ErikH2000
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Here's an idea I like:

There is a tribe of people to which you belong. The people in your tribe are not the best people necessarily--they are just the best people for you. Amongst your tribe, life is more fun when good things happen, and more easily endured when bad things happen. Luckily, your tribe has thousands and thousands of people in it--more than you really need. Unluckily, they've been scattered randomly across the world, and there's no simple way to locate and identify them. What can you do? Keep an eye out for new friends among strangers. And try to show your true colors so they can find you.

We have tried very hard to show our true colors in DROD: The City Beneath. It's a game for the elite puzzle-solver. It bursts at the seams with new game elements, most of which have never appeared in any other game before. In the hands of less dedicated (smarter?) developers, the game could have been cut up into half a dozen separately-sold, smaller games. Compromises could have been made for glitz and whizbangery at the expense of gameplay. The complexity of the game could have been pared down. I.e. do we really need diagonal movement? A full mouse interface might have been supplied to make the thing portal-friendly. To accommodate the casual player that wants to chill for ten minutes without thinking too hard, we could have dumbed all the levels down. And isn't it a little offputting that one little mistake sends Beethro to his death? Why not give the player a health meter and let him blunder his way through puzzles he doesn't understand?

But we don't want to lose our way. DROD is mega-niche. DROD is long tail. DROD is tribal. So we can't make all those compromises to package up the game for a mass audience. If we ever go that route, it will have to be with a different game.

The City Beneath is almost arrogant in its attitude toward the DROD newcomer. Unlike King Dugan's Dungeon or Journey to Rooted Hold, it wasn't designed as an entrypoint to learning the game. Sure, we try to go easy on the player in early levels. And there are tutorials interspersed throughout the game to catch up rookies on previously-introduced game elements. But the general advice given to the new DROD player will be to start from one of the two earlier games. "You wanna play the game? Or you wanna play the game right?" I'm sure we will pay a penalty for this haughty attitude. We're going to lose some sales, reviews, and distribution deals. People with low attention spans will walk away irritated and confused. Bleh. We don't need 'em. They can go hang out at RealArcade and type inane little "OMGWTFROTFL" messages at each other all day.

We're slowly collecting the right kind of people here. Career players that spend as much time playing DROD as Mike or I spent making it. Creative contributors that are pumping energy into the community with their new holds, mods, and side projects. Friendly forumites that can write intelligent thoughts with only an occasional "OMG LOL W00T" thrown in. You guys have been a great audience, and it is a pleasure to send something good your way every now and then. The City Beneath is coming, and I have no doubts you will love it.

Beauty Over Brains

Jason is running a new hold-building contest this month. This is all about making the most aesthetically-pleasing set of levels.

contest info

A Million Strong And Growing

The forum monkey reports:

"We've now had over 1,000,000 demo uploads for high scores. Now, I know that there are duplicates from people doing mass uploads over and over, but it's still neat. At this point, there are 694,218 that we still have - the rest were either improved upon by the player, or verified to be invalid. Of those, 528,592 are valid, the rest are marked as invalid but not deleted."

So people have played some DROD room or another through to completion at least a million times. Yeah, that is pretty nifty, actually.

Larry Murk, Fantastic Freak of Nature

I am tempted to talk about Larry's phenomenal creative output numerically, i.e. in terms of number of holds created, total room count, average number of holds released per month, average rating per hold, and so on. That would be the obvious thing to do, because Larry has got some impressive stats there. But I don't want to fetishize the numbers. Because maybe I say something like "Larry Murk has the highest ratio of top-ten-ranked 100+ move-completed rooms to number of cats that he owns". And then some feisty young munchkin would try to beat or dispute that record, totally missing the point. The point is...

Larry Murk has been pumping out the fun! Non-stop, month after month, he keeps giving us all new holds to play. We are really lucky he's doing this, you know?

So I'm giving Larry the "Don't Ask" award for December. What will it be this time? 888 mod points and he gets to specify the text that goes in my signature for January.

