Saving Wallden Updates (formerly "Departing the VP Community")

[xenonph]

@merlinrtp

You set a great example for this community! Thank you kind sir!

That is why I love this hobby, and am very proud to be a member!

 

There are so many different skills needed to make a table, and it can be overbearing sometimes.

Specially if you are working on a table alone.

I know that I would have loved to get help like this, when I started modding tables!

I hope @Arelyel realizes that these types of offers do not come around as often as they should, and he should definately take advantage of your offer!

 

Just my 2 cents.

Carry on.

 

[Guest]

4 minutes ago, xenonph said:

@merlinrtp

You set a great example for this community! Thank you kind sir!

That is why I love this hobby, and am very proud to be a member!

 

There are so many different skills needed to make a table, and it can be overbearing sometimes.

Specially if you are working on a table alone.

I know that I would have loved to get help like this, when I started modding tables!

I hope @Arelyel realizes that these types of offers do not come around as often as they should, and he should definately take advantage of your offer!

 

Just my 2 cents.

Carry on.

 

I definitely will. 12 AM gotta go

[merlinrtp]

14 hours ago, Arelyel said:

No. Just like with VP, I'm not "getting rid" of it. I'm taking a break. I'm leaving / have left, but I don't plan for it to be permanent. I just don't know when I'll be back given my situation, and it could be a long time depending on how things play out. Same goes for my friends. Work has to come first sometimes, so I will postpone visiting them when I must. It doesn't mean I'm not their friend. It just means survival is more important.  I did, however, originally plan to completely toss Saving Wallden. I'm re-considering how I might be able to still pull off making the table, or at the very least getting what I have now to a playable state and putting up as an unfinished table. If I opt for the former, I need to pull back heavily on my original goals. I can't make a decision though until I first stabilize my financial situation.

 

 

A lot of the things you mentioned, I know you were being sarcastic, but I don't have a car (can't drive due to seizures), don't have a game console (all I have is my PC but I spend a vast majority of my time working rather than gaming), Grandma passed away sadly, and I still have friends but they know work comes first sometimes.

 

That's true. And I am fine with that. It is good that we don't do everything expecting payment. However, as I mentioned, my financial situation is critical at the moment. Therefore, these things must take a back burner to things I do get paid for because money / more work is what will stabilize my situation. Once that is stabilized, then I can return to doing things that I don't get paid for, assuming I have the time and resources to do so. I'm making progress, but I'm not there yet. And it may be at least a few more months, but probably longer, until I'm there, especially with having to pay back loans from college.

 

I appreciate it. I do have a passion for VP. I'm just not in as stable of a situation as most, and therefore cannot participate to the same level or be as consistent / reliable. So things like this happen. This is the second time it's happened and probably not the last.

 

@merlinrtp your offer is a godsend. I tentatively accept it. Right now, I'm still considered on a leave of absence from VP due to my finances. However, I'm in the process of getting more work / clients and should hopefully stabilize out in a few months. Once I can commit again to the VP community, hopefully by mid 2024, I"ll see what to do about Saving Wallden. Maybe I could first use some help on reorganizing the development goals and path for the table. I think I was trying to shoot directly for the sun when I should have been asteroid-hopping, if you know what I mean: focusing on one or two things at a time instead of trying to build everything at once. I was following Darkest Dungeon behind the scenes. I haven't been able to try it yet but it looks like an amazing table. And I'm really glad the queue system has helped you out a lot. It's heavily being used in Wallden too.

 

If you'd like, I'll send you Saving Wallden in its current state and you can take a look at it at your leisure while I'm getting my situation in order. Or I can try putting up for download as previously suggested. I'm not so sure I'd want to do that though since right now I can't work on its development until I have my ducks in order.

Would love to see it in it's current state, please send me a link. I also forgot to mention I have done about 3 or 4 tables with scorbit code.. all pupdmd based

[Guest]

@merlinrtp and anyone else interested... I have what I have so far up for download at https://wallden.pdstig.me/pg/downloads/entry/saving-wallden/table-downloads/saving-wallden-0-2-8 .

