Trickster
Level: Smitemaster

Rank Points: 662
Registered: 07-03-2007
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File: Doomed Room.hold (109.8 KB)
Downloaded 59 times.
License: Public Domain

Recently, one of the rooms in the beta for Tinytall Tower was broken by the announcement that the trick the room is based upon will be removed in the next update.

It's a really fun room (if you like hard rooms), so I yanked it out and placed it into a tiny hold which features both the room, and a harder postmastery version of one of the chambers. Enjoy it while it's still playable!

It is designed to teach you the soon-to-be-defunct trick while you play, so you don't need knowledge of it. However, being able to direct builders is rather essential.

Hopefully someone can get a bit of pleasure from what I worked so hard at. Good luck! I suspect some of you may even beat the postmastery room, though so far not even my testers have attempted that one...

EDIT: Fixed 1S so that you can actually exit after beating it. Stupid mistake after moving the room. It should still have the same Hold ID so presumably you can restore to 1S.

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[Last edited by Trickster at 05-10-2012 10:37 PM]

Dischorran
Level: Smitemaster

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I really liked this room (insofar as I'm going to like a room that takes an entire frakkin' evening to beat).

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The spitemaster
Level: Smiter
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Registered: 06-09-2005
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I find it very hard to see the flashing icons of where the builders were going with the light and fog in as well. Slightly frustrating. However, good room and I would put it at 7.5 for difficulty.

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Trickster
Level: Smitemaster

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Dischorran has informed me that people in chat are complaining about difficulty seeing features, which may be in part due to the switch to Sandstone at the last minute.

As far as I am aware, the annoyance would be telling pits from pit platforms from water from water platforms; the lighting technique isn't much different from things I've seen in the recent SmS and GatEB (at least it looks the same on my monitor). You might want to turn Alpha blending off if you have difficulty seeing the features.

For what it's worth, I don't suspect this will be an issue anywhere else in the tower since I'm not mixing pits, water, and two kinds of platforms there. Most of the rooms are quite clear. But if this is a huge problem, a little feedback now might be good, because none of my testers have noticed what I'm hearing now.

EDIT: Ah, right, the flashing tiles. Derp. Yes, I can totally understand that.

I tried to mark the flashing areas with checkpoints or other prominent features to make them more obvious. This is a strategy I used in other rooms with builders (I think there's only one or two remaining in the tower that qualify, however).

EDIT EDIT: And people turning off alpha blending means they miss the spectacular light-show blending and shading I did in that last room. So unfortunate!

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[Last edited by Trickster at 05-10-2012 05:21 AM]

TFMurphy
Level: Smitemaster
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I'd say it's a trifle more unfortunate that no one will be conquering 1S as it currently stands....

Trickster
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TFMurphy wrote:
I'd say it's a trifle more unfortunate that no one will be conquering 1S as it currently stands....

Damn, that was stupid of me. Well, I just fixed 1S and reuploaded it...you should be able to exit the room after you beat it now.

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Jatopian
Level: Smitemaster
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I quite enjoyed the southeast portion of the first room. The northeast portion is a lot of platform juggling and I can't say it's nearly as fun.

Edit: It does look like a neat mechanic, and maybe it would be nice to have a mechanic that is somewhat like it but makes more sense in a future DROD. Probably it won't end up involving bridges.

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[Last edited by Jatopian at 05-10-2012 11:22 PM]

Trickster
Level: Smitemaster

Rank Points: 662
Registered: 07-03-2007
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I'm curious if anyone was able to conquer the hold (i.e., conquer 1S after the fix).

Originally, the fourth chamber was going to be a room in the Tower proper, but on the advice of testers I created this room instead in order to teach the trick. I enjoy all of the chambers, but I think the fourth is the hardest* and most clever.

* This is true unless you count the postmaster version of the third chamber (1S), which relies on a quirk of builder behavior I still do not understand. It's very odd to see a builder sandwiched right between a relay station and a flashing square, yet unable to build the square even though no movement is required. (That may be yet another bug, for all I know.)

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TFMurphy
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It's probably not clear, but I did finish the room up to the roadblock before you updated it, so yes, I conquered it.

The 4th chamber, by the way, is unaffected by the fix: you can go ahead and reuse it in your hold. It does have a US though... you can use the bottom builder for everything here.

And I solved 1S by giving the builder two relay stations to go to: remember that builders like to alternate what station they run to, which gives you more than enough time to block him off.

I'm not sure I understand exactly what you're doing to get the builder to act like you describe either. I don't really see anything in the code that would prevent a Builder from either getting supplies from a Station it's right next to, or building on a Build Marker it's right next to. There's a slight quirk in that if there isn't a path to the Station's exact *tile*, he won't consider it (even if he's standing right next to the Station), but that's certainly not the case in your room... and he'd just stop dead if that was the case, and certainly wouldn't oscillate back and forth. EDIT: I take that back: he would oscillate once he'd added stations to his visiting queue, and would face each station in turn he wants to get to. But if he's right next to those stations in the room, there shouldn't be anything stopping him from using it.

If you'd like to post a small room demonstrating this, then that might be useful.

EDIT: Wait, I might understand. Are you sure the Builder *never* builds in that situation? Because I could see a 2 turn delay happening if the Builder had added the other two stations to his visiting sequence, which means in between building he will want to visit them, and will waste a turn facing in the direction of the blocked station. But after those two turns, he'll face the station he's next to again and get supplies from that. So that wouldn't keep the builder occupied forever.

EDIT 2: Incidentally, such a situation does seem to end up with the builder *building* the Road on the same turn that the Bridge drops, which ends up deleting the Build Marker but also causing the road to drop into Water. Not certain about whether that's intended or worth changing.

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[Last edited by TFMurphy at 05-12-2012 03:07 PM]

Trickster
Level: Smitemaster

Rank Points: 662
Registered: 07-03-2007
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TFMurphy wrote:
The 4th chamber, by the way, is unaffected by the fix: you can go ahead and reuse it in your hold. It does have a US though... you can use the bottom builder for everything here.

Ah, I see the problem now. After I moved the room into the chambered format, somehow the door to the builder's node was not properly set to shut. The NE plate should shut both S doors, preventing the S builder from returning to a cyan node.

You're right that it still works despite being based on the same idea, though. Essentially it relies on the fact that the bridge will drop to water if you release the water platform but pit if you wait for the pit platform first. I may try to rework this as a challenge room and change up the first three chambers in that case. It's still going to require a lot of redesign but it's nice to keep that last one. Thanks for noticing that.

TFMurphy wrote:
So that wouldn't keep the builder occupied forever.

As I recall:

..X
NB.

N is node. B is builder with node color and having visited another node, currently standing on pit platform. X is ortho-square onto which builder wishes to build. The builder vacillates eternally, as I recall, but my memory is somewhat sketchy. I figured the vacillation was due to either looking at alternate nodes (as he's visited others by that time) and/or mistaking the ortho-square as impassible for some reason (which it is, but should not prevent him from building by diagonal adjacency).

I don't have a demo, and it's been a long time since I made this room. I'll try to make one later if I find time.

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