Topic Picks for December

Sorry, I'm running behind, guys. I'll give you some good topic picks in January. Still, I heartily encourage anyone who wants to get in on the action to head over to our frothy forum at: http://forum.caravelgames.com

-Erik

____________________________
The Godkiller - Chapter 1 available now on Steam. It's a DROD-like puzzle adventure game.
dev journals | twitch stream | youtube archive (NSFW)

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[Last edited by ErikH2000 at 12-12-2006 03:47 AM]

Chaco
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Awesome. Journey to Rooted Hold has been out for what, two years now? Taking into account forum growth, I predict the 5 million mark will be sometime after DROD 3.1.15 is released.

____________________________
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Mattcrampy
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Unless Erik decides, 'You know what? We've done the uber-niche puzzler, I wonder if we can make a portal game without it being a match-3/Chip's Challenge clone.'

I don't know how likely that is, though.

Edit: I finally worked out why I'm so snarky around the 'we know our audience' stance that Erik's taking. I respect Erik and DROD, and that's really part of the problem: I respect the creativity and innovation around DROD, and truly believe that it's one of the most original games in existence, despite the charge that it's basically just a Dalek clone.

I... guess it's that I fervently believe that you can easily kill genres by making them so difficult to get into that only the people who are already in can appreciate the changes that you make to the 'formula'. I believe that's what killed the adventure genre - the increasingly esoteric puzzles and the insistence from the adventure game fanbase that adventure games are only allowed to be this narrowly defined spectrum of gameplay concepts. The only way adventure games have been able to recover is to come at the genre from the other direction.

I guess I'm disappointed that it feels like Erik is scuttling the ship, a bit. Here's this great, innovative game where nearly half the concepts are pretty much all-new ideas - gaming's not at the point where a consistent language has been established (and when it has it's stupid things like "Your character will step off a cliff if you ask it to") so it's not like being different is going to confuse people for long. And yet all the development is in the ivory tower direction, which is the sort of thing that killed adventure games. But whatever.

Maybe the rules work differently for puzzle games, but I doubt it. It's a viable genre, albeit under the limited subsets of 'match three', 'falling blocks' and 'whatever Popcap does' which in itself spells doom for the genre (again) and I'm sort of disappointed that the most creative puzzle game I've ever played is also the one that's the least likely others will enjoy.

Or maybe what this feeling's saying is to go nuts and make a stepping puzzle game for the portals. It'd certainly help with feeling like there's a missing link between DROD and everything else.

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

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[Last edited by Mattcrampy at 12-11-2006 11:47 AM : Mod-downs invited.]

Darkmatt
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I've been itching for something TCB that will relieve my urge for yummy eye/brain candy since I hit 100% on JtRH. Don't give up, and all that stuff.

Seriously, I'm biting my nails praying for the bar to pass 90%

Rabscuttle
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ErikH2000 wrote:
Why not give the player a health meter and let him blunder his way through puzzles he doesn't understand?

Why not give the player mimic potions to help kill monsters? Or invisibility potion so that he can sneak around without being seen? Or a decoy potion to distract monsters and keep the heat off.

The moral is: Anything that looks like it might help invariably makes life more difficult. I'm confident in saying that extra health will not help.

(Conversely the Slayer is your pal who kills monsters, hit orbs and helps you destroy tar - what a guy!)

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[Last edited by Rabscuttle at 12-11-2006 06:28 AM]

NiroZ
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Rabscuttle wrote:

ErikH2000 wrote:
Why not give the player a health meter and let him blunder his way through puzzles he doesn't understand?

The minute you said that I had an image of a Larrymurk puzzle where you have to pass through a guards sword x number of times, meaning you cannot allow Beethro to be hurt anywhere else.

Whist the health idea not bad in itself, its the concept that is rejected.

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[Last edited by NiroZ at 12-11-2006 06:54 AM]

Kevin_P86
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NiroZ wrote:
The minute you said that I had an image of a Larrymurk puzzle where you have to pass through a guards sword x number of times, meaning you cannot allow Beethro to be hurt anywhere else.

How is that different from how the game is now...?

____________________________
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NiroZ
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Kevin_P86 wrote:

NiroZ wrote:
The minute you said that I had an image of a Larrymurk puzzle where you have to pass through a guards sword x number of times, meaning you cannot allow Beethro to be hurt anywhere else.

