I suppose it is no longer chic to comment pre-2.0-engine holds, but what the heck. This was literally the very first hold I played after finishing KDD around 1.5 years ago. I got fairly disheartened in Tomb Raider (L1), 1E, and when some real life things came along which greatly reduced the amount of free time that I had (basically to zero), I stopped playing. (Had there been the backspace thing in 1.6, I might have finished it back then.) In anticipation of receiving my JtRH CD, I cranked up AE again after a long abstinence and finally finished the hold. The hold was really great, probably the most compact hold (i.e. good puzzles without filler to speak of) I have played thus far. (To be fair to all other architects, I've only played a small fraction of all holds.) It was quite a few degrees of difficulty higher than KDD and had me saying some choice words quite often.
Perhaps interesting: I finished KDD without ever really figuring out the exact snake movement; I just tried to "
feel my way through"
the puzzles, which of course made for a poor efficiency. Though I read the monsters page of DROD.net at some time (which was much more spoilerly then than it is now), I quickly forgot the algorithm, specifically whether the movement preference was absolute or relative (i.e. "
turns north"
or "
turns right"
). Playing The Horde, 1E forced me after many failures to take notes on the snake movement and figure it out. I guess I am a better person for having done that room. The other snake rooms in the hold also cost me oodles of time. It took me very many tries to get the timing in Vault, 1N 3W correct. I wanted to make a more concrete commentary of the individual rooms, but I seem to have lost my notes somewhere. Sorry! I liked the story and the way the matching level layout between Raider and Escaper added to it quite a bit. My heart fell into my shoes when I saw the last level (after having thought Escaper was the last one) was named "
The Horde"
, but it wasn't as much an unforgiving efficiency test as I was expecting. Thanks for building the hold and letting us play it (well, I guess that goes without saying).
On another note, I am not sure if this is exaggeration:
DiMono wrote:
Short enough that I was done in only a few hours....
but it does have me wondering if I should not also rather stick to solitaire. I guess practice makes perfect.
-leroy
____________________________
You can hear happiness staggering on down the street -- footless, dressed in red.
-Jimi Hendrix, "
The Wind Cries Mary"
For some reason, on my copy of this hold, again the final stairs go to Level 4, The Horde. Since this version has been downloaded 47 times I assume that some people have beaten it...is this happening to everybody? Or am I special in some way this time? As I offered in the original post, if this happens to you, I can send you a copy with Anyone Edit turned on. I might rename it so that you can have a copy with demos saved as well as a copy that can be edited. I can e-mail you the ending too. Hopefully this is just some weird bug that maybe popped up when I fooled around in the editor a bit after submitting the hold...because I did check, I really did! In the editor only, yes...but only because making one tiny change would make me have to replay the entire level over again, which I just didn't have time to do.
.
The hardest room was the one with the spiral snake and the queens. I did kill the stuff in the Vault 1S1W with the mimic, thinking it's the right way to do things. The coolest rooms were the one with the many-eyed mutant tar, and the one with the pit-traps and switching yellow doors in the Vault. Also, I completed one of the secret rooms, but the other was too much for me... never was that good at effeciency and it looks like a 10K moves room, and you probably need to use them eyes to hide behind and stuff. Overall, I liked the story and the hold. Thanks for building it.
