about this world will be oddly familiar, even though Dink has never been here before.
February 10th 2020, 12:04 PM
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SlipDink
Peasant He/Him United States bloop rumble
2nd generation. No easy way to be free. 
Okay, I've started development on my next dmod, entitled, "A Little Adventure".

Dink starts out in the middle of an adventure, heroically fighting for his life while trying to eliminate the latest threat to peace and harmony in the kingdom of Goodheart. Suddenly he is unexpectedly whisked away at the exact moment when he vanquishes his foe.

Now Dink must struggle to "get back". When he finally does return, he decides to spend time in his hunting retreat. There Dink finds that boredom sets in as months go by without anything exciting happening. It seems that lately, no one needs a hero. But then he is taken off guard by a unique surprise attack in his cottage that (his enemy thinks) causes him to disappear forever. Once again, Dink must again struggle to "get back" from a VERY different(*) and yet VERY familiar place so that he can defeat this new evil that bested him him when he least expected the attack.

You can expect many interesting and relatively unique side quests along with my usual sense of humor and a few fun "special effects".

I'm not projecting a completion date yet, but should have a good idea of that within a month or so.

Who else is working on a dmod now?

(*) Perhaps it will be so different that I can truly claim that Dink has never been in such a place before.
February 10th 2020, 01:39 PM
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Skurn
Peasant He/Him Equatorial Guinea duck bloop
can't flim flam the glim glam 
i added a bit to dink goes dating.
February 12th 2020, 12:41 PM
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SlipDink
Peasant He/Him United States bloop rumble
2nd generation. No easy way to be free. 
@Skurn:
i added a bit to dink goes dating.

Interesting. How are things coming along with it? What percentage of completeness have you reached? I'm only just starting (about 5-10% complete) in my dmod "A Little Adventure". Once it is further along (at least 25%), I'll start a Thread just for that dmod.

Perhaps you should start your own Forum Thread to track the progress of "dink goes dating"?
February 12th 2020, 02:20 PM
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RangerLord
Peasant He/Him Hungary bloop
The nation above all 
Skurn already made a thread, it's just haven't been updated for more than a half year. I will bump it.
February 13th 2020, 11:19 AM
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SlipDink
Peasant He/Him United States bloop rumble
2nd generation. No easy way to be free. 
@RangerLord:

Skurn already made a thread, it's just haven't been updated for more than a half year. I will bump it.

Ah yes... thanks for reminding me of it and "bumping" it too.
June 16th 2022, 12:06 PM
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Slipdink
Peasant He/Him United States bloop rumble
2nd generation. No easy way to be free. 
Well, I'm, pondering this again. I still might work on any of the 5 listed above, with the exception of "Fate of Destiny", which ExDeathEvn seemed to not want to be finished (by someone other than ExDeathEvn).

I was also considering working on Robj's "TDA" for a while there, but it seems he may have lost interest in me working on it, so we just need to encourage Robj to finish it!

Northern Lands might be where I'd work next, but I'm still open to other options as I would need a lot of help from Bluedy to get started there. I'd also make a lot of coding stylistic changes to start too. I think I'll probably use some more of Reiner's Tilesets that have inspired me, but it would mean some major changes (or at least additions) to the Northern Lands story.

#1 Has anyone got any suggestions about Northern Lands or other unfinished dmods?

#2 Has anyone seen Bluedy around lately?
June 16th 2022, 02:59 PM
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drone1400
Peasant He/Him Romania
C# nerd 
#2 Has anyone seen Bluedy around lately?
He's active on discord. He's been having technical difficulties with his computer though, recently got some upgrades but the motherboard seems to be broken out of the box and he's going through warranty hell trying to get it fixed...