19 réponses à ce sujet

[M. Rieder]

So the end is in sight.  You have spent months, perhaps years working on your module or campaign and you are finally nearing the last few scenes or the last monumental battle.  The temptation to hurry and cut corners can be enormous.  How do you deal with it, or do you even face that temptation?

[Shaughn78]

Take it slow, a minor glitches at the end are very bad things.

Take the time to do it right, double and triple check it. With this much time already invested what is a bit more.

[Lugaid of the Red Stripes]

Just call it a beta, take a small break, and then go back and fix all the bugs and add in all the bits and pieces you left out.

[kamal_]

Resist the temptation or your will get off to a bad start of votes and comments. Plus seeing lots of bugs reported will annoy you.

[M. Rieder]

Hey, thanks for all the encouragement. I wansn't very clear in my initial post, I fear. I have not started the final playtesting or bug checking/correction. I am still in the initial build of the last few minutes of play. I was wondering if anyone has any special techniques to keep their ideas fresh all the way to the end. I want to make sure that the story doesn't go flat at the end, but I also don't want to smother the player with the dialogue wall of death or puzzle them to death.

[kamal_]

You should have outlined the basics of the plot and major things to for the player to face. If you follow that things will go smoothly. If you think you're out of ideas, you can always do bugtesting for awhile until the ol' brain gets some ideas.

[Lugaid of the Red Stripes]

I second kamalpoe, you need a bit of a break for your creative bits to rest and get re-inspired. In addition to bug-testing and polishing, you can work on a few side-quests or flush out some unimportant conversations. With the side-quests, there's less pressure on yourself to be brilliant, so it's easier to play around with ideas and get yourself excited again. You might just need to play a different kind of game for a while, though, or watch some movies.

After a certain point in the plot, though, your characters should be driving the plot forward for you. Just think about them, how they are reacting to the whole situation, and what they need to do or have done to them before everything is over. Then you just have to find a way for the player to have a hand in those events or reactions. At this point, it's more about doing justice to the story and giving it a decent ending, the player's already had their fill of different quests and puzzles.

[foil-]

I don't think you are alone at all. Lots of movies and books fail near the end when the author faces the horrible block of how to end months/years of pouring everything into their creation.

I personally like endings that have a mix of tragedy and hope. The tragedy wasn't meaningless and feeds the hope. Characters show strong reaction to the tragedy but use it to feed their hope.

Too strong one way or the other turns me off. Although for myself, I prefer an author that errors on the side of happy ending. These doom and gloom / ironic endings that are so popular these days are a turnoff for me.

Maybe drafting several endings on paper before committing to the actual module work is the way to handle a sense of rush. You feel like you are accomplishing something quickly but aren't committing to any one idea or ending. Sleep on them for a while and once you find the one that really strikes a chord, you may be more inclined to take that perfect ending slowly. I think trying to make a perfect ending in the first pass is where many authors fall down. They are committed to one idea or story and are not able to throw it out even though the story leading up to it has changed or evolved.

Interesting topic by the way

[Shallina]

Making a remake free you from all those worry....

The blank sheet problem : Damn what's next I have no idea ? is really one big stopper LOL.

[The Fred]

M. Rieder wrote...
How do you deal with it, or do you even face that temptation?

Many more things fail at the start because people are overambitious with their projects. Personally I'm not even at the demo stage yet. 

[M. Rieder]

This is all very good advice and is helping. I'm making an effort to pace myself, to take some time to do other things to let my mind relax, and to try to let things flow naturally based on the characters and plot so far.

[Claudius33]

I personally enjoy the moment when  I write the very last conversation wich ends the mod and give credits. As I am probably the poorest tester of my own creations, I use a 3 weeks delay between the final point of the the last convo and the release to do a last full run.

Since there is always one last bug or one last unanticipated player's behaviour, I release the campaign folder with a collection a debug scripts (jump a to way point, fire convo, update global/ local variables, resurrect a character , move a character to a waypoint...), to quicly give to a blocked player a bypass thru the console.

[Kaldor Silverwand]

I think I am more likely to have interior areas that are less decorated as I get toward the end. I've thought about changing my development order around a bit so that I don't develop the ending areas last, that way if there is a slight drop in quality it occurs in middle areas rather than at the finish.

