Overview
This guide shows users how to create their own challenges, setting their own rules and renown/score requirements, and putting the information into a format suitable for use in the Steam Forums as well as creating a template which the Challenge Team can then use to record results, update and build prior to public use; and then rapidly give both results and analysis of the results.
Introduction
This guide is designed for players who have enjoyed the Community Challenges and wish to be involved in creating their own challenges – or involved with the process of creating them, at the least!
The full process will still involve the Community Challenge Group – they will be editing, balancing and tweaking suggestions made with the Challenge Generator tool below and then running them using the template it creates.
This is a Google Sheets link where the various bits of information can be adjusted to suit the preferences of the individual.
Link here: – Click for the latest Generator
To create the basic rules and setup for a challenge, you need only use the ‘Data Page’ tab of the sheets (the default opening one) – the rest is for those running it later (don’t edit these if you want them to be usable by the Challenge Team!)
Basic Google Sheets Info
To use the Generator, you will require a Google Account. These can be obtained on www.google.com (or local country equivalent).
Once you are signed into a Google Account, you will be able to access the link in the Introduction and gain access to it.
However, the linked page will be protected against editing – you will not be able to change anything on it – this is because you will want to design your own challenge: go to the File menu at the top, then ‘Make a Copy’, select where you’d like to save your personal copy, and don’t tick the ‘Share with the Same People’ button.
When you do this, a new page will open with your private copy. This version will be possible to edit as you wish – and this is the one that will become your personal Challenge. I recommend immediately changing the name to something suitable for your Challenge Concept.
The challenge will also be added to your Google Sheets, so that anytime you wish to access it from any computer, you need only login to your gmail account and access google sheets and you will be able to see it there.
I also recommend immediately doing the following:
- Go to the tab at the bottom where it says ‘Data Page’ and right click
- Hit ‘Protect Sheet’
- Along the side a new side-bar will open. It’ll offer options like naming a range and offer range or sheets, etc. Go straight past these to the ‘Set Permissions’ button and press it.
- A new window will then open offering to set permissions. This allows you to select people who can change details on the sheet. In general, I’d recommend only giving yourself access, but if you work in collaboration with anyone else, you may wish to include others at this point.
- Once you’re selected yourself (and anyone else you wish to give access), hit ‘Set Permissions’
- You’ve now got your own, private Challenge Generater page all set up and ready to adapt as you wish, and no one but yourself (or anyone you allow access) will be able to change it, even if you later share access in order to share your challenge with others.
Do this process each time you wish to create a new challenge so that you don’t overwrite the previous one.
Should you wish to, as the sheet’s owner, you (or anyone given the full access) are also the only person who can choose to delete the file later (Go to File menu, ‘Move to Trash’, then confirm).
When you wish to share your masterpiece (or want assistance with progressing it!), you may click the ‘Share’ button on the top right of the screen (when looking at your sheet) and the options will offer one of two ways – either you can share by emailing directly; (which will also limit access to any kind of editing to those you’ve shared it with) or by creating a link.
In general, if you’ve followed the Protecting your Sheet process above, you can share a link freely without any issues, allowing you to put it up on the Steam forums – the only times you might prefer email access is when you’re collaborating with another person to create challenges prior to sharing it across a wider group.
Note: View Personal Security for details about sharing personal information below.
Obviously, this does use your own gmail account. If you own a shared sheet, anyone with access will be able to see your public details on your gmail account.
Bear this in mind if you are planning to collaborate on the forums or the like – you may prefer to setup a seperate gmail account to do so to preserve your anominity if you mean to do this a lot, though again, the only thing shared is the email and pseudonom itself – it’s up to you whether to use it or not.
Data Page: Standard rules
This section covers the basic information which you can edit to your liking using the Challenge Generator ‘Data Page’ – bear in mind that other alternatives may be available, but you will have to ask the Challenge Team directly for alternatives, as they will require additional work – and it may be easier to find work-arounds within the Challenge Generator itself.
