NobleHelium
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This has been bugging me for quite a while...why exactly does the presence of snakes cause the threat clock to be displayed? I see no use of the threat clock for snakes...

Hmm, it seems like there should be a general gameplay discussion forum of some sort. Hints & Solutions only deals with specific rooms usually, I don't see any place to discuss the general gameplay except in well, general.

jbluestein
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NobleHelium wrote:
This has been bugging me for quite a while...why exactly does the presence of snakes cause the threat clock to be displayed? I see no use of the threat clock for snakes...

Hmm, it seems like there should be a general gameplay discussion forum of some sort. Hints & Solutions only deals with specific rooms usually, I don't see any place to discuss the general gameplay except in well, general.

Snake movement preference is governed by the clock, although it's not obvious from the standard clock. (silver has posted a very nice one on the Development board that is more explicit.)

Snakes have a horizontal movement preference and a vertical movement preference. Unbrained snakes switch this preference every five turns.

Then it get s bit more esoteric. On turn 0 in any room, snakes are on turn 2 of horizontal move preference. Net result: on any turn ending in 9, 0, 1, 2, 3, they have horizontal preference. 4-8, vertical. Exactly how they move in any given circumstance depends on their preference and a bunch of other factors, but often it's enough just to know how they prefer to go in order to manipulate them effectively.

(Brained snakes, by the way, change their preference every turn instead of every five turns.)

Josh

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"Rings and knots of joy and grief, all interlaced and locking." --William Buck

Dex Stewart
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Snakes try to follow Beethro, but can only move orthogonally. Therefore, when Beethro isn't on their line or column, they have to choose which way they go. Every five turns they switch between vertical and horizontal movement preference.

jbluestein
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By the way, if you want to see examples of this, I believe that Rabscuttle has a snake tutorial currently in Architecture. I would also recommend larrymurk's excellent Ssslitherin hold, which is all based around snake manipulation.

Josh

____________________________
"Rings and knots of joy and grief, all interlaced and locking." --William Buck

zex20913
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jbluestein wrote:

(Brained snakes, by the way, change their preference every turn instead of every five turns.)

Josh

Not true. Often, you can be one row south of a row a snake is in, with nothing but floor between, and the snake will just move horizontally. If it actually changed preference every move, it would go one row south on at most turn 2.

Brained snakes just want to get you and avoid dead ends.

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jbluestein
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zex20913 wrote:

jbluestein wrote:

(Brained snakes, by the way, change their preference every turn instead of every five turns.)

Josh

Not true. Often, you can be one row south of a row a snake is in, with nothing but floor between, and the snake will just move horizontally. If it actually changed preference every move, it would go one row south on at most turn 2.

Brained snakes just want to get you and avoid dead ends.

Hmm. I thought I read this somewhere. Perhaps I was wrong, though.

Josh

____________________________
"Rings and knots of joy and grief, all interlaced and locking." --William Buck

TFMurphy
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Brained serpents don't even really want to avoid dead-ends. They just pick the first path the brain offers to them that doesn't start with a diagonal and doesn't have a Brain-visible obstacle or arrow that blocks their movement.

You can easily lead them into a dead-end by either abusing the fact that brains still consider diagonal paths for them or the fact that brains don't consider other monsters to be obstacles.

Tahnan
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You may be interested in using a clock designed to indicate which way the snakes are going to move: silver's or mine. (Disclaimer: I like mine.)

NobleHelium
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Hmm, interesting. I think there should have been some kind of mention to this thing in the JtRH serpent level or something, since the first level that each monster type is introduced generally gives hints on how that monster behaves. But perhaps this is a little too in-depth.

Seems a bit weird that snakes start off at turn 2 of the horizontal phase. Rather random, and doesn't fit with roaches and tar. Perhaps it should be changed, but that might break some rooms in holds...

I really think there ought to be a game mechanics forum or gameplay discussion forum to discuss this kind of thing; I saw the thread on briars which would is in the same vein, except explanation instead of query, of course.

