The Making Of: Ponr (point Of No Return)

[Spoiler Warning - This thread has many Point of No Return Spoilers]

So this is something I’ve wanted to make for a long time now and what time’s better than quarantine, right?

Ponr was originally the first quest that I worked on since the beginning of the update cycle (It was called Rtd Side Quest and the earliest mention I could find of it was January, 11th 2019). The quest only released on November, 25th though (Late *cough* after beta started)

Point of No Return is a Phantom of the Opera song and I plan to make every quest I make a musical theatre reference… If the update released today A Journey Beyond would 100% be called Into the Unknown btw.

Ok so the reason why I made this thread was to show the many versions Ponr had before it’s release (Cause making each and every puzzle for that quest was a big pain so no I’m not gonna just leave them)

The Sound Maze

Yes this was a really bad idea, and yes Grian had to test it and yes I think he hates me now that this quest is done cause he had to test so many hard puzzles

This was the first puzzle I came up with and it’d be 100% sound based, the sounds would guide you through a maze, if you were going on the right way it’d make a cool beep sound and if you hit a wall it’d make a bad villager noise. We actually made a prototype for this one so you can check out the video.



From here you can already tell that this quest’s gonna have a long update cycle, anyway. Next removed puzzle.

The 2nd Maze (Crystal maze)


This maze would be guided by firework lines http://prntscr.com/ryeba1

They’d tell you where to go to find these crystals http://prntscr.com/ryebtk

The crystals would open these doors http://prntscr.com/ryec9t

Each crystal color would open a different door and that was the big trick, the biggest challenge was knowing which crystal to disable/enable to get to the exit (In the dark) - This puzzle actually worked and was designed by the awesome @Valaerys but it felt too disconnected from the quest’s lore.

The beginning of parkour challenges

http://prntscr.com/ryefb5 This was a small timed parkour challenge, the platforms would disappear and you had to quickly get to the top

http://prntscr.com/ryeg05 This was basically the same thing but the platform movement was random, not linear so it was harder

And after all of that we came to the first challenge that actually went in-game, the most memorable one too, the blood trail http://prntscr.com/ryegyx

Yes it used to go up originally.

The original switching souls puzzle

So this video I’m about to show you is from March, 9th 2019. This was the first switching soul scene I had and the first time I included the soul in Ponr, before that I had no idea what to do and from that I got a good general direction.



After that cutscene we had the first switching souls room. Same concept, only design changed (If you think this is near it’s ending we’re not halfway there yet)

http://prntscr.com/ryf80v

The invisible maze that actually went in-game but not this version

This was when the quest you see in-game started getting its final shape and this was still early 2019.

http://prntscr.com/ryejwc

Note that the entire quest had a really claustrophobic feel to it, it was all set in small rooms.

I came up with this for the beginning of the quest after thinking of the soul idea. The player would leave Lutho and come right to the top of this maze as the first puzzle in the quest, they’d see their soul running away and when the soul completed the maze they’d get tped down and have around 15secs to complete the maze themselves or they’d get tped back up to see the cutscene again until they learned the path and got to the end of it in time.

Eyeless and more blood trails

This was right after the maze http://prntscr.com/ryeo4p and it was literally the same thing as in the final version, the soul’s there standing still and when you right click these eyeless mobs appear, they become aggressive and once u kill them a blood trail appears.

Fun fact about the eyeless mobs, I forgot to and never actually balanced them so what you fight in the current quest are some random mob I stole from Imaxe that throws melons. (I don’t think anyone noticed that yet lol)

The first switching sides parkour

I remember spending so many hours on this one… Basically it’s the same concept as the last parkour in Ponr’s parkour room but every time you stepped on the same pressure plate a new platform would appear, it was 100% linear so you couldn’t choose which platform to step on, you just had to keep switching to go up. http://prntscr.com/ryf8w1

The interactive soul

So on the current version of the quest due to system limitations the soul doesn’t actually go along with you but we made a test version of a puzzle with CMDs, it was really simple and you just had to push a block. I thought the concept was too limited though to explore more puzzle concepts with it so never really used it a lot more.

Here’s a video of it though.



(I forgot to use the texture pack btw so yeah it’s just a floating head but it looks cool in the dark)

Did you think that was the last maze? Haha

http://prntscr.com/ryfj16

This maze had doors for the soul and doors for the player, both had to step on the same colored platform on their own side of the room to open the door for the other. Doors and platforms had different patterns so you had to go back and forth to get both to the ending

http://prntscr.com/ryfjzv

(This won’t be the last time you’ll see this concept, it almost went in-game)


Flying puzzle

This is the fly minigame you currently see in the quest but this version had lag issues and system limitations because we designed it to work with minecraft’s levitation potion but that didn’t work so we had to remake the puzzle in the new quest design and with a new system.

http://prntscr.com/ryfmgu

The last old Ponr design puzzle

This was a different version of the soul switching parkour, this was an easier linear version to teach the player about the switching souls parkour mechanic with different platforms.

http://prntscr.com/ryfo3h

When you got to the top you can see a hole up there, that was a small tunnel with the running souls, that tunnel would lead to the complicated version of the platform parkour.

http://prntscr.com/ryfqr2

This version is the same minigame you currently see in the game in a different room.


The final design

With so many puzzle concepts I had to figure out a way of connecting them and make an understandable “your soul’s going away” progression. Originally, the soul would get an even darker skin in the middle of the quest to represent that it was going away but that didn’t work well with the vanta and ended up not being needed.

So I tried this bigger endless looking room design that worked really well fortunately so we kept that and I had to remake every puzzle in that new location (Yay I love this quest)

This tunnel in the beginning of the quest only exists because the running souls used to be here, but we removed them and moved them to the ending http://prntscr.com/ryfufj

The current invisible maze used to be way longer, I made it shorter like 2 weeks before release.

We removed an entire puzzle (this - http://prntscr.com/ryfw3h) 1 week before release because there was too many puzzles and this was really hard and frustrating. (Rip Grian testing this) It was basically the same door puzzle where both had to step on the same colored door to open the different doors and get to the exit (http://prntscr.com/ryfxgm)

This went to beta, the flying section used to be way harder, hitting a platform would instantly reset the entire puzzle making it really frustrating. We nerfed it for the noobs though.

That’s it

So yeah it was a really long quest process and it was a really trial and error quest but in the end it was worth it cause we found the best puzzles that connected really well to the quest’s story.

When I wasn’t a CT member I really liked getting insight into quest making and while this isn’t anything like making a “normal” quest I hope something here can help aspiring GMs. (Don’t make fetch stages *cough* - Don’t tell players to get items for no reason, thanks)

If u have any questions about quest making in general or if you're curious about something in the quest, feel free to ask. <3

So yeah that’s it. Bye nerds <3 and cute quint!

 

dondondondondondondondondondondondondondon

EH HUE EH HUE HUH EH HNNGH EH HUE EH





point of no return

 

Also some videos with the making of Ajb for y'all

This was me showing the CT the flight mechanics in AJb, the first version didn't go live, the 2nd one is pretty much the one in live

 

......

 

Get that Frozen shit away from me

 

Dare you leak the nature of CT
You'll have more -game night- from Salted

 

Soul part more like trying to cheese it for hours with pandemonium

 

this is epic pepo! epic quest! i love so much