Forum Challenge Game?

[JellySlayer]

Been thinking it was about time to start up a new forum challenge game, and I wanted to solicit ideas about what people might be interested in (assuming there is interest at all).

I guess the most recent big challenge game was AdomPossible in 2014. This was a team, mission based challenge where teams ran multiple characters having to complete various objectives "Find an artifact; Kill Gaab'Baay" for points. I like the format, though in the most recent implementation, some people ended up getting stuck playing really long turns to catch up when they started to fall behind. I was thinking that exploration mode (or even story mode) might help resolve some of these issues in one way or other, maybe open up some more interesting possibilities for missions/rewards/whatever as well.

A few years back we did a couple of head-to-head competitions between players in a ladder system, where you'd play a couple of rounds diving in the ID and try to outlast an opponent. ID runs may be a bit repetitive these days, although it's possible we could spice this up using some of the "Challenge of the Week" characters that have access to vaults and other fun stuff.

Even longer ago was the The Weakest Link that sort of kicked off the competitive challenge games AFAIK, where a group of ~6 people all played a single character in the ID, and tried to outlast each other similar to the Duel to the Death above, except with a larger group.

Of course, if people have other ideas, we can always do something else...

Other thing to think about is version compatibility. Latest public release is r60, IIRC, but it would probably be nice to encourage the Steam crowd to play, so r64 for them. r65 seems fairly unstable, IMHO, so I don't think that one should be used. r60 and 64 aren't compatible with each other, but if we do a Weakest Link/AdomPossible type thing, we can at least have Steam teams and a public teams.

Thoughts? Ideas? Suggestions?

[Soirana]

I was thinking that exploration mode (or even story mode) might help

I don't really see a reason why these should be deployed. You can plow through anything in story mode through reloads...

A few years back we did a couple of head-to-head competitions between players
..."Challenge of the Week" characters that have access to vaults and other fun stuff.

I thought everyone got fed up with ID runs. Personally I o not like heat-to-head too much. I find that "Challenge of the Week" often being rather dull (90% of time).

Even longer ago

Wiki has an article on challenge games. If it has any inaccuracies or stuff needed to be add, it would be nice to know.

Other thing to think about is version compatibility. Latest public release is r60, IIRC, but it would probably be nice to encourage the Steam crowd to play, so r64 for them. r65 seems fairly unstable, IMHO

R65 is not on Steam, it is donors only so clearly no go. Steam layer does not have really any other option (well, I guess they can have separate non-steam installation, but I doubt anyone would do that), but to use r64, IIRC, rolling back to previous versions is not an option on Steam. Any r64 save won't load on older versions (r60 save would work on Steam).
This essentially means non-steam players can't play with steam guys if file sharing i s needed. (r61 to r64 don't have non steam versions at all, even for donors I believe).

Thoughts? Ideas? Suggestions?

I suggest to use something which does not involve file sharing (or ask/wait for proper public release).
Example of not shared game could be:
Zodiac runners -- using UD dives instead of ID. Basically a team (with loose number of participants) has to make a SMC/UD/HMV run with character for each race (we have 12 now). Since there are 20+classes some tier system will be needed (for example splitting in four tiers and then either letting to choose 3 classes from each ter, or one from each tier and when picking from top tier means, forced pick from lowest, picking from second means picking from third and so on...).
Team would be freely allowed to combine race/class/month as they wish.
Team with most successful runners win.

It is not most exciting thing, but does not involve file sharing (on the other hand teams can be allowed to pass the save, if player thinks he is in too tight spot) and does not command too much involvement (IIRC, most of challenge games suffred from drop outs, lost of interest, ...)

[pjsb1]

I like the idea of another forum challenge game, we might actually be able to use crowd mode even (although I don't really know how it works). I haven't had a chance to do a forum challenge game yet as I hadn't regularly checked (I often only checked when a big release came out) the forums until the past year or so.

[Maul]

I honestly think we should do another Weakest Link, that was the funnest challenge game ever to grace the ADOM forums.

[Maul]

So... no more responses? Is the board pretty much dead? If so, that's a shame. I mean, I'd be willing to even start and manage a Weakest Link, or any other challenge game desired, if that's what's needed to get things rolling, but I am worried that there might be too little interest. Or is it the divided status of the ADOM community (i.e. Steam version vs. traditional direct-downloadable public prerelease) that's the reason behind the so little activity? Or would everyone come out of the woodwork once something actually got rolling?

[pjsb1]

It was probably because it was a holiday weekend and monday. Some people check the forums once a week, I think there will be enough interest, especially if we also post to the steam forums.

[Soirana]

It was probably because it was a holiday weekend and monday. Some people check the forums once a week, I think there will be enough interest, especially if we also post to the steam forums.

I would bet that for steam players xcom2 and adom playerbase slightly intersect too. I posted message on steam forums just to check the potential activity.

Re: savegames. I think Adompossible type could work if people within a team play same version.

[Cactus]

I'll be happy to play another challenge game.
For me, something like ADOMPossible would be perfect, because I'd prefer to play together with teammates rather than against each other. But we'd need someone to design missions as masterfully as JellySlayer did last time. A simple ID challenge is of course much easier to run.

[Blasphemous]

Whatever it is or going to be - yes from me.

[Blank4u47]

Whatever it is or going to be - yes from me.

Same here. I think latest steam version should be used though, so we can have more people involved.