Tuttle
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NobleHelium wrote:
Hmm, interesting. I think there should have been some kind of mention to this thing in the JtRH serpent level or something, since the first level that each monster type is introduced generally gives hints on how that monster behaves. But perhaps this is a little too in-depth.

It's a detail that I don't think is needed to solve anything in KDD or JtRH. It's nice to know, but there's never a situation so unforgiving that you can't also get through by trial and error. Ditto for the NESW rule (the order in which an unbrained snake will try to move if its first movement preference is blocked).

Some of the other holds, like Perfection, though...

Seems a bit weird that snakes start off at turn 2 of the horizontal phase. Rather random, and doesn't fit with roaches and tar.

If you think of it like this, it lines up:
- Consider the clock to tick after you press a key and before the monsters move. Whether it happens before/during/after Beethro moving isn't relevant.
- Think of the clock running from 0-29 (ie roaches spawn and tar grows on turn 0).
- A snake is then horizontal if the clock is 0-4, 10-14, 20-24 when it moves, vertical for 5-9, 15-19, 25-29.

That's a pretty convoluted way of thinking about it though. Easier to just use one of the snake clocks, or remember that it will have already changed every time you see the original clock move to a multiple of 5.

Perhaps it should be changed, but that might break some rooms in holds...

I dunno, if you changed it but then made spawns, growth and Beethro entry all happen on turn 2 it should still work.

Tahnan
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NobleHelium wrote:
Seems a bit weird that snakes start off at turn 2 of the horizontal phase. Rather random, and doesn't fit with roaches and tar. Perhaps it should be changed, but that might break some rooms in holds...

Yeah, it is weird. But it's far, far too fundamental to change.

I do think that having some central collection of all of these facts would be an awfully good thing.

bwross
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Seems a bit weird that snakes start off at turn 2 of the horizontal phase. Rather random, and doesn't fit with roaches and tar. Perhaps it should be changed, but that might break some rooms in holds...

It's just that what's important is the next clock tick... so although the serpent's behaviour changes every 5 (on the 0s and 5s), what is important is that that occurs when you move onto that value. So zero is technically the first turn, but the serpents have already moved for that turn of horizontal movement (so it's important that the player respond correctly on clock tick 29 before the serpent does... or the 4s and 9s in general)... their next move will be the transition to 1 which is the second time they'll move for that particular horizontal phase. So in that (more important) sense, it's the second turn.

Banjooie
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The important thing here is that if you make a hold based around this idea I hate yo.

Rabscuttle
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And I hate you if you make a hold based around the fact that roach queens spawn however often they spawn.

NiroZ
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And I hate anyone who dares to make a hold based around the fact that roaches move once per turn.

Jatopian
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And I hate floor.

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bwross
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Jatopian wrote:
And I hate floor.

Yeah, floor is just sooooo 2.0. It just attracts roaches and serpents and mud. Much better are the new dungeons with nothing but pits, water, and walls.

Banjooie
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Trying to equate the function of any element in the game as being somehow less terrible and cruel than snake movement is like.

I don't know. It's like, 'If you hate nougat, you must hate EVERYTHING in a chocolate bar!' or something.

Jatopian
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Banjooie wrote:
It's like, 'If you hate nougat, you must hate EVERYTHING in a chocolate bar!' or something.

I like nougat. Dried coconut is what I hate.
But I take your point - serpent movement is a bit esoteric. I personally wouldn't mind, except that I have yet to find a serpent clock that isn't ugly.

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Make your pressure plates 3.0 style!
DROD architecture idea generator

TFMurphy
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File: TTWS.hold (1.6 KB)
Downloaded 57 times.
License: Public Domain

You know, I'm surprised at the hatred towards serpent movement when their rules are so easy to understand and memorize, and such an important part in getting them exactly where you want them.

Unlike, say, the inhabitants of this one-room hold....

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[Last edited by TFMurphy at 06-17-2007 05:41 AM]

coppro
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Well, at least it doesn't use the Mersenne Twister mod 2581, rerolling if out of bounds, and then moving towards the square denoted by counting diagonally downwards to the left, starting from the top left corner, with each line starting along the top and left edges, starting from the bottom-right corner.

