The Post-Apocalyptic Society Collab (AKA Apocollab)

[MyNameIsKooky]

Hello, and welcome to 2023's Wonderland Endeavors collab project! Let's all make something great together!

The deadline for submissions is not decided at this time. It might be at least a year or two from now. I need a very long break after the Wondertown Coup Collab, and the only reason I'm posting this topic now is because I'm about to move my computer halfway across the country and don't want to lose this document. (Yes, I don't feel like backing this up.)

-=- THE PROMPT -=-

Your adventure should satisfy at least one of the following prompts.

PROMPT A:

Your adventure should include the player's attempted integration into a post-apocalyptic society. The society must somehow be destroyed by the end of the adventure.

The apocalypse's nature is left up to the interpretation of the adventure creator. Feel free to go wild by including any sort of apocalypse you want.

PROMPT B:

Your adventure should include the player's attempt to stop an apocalypse. The player must fail to stop the apocalypse by the end of the adventure.

The apocalypse's nature is left up to the interpretation of the adventure creator. Feel free to go wild by including any sort of apocalypse you want.

-=- HOW TO PARTICIPATE -=-

Create an adventure. Any adventures that satisfy the prompt will be included as mandatory content in the hub. The hub will likely be mostly linear, with an overarching story connecting different entries to each other in a sequential fashion. You can also contribute "bonus adventures" that don't follow the prompt and aren't necessarily relevant to the hub's story. These bonus adventures will usually be optional in the hub. The player will likely need to use spare coins to access the bonus content.

Credit yourself somewhere in your adventure's intro screen. This will let players know who made each adventure. Aside from that, the adventure title and description can be anything you want.

When your adventure is finished, send it to me privately somehow. A private message on PCPuzzle works, or you can privately send it to me on Discord. When the hub is finished, this private content will finally become public, and everyone will be blown away! It is common for me to ask people to revise parts of their adventures (usually just some difficulty tweaks or reducing tedium) so please be open to that.

-=- DESIGN PRINCIPLES -=-

BE GENTLE!!! Please prioritize a fun experience rather than an extremely difficult or tedious experience. Many different people have sent me collab entries in the past that had incredibly difficult action sections which required immense precision and allowed practically no room for player error. Playing through that stuff (prior to revisions) was often a dreadful experience. There's nothing wrong with an adventure being challenging, but it still needs to be fun. There is a point where an adventure is so difficult that it's frustrating instead of fun.

BE GENTLE!!! Less is more when it comes to designing a puzzle. Making extremely difficult or intimidating puzzles has always been a staple of the WA community, but Wonderland Endeavors is not the best place for that. While very difficult puzzles can exist in Wonderland Endeavors, they would best exist as optional content.

Try to minimize tedium. If possible, try to minimize repetitive time-consuming actions required by the player.

-=- WHAT CUSTOM CONTENT IS ALLOWED? -=-

OpenWA's modded content is allowed. The latest version of OpenWA will be used. After some discussion, many have agreed that it would be best to move forward with allowing modded content in Wonderland Endeavors. This includes modded gameplay elements, modded CMDs, and more.

Custom music, custom models, and custom textures are allowed.

Custom accessories for Stinker NPCs are allowed. Yes, this is vanilla-compatible!

You must correspond with me if you want to use custom icons. Hubs are only allowed to use a single icon set, so I'll need to assign you a range of icon IDs if you want to use custom icons. To get that set up, contact me and tell me how many icons you need. PCPuzzle DMs or Discord are both fine.

Use gates/keys version #1. Similar to icons, there can only be one gate/key set throughout the hub. Whatever the hub uses will override what you set in the adventure.

-=- OTHER STUFF TO BE AWARE OF -=-

Do not put optional coin tollgates or optional dialog FNC 4s in your adventure. This is because collecting all coins will be necessary to access all postgame content, and optional coin spending could lead to permanent loss of coins. Tollgates and FNC 4s that the player needs to pass through no matter what are fine, though.

Try not to let the player take any keys out of the adventure. This could be used to exploit later adventures in the hub.

If there are any custom items that the player can take out of the adventure, you must use correspond with me to choose specific Fn Ids. In order to prevent Fn Id overlap with other adventures, I'll need to assign you a range of Fn Ids. To get that set up, contact me and tell me how many custom items you're planning to let the player take out of the adventure. PCPuzzle DMs or Discord are both fine.

Any additional custom items that the player retrieves when "Floinging back in time" into an adventure will not be kept by the player upon finishing the adventure. Only custom items that the player collects during their first playthrough of the adventure will stay in their inventory.

-=- GLITCH POLICY -=-

Wonderland Endeavors' stance on glitches varies depending on the glitch. The general policy is "don't require use of them unless you have a good reason". This helps ensure that content is accessible to new players. Many players have gotten their first exposure to custom Wonderland Adventures content through past Wonderland Endeavors collabs. However, I'm willing to be slightly more lenient with this rule for bonus adventures, since they're not mandatory content, but I still may request revisions on a case-by-case basis.