• Use DEBUG_MODE = 310 to test out the Blacksmith mini-wizard (currently only KILL is implemented)
• DEBUG_MODE = 320 to test Glitch mini-wizard
• DEBUG_MODE = 1000 to test general game play as it is so far

As mentioned, I lost the PUP pack unfortunately, so no PUP Pack at this time (probably for the better for the time being as it was eating away a ton of development time). And I have not yet coded in the JP / Flex DMD to explain each difficulty setting. Luckily, I already coded the table to handle working just fine without PUP.

 

What were my plans for the full rules are on https://wallden.pdstig.me .

 

Again, your willingness to hop aboard the project is greatly appreciated. Hopefully it will only be a couple / few months when I can resume development.

Edited December 18, 2023 by Arelyel

[merlinrtp]

14 hours ago, Arelyel said:

@merlinrtp and anyone else interested... I have what I have so far up for download at https://wallden.pdstig.me/pg/downloads/entry/saving-wallden/table-downloads/saving-wallden-0-2-8 .

• Use DEBUG_MODE = 310 to test out the Blacksmith mini-wizard (currently only KILL is implemented)
• DEBUG_MODE = 320 to test Glitch mini-wizard
• DEBUG_MODE = 1000 to test general game play as it is so far

As mentioned, I lost the PUP pack unfortunately, so no PUP Pack at this time (probably for the better for the time being as it was eating away a ton of development time). And I have not yet coded in the JP / Flex DMD to explain each difficulty setting. Luckily, I already coded the table to handle working just fine without PUP.

 

What were my plans for the full rules are on https://wallden.pdstig.me .

 

Again, your willingness to hop aboard the project is greatly appreciated. Hopefully it will only be a couple / few months when I can resume development.

Well this is gonna take a bit to catch up on.. but I am game.. I am just working on adding PuPDMD/Scorbit/VR to thundercats and I will take a good look a the code.. Quick view of the ruleset is super interesting .. reminds be a lot of what we did in Darkest Dungeon but different of course. from first glance, you seem to be very well organized. Please send me a friend request on Discord if possible as it's much easier for me to communicate there, I know your time is super limited and respect that. 

[Guest]

2 hours ago, merlinrtp said:

Well this is gonna take a bit to catch up on.. but I am game.. I am just working on adding PuPDMD/Scorbit/VR to thundercats and I will take a good look a the code.. Quick view of the ruleset is super interesting .. reminds be a lot of what we did in Darkest Dungeon but different of course. from first glance, you seem to be very well organized. Please send me a friend request on Discord if possible as it's much easier for me to communicate there, I know your time is super limited and respect that. 

No worries. I won't be working on it for a couple / few months anyway, so there is plenty of time. The table is already at about 16,000 lines of code, but a lot of it is external libraries. Wallden is using many different libraries / classes. Plus, I'm using a code formatter as well which prioritizes new lines over chaining statements together. And, I'm very OCD about using constants to add context lol.

 

I do not have Discord anymore; I got rid of my account (I may or may not create a new one in the distant future). It was part of my purging of things that were distracting me too much from work. I need to get @Dazz to change my VPU account if possible to a regular username/password one. The way it is now, if I get signed out for any reason, I'm locked out completely.

 

Are you content with us using VPU for now? Or, we can use email, text messages, or I can create a git repository for Wallden on GitHub or GitLab (I prefer GitLab though as Microsoft, which owns GitHub, does not have GitHub open-sourced when they claim to support open source software) and we can collaborate through that. Please let me know what works for you. I'm just trying to avoid social media for now.

Edited December 18, 2023 by Arelyel

[Dazz]

50 minutes ago, Arelyel said:

No worries. I won't be working on it for a couple / few months anyway, so there is plenty of time. The table is already at about 16,000 lines of code, but a lot of it is external libraries. Wallden is using many different libraries / classes. Plus, I'm using a code formatter as well which prioritizes new lines over chaining statements together. And, I'm very OCD about using constants to add context lol.

 

I do not have Discord anymore; I got rid of my account (I may or may not create a new one in the distant future). It was part of my purging of things that were distracting me too much from work. I need to get @Dazz to change my VPU account if possible to a regular username/password one. The way it is now, if I get signed out for any reason, I'm locked out completely.

 

Are you content with us using VPU for now? Or, we can use email, text messages, or I can create a git repository for Wallden on GitHub or GitLab (I prefer GitLab though as Microsoft, which owns GitHub, does not have GitHub open-sourced when they claim to support open source software) and we can collaborate through that. Please let me know what works for you. I'm just trying to avoid social media for now.

