Oneiromancer
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I've been getting a lot of mail recently that isn't actually addressed to me. Sometimes it's just some generic junk mail that is intended for "occupant", but I seem to get more than the normal share of mail addressed to someone who doesn't actually live here. You'd think the post office would understand after the 20th time I write "No longer at this address--return to sender!" on an envelope. I've even got the same letter back a second time, with my writing still on it!

However, the following piece of mail was different. It wasn't addressed to anyone at all, and the paper was unlike any I had ever seen before. My curiosity got the best of me, and I just had to open it and see what was inside. And, well...I'm glad I opened it. The text of what was inside reproduced below:

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The Order of Engineers
Cordially Invites You
to Attend the Order's Annual
Banquet of Honor
for Lifetime Achievement
on Onsuary the 3rd, 147 BD
in the Banquet Hall

Please join us in recognizing the work of Fifth Engineer and her impact on Empire society and construction technology. Fifth Engineer has had many achievements after she graduated the Imperial Engineering College with an outstanding thesis on the topic of "Placing Obstacles on Walls". She has since advanced our understanding of such diverse fields as diagonal gate installation, the amount of heating that floors can withstand before becoming structurally unsound, and calculating the optimal level of crumbliness that should be exhibited by crumbly walls. But she is naturally best known for her influential work on "sister gates", which she will discuss tonight. (Please see the accompanying abstract for more information.)

Reception to Follow.
Please Announce Your
Intention to Attend with
Twenty-Fourth Administrative Assistant.

(The following sheet of paper was also included in the envelope.)

Sister Gates by Fifth Engineer

In this talk I will discuss the history, development, and subsequent implementation of sister gates. The research began as a natural offshoot of the ubiquitous yellow gate technology, which are well known to be controlled by orbs or, more recently, plates installed in the floor. The red, green, blue, and black gates were long considered inferior and not worthy of the time or money necessary to rebuild once they had been opened. After our stunning breakthroughs, we unveiled the "sister gates" for these other devices, putting them on a nearly equal footing with the yellow gates. At long last, architects could design around the functionality of gates that began open and then closed when their condition was met. The impact on the security systems of the Empire will also be discussed.

---

Game on,

____________________________
"He who is certain he knows the ending of things when he is only beginning them is either extremely wise or extremely foolish; no matter which is true, he is certainly an unhappy man, for he has put a knife in the heart of wonder." -- Tad Williams

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[Last edited by mrimer at 11-12-2006 08:39 PM]

NiroZ
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So, in other words, this is the same as the 350 image?

Ezlo
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Yay! Happiness! I've been planning lots of puzzles around these for weeks since I thought they would be in! Thanks so much!

UrAvgAzn
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Oneiromancer wrote:
However, the following piece of mail was different. It wasn't addressed to anyone at all, and the paper was unlike any I had ever seen before. My curiosity got the best of me, and I just had to open it and see what was inside. And, well...I think you'll all agree that it was worth it.

Really?


Keep posting,

____________________________
"The leaf, still green, must someday fall.
Such grief, such joy, to live at all."
- T.A. Barron, The Lost Years of Merlin

zex20913
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A^wesome. I'm sensing a lot of challenges and great holds coming from this.

Oh, and there's a spoiler here, if anybody hasn't guessed.

____________________________

Chaco
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Yeah, that's what I thought! Game on indeed.

To confirm: anti-green, blue, red, black, and any other anti-door type implemented in TCB have been implemented.

____________________________
Quick links to my stuff (in case you forgot where it was):

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[Last edited by Chaco at 11-12-2006 03:15 AM]

coppro
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Aah... this is good. I´ll get to work adding those to my style, now. Black will be the hardest, most likely.

Actually, the puzzle potential is astounding. A room where the puzzle is to get out before a serpent dies. Oneiromancer, is that the complete content of the message, or did it mention blue gates at all?

EDIT: Blue sister gates seem player-punishing. There must be SOME way around this, but I guess there´s nothing that can´t be done with a fuse, a 1-narrow corridor, some blue gates and some bombs.