I mean, it would work, but I like this method better.

Tahnan
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Jatopian wrote:
But I take your point - serpent movement is a bit esoteric. I personally wouldn't mind, except that I have yet to find a serpent clock that isn't ugly.

*sniff*

Seriously, I'm open to suggestions. What would you want one to look like?

Kevin_P86
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I think both silver's and Tahnan's 3.0 serpent clocks look quite good indeed.

____________________________
+++++[>+++++<-]>[>+++>++++>+++++<<<-]>.>+.>-------.<++++.+++++.

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[Last edited by Kevin_P86 at 06-19-2007 03:42 AM]

Tuttle
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IMHO it's hard to go past the fact that the one in game[1] just looks the part. If I ever got inclined enough I'd probably shade segments of the clock face and maybe drop an H or V in one corner, and leave it like that. The circle works better for me than the number and bar graph ones I've seen.

It'd make distribution interesting though ("here's an overlay but you need to somehow merge it with the clock that came with the game before it's actually useful"). Not everyone has Photoshop or the GIMP lying around.

[1] I'm thinking of the JtRH clock only here; haven't got around to playing TCB yet.

Jatopian
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Tahnan made a clock? I searched for it but could only find silver's.
Personally I think an overlay might be a good idea.

____________________________
DROD has some really great music.
Make your pressure plates 3.0 style!
DROD architecture idea generator

Kevin_P86
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Jatopian wrote:
Tahnan made a clock? I searched for it but could only find silver's.

It's right here.

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+++++[>+++++<-]>[>+++>++++>+++++<<<-]>.>+.>-------.<++++.+++++.

bwross
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Tuttle wrote:
IMHO it's hard to go past the fact that the one in game[1] just looks the part.

I agree... that's why I modified that clock with a little horizontal or vertical bar in the center (on the round part of the hand... I also colour coded them red and green like other serpent clocks) and used a partially transparent back layer to flash progressive warnings that turn 29 is approaching.

Of course, I can't distribute the image (and will not... even in a format that could be applied to the original, I doubt I even have the GIMP project around anymore). I also haven't updated it for TCB anyways (and probably won't any time soon because the half ticks will require a lot of work since the images are no longer separate files and would have to be extracted).

Tahnan
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Tuttle wrote:
IMHO it's hard to go past the fact that the one in game[1] just looks the part.

Oh, I wholeheartedly agree, though it is nice sometimes to have numbers. In fact, when I don't have to deal with snakes, I often switch back to the official clock, which you can now do by setting more than one clock image and clicking on the clock to cycle through them.

(It is why I prefer the style of my clock--and by "my", I mean "whoever it was I ripped it off from", since it was their idea--over silver's: it at least keeps the DROD-appearance, with the scrolls and font.)

captainzakku
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Kevin_P86 wrote:
I think both silver's and Tahnan's 3.0 serpent clocks look quite good indeed.

Do the 3.0 clocks take into account the speed potion? The (probably very old) serpent clock I'm using switches back and forth every turn between the old clock and the serpent clock. Which actually would be a helpful add on to the clock: safe turn/monsters move turn when the speed potion is in effect.

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Tahnan
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captainzakku wrote:

Kevin_P86 wrote:
I think both silver's and Tahnan's 3.0 serpent clocks look quite good indeed.

Do the 3.0 clocks take into account the speed potion? The (probably very old) serpent clock I'm using switches back and forth every turn between the old clock and the serpent clock. Which actually would be a helpful add on to the clock: safe turn/monsters move turn when the speed potion is in effect.

They do. There are two clock files, "clock" and "clock2" or something like that, one of which is the familiar once-per-turn clock and one of which is the clock for half-ticks. Both silver's and mine come with both files. (The switching back and forth is the result of TCB using the custom clock when it can, i.e. normal turns, and defaulting back to the standard clock when there's no file for half-turns.)