How is that different from how the game is now...?

The fact that you have to watch out for it. It would, in that scenario, another variable to watch.

Chris
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ErikH2000 wrote:
"We've now had over 1,000,000 demo uploads for high scores. Now, I know that there are duplicates from people doing mass uploads over and over, [...]"

So people have played some DROD room or another through to completion at least a million times.

I don't see how that conclusion follows from the given facts, when there's no information given about the number of duplicates.

lakibuk
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New game elements, sounds tasty.
How much new stuff will there be, if you compare it with going from DROD1 to DROD2?
Also will they make as much sense as the old elements? Can't wait to see...

____________________________
Karl
Blueskied Games (main site) - Gratis Spiele (german site)

Chris
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Mattcrampy wrote:Edit: I finally worked out why I'm so snarky around the 'we know our audience' stance that Erik's taking.

... and then went on for several paragraphs. I didn't understand much of it at all. What are you trying to say Matt?

I guess I'm disappointed that it feels like Erik is scuttling the ship, a bit. Here's this great, innovative game where nearly half the concepts are pretty much all-new ideas, and it's not like gaming's at the point where a consistent language has been established (and when it has it's stupid things like "Your character will step off a cliff if you make it") so it's not like this is going to confuse people. And yet all the development is in the ivory tower direction, which is

Scuttling? Is that where you cut holes in a ship? Can you cut a bit of a hole? What is a consistent language? DROD speaks English, which isn't consistent, but no natural language is. "Your character will step off a cliff if you make it" isn't a language, it's a confusing sentence. "make it" can mean quite a few different things, such as "to achieve a goal; be successful". What is the ivory tower direction? Perhaps if I knew more of the background and more about TCB some of this might make sense to me. Finally, why does that paragraph just finish in the middle of a

Fafnir
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Well, what can I say but "TCB is coming! OMG LOL W00T!"

____________________________
Stupidity kills.
Absolute stupidity
Kills absolutely.

Mattcrampy
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Chris wrote:

Scuttling? Is that where you cut holes in a ship? Can you cut a bit of a hole?

Yeah, scuttling is sinking the ship by cutting holes in it. I was saying that it sort of feels like it, not that it's cutting part of a hole.

What is a consistent language?

Would calling it a 'consistent grammar' be clearer? In movies, there is a language, as it were, of how to express certain concepts that are consistent across film. For instance, a POV from a wild animal is usually done by holding the camera by hand then filming back a ways in the wilderness. They usually put a filter over it as well, to drive the point home. It's pretty common, I expect you've seen it a couple of times.

There's only a few 'shortcuts' like this in games that are anywhere near consistent. There's only a couple I can think of off-hand that are almost universal; for instance, 'if a boss character has a large eye, that's its weakpoint' which is strictly adhered to in Zelda and is fairly well-spread. Health bars being red is another fairly universal one. But there's no agreed way to represent a lot of things in games, and DROD doesn't exactly cleave to those that are somewhat standard (like "cliffs are bad, and if you step your character off a cliff, you'll die", which as we all know doesn't happen in DROD). In that sort of environment, being different isn't a handicap because players usually have to relearn the game's 'language' anyway. And DROD is very different, which is the thrust of what I was saying.

What is the ivory tower direction? Perhaps if I knew more of the background and more about TCB some of this might make sense to me.

The 'ivory tower' is a metaphor for elitism. It's unclear because I forgot this paragraph needed to be edited and I decided to just post it and get back to work, but I was saying that the development seems to be keeping all the premium DROD players happy at the expense of the less skilled.

Finally, why does that paragraph just finish in the middle of a

I usually do that on long posts when I edit in the middle of writing it. I forget to finish the paragraph... I fixed it for you.

Anyway, the thrust of it was that DROD is a very original game, and I'd prefer it if more people got to see it, but Caravel appears to be happy putting their existing fanbase over their potential one (this worries me because I've seen it kill games before). At the same time, I respect Caravel and their right to choose the audience they want to cater for (which I'm still a part of, and TCB is gonna be great), and if I want something different, the onus is on me to provide it.

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

NiroZ
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Er, what exactly is wrong with this one, Maurog?

