agaricus5
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eytanz wrote:
Don't worry about it - I'm sure it can be very frustrating to put a lot of work into something and then have someone being very cavalier about just ignoring it. I still think this would work much better as a seperate hold - not just for the sake of people playing Bavato's Dungeon, but also because I'm sure there are a lot of people who like this sort of level but will not be able to play it because the earlier parts will be too difficult for them.

Eytan

I think I'll still keep it, and future levels of similar types within the dungeon (if I do decide to make them), just for a little variatio so it can appeal to people who do like these sorts of levels, but I will put warp rooms somewhere before those levels or in easily accessible places in the levels themselves. And, yes, if I amass enough of them, I will put them together as a hold separate from Bavato's Dungeon, perhaps to donate to the ACDOD if it will have need of such levels.

About the little bug of yours with the warp room stairs, if you, or anyone else finds it does not go to level 6, please reply and I'll stick a new version to this post with warps to levels 5 and 6 from the level 1 warp room.

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Schik
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By the way, level 6 is TOUGH. Crazy tough.

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agaricus5
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File: Bavato27.hold (69 KB)
Downloaded 81 times.
License: Other
From: Unspecified

Err... I'm not sure if you are far into level 6 or not, but I have discovered that 1N has just a little too much tar too be completable - I must have added it for some reason after testing the room, but I cannot remember why.

There is a skip from level 1 directly to level 6, so you don't need to do level 4 all over again. However, to make sure you don't lose lots of progress, I suggest you finish level 4 before updating as the problem only affects level 6.

I'm sorry about this.

Edit: There is a Green Door with a hole in it in 2E. Just ignore it for the time being - I just spotted it, but have already released the file, so I won't change it.

[Edited by agaricus5 on 10-27-2003 at 10:23 PM GMT]

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Atch
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I’m going through Bavato27 for the first time: I didn’t enjoy Level 1, far too many orbs for me, but Level 2 is fantastic with the most challenging rooms I have yet encountered in DROD.

On 23rd October you said Wesley that three rooms on Level 2 had been modified and are now much harder than the originals. Of these I have been able to clear 1S2E and 2S1E but have come to an impasse in 2S. I have opened all the gates apart from the three southernmost (tar mother, entrance and an orb just to the north of the entrance) and the green gate in the NW. There are no more free orbs as far as I can see and the green gate will not open until the two isolated roaches are killed for which I need the third mimic potion. How do I get to this potion, have I missed something – a hidden orb beneath the starting tar perhaps?

agaricus5
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Atch wrote:
I’m going through Bavato27 for the first time: I didn’t enjoy Level 1, far too many orbs for me, but Level 2 is fantastic with the most challenging rooms I have yet encountered in DROD.

On 23rd October you said Wesley that three rooms on Level 2 had been modified and are now much harder than the originals. Of these I have been able to clear 1S2E and 2S1E but have come to an impasse in 2S. I have opened all the gates apart from the three southernmost (tar mother, entrance and an orb just to the north of the entrance) and the green gate in the NW. There are no more free orbs as far as I can see and the green gate will not open until the two isolated roaches are killed for which I need the third mimic potion. How do I get to this potion, have I missed something – a hidden orb beneath the starting tar perhaps?

No. It's me.

I must have been rather colourblind at some point.

I cannot believe they are green - I thought they were yellow beneath the tar. It's an unfortunately unseen bug that I must have forgotten to check, although I'm positive that they were yellow - I can't understand it. To avoid any more trouble with Yellow/Green Door confusion, I've removed the green door in front of the orb in the top-left corner, which is the one you need, but unfortunately it requires an update. I apologise. It's the last room in Level 2, so you can now try level 3 - use the level skip in Level 1.

Glad you're enjoying the hold so far.

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agaricus5
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Hmm... there's been a relatively long silence.

I get the feeling that this means Level 6 is far too hard. Am I right?

