The Dink Network

The Last Quest really?

February 7th 2018, 05:25 PM
spike.gif
SlipDink
Peasant He/Him United States bloop rumble
2nd generation. No easy way to be free. 
I know that I sort of "came late to the party", but would like to discuss what can be done to make certain that the most recently updated (and perhaps the last) D-Mods are NOT just my two part Last Quest story.

I know that others have made some recent contributions and a few are in the process of developing more D-Mods, though a quick look through the "Files - D-Mod" sections of this site as sorted by date will tell you that the number of D-Mods per year has dropped off dramatically in recent years. Our beloved DN King and ultimate system administrator (redink) has certainly made a recent effort to spruce things up a bit, and ran a fairly recent successful contest that got us a few more D-Mods. Also, our most esteemed author (Seth) has even recently worked with us to turn out a new edition, but these efforts (as far as I can tell) have really not made a big dent in the problem.

I'd like to suggest that members of the DN who are working on D-Mods that have been doing so for years and know in their hearts that they will not complete said D-Mods, please consider posting them here as "Unfinished", but with all source files, and any useful resources, tools, etc.

Perhaps it would be worthwhile to change the way we use the "Files - D-Mod" sections of this site and the category "Unfinished" so that (for example) we could see all the Unfinished Quest sized D-Mods only. This might encourage people to find and finish these, which might (in theory) get a few more complete D-Mods out to the public without quite as much effort as waiting for more contributions made "from scratch".

The categories we have now (D-Mod Development Miscellaneous Romp Quest Epic Graphics Music Demo Unfinished Source Tutorial Add-On Cheat Frontend Translation Fan Work Official Utility Dink.exe), seem adequate enough, but it is my opinion that it would help to be able to use them to choose which D-Mods are in the list we could download.

Anyway, I'm certainly just throwing this open for discussion, and would like to know what other members of the DN have to say about this idea or other ideas like it. Plus, I recognize that I am just assuming that one of our administrator types would not mind making these kind of modifications to the "Files - D-Mod" sections of this site.
February 7th 2018, 06:33 PM
duck.gif
Toof
Peasant He/Him
I disagree. 
I bet quite few of those would be unplayable. This is a really old game. I can't even think of playing some of the larger dmods without cheating. Leveling up? Hell no, I can't be bothered with that. I can't even bring myself to play a dmod, like, say... stone of balance. Too damn long.

It is getting stale, but what keeps me here are short mods, with lots of funny dialogue and easy combat.

Making Dmod is very time consuming. I barely manage to stay in physical contact with my friends, let alone spend time making something that 15 people at best 'might' enjoy.

I still keep trying though, but every time I have to delay it by at least 4 months... And whenever I return to work on it, I'm like "Holy duck, this is pure garbage", so I start over with a different idea in mind. Which leads me nowhere...


EDIT:
For the sake of the eternal pessimism, please rename thread to 'The Dink Network is dying... again'
February 7th 2018, 08:36 PM
wizardb.gif
Bluedy
Peasant He/Him Romania bloop rumble
I like Frutti Fresh 
Yeah, this is a pretty big problem. We are looking at our community while it's slowly dying. There's definitely not as many dmods released by the month which saddens me quite a lot. Many abandoned projects aswell that will never see the light of day, from dmods to Seth's DinkHD update.
BUT, theres some good news too. You are working on a dmod. I am working on a dmod. Kerrek is also working on a dmod which might never see the light of day (but hey, it's something). So, so far, we're in a pretty good state. The only thing which might improve the situation is for Seth to release Dink on Steam.
February 7th 2018, 08:53 PM
peasantmp.gif
Skurn
Peasant He/Him Equatorial Guinea duck bloop
can't flim flam the glim glam 
We are looking at our community while it's slowly dying.

been a worry since a year after dink went freeware. not happening ever.
February 7th 2018, 09:39 PM
wizardb.gif
Bluedy
Peasant He/Him Romania bloop rumble
I like Frutti Fresh 
I hops so
February 7th 2018, 10:06 PM
goblins.gif
I've considered releasing the D-mod that I've worked on as unfinished (It was supposed to be an epic, but it's only about half-way finished), but I keep telling myself I might come back to it someday. Plus I know that it still needs some work to really be worth playing. Still I might consider doing some "finishing" touches on it and releasing it as unfinished, probably with a halfway ending and a "To be continued???" at the end or something. I've kind of migrated to making original stuff so going back to truly finishing my Dmod at this point would kind of be a big commitment.

