admin
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File: Lunchbreak Special.hold (2.1 MB)
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I apologize for the huge delay, but the compilation hold for the Holds al Dente contest, held in October 2006, is finally here.

I would like to thank testers tokyokid, Ezlo, Chaco and NiroZ for their help in testing this massive hold.

Enjoy.

Chaco
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This hold has a lot of content, but I'm glad it finally got released. There are some real gems in here, and I think a lot of these rooms will be fun to optimize. Have at it!

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Tahnan
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Oh, it makes me so sad that much of what made the contest winner so cool has been killed by the changes to dropped doors in DROD 3. Ah, well.

Chaco
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This is true - you may want to play Professor Goole's Goolean Dungeon in JtRH. You may also want to avoid looking on the Hints and Solutions map for that level.

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goldenferret
Level: Delver

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Oh my gobbing fegundo! This has got to be the hugest hold ever!! It even beats Pitiful!! Must... download...

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bomber50
Level: Smitemaster
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The contest was great, and so is this hold. I forgot that I actually came in a fair place for the contest.

Since there's so many parallel rooms, I can taste the high scores....

Bingbing
Level: Goblin
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goldenferret wrote:
Oh my gobbing fegundo! This has got to be the hugest hold ever!! It even beats Pitiful!! Must... download...

Nope. Let'- Oh. My. God. SIXTY THREE LEVELS. ALMOST SIX HUNDRED ROOMS. This is more than DOUBLE the size of Deep Hold in Levels, and almost double in rooms. Goldenferret, you are correct. Now the only possible way to beat this hold (in levels) is an "Cheap Trick" complication. That would be ridiculous.

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I don't know what to put here.

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[Last edited by Bingbing at 09-14-2007 01:08 AM]

techant
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Thanks so much for all the hard work all.
This is great, and it was a fun contest to enter in. The rules were simple:

This Is What We'll Do

For this contest, I want you to make a DROD hold that can be completed in one hour or less.

That means while the this hold is huge it is really just a number of wonderful distractions for your lunchbreak each day. OK so it will take a few months of lunchbreaks but oh the fun of it.

If you enjoy playing these holds and have never build one then I encourage you to try your hand at it in the Contest thread. It is a fun to get started and the contests are fun as well.

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DROD RPG Released!! You must try it out it is Great!!

Kevin_P86
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As it probably to be expected, it seems some people really like this hold (having currently 3 votes of 10) and others really don't (having votes of 3 and 5). At any rate, I'm glad at least some people are enjoying it .

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Stephen4Louise
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Kevin_P86 wrote:
As it probably to be expected, it seems some people really like this hold (having currently 3 votes of 10) and others really don't (having votes of 3 and 5). At any rate, I'm glad at least some people are enjoying it .

I wouldn't read too much into the rating of this hold. I don't think there's any question about the great work you put into the compilation, and if I was rating on that alone it would be very high. The problem is that some of the holds would barely manage a rating of 5.

Steve.

Kevin_P86
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Yes, I know - and I definitely understand low ratings for this hold, since many of the rooms are ... not good (as you say).

I anticipate the average rating to be not much over five, which is really too bad, since there are some really great rooms too. And they might go unnoticed by some people if the rating of this hold is low-ish.

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Rabscuttle
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I did a 5-5 vote to get it noticed. I forget if that is still necessary :/

The final room of the winning hold really needs a checkpoint. *grumble*

Tahnan
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Rabscuttle wrote:
I did a 5-5 vote to get it noticed. I forget if that is still necessary :/

The final room of the winning hold really needs a checkpoint. *grumble*

Just wait until you get to some of the lower-ranked holds. Boy could some of those use checkpoints (lookin' at you, Jeff_Ray..., though not only you).

Kevin_P86
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Rabscuttle wrote:
The final room of the winning hold really needs a checkpoint. *grumble*

I've always been really curious whether that room is possible or not...

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NoahT
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Dunno if anyone else has caught this yet, but...



-Noah

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And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make.

My stuff:

Ezlo
Level: Smitemaster

Rank Points: 1226
Registered: 01-08-2006
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We caught it I believe, but we weren't going to change anything.

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Call me Citrus.

Remlin
Level: Master Delver
Rank Points: 181
Registered: 04-28-2005
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I'm the one who gave it a 3 (for both fun and brains). There's just so much about this hold that's not to like. Sure there are a couple of individual levels that deserve ratings of 9 or 10, but the overall hold is pretty bad. There are back-tracking issues, missing checkpoints, required rooms behind secret walls, force arrows on entrances - pretty much any example of bad architecture you care to name, it's somewhere in this massive hold. And the scripting... oh god, the scripting.