Mattcrampy wrote:
Would calling it a 'consistent grammar' be clearer? In movies, there is a language, as it were, of how to express certain concepts that are consistent across film. For instance, a POV from a wild animal is usually done by holding the camera by hand then filming back a ways in the wilderness. They usually put a filter over it as well, to drive the point home. It's pretty common, I expect you've seen it a couple of times.

Ohhh, don't let me started on how much I hate that sort of thing. The 'grammar' is so predictable I know the entire storyline of most films by the time they are halfway through, which absolutely kills it, as you would imagine.

Mattcrampy wrote:
There's only a few 'shortcuts' like this in games that are anywhere near consistent. There's only a couple I can think of off-hand that are almost universal; for instance, 'if a boss character has a large eye, that's its weakpoint' which is strictly adhered to in Zelda and is fairly well-spread. Health bars being red is another fairly universal one. But there's no agreed way to represent a lot of things in games

Which means that they just borrow the 'Language' from films (sorry, just finished F.E.A.R.)

Mattcrampy wrote:
I was saying that the development seems to be keeping all the premium DROD players happy at the expense of the less skilled.

Agreed, although I think that they have changed that direction now, if SmSes are to be an example. More on this below

Mattcrampy wrote:
Anyway, the thrust of it was that DROD is a very original game, and I'd prefer it if more people got to see it, but Caravel appears to be happy putting their existing fanbase over their potential one (this worries me because I've seen it kill games before).

Your probably right, but the thing is that DROD has dual appeal. It has the normal trappings of a game, but underneath that its a puzzle game. It may interest you to know that I didn't realise that DROD was a puzzle game until I reached level 3 of KDD 2, having completed the JtRH demo in its entirety. As long as DROD teaches its players, the concepts so that they can see the logic and observation puzzles, DROD will always have an audience, simply because there is always an audience for puzzles. The fact that Caravel also is offering traditional gameplay(and one would assume that they would expand on this in TCB) I doubt that DROD will run out of an audience any time so, as their main problem is that they don't make it easy enough for new players to understand(learning curve), which has been a big issue IMO. My younger brother refuses to play DROD simply because 'It looks hard'.

Mattcrampy wrote:
At the same time, I respect Caravel and their right to choose the audience they want to cater for (which I'm still a part of, and TCB is gonna be great)

I thought you weren't going to give any TCB spoilers

Mattcrampy wrote:
and if I want something different, the onus is on me to provide it.

Ditto that.

Of course, this is not to say that elitism is something that Caravel should watch out for, I just don't think it is currently heading for it.

(disclaimer, I am very tired, and due to the large size of this post, the chances are that my intended meaning may not be properly conveyed, in which case I promise to clarify it when i'm sane again awake.)

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[Last edited by NiroZ at 12-13-2006 07:33 AM]

eytanz
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Mattcrampy wrote:

What is the ivory tower direction? Perhaps if I knew more of the background and more about TCB some of this might make sense to me.

The 'ivory tower' is a metaphor for elitism. It's unclear because I forgot this paragraph needed to be edited and I decided to just post it and get back to work, but I was saying that the development seems to be keeping all the premium DROD players happy at the expense of the less skilled.

You know, Matt, I do wish you'd wait until you'd actually seen the game before you make this sort of comment. In a very straightfoward sense of the word, you don't know what you are talking about.

At least, you of all people should be experienced enough to know that in posts like this, Erik likes to have a theme, and his explanation of events may not reflect the full reality because he wants the description to fit the theme.

In other words, the thinking behind the design of TCB is not only what Erik describes. There are two factors he left out, both actually more important than the one he left in.

1 - The main reason that it was decided not to have a new "introductory-level" hold with TCB is because it is impossible to write an intro-level hold for the amount of elements DROD 3.0 has. Trying to do so would basically turn the hold into a long, boring, tutorial with no challenging puzzles whatsoever. That would please *neither* the core audience nor the new players. The only reasonable way to handle this is to split element introduction across multiple holds, and have TCB be an introduction only to the new elements. This was something that was carefully considered in the design phase for the hold.

