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Dischorran
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icon The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (+2)  
While good puzzle design is nice and all, one of the great features of the later versions of DROD is the ability to design a room that is not only enjoyable to play, but enjoyable to look at as well.

There are many ways in which to do this. One can use the new lighting system to great advantage, as seen in cheese obsessive's Cheese's Hodgepodge; one can use DROD elements and custom images to create fantastic "hold art" in the map screen or in the playing field itself, as seen in Elfstone's Castle Steele; or one can go the opposite direction entirely and make simple, elegant rooms with carefully chosen floor decorations, as seen in Jutt's Artful Architecture. Even just a few minutes spent changing floor styles and walls of each room can add a point or two to the average rating of an otherwise mediocre hold.

However, what can be used for good can also be used for evil, turning a perfectly good puzzle into an aesthetic nightmare. Decorations can overwhelm, lighting and weather effects can obscure, color choices can clash or even blind, symmetry and clean lines can be broken just enough to be horribly distracting. This has been done by accident plenty of times; we've all seen these rooms and holds, and have complained about them in Holds or Architecture (and no, I'm not going to call architects out by name here). But what atrocities could be produced were the collective efforts of the architects of DROD to be concentrated on making a room that is not merely accidentally ugly, but deliberately so?

Thus, the goal of this unofficial contest: make the ugliest DROD 3.1 room that you can! Anyone can custom tile a floor pink and green and call it a day, but only the best (or worst?) architects will be able to produce a perfectly functional room that nonetheless defiles the very name of DROD. In the best case, the results of this contest could serve as a guide for novice architects to how NOT to decorate a hold!




The official rules:

* Submission guidelines:

1. Submissions should be a TCB hold containing exactly one room. Each must have a level entrance and a set of stairs to end the hold, and must be solvable. Submissions must stay inside community guidelines - anything obscene will be disallowed with prejudice, no copyrighted content, that sort of thing.

2. If you choose to use image walls, pits, or floors, they must be entirely your own creation. Not only would there be inevitable copyright issues, we're looking for creativity here, not for who can use Google to find the ugliest picture to put on the floor.

3. Aside from being ugly as sin, the room should be one that you would enjoy playing in a hold; while a "bad room" contest is not a bad idea, this is an "ugly room" contest instead. The quality of the room as a puzzle will be considered, but only as a minor part of the voting - so make it good if you can, but don't let this scare you off if you're new to the architecture business! If all else fails, one could design a room and then drop a couple of roach queens in appropriate places to make a puzzle out of it.

4. Submissions are to be posted in this thread - this means that they're public, and sharing of ideas and revising one's submissions up until the deadline are permitted and encouraged. 2 entries are allowed per person.

5. A compilation will be made if there are enough entries. Please submit entries as "Anyone Edit" and indicate if permission is granted for inclusion in the compilation.

* End date: You have three weeks from the time of posting, ending at Local Time:06-28-2009 at 11:00 PM. Voting will occur immediately afterward.

* Prizes: A token 5 points for first, 3 points for second, 1 point for third, and the accolades of the community.

* Voting guidelines: Voting will be run as a traditional 1-10 ranking after the deadline passes. Voters should take into consideration overall "ugliness" and the creativity of design. Quality of the room as a puzzle should also be considered, but should modify the score by no more than a point in either direction.

Questions? Comments? Promises to make a room later? Put 'em in the thread!

TIME UNTIL DEADLINE: negative 768 weeks, 1 day

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06-07-2009 at 09:43 PM
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Dischorran
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icon Re: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (+1)  
Entries posted to date:

Chaco's Profoundly Ugly Room
noma's Renovations Completed
Eyeminator by skell
VIPCOOL's pRetTy uGly hoLd
Tahnan's Beauty Under Brains
12th Archivist's Total Ugli
The Stew Boy's Bleach Stew
noma's More Reno's
VIPCOOL's PrTty UgLyh Old 3

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[Last edited by Dischorran at 06-28-2009 08:24 PM]
06-07-2009 at 09:45 PM
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12th Archivist
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Sounds really fun. I'll join.

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06-07-2009 at 10:21 PM
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Jatopian
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I nominate bad evil restaurant. Any room of it.

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06-08-2009 at 01:02 AM
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Chaco
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File: Chacos Profoundly Ugly Room.hold (2.1 KB)
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icon Re: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (+2)  
I would have thought there would have been more entries by now!

Here's something simple to start things off - the puzzle here isn't too bad and would probably actually work well in a hold if it didn't look so horribly ugly.

Hopefully this is exactly the sort of thing Dischorran is looking for here.

I permit this entry to be included in a compilation. Because a compilation of ugly rooms would be interesting.

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[Last edited by Chaco at 06-19-2009 08:53 PM]
06-19-2009 at 08:49 PM
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Dischorran
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ow my eyes

Yes, this is an excellent start. Go Chaco!