Note that all these rules are set to the default setting: entirely open-ended options with the normal Challenge Rules applied – you need only change any particulars to suit your individual challenge’s requirements.
Also note that any Medal Limitations used on the sheet are the minimum medal level possible: if any other rule defines a lower minimum for that entry, the end result will reduce the medal down: just because someone has achieved a ‘Platinum’ level renown does not mean they will get a Platinum Medal if they don’t meet another Rule’s limits: Whichever limit is the lowest is the end medal result, so to get Platinum, an entry must pass all the applicable rules.
You won’t need to edit these – these are for the Challenge Team to set parametres according to the date and number of the challenge being run as a Community Challenge and requirements such as build number – things you needn’t be concerned over!
This section is entirely just for making notes as you wish – the entire Column of A below ‘Notes:’ can be changed without any impact on the rest of the sheet, so feel free to put any comments or details you wish to within this area.
The first section on the sheet defines the medals (as per usual Community Challenges) and the required Thresholds to meet those medal requirements.
There is no need to change the medals themselves – and the requirements to meet those medals are score or renown specific only – additional requirements are dealt with later.
Please only use numbers when setting requirements, and if you are not certain what requirements should be set, it is probably better to leave them as they are – the Challenge Team are experienced with setting these boundaries and are liable to change settings according to how difficult or easy the challenge is judged to be.
This sets what medal limitations are decided by which difficulty an entry is played on. It is standardised to limit medals to Silver if the game is played on Easy or Normal and up to the full Platinum medal for Classic or Impossible difficulty, though if there’s sufficient justification, this can be altered here.
By default, there’s no need to change these settings.
This decides whether or not different main resources (Gold, Status and Research) can limit medals for players. By default, any of the resources are allowed, but if you wish to put a requirement on winning that, for example, Research must be the main resource, you would do so by changing the ‘Limits to medal’ for Status and Gold to ‘(none)’ and leaving Research on ‘Platinum’.
If you wish to simply prohibit Status from being the main resource for your challenge, you need only change Status from ‘Platinum’ to ‘(none)’.
Attitude works in exactly the same manner as Main Resource.
‘Finished?’ declares whether or not the challenge allows entries which ended prematurely. The ‘☑’ symbol indicates that the entry is submitted as standard (probably using the game ending screen as the entry screenshot), while the ‘☐’ symbol indicates that the expeditions finished early and the submission was made with the Records screenshot.
It is set to default to the norm for the Community Challenges – that Platinum and Gold are only possible to achieve by completing the 5 expeditions and returning triumphant; while premature endings can only achieve Silver medals at best (provided all other requirements are still met!)
This decides which crew members can be allowed as Captains for this Challenge. The default setting is to allow all captains, but most challenges will have some restrictions.
Any captains who are not allowed at all should be changed to ‘(none)’ on the limitations; while any that are allowed but may not achieve full Platinums (perhaps because they have an unfair advantage) should be changed to suit a relevant medal (usually Gold or Silver); but in most cases, captains are either allowed completely or disallowed completely to avoid uneccesary complexity!
These are similar to the captains section, and may be restricted in a similar manner. If the crew options are open-ended for each crew-member, ensure that both Crew Member settings are identical.
From this point onwards, you may set up to 9 custom rules in addition. See the ‘Custom Rules’ section below for details on how to do this.
Data Page: Custom Rules
These are rules set individually for your challenge that do not use the standard data rules which are required by all entries regardless (see Data Page:Standard Rules above).
This section involves greater control and more consideration to set, so ensure you complete it fully:
- First, set in cell S1 (the red cell) how many rules you wish to set as custom rules. You can change this at any stage later, but the amount must be correct and matching the total you enter by the end or the Challenge Sheet will not function correctly when used for Results later!
- In Row 2 under S1, you will see headers for each rule – you may put a title for each rule in, and next to it (provided you’ve completed the Number of Rules correctly!), you’ll see ‘Limits to medal’ appear.