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Oneiromancer
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It's always a lot harder to get people to playtest a really hard dungeon than an easier one. After I was only able to beat one room on level 4 I decided to take a "wait and see" attitude for now, especially because I only really play DROD during breaks at work (at home I play other games). I would probably playtest the large holds more if I had "Anyone Edit" versions. That way for really hard rooms I can either add a checkpoint to make it easier or skip past it to better offer advice for the entire hold. It seems that people complain a lot less when the rooms are too hard rather than when they are too easy...probably some kind of pride thing going on there.

I don't think I'm being hypocritical, because I don't think that my hold is very hard, but it hasn't gotten many comments either after I released the expanded version, at least compared to the original version. So I think at some point, even with level warps, people just get tired of playtesting the same hold, and just want a final version that will keep all their saves and demos for posterity.

Anyway, just what I think. I will give your latest level a try as soon as I can.

Edit: I took a look at level 6, at least I ran through all the rooms I could reach. I liked levels 9 and 16 of Dugan's, but these are just amazingly crazy. It makes my brain hurt just to look at them. Not that these are bad things; it says a lot for your ability as a puzzle maker. And on second glance they certainly seem doable with a little care and several attempts (except for 1W, which looks like it could be really tough to me, although I think I might see something)...damn, now I want to see if I can beat them. See, this is a good thing. It just takes a while to build up courage. What was I saying again?

Game on,


[Edited by Oneiromancer on 11-09-2003 at 10:41 PM GMT]

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Scott
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I can't get through level 4 so I can't test level 6.

agaricus5
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Scott wrote:
I can't get through level 4 so I can't test level 6.

What do you mean?

Do you have an older version (Bavato 23/24) of the hold than the one up here?, for those versions have bugs in them that make level 4 unconquerable. Please get the file entitled "Bavato 27", the newest version, if you do, which contains fixes for the problem.

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Atch
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I’ve not yet reached Level 6 Wesley I’m still battling through Level 4 and it is tremendous stuff, just getting better and better.

Some comments on Level 3:

Generally it reminded me of Dugan’s Level 21 even down to the same ice rooms – strange then that you are on record as saying that you hated Level 21!

I enjoyed every room but two stand out:

1S – I cleared all the tar in this room, which was perhaps unnecessary in the middle section but I thought it a more elegant solution. This did however mean reaching the tar mother’s extremity only 14 moves before she became inaccessible. On a previous attempt I missed out here by an agonizing 2 moves!

1S, 1W – What a room! On completion I voted it my No.1 DROD room to date but that was before reaching Level 4.

Level 4

Rooms so far cleared: 1N, 1W – 1S, 1W – 2S, 1W – 1S – 1S,1E – 1S, 2E.

Comments:

Of all the DROD room schemes this is possibly the worst for spotting crumbly walls easily, which no doubt is why you chose it.

1N, 1W – eytanz thought the timer redundant. I think that perhaps I agree. I wasn’t very adept at getting into positions to kill a roach at every turn but still had 145 moves to spare when the tar mother was killed.

1S – I have run out of superlatives, this is the supreme DROD construction. The demo statistics (34.10min, 1848 moves) distort the truth; this was in fact a 6Hr marathon of total absorption. Can they be any harder than this and still be enjoyable? I will replay this to see if there are alternative routes: my first was: clear entrance to tar; NE corner; N centre; S then up to NW corner (very tricky); down to SE corner and finally W to the tar mother.

Well I don’t know Wesley I almost abandoned Bavato on Level 1 – if I get trapped by one more orb! – but just look at what I would have missed. I shall continue down to Levels 5 and 6 but however they turn out I shall still consider Bavato a masterpiece.

StuartK
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agaricus5 wrote:
Do you have an older version (Bavato 23/24) of the hold than the one up here?, for those versions have bugs in them that make level 4 unconquerable. Please get the file entitled "Bavato 27", the newest version, if you do, which contains fixes for the problem.