I'm still really looking forward to RobJ's Dmod (The Dark Avilan). I helped test that one back when it was a demo and it was already quite excellent. So there's no way I'm passing up that one.

There's also a good chance I'll go back and play the newer Dmods that came out in the past couple years once I have a reasonable amount of free time. I've never done a let's play before but I might even consider giving that a shot just so you guys can get some feedback on your mods. Keep in mind this would be after an unfinished release of my Dmod if I do it though.

Dink Smallwood is like a Phoenix. There is always hope.
February 8th 2018, 07:13 AM
duck.gif
Toof
Peasant He/Him
I disagree. 
Hey, it's 20 year old game, and it still lives. It's also worth considering that quantity isn't quality. Better to have fewer enjoyable mods, than lots of crappy ones. Plus, the long wait increases the desire... *drools*
February 8th 2018, 10:43 AM
dinkdead.gif
twp
Peasant They/Them
 
The detractors on this thread have always had the option of no longer playing Dink... The game police have not yet made an attempt to force anyone to play... That is said only half joking. We live in a strange world.

I have many DMODs on my HD and hope to add more as they are released.

I'm proud to say that, yes, I Play Dink, with all due respect to IPlayDink on this forum.

With respect to DMODs which are still in development, I would like to see these available, as incomplete code, in their own section. This should totally be up the author and not in any way a requirement... Particularly if the author feels they may never get around to finishing a project.
February 8th 2018, 10:59 AM
spike.gif
SlipDink
Peasant He/Him United States bloop rumble
2nd generation. No easy way to be free. 
@ Thenewguy:
I was excited about playing the (upcoming?)RobJ Dmod (The Dark Avilan), but last he was talking about it, it seemed he was about to abandon the effort.

Maybe we can convince him to release it as Unfinished so that someone else might finish it. I'd certainly give it a try after I finish "All that Glitters".

As for your own D-Mod (the half-way finished epic), I would like to encourage you to go ahead and continue with 'doing some "finishing" touches on it and releasing it as unfinished, probably with a halfway ending' . If you release it with all relevant source, etc. maybe someone would finish it for you.
February 8th 2018, 11:08 AM
spike.gif
SlipDink
Peasant He/Him United States bloop rumble
2nd generation. No easy way to be free. 
Well, as I said, I'm a bit late to this party... (ahem) I've just figured out that if you go to a dmod and click on a link under Categories like "Quest", it takes you to a page of dmods (http://www.dinknetwork.com/files/category_quest/) that are all in that category, that looks like this:

Files - Quest
[1] [2] [Next]

While that is not is not quite what I was hoping for in terms of being able to group more than one Category at a time, it is pretty close. It was easy enough for me to figure out that http://www.dinknetwork.com/files/category_unfinished was the page that listed all the unfinished D-Mods.

So, that might make the work of finding an abandoned D-Mod to work on pretty easy.

Hooray! There are some there of good size that are rated quite highly too.
February 8th 2018, 12:13 PM
goblins.gif
I don't think so. It sounded to me like The Dark Avilan is coming, just on hold for a while, while he deals with other things. If you are worried about those last few posts of TDA's thread they were more of a joke than anything. That's my take on it anyways.
February 8th 2018, 06:25 PM
duck.gif
Tal
Noble He/Him United States
Super Sexy Tal Pal 
I've always wanted to make a D-Mod - and I've taken no shortage of flak over the years for not having ever done so - but I have never successfully overcome a lack of motivation, poor prioritization, and general depressive tendencies.
February 8th 2018, 09:09 PM
anon.gif
toof
Ghost They/Them
 
I've always wanted to make a D-Mod

Just wanted, or did you actually try to experiment with some interesting ideas you had?
I'm talking about a dmod ofcourse, we are all familiar with the genesis of Talporn.
February 8th 2018, 11:10 PM
peasantmp.gif
Skurn
Peasant He/Him Equatorial Guinea duck bloop
can't flim flam the glim glam 
there you go, tal. there's the name of your dmod - the genesis of talporn.

now you're set.
February 8th 2018, 11:47 PM
peasantmb.gif
yeoldetoast
Peasant They/Them Australia
LOOK UPON MY DEFORMED FACE! 
Reminder that Talporn.com has expired
February 9th 2018, 03:03 AM
peasantmp.gif
Skurn
Peasant He/Him Equatorial Guinea duck bloop
can't flim flam the glim glam 
and that can be the plot.