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[Last edited by coppro at 11-12-2006 03:28 AM]

eytanz
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Oneiromancer wrote:
The red, green, blue, and black gates were long considered inferior and not worthy of the time or money necessary to rebuild once they had been opened. After our stunning breakthroughs, we unveiled the "sister gates" for these other devices, putting them on a nearly equal footing with the yellow gates.

Why are blue sister-gates worse than green sister-gates?

____________________________
I got my avatar back! Yay!

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[Last edited by eytanz at 11-12-2006 03:31 AM]

NiroZ
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There are heaps of uses for blue gates.

just have rooms that can't be solved unless you have walls in between.

stigant
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Why are blue sister-gates worse than green sister-gates?

Well, for one thing, they could go up in rooms without your knowing it. For another, they could block completion of the level if you clear a required room between the sister gate and the non-sister gate before completing the rest of the required rooms on the level. This would be especially painful since you likely cleared not just one but several rooms in the interim. All of that progress will be lost when you restore.

____________________________
Progress Quest Progress

Oneiromancer
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stigant wrote:

Why are blue sister-gates worse than green sister-gates?

Well, for one thing, they could go up in rooms without your knowing it. For another, they could block completion of the level if you clear a required room between the sister gate and the non-sister gate before completing the rest of the required rooms on the level. This would be especially painful since you likely cleared not just one but several rooms in the interim. All of that progress will be lost when you restore.

Normal blue gates can also be used to make non-required rooms impossible to solve (consider one of the more famous user-made DROD holds). It's one of those game elements that needs to be used carefully, and probably not too often in any case. (The blue ones, not the rest.)

I'd like to go into more detail on a lot of things, but we can't just yet. I will say that there is indeed a lot of potential and I'm sure people can imagine many rooms that were impossible to create before.

Game on,

____________________________
"He who is certain he knows the ending of things when he is only beginning them is either extremely wise or extremely foolish; no matter which is true, he is certainly an unhappy man, for he has put a knife in the heart of wonder." -- Tad Williams

Mattcrampy
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Blue sister gates would have been really handy in Level 8 of JtRH. It was, however, not to be.

You'd think the post office would understand after the 20th time I write "No longer at this address--return to sender!" on an envelope. I've even got the same letter back a second time, with my writing still on it!

Totally does not work like that, dude. It's addressed to the house, it gets delivered to the house. If you're getting someone else's mail, it's their responsibility to make sure their address is correct.

Basically what I'm saying is that people are sending you free mulch for your garden.

____________________________
What do you call an elephant at the North Pole?

eytanz
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stigant wrote:

Why are blue sister-gates worse than green sister-gates?

Well, for one thing, they could go up in rooms without your knowing it.

This is actually not possible.

____________________________
I got my avatar back! Yay!

schep
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eytanz wrote:

[anti-blue gates] could go up in rooms without your knowing it.

This is actually not possible.

Well, sure, you always know when blue gates move, but it's still possible you hadn't been to some non-required room and hence didn't know there were any anti-blue gates to go up.

But (to echo others' comments) if this is ever a problem, it's a case of badly designed hold, not a flaw with the game element.

coppro
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Also, how have we managed to get the things´ name incorrect multiple times within 6 hours? It´s called a sister gate, not an anti-gate or a sister-gate. Or an anti-door. Or a hole.

Doom
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/Me likes. New ways to do things without really adding a new object to learn.

Mimics/Bombs + Tar/Mud + Black Sister gate -interaction, and the like sound tempting.

I've added this one as well to the Confirmed TCB Features. [link]

Fafnir
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This could be really, really, really nifty... Argh! When will TCB come?!

____________________________
Stupidity kills.
Absolute stupidity
Kills absolutely.

tokyokid
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I can't wait for TCB now! Come on Mr.Bar!!!

Jatopian
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tokyokid wrote:
Come on Mr.Bar!!!

I think you mean Deadly Bar of Death. The other is a poser.