@Arelyel Check PM

[merlinrtp]

2 hours ago, Arelyel said:

No worries. I won't be working on it for a couple / few months anyway, so there is plenty of time. The table is already at about 16,000 lines of code, but a lot of it is external libraries. Wallden is using many different libraries / classes. Plus, I'm using a code formatter as well which prioritizes new lines over chaining statements together. And, I'm very OCD about using constants to add context lol.

 

I do not have Discord anymore; I got rid of my account (I may or may not create a new one in the distant future). It was part of my purging of things that were distracting me too much from work. I need to get @Dazz to change my VPU account if possible to a regular username/password one. The way it is now, if I get signed out for any reason, I'm locked out completely.

 

Are you content with us using VPU for now? Or, we can use email, text messages, or I can create a git repository for Wallden on GitHub or GitLab (I prefer GitLab though as Microsoft, which owns GitHub, does not have GitHub open-sourced when they claim to support open source software) and we can collaborate through that. Please let me know what works for you. I'm just trying to avoid social media for now.

That works for now

[Guest]

3 hours ago, Dazz said:

@Arelyel Check PM

Very much appreciated, thank you Dazz. The temporary password did not work, but I was able to reset it.

[bord]

This was one of the shortest-lived goodbye threads I can remember. Hard to tell the difference between returned and never left.

[Guest]

11 hours ago, bord said:

This was one of the shortest-lived goodbye threads I can remember. Hard to tell the difference between returned and never left.

I'm still on a leave, as-in I'm not doing any work on VP right now. Literally the only thing VP I'm doing right now is this topic.

[jicho2003]

Hello everyone.

Several considerations on this topic.

 

Starting a table from scratch is a task that takes months, investing almost all your free time in it. I have only made a mod of a JpSalas table and a recently released theme of my own. The first was simply a way to test if I was able to do it with limited knowledge of Blender and the script itself. Photoshop was better...and I was able to do it.

 

I chose a term that I liked...without thinking about whether the audience might like it. I just wanted to test myself. My knowledge of English didn't help much, but with trial and error I ended up getting ahead.

 

After the publication I had some displeasure with what they did with my table, building payment cabinets with Saint Seiya as a claim in my country, at the hands of someone who is dedicated to the arcade world. That made me stop and reconsider whether I continued.

And I decided yes.

The community is worth more than a guy with a lot of face, but I told myself that would continue doing things my way.

 

I was curious to know how far I could go with FlexDMD for my real Dmd, and that's where The_A_Team was born.

 

After almost a year there is this. I am not obstructed by standards. It does not have the most current Nfozzy physics, since I program as far as I understand. I also don't remap lights in blender because I don't understand the tutorial in English, nor VR or PupPack. My computer does not reach 10.8 properly.

 

The only thing that was limiting me was being a beta tester myself, because I knew there were errors but it is difficult for a single person to agree with them, and that is why I published now.

 

When I have something to update I will update...without further ado.

 

I have the knowledge that I have and I'm not obsessed that someone asks that the table have some standards that I cannot reach.

After all, only a small percentage of users leave you a message or give you a like. If you are expecting that in such a large community, I think you are wrong. It's an unpaid hobby that can entertain you and make you think, pretending more is impossible

[Guest]

A quick update. Currently I'm anticipating the possibility I can return to VP and working on Wallden in March. But this is not a promise. It can easily get delayed further depending on my finances (and tax season). Right now, I'm spending a vast majority of my time developing a CMS software and providing web services for clients running said software. This is providing some of the income I need, though it's not enough yet. VP will have to remain on the back burner for now as it can't provide any income at all for me.

 

On 12/30/2023 at 10:25 AM, jicho2003 said:

I had some displeasure with what they did with my table, building payment cabinets with Saint Seiya as a claim in my country, at the hands of someone who is dedicated to the arcade world. That made me stop and reconsider whether I continued.

Ouch, sorry to hear that happened. It sucks when people take advantage of the hobby like this. But good to see you're still in it. 

 

On 12/30/2023 at 10:25 AM, jicho2003 said:

I have the knowledge that I have and I'm not obsessed that someone asks that the table have some standards that I cannot reach.

After all, only a small percentage of users leave you a message or give you a like.