Of course my score is no comment on the obviously great effort that went into doing the compilation. It's just not a fun hold to me. It goes on and on and on, boring room after boring room.

Kevin_P86
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Remlin wrote:
I'm the one who gave it a 3 (for both fun and brains). There's just so much about this hold that's not to like. Sure there are a couple of individual levels that deserve ratings of 9 or 10, but the overall hold is pretty bad. There are back-tracking issues, missing checkpoints, required rooms behind secret walls, force arrows on entrances - pretty much any example of bad architecture you care to name, it's somewhere in this massive hold. And the scripting... oh god, the scripting.

Of course my score is no comment on the obviously great effort that went into doing the compilation. It's just not a fun hold to me. It goes on and on and on, boring room after boring room.

Considering you don't have any high scores uploaded for this hold, I don't think you're in a position to make those claims.

Since it made it through the HA process, all the backtracking issues that someone noticed were fixed. If there are still some present, it is nothing but an oversight.

And to which scripting are you referring? All the scripting that is present I would consider very obvious and intuitive.

And once again, please play the hold before you make a comment like "boring room after boring room".

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CuriousShyRabbit
Level: Smitemaster
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I'd agree with Remlin that this hold does contain some ... rather forgettable ... entries. I'm glad that you can conquer the hold without playing every one of them... this was a good call by the compiler. What I would like even better is not to see the lower-rated rooms at all... more of a "Best of..." compilation, with the secret rooms as marked in the original holds.

That being said, there are plenty of great reasons to play this hold. It contains some true gems. (I will wait to rate the hold until after I've played them all.)

Rabbit's top three picks (so far):

Hold #4 Boyblue's Level 20,061,022
I think these tight little lynchpin puzzles best fit the theme of the contest. "Let's see here... no, that won't work... I'm supposed to do what?... oh, wait... Aha!!!" 8 times in one hour. What a delicious lunch!

Hold #7 Doom's Under the Trapdoor
These are trademark Doom puzzles, where you have to figure out which of a few interacting elements to deal with first. I find this kind of puzzle very interesting. The difference between these and the puzzles in, say, Beethro's Teacher, is that I could actually solve them on my own. It did take me much longer than one hour to do it, but what fun!

Hold #9 Trick's Nightmare Roses
This is art, on many levels. Visually beautiful, the initially frustrating repetition gives way to a relatively simple solution, which is exactly the experience of dreaming and then vanquishing a nightmare. Why aren't there other holds by trick on the Holds board?

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There are indeed some backtracking issues with this hold. Here are two that I have encountered so far.
Hold #1.
Hold #13

Tahnan
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Kevin_P86 wrote:

Remlin wrote:
I'm the one who gave it a 3 (for both fun and brains). There's just so much about this hold that's not to like. Sure there are a couple of individual levels that deserve ratings of 9 or 10, but the overall hold is pretty bad. There are back-tracking issues, missing checkpoints, required rooms behind secret walls, force arrows on entrances - pretty much any example of bad architecture you care to name, it's somewhere in this massive hold. And the scripting... oh god, the scripting.

Considering you don't have any high scores uploaded for this hold, I don't think you're in a position to make those claims.

And to which scripting are you referring? All the scripting that is present I would consider very obvious and intuitive.

Good Lord, man, are you kidding?

For one thing, Remlin needn't have played this hold to know what's in it; he only needs to have played the holds when the contest happened. I did so as well, and I can assure you that he's right: there are some very good holds in here, and there's, quite frankly, some rather bad ones.

It's true that the backtracking has (presumably) been cleaned up, and that there are no longer required rooms behind blue doors; those are basic holds-board things that would have to be fixed. But he's right about the lack of checkpoints (see above) and he's right about the scripting (e.g. Tokyokid's "Chambers").

Incidentally, while I'm on the line:

Chaco's comments.
My comments.
Techant's comments.

...from the original Al Dente contest thread.

Kevin_P86
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Tahnan wrote:
Good Lord, man, are you kidding?

I assume you are referring to the scripting comment? If that is not the case, I would appreciate being pointed to this unintuitive scripting. I really can't find it.

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Kevin_P86
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Ok. I'd like to apologize to Remlin. I just re-read my post, and I was rather out of line.

I know it's not an excuse, but I was sort of mad at something totally unrelated at the time, which is probably not a good time to post, and as a result I took his comments rather personally (even though they certainly were not).