I'm playing Bavato 26, but I've been stuck on 1S of level 4 for a long while now (I completed all the other rooms in the area) My patience with it has kinda ran out for now. I always screw up before reaching the next checkpoint, or use the next checkpoint in the wrong way. Entirely too frustrating, so I only have another go at it every day or two. I think I'd much prefer to play this when there's a movement clock.

Since I don't want to lose my progress here (your rooms are a one time only thing for me - intensely satisfying to win, but no way I'll ever do them again) the only way I could test level 6 would be a seperate install of DROD.

If you're going to do really difficult levels, it might be an idea to have stairs to all of them on the first release - it just gives a greater chance that people will look at the additional levels, if they get stuck.

And please try not to have such difficult rooms as choke points...

agaricus5
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StuartK wrote:
Since I don't want to lose my progress here (your rooms are a one time only thing for me - intensely satisfying to win, but no way I'll ever do them again) the only way I could test level 6 would be a seperate install of DROD.

If you're going to do really difficult levels, it might be an idea to have stairs to all of them on the first release - it just gives a greater chance that people will look at the additional levels, if they get stuck.

You need to somehow get a copy of version 4.4, Bavato27, above - it has a warp to levels 1-6 and a fix for L6 1N, which has a bug in your version.

And please try not to have such difficult rooms as choke points...

I will try to allow the player to bypass very tough rooms in levels, this one being one of them, I've found. L6 2W is also rather nasty, so I think that I will remove the green door altogether from it later on as well.

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agaricus5
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I've managed to find some spare time to return to the forum (what a lot you miss in a week or two of absence!).

I suppose this verrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrry large delay in posts is really telling me something. I suppose my hold is really not very tester-friendly/interesting enough to attract people enough to play it to test it.

I suppose I need to either...

1. Split the hold into mini fragments during testing so that each level only contains two or three rooms and that all levels and rooms are accessible.

2. Remove all green doors/blockages from the rooms unless they are part of the solutions so that all rooms become accessible.

3. Destroy the multi-level idea and turn the hold into a set of smaller ones (and re-write the storyline).

4. Finish the hold now and use all the future rooms in another hold.

5. Something else.

What do you think?



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eytanz
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The reason that I personally stopped testing your hold was that I lost my progress to my data crash a couple of weeks ago and felt like I needed a break before I return to it. I'm also very busy, and don't have nearly as much time to play as I want to. But regardless, I think this:

2. Remove all green doors/blockages from the rooms unless they are part of the solutions so that all rooms become accessible.

Isn't a bad idea, at least if applied in more moderation than implied - given the difficulty level of your hold, I think opening up the levels a bit would make it a lot more enjoyable (in general, not just for testing); in Dugan's Dungeon, for instance, the harder levels (8, 21, 24) tend to be the least linear, which is good design. Your levels aren't completely linear, but they do have a lot of chokepoints that aren't totally necessary.

Also, I'd still recommend moving level 5 to a different hold. But we've been over that before.

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Oneiromancer
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I pretty much agree with what someone else said before (Stuart perhaps?)...the rooms can be so hard that I don't want to have to play them over again when a small problem is found in the same level. I also don't have as much downtime during the day to play as I used to--it takes a lot less time to come to the forum and make a few posts than it does to actually play some rooms.

However, if I were you, I would do this. Make a version of your hold that is Anyone Edit. Give it to a few people that you trust, if you're worried about stuff being stolen. Then the people that have this version can play every single room without necessarily having to beat it. They can give you feedback on every single room instead of only the ones they reached. They might even be able to see a problem with a room just by glancing through them.

For example, in the first ("fullscreen") release of Eytan's Tomb of Nomb, I had a lot of trouble with the second room (what is now 2N 2E), where you have to kill all the brains before going to the second part of the room and dodge the tar babies that come out of where the brains were. Since that was an Anyone Edit version, I was able to add a checkpoint where I kept dying and then beat the room. It never ended up being added to the final hold, but on the recent replay I was able to beat it pretty easily anyway. (My brained monster skills must have improved, probably thanks in part to this room.) I think that if people had complained about the difficulty of Treasure Hunt I would have been more than happy to do this. The best kind of playtester, I think, is one that can notice a failing, make the change by themselves, and then test that change again to see if it was worth it. What Clayton did with his tar maze is a great example of that, I really felt that my playtesting was making a difference.