Perhaps I am wrong. But I've heard several people in the community say they don't really consider playing a table unless it has X standards / features (usually reflecting what VPW does). It's enough to be on my radar. Sure, it probably shouldn't be. But aside from enjoyment working on the project itself, the best kickback I could get from spending many hours of my free time on a table is the fact that lots of people see it / play it. If that isn't / wouldn't be the case, then it's not worth my time as a free project. I get this line of thinking is not what most others follow. And I understand the argument that I should focus on my own enjoyment instead. But I'm a very "Fe" [extroverted feeling] person for the Jung Theory nerds out there (I see no benefit in what I want to do if what I want to do won't benefit others to the capacity it can justify the necessary effort and resources put into it. It's now my brain is wired, so I'm not sure how I could change that if I even can.).

 

On 12/30/2023 at 10:25 AM, jicho2003 said:

After all, only a small percentage of users leave you a message or give you a like. If you are expecting that in such a large community, I think you are wrong.

This is true. I'd just simply be happy with people downloading / playing it. The feedback is nice and can be very helpful. But it's not necessary to have a bunch of it especially since, as you said, most won't provide it. Probably less than 5% of people do, if I were to guess.

 

On 12/30/2023 at 10:25 AM, jicho2003 said:

It's an unpaid hobby that can entertain you and make you think, pretending more is impossible

I respectfully disagree. I believe there is much more to an unpaid hobby than self entertainment and thinking. Those are important, but I'm a believer in the community aspect of a hobby. An unpaid hobby like VP needs that community for it to thrive.

[jicho2003]

18 hours ago, Arelyel said:

I respectfully disagree. I believe there is much more to an unpaid hobby than self entertainment and thinking. Those are important, but I'm a believer in the community aspect of a hobby. An unpaid hobby like VP needs that community for it to thrive.

It is possible that you are right. In part we are here for that and working for that.

The feeling of community and trying to give back what you take away in knowledge or entertainment.

[jicho2003]

18 hours ago, Arelyel said:

 Perhaps I am wrong. But I've heard several people in the community say they don't really consider playing a table unless it has X standards / features (usually reflecting what VPW does). It's enough to be on my radar. Sure, it probably shouldn't be. But aside from enjoyment working on the project itself, the best kickback I could get from spending many hours of my free time on a table is the fact that lots of people see it / play it.

Anything that involves improving something you do (even if it's just entertainment) is important.

 

I said it in the presentation of my last table.

 

I wanted a DMD in my cabin that felt like a gaming rom. It's the only thing I always miss on an original table.

Once I was satisfied with the result, I published the table knowing that errors were going to be found, because there were hardly any tests beyond my own. My standard is whatever I can reach.

 

A user wrote to me to tell me how he could see subtitles of the nFozzy and Fleep sound physics tutorials in my language (Is horrible)... and I'm trying to learn... whether I can do it or not is something I don't know.

 

At the moment I'm happy with the path and trying to leave a code that I can feel comfortable with if I start another project.

 

Does that mean I'm going to comply and implement everything a table is supposed to have just because that's what someone expects?

 

The answer is no. I will go as far as I go and when I go.

 

Other users have written to add things and for now that will not be the case. It's not that it closes me but it's not what I'm looking for

 

Does it mean that I only intend to equal the work of a dozen creators who are very, very good at what they do? well obviously neither.

 

Honestly, it matters more to me now if I can advance 5% more in making the DMD feel more real in a hypothetical future project than 50% in a physics one.

 

I'm not blind either and I know that no matter how good the DMD is, if the physics is a disaster the table will be and the first to not enjoy it will be me.

[Guest]

*Music Announcement*

 

It has come to my realization that there is a copyright loophole. People can take music from FreePD, which is supposed to be Creative Commons 0, use it in their own music videos online, and cause these services' content ID to then start taking down / muting anyone else who uses the same "Creative Commons 0" music.

 

I've also noticed FreePD silently took down many of the tracks they once had.

 

How does this affect Saving Wallden? All of the music currently in the game was from FreePD. Effective immediately, as I can no longer trust any of the music from FreePD to remain licensed under CC0, I will be dropping all music from the game.

 

Please let me know if you have any ideas for music that can be used in the game, will not cause copyright issues if someone decides to upload video of gameplay, and will not change licenses without my knowledge. I'd greatly appreciate that.