I definitely agree that there are some very ... bad ... rooms, but I do really think that these are the minority, and I don't think these few rooms bring down the overall quality of the hold to such an extent. But that's just my opinion.

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Tahnan
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Kevin_P86 wrote:

Tahnan wrote:
Good Lord, man, are you kidding?

I assume you are referring to the scripting comment? If that is not the case, I would appreciate being pointed to this unintuitive scripting. I really can't find it.

Well, in part, I was referring to the idea that Remlin couldn't know what was in the hold without playing it.

But in part, yes, the unintuitive scripting. For instance, I happen to have just played through the first part of the the Chambers hold as I said, it's Tokyokid's hold), which has:

* Suddenly appearing queens and roaches in Chambers 1-4, 1W,
* Unexpectedly many evil eyes in Chambers 1-4, 1S,
* Suddenly appearing monsters in Chambers 1-5, 1N...

And apparently, though I haven't reached it again yet, there's a script in Level 2-2: 1N that irritated me enough that I quit playing the hold the first time around.

[Edited to note: there's also a backtracking problem in 2-3, in that if you leave the entrance without conquering the room, you're stuck.]

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[Last edited by Tahnan at 09-16-2007 05:16 AM]

Remlin
Level: Master Delver
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I've already finished the hold. I haven't yet uploaded my scores.

Other than saying that, there's really not much I want to add in my defense. Kevin, you say you anticipated the final rating to be 5ish, so you must have expected some ratings as low as mine. Hey, you can't please everybody all the time.

The primary reason I rated low wasn't the scripting or backtracking or whatever. It's what I wrote in the last paragraph - it's boring, and it goes on way too long. It's got some real gems, but they're hidden in a mess of mediocrity. There's a huge amount of cruft hiding the good stuff.

I know it's a compilation, and I understand why you didn't cut out the less polished parts, but the result is what it is. I'm rating this hold on the same standards I'd use for any other. Someone who just plays the best levels would definitely have a far better experience, but that's not really a reasonable way to rate a hold.

Chaco
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NoahT wrote:
Dunno if anyone else has caught this yet, but...

Click here to view the secret text

×In Lunchbreak: 3S1W, you don't have to strike the orb, which makes this room really trivial.

-Noah

I'm not quite sure what I was thinking when I made that room; but in any case it at least makes my entry easier to complete.

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Blondbeard
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It feels a bit silly to grab the same highscorte over and over again in tricks hold. I wouldn't protest if all (most of?) the rooms there were marked as un-highscorable. I have been getting a lot of #1s though

Mattcrampy
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I'd just like to say (as when Kevin volunteered to make the compilation we had a quick discussion over the approach to take) that people felt that the compilation should involve every entry. My original plan was only to involve those entries that reached a minimum threshold, because my ulterior motive here was to have a decent quality hold that was not too hard but still enjoyable, as player-made holds often end up being a good deal harder than the large release holds. Shame we missed this target first time around; if/when we do Al Dente 2007, I'll probably manipulate the rules so I can get closer to this goal.

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Kevin_P86
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Blondbeard wrote:
It feels a bit silly to grab the same highscorte over and over again in tricks hold. I wouldn't protest if all (most of?) the rooms there were marked as un-highscorable. I have been getting a lot of #1s though

I think there's still several rooms that need to be marked un-highscorable, but I'm a little hesitant to do so, as it apparantly cannot be reversed.

But if there are room(s) that people agree should be marked un-highscorable, I will glady do so.

Perhaps waiting to see which rooms Rabscuttle manages to complete will give a good indication of which should be un-highscorable...

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Kevin_P86
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In regards to my entry (#10): there seems to be a lot of mixed impressions - some people seem to really like it, others seem to really not. I personally really like these rooms - even though I've beaten them dozens of times each and know how to beat them very well, I still enjoy playing and trying to optimize them.

So I would appreciate any specific comments - Which rooms (if any) did you like? Why? Which rooms (if any) did you not like? Why? I will reward any such comments with modding.

My personal favourite has to be 1 North, 2 East - easily the best room I've created, in my opinion.

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schep
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I would personally prefer if only one room from Nightmare Roses were highscorable. Conquering all rooms possible is definitely not the point of this level, and seeing 'Missing High Scores' on my stats page would bother me. Did anybody not conquer The Entrance during their first play?

But if you want to go just by what's possible, I'm pretty sure it's just the rooms on the east and south edges which can't be conquered.