2 - You're speaking as if DROD 3.0 is a puzzle game which starts and ends at TCB. That's false. DROD 3.0 isn't really a puzzle game at all. It's a puzzle game development system, which includes a puzzle game (TCB). But in all seriousness, Caravel's long term planning depends on the editor, and on community-based content, more than it does on TCB.

Now of course, you may question whether this is still a good idea to begin with, and why bother. But I think the reason is - JtRH is a success. It has managed to attract a growing community, and while I don't know the numbers, it's making money. Sure, it's no Zelda, but then, very little is. You're speaking as if the fanbase is shrinking or stagnant, and it isn't.

And just like there were many games that died because their creators catered to the fan base, there were many, many games that died because their creators decided to change the game's core values to attract a nebulous larger audience. Take the Ultima series, or Star Control, or King's Quest... And those are just three examples that popped into my head without thinking about it.

But in any case, the point is really moot until you see TCB and the new abilities of DROD 3.0 and judge it from an informed POV.

____________________________
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[Last edited by eytanz at 12-11-2006 02:04 PM]

schep
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omg BEST N3WZ INTR0 EVAR lololol

ErikH2000
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Mattcrampy wrote:
Aintrodnyway, the thrust of it was that DROD is a very original game, and I'd prefer it if more people got to see it, but Caravel appears to be happy putting their existing fanbase over their potential one (this worries me because I've seen it kill games before).

Note that I acknowledged there is a "penalty to be paid". I'm aware of the tradeoffs. We did not feel like having introduction rooms in the game proper for roaches, roach queens, tar, serpents, etc. So these intro rooms were all stuffed into a large number of optional tutorial rooms. The tutorial rooms are interspersed throughout the game as little teleport squares that take you away from the main action for a bit.

I don't want to commit to this right now, but it's also likely that Journey to Rooted Hold and King Dugan's Dungeon will be upgraded to use the new DROD 3.0 engine. The idea is that there will be no apologies or disclaimers to make when directing a new player back to a previously-released game.

As far as getting new people to play our games, I don't think The City Beneath will be bad for that--just not ideal. Note that a lot of people learned about DROD via press related to Journey to Rooted Hold, but decided to begin with King Dugan's Dungeon first after taking a look around.

Also, just because the strategy we are using with The City Beneath is not well-tuned to pick up new customers, doesn't mean we will follow that same strategy for all of our future games.

I admit that I have no interest in catering to casual markets because the people playing them are too... casual, I guess. They don't want to try a lot of new things, and have certain expectations which must be met at the expense of game design (i.e. mouse control for everything). It is much more important to me to increase our own base of players with which we have direct contact than rely on what portals can bring us. I say this after putting DROD on half dozen or so portals and not really seeing anything impressive come of it.

-Erik

____________________________
The Godkiller - Chapter 1 available now on Steam. It's a DROD-like puzzle adventure game.
dev journals | twitch stream | youtube archive (NSFW)

Doom
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ErikH2000 wrote:
So these intro rooms were all stuffed into a large number of optional tutorial rooms. The tutorial rooms are interspersed throughout the game as little teleport squares that take you away from the main action for a bit.

OMG, TCB SPOILERS, TELEPORTERS!

The technology is clearly advanced enough now for... dare I say it...?

Timo006
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Doom wrote:
OMG, TCB SPOILERS, TELEPORTERS!

The technology is clearly advanced enough now for... dare I say it...?

Click here to view the secret text

× !

Maybe it's advanced enough for...



____________________________
Drod Number: 3034; 8th person to see the Second Sky

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[Last edited by Timo006 at 12-11-2006 06:32 PM]

Briareos
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ErikH2000 wrote:
I don't want to commit to this right now, but it's also likely that Journey to Rooted Hold and King Dugan's Dungeon will be upgraded to use the new DROD 3.0 engine. The idea is that there will be no apologies or disclaimers to make when directing a new player back to a previously-released game.

Well, in case everything is using the same engine then - how about adding the possibilty to install KDD 3.0, JtRH 3.0 and TCB into the same location so you get one game with 3 holds (plus any holds you download, of course) instead of 3 separate installations?

Kinda like Firefox, Thunderbird and Sunbird should share a Gecko runtime environment, but currently don't?

