Looking for Sweetpea
Dear Log,
After processing the copious documentation (particularly Dink Ref v4.0 and the TMOD "Dink Goes Boating") and very excellent video tutorials from SimonK, I've begun to cut my teeth on a DMOD, called Quest for Sweetpea. This one will be a romp, designed more to show me the ropes that to flat out impress anyone. I'm trying to keep the map down to 10-20 areas.
The plot is dirt simple: someone has obsconded with the Smallwood's prized sow, Sweetpea and Dink has to bring home the bacon.
Although I've skimmed the docs that Seth wrote, I'm genuinely surprised anyone found them useful. The information in them is just so poorly organized, it's painful. But that's why Seth is a programmer, not a technical writer.
I'm really please that such an active community has grown up around this project.
One note about all thedocumentation I've read is that there's a lot of domain-specific knowledge that's assumed by the writers. Setting aside programming fundamentals for a moment, I wonder if most newbies will know the difference between a tile and a sprite? I would bet not. These are analogous to pictures and movie clips in Flash.
Tiles are just single images and typically done have a whole lot of scripting to them, but sprites are where the action is. Ideas like hardness and a depth queue are similarly arcane and perhaps are subjects that need a gentler introduction.
I come to Dink after working with Funeral Quest mods and writing the scripting guide that comes with the game. Also, I played around for several months wrapping my head around Fallout mods. I got to the point of making new quests and having them show up in the PIPboy went I had a hard drive failure that ate my work. Sigh.
Still, those experiences made picking up Dink easier, although I can't say it's been easy.
If I can actually finish Sweatpea, that will give me the tools for a more ambitious project, which is an epic trilogy that focuses on the events eluded to in the original Dink Smallwood game. The working title for this idea is called the Goblin Wars. I've got a chronology sketched out and have begun to break up the bits into chapters of adventures. If I do all my homework, maybe I get even get Seth to sign off on it as canon.
Small steps first. Remember to breath...
After processing the copious documentation (particularly Dink Ref v4.0 and the TMOD "Dink Goes Boating") and very excellent video tutorials from SimonK, I've begun to cut my teeth on a DMOD, called Quest for Sweetpea. This one will be a romp, designed more to show me the ropes that to flat out impress anyone. I'm trying to keep the map down to 10-20 areas.
The plot is dirt simple: someone has obsconded with the Smallwood's prized sow, Sweetpea and Dink has to bring home the bacon.
Although I've skimmed the docs that Seth wrote, I'm genuinely surprised anyone found them useful. The information in them is just so poorly organized, it's painful. But that's why Seth is a programmer, not a technical writer.
I'm really please that such an active community has grown up around this project.
One note about all thedocumentation I've read is that there's a lot of domain-specific knowledge that's assumed by the writers. Setting aside programming fundamentals for a moment, I wonder if most newbies will know the difference between a tile and a sprite? I would bet not. These are analogous to pictures and movie clips in Flash.
Tiles are just single images and typically done have a whole lot of scripting to them, but sprites are where the action is. Ideas like hardness and a depth queue are similarly arcane and perhaps are subjects that need a gentler introduction.
I come to Dink after working with Funeral Quest mods and writing the scripting guide that comes with the game. Also, I played around for several months wrapping my head around Fallout mods. I got to the point of making new quests and having them show up in the PIPboy went I had a hard drive failure that ate my work. Sigh.
Still, those experiences made picking up Dink easier, although I can't say it's been easy.
If I can actually finish Sweatpea, that will give me the tools for a more ambitious project, which is an epic trilogy that focuses on the events eluded to in the original Dink Smallwood game. The working title for this idea is called the Goblin Wars. I've got a chronology sketched out and have begun to break up the bits into chapters of adventures. If I do all my homework, maybe I get even get Seth to sign off on it as canon.
Small steps first. Remember to breath...
Sounds great. Looking forward to hearing of your progress. Good luck! 