 

Until I find (decent) music that meets these criteria, the game will not have music.

[xenonph]

5 hours ago, Arelyel said:

*Music Announcement*

 

It has come to my realization that there is a copyright loophole. People can take music from FreePD, which is supposed to be Creative Commons 0, use it in their own music videos online, and cause these services' content ID to then start taking down / muting anyone else who uses the same "Creative Commons 0" music.

 

I've also noticed FreePD silently took down many of the tracks they once had.

 

How does this affect Saving Wallden? All of the music currently in the game was from FreePD. Effective immediately, as I can no longer trust any of the music from FreePD to remain licensed under CC0, I will be dropping all music from the game.

 

Please let me know if you have any ideas for music that can be used in the game, will not cause copyright issues if someone decides to upload video of gameplay, and will not change licenses without my knowledge. I'd greatly appreciate that.

 

Until I find (decent) music that meets these criteria, the game will not have music.

 

You could just tell people if they want music, add it themselves, and then post a little info on how to add music to the table.

Problem solved.

[LynnInDenver]

11 hours ago, Arelyel said:

*Music Announcement*

 

It has come to my realization that there is a copyright loophole. People can take music from FreePD, which is supposed to be Creative Commons 0, use it in their own music videos online, and cause these services' content ID to then start taking down / muting anyone else who uses the same "Creative Commons 0" music.

 

I've also noticed FreePD silently took down many of the tracks they once had.

 

I think what you're really looking at is that YouTube's ContentID system is broken - unfortunately it's broken by design at the insistence of the big players of the music industry. And how it's broken in this case is that they don't won't vet what's uploaded to their ContentID system for fingerprinting, so certain nefarious actors take advantage of it to earn money on other people's work.

[Guest]

10 hours ago, xenonph said:

 

You could just tell people if they want music, add it themselves, and then post a little info on how to add music to the table.

Problem solved.

That's probably what I'll end up doing. The only issue is a couple of the modes are music-based / supposed to transform according to whatever music is selected (one of them was already implemented too, not merely just planned / written out). Very sad because I had several modes planned out similarly with the music selection. I'll have to re-work all of them.

 

4 hours ago, LynnInDenver said:

 

I think what you're really looking at is that YouTube's ContentID system is broken - unfortunately it's broken by design at the insistence of the big players of the music industry. And how it's broken in this case is that they don't won't vet what's uploaded to their ContentID system for fingerprinting, so certain nefarious actors take advantage of it to earn money on other people's work.

They are very broken; in this case it was Twitch though giving me issues, but both are broken. Normally I'd agree with you and call it a day, but the fact FreePD was also silently removing some of the tracks (including the ones that triggered the content ID) makes this situation go beyond content ID. I suspect someone bought rights to some of their songs, making them no longer CC0 licensed, so they had to remove them. But if some of them can be bought, then all of them can be bought, which means I can't trust FreePD at all now.

---

I know some may say "who cares? Use it anyway", but point is I wanted Wallden to be 100% streamer friendly if possible. Doesn't look like that will be possible with any music of any sorts

Edited February 14 by Arelyel

[Guest]

I think I'm going to try something different on my end. I have a copy of MAGIX Music Maker on my machine. I could piece together some loops and create various music for the game which will be very unlikely to cause copyright issues (especially since they're used for non-commercial purposes, and they're not "songs" but rather loops you manually put together into your own tracks). I've started using MAGIX created music on some Twitch streams without issue so far. And MAGIX has some nice music-score loops and FX which would work well for a medieval-style game like Saving Wallden.

 

It will cost me a little bit of money to do, but not that much (probably $50 tops in total). I'm considering this route because music was supposed to play a big role in the game. Please let me know what you think.

As a side note, I hope to be able to slowly get back into Wallden development in March, and more so in April. I can't promise anything though.

Edited February 22 by Arelyel

[Guest]

Alright, I think MAGIX might work out very well. In fact this may have been for the better because by creating my own loops / segments, I can create music pieces to sync with whatever is going on in the game at the time, thus making it flow better.

