Doom
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Banjooie wrote:
That's because there was never a puzzle made better by hiding things under tar.

Off the top of my head,
Advanced Concepts 2 : Tarstuff : 3 East, 5 North qualifies
Tar Ballroom : The Three Steps : Entrance wouldn't work the same without walls under tar either.

And it's much easier to think of good snake manipulation rooms that would be trial-n-error without the movement rules.

Now something like abusing Slayer movement, that's actually awful.

Jatopian
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Doom, there is a difference between intentionally hiding information under tar, and just putting things under tar because that's how the puzzle has to be to work.

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Doom
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There's no difference in that you wanted to use a transparency mod for both types of rooms.

As shown there were some perfectly legit uses of hiding things under tarstuff, wasn't entirely rooms not worth playing at all. Vision tokens along with the slider took away one mandatory mod to play these. Serpent clock is just the logical next step for similar reasons.

Jutt
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Isn't the fact that the clock appears at all when serpents are present, already a hint to their underlying movement patterns? Really, displaying their H/V movement preference uncovers only a small part of their behavior and is nothing like a guide for architects how to exploit their logic in the most evil ways possible.

Also I find the argument that people could potentially go and create horrible serpent puzzles because of this feature laughably simplistic. There are so many more factors that contribute to what puzzles get made. We have a forum with plenty of discussions and opinions on serpent puzzles. There are beta testers who provide feedback on whether puzzles are fun to play. We have hold ratings and comments where you can tell architects to stop making horrible serpent manipulation puzzles. And if they still get made, we have tons of people who actually like serpent manipulation. You don't have to love them, Banjooie, but can you at least tolerate their existence?

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Banjooie
Level: Smitemaster

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Jutt wrote:
Isn't the fact that the clock appears at all when serpents are present, already a hint to their underlying movement patterns?

NO. Or, rather, not one that in any way is directly and intuitively obvious to at least me, and I am apparently not the WORST person at this game, so...

You don't have to love them, Banjooie, but can you at least tolerate their existence?

I'm not sure if this is is a brony joke. At any rate: NO.

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[Last edited by Banjooie at 07-21-2012 09:05 PM]

Blondbeard
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Hmm... I think if Banjooie liked serpent puzzles, and someone else was the serpent hater, Banjooie would have swooped in and made a sarcastic comment by now

Banjooie
Level: Smitemaster

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I want it for the record that you're complaining that I'm /not/ being a sarcastic jackass in this thread.

Blondbeard
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Nope. I'm not complaining. It was just a reflection that felt somewhat amusing. I do think you are a bit obsessive about the issue though. There will still be plenty of non-serpent rooms for you to play, and as is clearly demonstrated here and elsewhere there are people who like serpent puzzles, and who really like the serpent clocks.

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[Last edited by Blondbeard at 07-21-2012 09:41 PM]

Tahnan
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larrymurk wrote:
Wouldn't it be nice to have a clock with
1. Serpent timer
2. Water skipper timer
3. Queen spawn count up/down
4. Speed 1/2 turn indicator

I've never been clear on why people want things like "water skipper timer". If you've got a clock counting down from 30, you know when the waterskippers spawn: they spawn on the zeros. I find the clocks that have pictures of snakes and waterskippers and roach queens and roach eggs to be very, very cluttered.

I continue to use my own clock (which, OK, so I'm biased), which has numbers that count down from 30, and a snake indicator along the bottom that simply say "H1, H2, H3, H4, H5, V1, V2, V3, V4, V5". Those clocks that show pictures of snakes confuse me; once I put in a clock that just says, in essence, "snakes will try to move horizontally/vertically towards you", things became much clearer. It's not graphically impressive, but man it's so much easier to read.

infoleather
Level: Roachling
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Queen the / tar cycle, big hand count 30 seconds count vignette dial Close snake preferences, waterskipper spawning any TSS

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Banjooie
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infoleather wrote:
Queen the / tar cycle, big hand count 30 seconds count vignette dial Close snake preferences, waterskipper spawning any TSS

Well, I'm sold now.

Red-XIII
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I think the serpent timer is pretty subjective, there are those who don't want to know every detail of DROD but there are also those who like knowing extra-stuff; personally while playing flash-drod I found the serpent-timer pretty useful in the simplest rooms, but there are many rooms in which the clock is not useful. Anyway, I agree with those who said that there has to be a chose bewtween clock in the options; if someone likes it, it'll use it; if someone don't it'll not

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