So, after going through all that, if you want to try this but with only a few people, I would be happy to be one of them, and concentrate on checking every room out, in the entire hold. Although I guess I'd like to wait until the hold is in a near final state; i.e. no more levels or major changes are forthcoming.

Game on,

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agaricus5
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Oneiromancer wrote:
However, if I were you, I would do this. Make a version of your hold that is Anyone Edit. Give it to a few people that you trust, if you're worried about stuff being stolen. Then the people that have this version can play every single room without necessarily having to beat it. They can give you feedback on every single room instead of only the ones they reached. They might even be able to see a problem with a room just by glancing through them.

Considering.....

.....

.....

That's a great idea. I'll just remove all the secrety things right up until the final release (I'll still have my own copy) and distribute it.

So, after going through all that, if you want to try this but with only a few people, I would be happy to be one of them, and concentrate on checking every room out, in the entire hold. Although I guess I'd like to wait until the hold is in a near final state; i.e. no more levels or major changes are forthcoming.

Game on,

I wanted to ask for playtester help from external sources, but I was afraid to ask because I thought the general reaction would be negative.

I think for the time being, I'll continue with it and then once ready for playtesting, I'll hand out a copy to people willing to help me. Since I don't know whether or not people are interested, I'll probably send a few PMs around to ask for playtester help, unless of course, it might be easier and faster to just release a limited version only containing things playtesters will see in it. I suppose a hold swapover may be needed to stop problems in seeing into older versions of the hold, but I don't think it's too much of a problem.

Feedback on this would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks for the suggestion! (I want to try some of these out too!)

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Oneiromancer
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Just be careful when making new versions with different things in them. It may be possible to accidentally delete the version with the secrety stuff in it. Be careful and make backups!

Game on,

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The_Red_Hawk
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OK, I only downloaded this hold a few days ago, and I'm still on level one (as I'm trying to complete about five holds at the same time) but this is a pretty good hold so far - not overly tough, but pretty good. I like the level theme for this first level, and I hope there'll be even better ones down below.

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BenStandeven
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I can't get the blue door on level 1 to open.

agaricus5
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It's naughty. I know, but I never noticed it. Secret room

on level 1 was made required. This will be fixed later. For now, just go to the room and come back to the room with the blue door afterwards.

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The_Red_Hawk
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Whew! I finally beat level 1!

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Slashing, whirling, diving, twirling,
Snapping, turning, rising, swirling,
Screeching, flipping, gliding, sliding,
The red hawk's dance of death.

.....the king of the skies.....

agaricus5
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The_Red_Hawk wrote in the "Deep Hold" Topic:
What did you do in Bavato's, anyways? Is it worse than this?

Go take a look.

Go to the warp room, L1 1N 1W and hit the orb that highlights the number 5.

The answer depends on who you ask. You can't see the solution straight away, so it's worse in that respect, but there are no monsters, so there is no nasty repetitive roach killing. It is, however, designed to reward those who can solve it with a warm glow of satisfaction that they discovered the hidden solution. It's not meant to have a solution requiring repetition of rooms several times with similar solutions for each iteration like your one, but it's very unlikely that anyone will get it first time, so it's probably a lot of circular trial and error. In a short answer, yes and no, and I was being hypocritical in the last post above.


[Edited by agaricus5 on 11-30-2003 at 01:15 AM GMT]

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eytanz
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I said something similar in the Deep Hold thread regarding level 13 thereof, but the same holds here - there's nothing wrong with the level per se; in fact, I think that it's likely that some people (the ones who enjoy mapping things) might get a real kick out of it. As long as there's an easy bypass route (not a secret room) in the final version of the hold, I'll be happy.

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