Andor's Trail

I just had this random idea... ok.

This game is open source.
The players are able to create maps, quest and dialogs.
The nature of the platform doesn't make things easy for constant updates (might be wrong here) and the devs aren't plants and as such can't work 24x7 for free.

To make it easier for the players to wait between releases and to better integrate everyone and show how hard its to be involved on game development ,I had the idea of small quest to obtain a certain item or just a misteryous hole that whenever the player stepped on it they would be teleported to a dungeon/map created by the community and after it was completed the player would appear out of the hole.

This way, everyone could try/test their ideas/maps with every other player of the game without interrupting or messing with the storyline of the actual game, it could be a group of 5 fixed maps (randomily chosen whenever the player jumped on the hole) and those maps would be changed every 6 weeks or more (depends on how many the community creates and how busy the devs are, a fixed time would be ideal), if there isn't much interest on creating maps the devs wouldn't be the ones to blame for lack of updates as the content would be player driven and from this, there might some great ideas to use on the main game.

Potential good idea !

I like this idea not only would we get an update at least twice a year it gives beginners a chance to try out their map making skills. The cool thing is that there have been many different posts on the forums about a tower or a hole with monsters that progressively get harder and harder for an end game add on. Maybe we can take the top rated user created maps and add them into the dungeon. The only problem is that someone would have to drop the update every couple weeks, months, quarterly, etc. We could have the maps voted on here in the forum that would drive more players to the forum.

Well, this really sounds like it comes from a gentle feeling. However, I see two HUGE obstacles:
- If we had more maps coming from different players, they would already be integrated in the game, if they are of high-enough quality to be worth playing. In the last 6 months, I have seen maps from only three people (two of them being the usual map-makers, only one new community member).
- Integrating these in a new release rather often would mean spending more time managing releases, and less time making AT evolve; while fetching these from an online source means adding network-related capabilities (thus requirements) to the app: no.

Last point and least, adding and removing maps between release can break saves: if a player saves while on a map, and tries to reload his saves in a new release that does not have this map, the game refuses to load the saves.

However, one can imagine building small "DLCs" for AT, based on the engine, but with a new short content. It could even be compatible with the current saves (some code hacking required !) both ways (load from AT in DLC, save in DLC, load in AT again), but that would require the "DLC" to use even more hacks to have its own save state...
I think a dedicated person with the right knowledge could pull a small, independent app with stand-alone content in a pair of weeks, considering 10hrs/day of work 7/7.
That much effort would be better spent creating content for inclusion in the real AT !

I didn't even think of the save feature. I guess that is one of the disadvantages to being able to save wherever you want. I was actually hoping that something like this would encourage more people to try their hand at making maps (even if they aren't very good at it) to add more content.