[M. Rieder]

Kaldor Silverwand wrote...

I think I am more likely to have interior areas that are less decorated as I get toward the end. I've thought about changing my development order around a bit so that I don't develop the ending areas last, that way if there is a slight drop in quality it occurs in middle areas rather than at the finish.

I can really relate to that.  It is hard to take your time and mull over an area and add little trinkets and books and various items of interest when you know you are only a few weeks out.  The last area I have to build is an interior, by the way...

[kamal_]

When you're "done", you're often really not done. At least for me, many things wind up being uneven in polish levels. I tend to make multiple passes over things, putting in basics, building up, detail/polish, sometimes repeat the detail/polish. When I'm "done" and testing, I can discover things where I didn't give the same amount of attention I gave other things, maybe I totally forgot to do lighting in an area.

The other thing to look for when you're "done" is inconsistency. Like you decided all mapnotes for quests would be green, except for the ones you made red... Or the estate of the lord everyone says is incredibly rich doesn't look "rich". Or an area just looks terrible compared to the others you've built.

[Clyordes]

As someone above said - remakes = no blank page problems. Since I tend to do only remakes of old P&P modules, I can relate to that - I was always much happier modifying someone else's work than trying to make it all up myself.
When it comes to this thread specifically, I always want to get just a bit closer to what the author created - whether its by working on improving a script to get something working a bit better, or trying to get the decor in a room just a bit more detailed & closer to the P&P room description - I love those old TSR modules!
By the time I'm getting toward the end of a project, I've usually worked through hours of testing, bug noting and bug fixing along the way, and there's not usually that much left to do apart from the last few encounters (I tend to conveniently forget about the full run through testing until I've finished all areas & encounters).
By this point, the end of the project is usually shining like a distant lantern on stormy light - enticing me nearer & I start to find myself increasing the hours I'm putting in the closer to finishing I get.
My hardest point seems to be when I'm in the early stages rather than at the end - finding the enthusiasm to put down DOW2 or FreeFalcon & embark on another big trip into the toolset - I always find the daunting thought of everything I need to do like a bit of a mountain that I need to scale before I get into the swing & I'm away. Am I alone in that?

Probably why I'm sat writing all this instead of starting my next jaunt!! (The Pool of Standing Stones - another short White Dwarf dungeon bash adventure that will lead on from Lichway)

Cly.

[The Fred]

kamal_ wrote...
When you're "done", you're often really not done. At least for me, many things wind up being uneven in polish levels.

I agree. One thing I'm not so hot on is area creation - mostly because it just takes ages. My areas tend to be relatively bare, and as I go back over them I add things in to make them look a bit more "lived in" (or as "un-lived-in" as possible, depending on the area). I expect that if I ever got to the almost-finished stage for anything, I'd need to go back over and add a lot of polish to pretty much everything.

Shallina wrote...
The blank sheet problem : Damn what's next I have no idea ?

Personally I have the complete opposite problem. After my current work is done, and the secret work after that, I have a Celtic/post-Roman/pagan Britain mod to do, a Norse mod, and possibly a Roman-esq mod or a Maztica-esq mod. Also my mysterious stranded-alone-on-an-island mod.

[kamal_]

The Fred wrote...
Personally I have the complete opposite problem. After my current work is done, and the secret work after that, I have a Celtic/post-Roman/pagan Britain mod to do, a Norse mod, and possibly a Roman-esq mod or a Maztica-esq mod. Also my mysterious stranded-alone-on-an-island mod.

Actually I think this is one of the problems. When you get get close to being done with one module, the annoying detail stuff seems old and busted compared to the new hotness of the next mod, so you start doing a crap job.

Old and busted, new hotness.
www.youtube.com/watch

[bealzebub]

I agree with Clyordes above.
"I was always much happier modifying someone else's work than trying to make it all up myself."
I do much better with the technical side than with the creative side of mod building.
It does get hard near the end of a project. Often I'm already thinking about the next project, and it's hard to force myself to finish what I'm working on before starting something else. And it's equally hard to stop what I'm working on to go back to patch projects I've already released.