As for the rest of you, you have a little over a week to prove that you too (YES YOU) can destroy the community from the inside out! Do you have what it takes? Do you???

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06-20-2009 at 04:22 AM
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noma
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File: Renovations Completed.hold (4.1 KB)
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icon Re: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (+1)  
Here is my contribution to the pain and suffering of DROD players everywhere. It's the first room I've ever created from scratch, so I concentrated more on the ugly instead of the puzzle. Feel free to use it in a compilation.

EDIT: To truly appreciate it, please have environmental effects turned on.

[Last edited by noma at 06-20-2009 04:30 PM]
06-20-2009 at 09:20 AM
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skell
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File: Eyeminator By Skell.hold (1.9 KB)
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Here is my entry to the contest. I tried to make it independent of the lights and other fancy stuff like that, so people with slow computers can liquidize their eyes almost as successfully as those who have better hardware.
I permit this entry to be included in a compilation.

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06-20-2009 at 12:11 PM
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Chaco
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Interesting...

I'd like to single out VIPCOOL's entry from all the others here mostly because in his entry the ugliness actually intrudes onto the puzzle solution; suffice to say it involves cutting tar, rotating arrows and running all around through the various restrictions imposed by all the force arrows and orthosquares.

In contrast, for the most part mine and noma's entries would look like actual puzzle rooms were all the extraneous ugliness removed.

===

I'm considering doing sort of a "before and after" type project where I compare "clean" versions of rooms with their ugly contest-submitted counterparts; for example my room would be a pretty standard Chaco puzzle room with standard floor and no obstacles, and noma's room would still take up most of the room, but most of the blue doors, relay stations and obstacles (besides the pale green ones and red ones for the builders to use) would be replaced with walls.

The intention would be that both rooms would behave completely identical in terms of demos and solutions; with the only difference being aesthetics.

I'm not sure whether the project would be well-received or even necessary, but that's why I'm putting the idea forward.

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06-21-2009 at 04:54 PM
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Dischorran
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Chaco wrote:
I'd like to single out VIPCOOL's entry from all the others here mostly because in his entry the ugliness actually intrudes onto the puzzle solution; suffice to say it involves cutting tar, rotating arrows and running all around through the various restrictions imposed by all the force arrows and orthosquares.
To be fair, skell's entry also integrates the ugliness into the puzzle. I agree that making a room necessarily instead of gratuitously ugly adds an extra touch of class to an entry, if you want to call it that, but it's certainly not a prerequisite for this particular contest.

I'm considering doing sort of a "before and after" type project where I compare "clean" versions of rooms with their ugly contest-submitted counterparts; for example my room would be a pretty standard Chaco puzzle room with standard floor and no obstacles, and noma's room would still take up most of the room, but most of the blue doors, relay stations and obstacles (besides the pale green ones and red ones for the builders to use) would be replaced with walls.
That could be an interesting post-mastery area for the compilation.

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06-21-2009 at 07:24 PM
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skell
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File: Eyeminator By Skell Pretty.hold (1.5 KB)
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Dischorran wrote:
To be fair, skell's entry also integrates the ugliness into the puzzle.
I don't know if I am not stabbing my back right now, but my puzzle does not really integrate the ugliness. Check the attachment, the pretty and the ugly version is almost identical - to be more precise, the puzzles are so similar that some of the demos might actually work for both, as the only gameplay difference is lack of arrows (and perhaps some misplaced bombs, I did it quickly so there might be some inconsistencies).

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06-21-2009 at 08:25 PM
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Dischorran
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Oh, would you look at that? We're now fewer than than five days away from the deadline, with a mere four entries competing for three prizes! But there's still time to enter!

The benefits are twofold: not only can you win fabulous prizes and the admiration of your peers, but you can contribute to the ugliest compilation the forum has ever seen!

So who wants to step up next? Will you be the one?

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06-24-2009 at 04:30 AM
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Tahnan
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File: Beauty Under Brains.hold (2.1 KB)
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I have zero patience for posts like Dischorran's. Mark this post to a negative one if you like, but the...oh, forget it. Hold attached.

I'm not quite sure I did this right. I mean, I think the room is ugly, but there's ugly randomness and then there's ugly by design, and this is only the former; I fear it may not measure up to the latter.

[Edit to add: hey, if you want this thing in a compilation, knock yourself the heck out, it's all yours.]

[Last edited by Tahnan at 06-24-2009 11:09 AM]
06-24-2009 at 08:19 AM
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Dischorran
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Oh good, there you are, with the appropriate link, no less. I couldn't think of a way to credit you for unwittingly giving me the idea for this contest without also calling out an unintentionally ugly room by name. (It would just be too negative.)