- Once this is complete, you will see that the columns under row 2 are be divided into pairs – on the left are any options which you may put in for that particular rule – enter however many different results players may achieve in regards to that rule – both successes and failures to meet the rule should be entered (if failure options are open-ended, you may always put a ‘Failed’ option in to summerise all of them)
- With all the different options entered, you may then select whether these results limit the medals a player may achieve. For example: If you have a rule that they must go via Viking Landing as their Starter Island, you could put in the Rule Title as ‘Starter Island’, the options on the left as ‘Viking Landing’, ‘Celtic Code’, or ‘Saxon Kings’, and change Viking Landing’s limits to ‘Platinum’ (indicating that any medal is possible to achieve if they follow that rule) and both of Celtic Code and Saxon Kings to ‘(none)’ to show that neither of those options are valid entries.
Do this for each of your custom rules and you’ll have completed the basic rules set and requirements for your challenge!
Updating the Hall of Fame (after your Challenge!)
Ok, updating the Hall of Fame comes in two parts: Firstly – this part: what you do after you’ve finished your Challenge.
(The other part is what you do to update your own sheet when starting your Challenge – for that, see the relevant section)
So here’s what to do: I recommend opening this guide and following it through each time until you’re doing it all automatically.
This assumes you’ve completed the results, analysis and posted everything on the forums already!
1) Go to your Challenge Sheet, then to the ‘Player List Updater’ sheet.
2) Select the box “A2”, then select across to Column “I” (Players) and down to Row “1002” so you have selected all the entries in the Hall of Fame (updated) list. Copy!
3) Open the “Hall of Fame Updates[docs.google.com]” sheet.
4) Duplicate the Left-Most tab (Challenge template) by right clicking on it then selecting “Duplicate”. Rename it to only the challenge number of your challenge. (This is important to keep only the number for the automated error-checking part of the sheet!)
5) Go to your newly numbered sheet, select the Square “A4” and right-click, then “Paste Special”, then “Paste as Values only”.
6) Right click on your challenge sheet, ‘Protect sheet’. This will bring up a menu bar on the right side.
7) Hit the ‘Set Permissions’ button. Select ‘Only you and Spreadsheet owner’.
8) Congratulate yourself on a job well done 😉
This leaves the updated Hall of Fame after your challenge up and available for the next challenge manager, but prevents anyone from editing it apart from you and myself – Blackvision – (should there be updates for the sheet that require editing)
Updating the Hall of Fame (before your new challenge!)
Ok, updating the Hall of Fame comes in two parts: This is the second part – the part where you: someone with a new challenge – puts the details into their Challenge sheet so the end results will be up-to-date.
(The other part is what you do to update the ongoing Hall of Fame when finishing your Challenge – for that, see the relevant section)
So here’s what to do: I recommend opening this guide and following it through each time until you’re doing it all automatically.
This assumes that the previous Challenge Manager has already posted up their Results on the Hall of Fame Updater – if their challenge number isn’t showing when you want it, go complain at them until they do it!
This part can be done anytime between them posting their results and you preparing your own results ready for posting. Do complete it before posting your own results though, as it will make it much easier for the automated checking systems to catch any errors in the previous results now than later!)
1) Open the “Hall of Fame Update sheet[docs.google.com]” and select the tab with the challenge number preceeding your own (new) challenge.
2) Select the square “A4” and select across to Column “I” and down to Row “1002” so that you have highlighted all the most recent results. Copy.
3) Open your own Scoresheet for the new Challenge. Select the “Player List” tab.
4) Select the Square “B4” and right-click, then “Paste Special”, then “Paste as Values only”. Once it finishes, this should have highlighted up to Row “J” (Players).
5) That’s it, the sheet will automatically update and put the new Hall of Fame details on the “Player List Updater” tab once all the results are in. Congratulations, your Challenge Sheet is good to go!
This should also work retrospectively if you’ve already done all your results, etc, but it’s generally safer to complete this before processing results on your sheet.