Or how about giving people that buy the downloadable version of any of the 3 games a DROD 3.0 installer that comes without any hold and give them separate downloads for the main holds they buy, kinda like the SMS holds?

(That would make the downloads smaller, unthinkable as it is... )

np: Yppah - We Aim (You Are Beautiful At All Times)

____________________________
"I'm not anti-anything, I'm anti-everything, it fits better." - Sole
R.I.P. Robert Feldhoff (1962-2009)

coppro
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Or will you actually be upgrading them, or just leaving backwards compatibility as an option?

Alneyan
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Briareos wrote:
Kinda like Firefox, Thunderbird and Sunbird should share a Gecko runtime environment, but currently don't?

I'll throw in Iceweasel and Icedove just for the sake of completeness here.

Some time ago, I recall someone from Caravel said that updating Rooted Hold and KDD for 3.0 was unliely. Of course, it *was* some time ago, and it *was* unlikely. Still, I'm not sure if you could really improve on Rooted Hold without hacking it beyond recognition; from what I gather of 3.0, it seems new mechanisms are the key.

eytanz
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Disclaimer first: I don't know of any specific Caravel plans here, nor do I even think actual plans actually exist as of yet.

But, regarding updating KDD and JtRH:

DROD 3.0 is fully capable of running all DROD 2.0 holds without breaking them. So technically, there's no real need to update any of the holds for gameplay's sake.

*However*, there are some graphical changes that will be made. Nothing major, but a 2.0 hold loaded in 3.0 might look a bit different by default. Therefore, official 2.0 holds might be updated in order to keep some things looking the way they were originally designed. I'm guessing (pure guess here) that this is what Erik referred to.

What Alenyan is remembering is that it was stated that there will be no major updating of the holds to take advantage of new gameplay/scripting features. As far as I know this is still the case - there won't be a "remixed" version of JtRh the way KDD 2.0 is a revamp of the original KDD.

There is, however, a grey area between these two extremes. Some small tweaks can be made that won't really affect gameplay but might streamline things a bit. For example, some of the scripting could be made to work in a cleaner fashion, and some of the new obstacles could theoretically be used in some places (without gameplay consequences) for additional graphical variety. I think whether or not this will happen is up in the air.

But as I said, this is all speculative.

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tokyokid
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Wow, I just love Illuminations, and really look forward to them! I can't wait for TCB and the next Illumination! Keep up the great work!

Maurog
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Are you sure there are teleporters? Currently existing stairs serve equally well as "little teleport squares that take you away from the main action for a bit". And one of TCB's recurring themes is allowing to mod the graphics of everything...

I'll be off to sharpen my Occam's razor now.

____________________________
Slay the living! Raise the dead!
Paint the sky in crimson red!

coppro
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I wouldn't put it past them - although they could of course be restyled staircases.

Mattcrampy
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ErikH2000 wrote:
We did not feel like having introduction rooms in the game proper for roaches, roach queens, tar, serpents, etc. So these intro rooms were all stuffed into a large number of optional tutorial rooms. The tutorial rooms are interspersed throughout the game as little teleport squares that take you away from the main action for a bit.

Oh. Well, that changes things.

Also, just because the strategy we are using with The City Beneath is not well-tuned to pick up new customers, doesn't mean we will follow that same strategy for all of our future games.

Oh, sorry, did I leave that impression? Part of the reason I respect both you and Caravel is that I know that you can be original, and I have no fear that we'll see a new game in the future that makes us all feel just like we first did playing DROD. I'm certainly not saying that Caravel is walking into certain doom and I'm the only one who sees it, because that's both false and incredibly egotistical. TCB will do just fine. I'm aware that it's a strategy you've decided on and that for other games a different strategy makes more sense. It's just that I've seen the strategy cause problems when applied with other games, and I was worried it would happen to DROD as well.

I admit that I have no interest in catering to casual markets because the people playing them are too... casual, I guess. They don't want to try a lot of new things, and have certain expectations which must be met at the expense of game design (i.e. mouse control for everything).

Huh. That certainly seems like the same sort of conditions that befell adventure games. It's not like casual games are in trouble, though, or probably ever will be as they're still uber-accessable.