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06-24-2009 at 04:53 PM
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12th Archivist
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File: Total Ugli.hold (1.9 KB)
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I guess I won't be getting first place here. The puzzle is hard, and the lighting effects are minute. The only good thing is that it's slightly unappealing with all the random tarstuff splotches and unsymmetrical walls and pits and water jutting up against each other. Let's see if it's any good. Allowed for compilation.

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[Last edited by 12th Archivist at 06-26-2009 03:54 PM]
06-24-2009 at 09:27 PM
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The Stew Boy
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Here's my submission.
Edit: Bug fixed.

[Last edited by The Stew Boy at 06-26-2009 08:15 AM]
06-26-2009 at 08:06 AM
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Chaco
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12th Archivist, I think your entry is impossible to complete. The northeast corner of the room (with the roach queen and the tar blob) is sealed off by trapdoors in all directions, so when all trapdoors are dropped the player is inevitably stuck on one side or the other and can't get to both the roach queen and the exit.

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06-26-2009 at 03:09 PM
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12th Archivist
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I though I fixed that bug earlier. Oh well. Re-attached new version.

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06-26-2009 at 03:53 PM
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noma
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And another one. Funny. In the two+ years I've been playing DROD, the only thing that gets me creating a "hold" is an "Ugly" contest. Well, maybe after this -- and now that I've got my feet wet -- I'll try actually creating something good (and not ugly, hopefully.)

[Last edited by noma at 06-27-2009 03:30 AM : for Dischorran :D]
06-27-2009 at 02:50 AM
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Dischorran
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Hey now, it's a beautiful contest, it's the *entries* that are ugly.

12th Archivist, I made it through your updated entry, so you're good to go.

As for everyone else, we're into the final weekend! Time to stop polishing those entries (for certain non-standard values of "polishing", I suppose) and get them in! Conversely, if you haven't started yet, it's not too late!

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06-27-2009 at 02:59 AM
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Chaco
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noma wrote:
Well, maybe after this -- and now that I've got my feet wet -- I'll try actually creating something good (and not ugly, hopefully.)

You oughtn't be so modest, noma - for what it's worth, I thought you made a good puzzle in your entry, spoiled only by its ugliness and not the quality of the room itself. :)

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06-27-2009 at 04:22 PM
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Blondbeard
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Ugly, ugly holds. I have just played the two last ones, and blech! ;)
06-27-2009 at 06:44 PM
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Dischorran
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Chaco wrote:
noma wrote:
Well, maybe after this -- and now that I've got my feet wet -- I'll try actually creating something good (and not ugly, hopefully.)

You oughtn't be so modest, noma - for what it's worth, I thought you made a good puzzle in your entry, spoiled only by its ugliness and not the quality of the room itself. :)
Agreed. I've been pleasantly surprised by the quality of the puzzles in plenty of these rooms, including noma's. It should make a pretty decent compilation hold - with eight entries (and counting - you have ONE DAY, people, and I know at least some of us don't have anything better to do on a Saturday night!), we've passed the cutoff for making a compilation out of this.

EDIT: Oh, and my mod points gave out a couple of entries ago, but once they refill I'll go back and finish giving out participation credits. So there's another reason to enter - we all like +1s, right?

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[Last edited by Dischorran at 06-27-2009 08:30 PM]
06-27-2009 at 08:26 PM
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12th Archivist
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A little less than an our (in my timezone) of contest left! Get cracking, people!

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06-28-2009 at 10:03 PM
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Dischorran
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And, time. Entries are now closed, and further edits are now only permissible to fix any *major* playability issues that may crop up. I haven't completed Chaco's entry or VIPCOOL's second entry yet; if someone happens to beat them before I do, please post here to confirm that they're solvable. I'll put up a voting thread shortly.

In the meantime, thanks go to Chaco, noma, skell, VIPCOOL, Tahnan, 12th Archivist, and The Stew Boy for participating, and to RoboBob3000 for getting the contest off of life support!

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06-28-2009 at 11:38 PM
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Chaco
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VIPCOOL wrote:
This is my second entry to this contest. I have a feeling that Chaco won't like the puzzle here.

I call shenanigans. This is a room you've already published:

Slayer Traps : Level 4 - Evil Eyes and Wraithwings : 1 South, 2 East

Technically, there was nothing in the rules preventing this sort of thing, but I'm at least a little disappointed - I was expecting a new VIPCOOL puzzle.

I'll try and solve this room so I can post a victory demo here and prove the room is solvable. I can produce a victory demo for my own room if anyone is having trouble with it.

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06-29-2009 at 12:13 AM
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Dischorran
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Good catch. I probably should have specified new rooms in the rules, but I didn't, and it is indeed VIPCOOL's own work, so the entry stands. As for whether entirely original work is worthy of a higher score in the polls, that's up to the voters.

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06-29-2009 at 12:38 AM
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