____________________________
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Make your pressure plates 3.0 style!
DROD architecture idea generator

tokyokid
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Yeah... thats what I meant...

coppro
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File: Sister Gate Concept.png (10.7 KB)
Downloaded 648 times.
License: Public Domain

Well, you know, I thought I might try and get in, but they kicked me out as soon as I did. I did, however, hear a presentation from an architect currently developing a radical new style, and I did manage to catch this concept drawing about sister gates:

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[Last edited by coppro at 11-15-2006 04:50 AM : typos ftl]

zex20913
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I actually think we might have seen sister gates on this forum before. *Realization*.

____________________________

eytanz
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You know, it occurs to me that one thing that both this month's spoiler and last month's share in common is that most of the people on the thread are focusing on the obvious, and perhaps not paying enough attention to all the details.

Just a thought, really.

____________________________
I got my avatar back! Yay!

Ezlo
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Well I like the fact that there's a college in the Empire. Not as rigid and bee-hiveish as JTRH told us.

Mattcrampy
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What I find interesting is that apparently the dev team has access to the Empire, and is on their mailing list. Presumably, they get the Empire's spam.

____________________________
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Tahnan
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eytanz wrote:
...most of the people on the thread are focusing on the obvious, and perhaps not paying enough attention to all the details...

Fair enough.

The Order of Engineers wrote:
...and her impact on Empire society and construction technology.

So the Empire has, er, a society. And technology. (Also, Engineers and Administrative Assistants.)

"Placing Obstacles on Walls"

In TCB, we'll be able to place obstacles on...er...walls.

...diagonal gate installation...

I admit I have no idea what that means. Diagonal gates?

...the amount of heating that floors can withstand before becoming structurally unsound...

Hmmm. So TCB will include some sort of heating element (flamethrowers?) and floors that melt (i.e. disappear) after a certain number of turns.

calculating the optimal level of crumbliness that should be exhibited by crumbly walls

Aha! And walls will have various levels of crumbliness.

...ubiquitous yellow gate technology, which are well known to be controlled by orbs or, more recently, plates installed in the floor.

So: floor plates. Check.

The impact on the security systems of the Empire will also be discussed.

And: the Empire has...ah...security. And systems for it.

That's all the details I could find--OK, there's also, let's see, "The Empire uses paper"; "The post office where Oneiromancer lives is worse than most"; "They have banquets"...

NiroZ
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eytanz wrote:
You know, it occurs to me that one thing that both this month's spoiler and last month's share in common is that most of the people on the thread are focusing on the obvious, and perhaps not paying enough attention to all the details.

Just a thought, really.

Hmm, at the expense of making a fool of myself, I would say that some of the connections between this one and last one are that they both have to do with doors and their various triggers. I wonder if there are any new doors in TCB.
Other things of interest are the fact that both spoilers are under the pretext of "look what I found in the mail!". Anyone want to guess in what form the next spoiler will come?

I also notice that both of them mention crumbly walls.

Mattcrampy
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The Empire's security system, if I recall my canon correctly, are the doors and gates. They're sold by the DAA as a security feature against dungeon infestation, but no-one's ever wondered why the doors in a room shut before a room gets infected, not after. (The rather cold way the Empire treats its citizens suggests that they perhaps refer to the Poppies and other army divisions as their 'security system', or perhaps the various monsters are considered the security system - but I thought most of the monsters weren't considered useful as defense by the Empire.)

They may have another security system that was added during TCB development, but if they expect us to infer that from this, clearly they think we're not just puzzle fans but paranoids.

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geomatrx
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It will be interesting to see how fuses set on blue sister gates will work. Another interesting puzzle element.

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Chaco
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Tahnan wrote:
I admit I have no idea what that means. Diagonal gates?

Remember how, in AE, if you placed a gate diagonal to another gate they acted as the same gate? In JtRH they act as seperate gates. I think that's what is being talked about here.

____________________________
Quick links to my stuff (in case you forgot where it was):