If a puzzle requires an obscure glitch to solve, that glitch should generally be the focal point of the puzzle.

The following glitches are entirely off-limits in Wonderland Endeavors:

1. Changing direction after hitting a wall on a Brr pad. Successfully performing this exploit is often inconsistent, and thus annoying. It rarely also leads to good or interesting puzzles.
2. Casting Floing on a Brr pad to preserve it when walking onto the Brr pad. This one was somewhat popular in the early WA3E days, but it's rather obtuse. When I solve a larger puzzle using this trick, it sometimes feels like cheating, even if it's intended.
3. Casting magic while walking onto a Glovecharger. This is a very obscure subset of the "casting magic while walking" glitch.
4. Inconsistent Scritter/crab corner behaviors. Walking diagonally into a Scritter that's in a northeast corner will make it move diagonally outwards. Walking diagonally into a Scritter that's in a southeast corner will not make it move diagonally outwards. Puzzles should not rely on the player taking advantage of this oddity. On a tangential note, the player needing to rely on Scritter/crab RNG in general is a no-no.
5. Any glitches that require inventory exploitation or save file exploitation. This is probably common sense.
6. Q-spelling through a solid wall. This is common sense.
7. Using Floing bubbles to make permanent walls by transitioning between wlvs. Ew ew ew.

The following glitches are discouraged but not entirely disallowed in Wonderland Endeavors. If a glitch in this list is not the focal point of a small puzzle, don't use it:

1. Casting magic into yourself while walking. This is another trick that's finnicky to pull off. I'm on the verge of putting it into the "entirely off-limits" section of glitches, but it's been used in a few interesting ways recently.

The following glitches are entirely allowed in Wonderland Endeavors:

1. Casting magic while flying from a spring or suction tube. People still seem to use this a lot nowadays, and it's fun to play as well.
2. Casting magic while sliding on ice. This one's a bit more annoying since it's easy to hit yourself, but I'll allow it.

If you are unsure about whether a specific glitch I didn't list here can be used, feel free to ask.

-=- FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS -=-

How long should my adventure be? You can make your adventure as long or as short as you want. If your energy levels are low, you could make a small entry that's one .wlv long, or even a joke entry. That's perfectly fine. You are also free to submit any bonus adventures that don't satisfy the prompt.

I'm new to using the editor. Can I participate in this? Yes, all skill levels are welcome. In fact, if you're new, then I encourage your participation that much more.

Am I limited to only one adventure? You are allowed to send me multiple entries. Of course, you should only bother with this if it's something you really want to do.

Can I remove the player's Gloves, GlowGem, and/or Spy-Eye during my adventure? Yes, it is possible to do this in Wonderland Endeavors collabs by consuming the item(s) with FNC 5 inside of a dialog. Gloves, GlowGems, and Spy-Eyes will be assigned unique Fnc Ids by the hub: 1001 for Gloves, 1002 for GlowGem, and 1003 for Spy-Eye. Note that this will not seem to work in regular Save+Test mode, since the items given to the player by Wonderland Endeavors hubs are special.

Does this collab feature the same protagonist as any of the previous Wonderland Endeavors collabs? Is it a prequel or a sequel? Um, how am I supposed to know the answer to that when I haven't received all entries at the time of writing??? You should decide what serves your entry the best.

[TwingleTheScraggler]

Do we really have to destroy the society? How about, instead, we focus on what caused the apocalypse.

[MyNameIsKooky]

Do we really have to destroy the society? How about, instead, we focus on what caused the apocalypse.

Maybe. There’s been a lot of discussion about the prompt and people seem to have different ideas about what they want.

Eventually, maybe an agreement will be reached, at which point I will edit the original post to include the new prompt. For now, all that’s clear is “something something apocalypse something something”.

[Jutomi]

My plans should cover apocalypse, post-apocalyptic society, destruction of said society and post-post apocalypse pretty well. And to think I was thinking of doing this for coup of all things...

Note: If I ever actually start work on this it'll be after my hub is done which... yeah GL.

[MyNameIsKooky]

It seems that a consensus has possibly been reached: there are now two prompts that an adventure creator could choose from. See the original post for details.

Meanwhile, on April 30th, I received the first entry.

[MyNameIsKooky]

On June 2nd, I received and played the second Apocollab entry. It's good!!

[Wonderman109]

I have my old SFR "Society" level as a joke entry. But I'm not sure what of substance I could make here without boiling a lot of time into something big (I've forgot almost all command/dialog stuff).

[MyNameIsKooky]

An update: the OpenWA version we're using is now whatever the latest version is. No need to worry about restricting yourself to an older version.

On July 4th, I received the first bonus adventure.

I have my old SFR "Society" level as a joke entry. But I'm not sure what of substance I could make here without boiling a lot of time into something big (I've forgot almost all command/dialog stuff).

Whatever anyone submits doesn't have to be big. It could be something small too. Most submissions so far haven't been very large, which is perfectly fine.

[nasko222]

im expecting the matrix reference in this one :DDD

[Jutomi]

Make one. :^)

[nasko222]

didnt thought about that xdxdxx