Here is a demonstration... the glitch mini-wizard was one of those modes which is heavily music-based because the table is supposed to glitch-out to the beat of the music. I made new music for the mode and modified the behavior accordingly: https://wallden.pdstig.me/pg/galleries/video/wallden_video_teasers/updated-glitch-mini?wide=1

It may be a little hard to tell at first, but about 30 seconds into the mode, the flippers start glitching out. At first, both inlanes pulse red periodically to give the player a warning that the flippers will pulse to the beat of the music on the next measure. Later on when the jackpot doubles, the inlanes flash orange, which at this point the flipper buttons are reversed for about 15 seconds. Then it goes back to pulsing the flippers again, this time alternating between the left and right flipper instead of both at the same time. Adds a unique challenge and atmosphere to the mode, I think.

The glitch mini-wizard BTW is accomplished when you try to exceed the maximum bonus multiplier; you "glitch" the table.

Also a bonus: the ball gets stuck in the bumpers in the end for a while lol. When the table goes dead, I keep the blue bumper alive because otherwise balls can get stuck against the bumper and drop target rubber. I may later decide to keep all 3 bumpers active.

Please let me know what you think.

Edited February 24 by Arelyel

[PIPAllah]

2 hours ago, Arelyel said:

Alright, I think MAGIX might work out very well. In fact this may have been for the better because by creating my own loops / segments, I can create music pieces to sync with whatever is going on in the game at the time, thus making it flow better.

Here is a demonstration... the glitch mini-wizard was one of those modes which is heavily music-based because the table is supposed to glitch-out to the beat of the music. I made new music for the mode and modified the behavior accordingly: https://wallden.pdstig.me/pg/galleries/video/wallden_video_teasers/updated-glitch-mini?wide=1

It may be a little hard to tell at first, but about 30 seconds into the mode, the flippers start glitching out. At first, both inlanes pulse red periodically to give the player a warning that the flippers will pulse to the beat of the music on the next measure. Later on when the jackpot doubles, the inlanes flash orange, which at this point the flipper buttons are reversed for about 15 seconds. Then it goes back to pulsing the flippers again, this time alternating between the left and right flipper instead of both at the same time. Adds a unique challenge and atmosphere to the mode, I think.

The glitch mini-wizard BTW is accomplished when you try to exceed the maximum bonus multiplier; you "glitch" the table.

Also a bonus: the ball gets stuck in the bumpers in the end for a while lol. When the table goes dead, I keep the blue bumper alive because otherwise balls can get stuck against the bumper and drop target rubber. I may later decide to keep all 3 bumpers active.

Please let me know what you think.

Peace,

 

Very innovative.  I'd be happy to play that table.  You got skills.

[Guest]

6 hours ago, PIPAllah said:

Peace,

 

Very innovative.  I'd be happy to play that table.  You got skills.

Thanks! A lot of the magic is in the queue system I wrote a while back. It would require a lot of timers and code to do these kinds of things otherwise without it. I can do a whole bunch of things using only one timer with the queue system.

https://gitlab.com/PDStig/vpin-workshop-scripts/-/blob/main/vpwQueue.vbs?ref_type=heads

The screenshot attached is most of the code (plus a few lines down) controlling the lights, the flipper pulsing, etc. during the mini wizard.

Edited February 25 by Arelyel

[PIPAllah]

8 hours ago, Arelyel said:

Thanks! A lot of the magic is in the queue system I wrote a while back. It would require a lot of timers and code to do these kinds of things otherwise without it. I can do a whole bunch of things using only one timer with the queue system.

https://gitlab.com/PDStig/vpin-workshop-scripts/-/blob/main/vpwQueue.vbs?ref_type=heads

The screenshot attached is most of the code (plus a few lines down) controlling the lights, the flipper pulsing, etc. during the mini wizard.

Peace,

 

I hope this is for the community because your high science is wasted on me.  I can barely script Pup Packs.  I don't know the first thing about programming tables.  All I know is the concept was dope, the table was shaking, and the lady with the cool British accent made the the whole thing come together.  I don't know how you did what you did.  All I can say is what you've done so far is the Chronic.

[Guest]

The table is still very early in development and probably will be for several years due to my busy schedule. But I'm hoping to put out an alpha version soon so others can play around with it. This table used to have a PUP Pack, but I lost it in a file transfer malfunction and decided not to recreate it (for now) due to how much time it was taking me on PUP alone. I'm open for others to make a PUP pack for the table though if they wish.