You know, Matt, I do wish you'd wait until you'd actually seen the game before you make this sort of comment.

I was working from the impressions that I had. I can't make any apologies for stating my opinion based on the publically available information, even if it's not consistent with the facts you're aware of, Eytan. I try not to infer these days unless I have corroborating evidence because it usually ends in trouble, so you'll have to forgive me for not reading between the lines in the Illuminations.

(Besides, if your points are accurate, it wouldn't matter much if I saw the game because what's going to really drive DROD in the future will be the community. So, one can only get an accurate picture of what DROD will look like by seeing the community get its hands on TCB, and by that point there'd be no need to comment.)

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eytanz
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Mattcrampy wrote:

You know, Matt, I do wish you'd wait until you'd actually seen the game before you make this sort of comment.

I was working from the impressions that I had. I can't make any apologies for stating my opinion based on the publically available information, even if it's not consistent with the facts you're aware of, Eytan. I try not to infer these days unless I have corroborating evidence because it usually ends in trouble, so you'll have to forgive me for not reading between the lines in the Illuminations.

I'm not asking you to make apologies. And for that matter, I have no idea if you have seen TCB or not - it's perfectly plausible that Erik sent you a copy of the dev version, as far as I know. But your original (and follow-up) posts seem to have a strange tension between talking about how much you respect Erik and Mike and at the same time you seem to be offering them very little benefit of the doubt.

For what it's worth, though, I wish no-one would make any sort of evaluative comments on TCB before they see it, not just you. By now a substantial amount of information has been released, but that just makes it easy to overlook how much information has not been released. It's pretty easy to mentally fill in the gaps based on Erik's post and other posts, but it's not easy to fill in the gaps right.

(Besides, if your points are accurate, it wouldn't matter much if I saw the game because what's going to really drive DROD in the future will be the community. So, one can only get an accurate picture of what DROD will look like by seeing the community get its hands on TCB, and by that point there'd be no need to comment.)

That's way over-simplistic. The only way the community can support and maintain DROD is if there is strong leadership from Caravel giving it a direction. Otherwise, it will either collapse with disinterest or worse. What I'm saying is that your original post seems to discount the contribution of the community by treating it as a constraint, which is partially why your interpretation of the situation is not correct.

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Congrats to the deserving Murk Man.

Y'know, if we had a health meter, we'd probably base puzzles around it, forcing the player to lose health only when necessary. That's the kind of diabolical genius we spawn around these parts. I remember a puzzle game called Kye that gave the player 3 extra lives per level... I made about 100 levels for it, and most of them either didn't work once the character died, or it required manipulation of the respawn mechanism. But it didn't have the community of great architecture we have; if it had I would never have published anything at 10. But I am tired and digress. The point is, we'd end up using the health meter and the original purpose would be largely defeated anyway, save for cheating in pre-TCB holds.

As for tutorials, several architects I hear are trying their hands at filling that need, and I'm even beta-testing one such that shows definite promise, or would if gamer_extreme_101 could be bothered to update it. And most persons learn by first trying the official hold, then trying easier fan hold(s); with me it was Great Uncle Yurgess's Hold. The point is, our community can fill that need; once it's filled that'll simply need publicizing.

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Schik
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ErikH2000 wrote:
"We've now had over 1,000,000 demo uploads for high scores. Now, I know that there are duplicates from people doing mass uploads over and over, but it's still neat. At this point, there are 694,218 that we still have - the rest were either improved upon by the player, or verified to be invalid. Of those, 528,592 are valid, the rest are marked as invalid but not deleted."

So people have played some DROD room or another through to completion at least a million times. Yeah, that is pretty nifty, actually.

Hey, I just noticed that we now have over 1,000,000 visited rooms! While the highscores table can store multiple instances for each person-room, the visited rooms list stored are unique per person. So if we use Erik math:
- People have explored over 700,000 acres.
- Lay all of those squares in all of those rooms end-to-end and you'll have a line 1.15 million miles long - enough to circle the Earth more than 46 times
- If each room were solved in 15 minutes, then over 10,416 full days went into playing DROD.

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