Trickster
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By the way, there's a reason I haven't just said "make it so you can choose whether green doors come back up if the room becomes unconquered again". This by itself is not foolproof. You can walk all the way to the edge of the room, past any number of green door tiles, and a bomb then goes off to create babies.

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skell
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Trickster wrote:

Tim wrote:
As the person who has found hundreds(!) of rooms with tar backtracking problems during HA testing, I would say something that prevents architects to make this kind of mistakes is very welcome. It is a huge problem because this happens a lot in holds by (mostly inexperienced) architects, and basically I suffer the most because I had to test them. Believe me, these things takes time to test.

Thank you.
If spiky greens leave people cold, the best solution may be a scripting command that blocks Beethro from exiting by wall or stair. Any attempt to leave will undo the action, and you can detect the attempt to have him say something like, "I shouldn't leave without killing the tar babies," or whatever.

The downside is that architects would need to know how to do it, but it's still better than nothing.

This! After some talking with Schik and my own thinking and now this post - after all we do have some simple elements which aren't very versatile and don't interact with other element in multitude of ways, but still manage to be crucial. Pits, green, blue, red and black doors, walls among others.

So yes, consider me a saved soul . The idea stands on its own in my mind after all.

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Schik
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The spiked doors are the most elegant solution. As Tim noted, this is an extremely common problem, so requiring scripting seems like a terrible hack when a fairly simple copy/change of an existing element would do a better job of fixing the problem.

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Trickster
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If the spiked door idea is a go, we probably want to maximize puzzle potential with them if it can be done without affecting the ease of use of the doors.

One way would be to have the spikes pop up any time a monster is in the same room, whether or not the room has been conquered previously. This isn't much, but it could make for a challenging walk-back through a room that contains stuff or some other way to generate monsters.

Another option is to have non-required enemies (like slayers) also trigger the spikes, so the gate could be used to force a slayer kill.

A third option would be to have the gates only pop up for spawned enemies. This would be slightly more complex to use for the intended purpose, because you'd need to do two things: border all exits with spikes (as normal), but also use a standard green door to block the exits. On the plus side, there are lots of things that could be done puzzle-wise with roaches and tar: any spiky surface would be unsafe during a spawn turn.

The most basic form would be to have them identical to green doors except they kill you if you're on them when they rise, and they rise whenever a room would not be conquered upon exit.

I think it would probably look most intuitive if they were just a line of big spikes (circles with conic shading). When down it'd look like a bunch of holes in the floor, and when up it'd look like big green spikes, one per tile maybe. That makes it more intuitively obvious that they're deadly from the top but not the sides. I don't think the base needs to be green when the spikes are down, but maybe the green spike tips could be visible from the dark holes. Of course, anyway you want to do it is fine, these are just ideas. I'd be happy to do the art for it if you need, though.

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navithmastero
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File: Spiky_Greens.zip (2.6 KB)
Downloaded 61 times.
License: Public Domain

Here is:

1- Green spiky door up: circle with green and black conic shading.

2- Green spiky door down: dark green circular base, with green noise.

Both fit 1 tile.

-nm

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[Last edited by navithmastero at 01-04-2013 08:45 AM]

Trickster
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navithmastero wrote:
Here is:

1- Green spiky door up: circle with green and black conic shading.

2- Green spiky door down: dark green circular base, with green noise.

Both fit 1 tile.

-nm

I'm guessing the background would be automatic(?), the same way they do um...

Well, I forget which feature does it automatically based on nearby ground-tile-style, but I know it's out there. I've fussed with it like crazy before...

OH! Custom tiles with transparency do that.

Maybe there should be a set background to it, though, for simplicity. Like, the border could always look like a downed green door or a road or something.

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navithmastero
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Yeah, an open green door would be the best,
I think, although it might look a little strange with an 'open' door.

Or:

-nm

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[Last edited by navithmastero at 01-04-2013 05:48 PM]

Tahnan
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Tim wrote:
As the person who has found hundreds(!) of rooms with tar backtracking problems during HA testing, I would say something that prevents architects to make this kind of mistakes is very welcome.

I'm a little puzzled by this. Playing through old holds, I certainly found myself frustrated more than once at having gone past a green door after leaving a new tarstuff baby alive. But my understanding was that, if you conquered a room, de-conquered it, and then left by a route that you wouldn't be able to come back through, it was pretty much your own frackin' fault, and not in fact an HA-level backtracking problem.

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Tahnan wrote:
I'm a little puzzled by this. Playing through old holds, I certainly found myself frustrated more than once at having gone past a green door after leaving a new tarstuff baby alive. But my understanding was that, if you conquered a room, de-conquered it, and then left by a route that you wouldn't be able to come back through, it was pretty much your own frackin' fault, and not in fact an HA-level backtracking problem.

I don't think that's fair at all. A player can't tell by looking at a single room whether or not a room they have not yet seen will provide a way to get back to the start of the level. It's incumbent upon the architect to at least put a note in the room that says, "You're doomed if you don't complete this now." In the absence of this, the architect should prevent the "you're screwed save" potential entirely.

I favor the latter, since not everyone speaks English and it's just kinder to the player. I've had to replay a dozen rooms before, and it can suck pretty hard.

This is really about convenience for me as an architect, anyway, moreso than for the player. I want to be able to prevent backtracking errors in a simple fashion. As it stands now, I can't, so I spend more time than needed and often make the level harder. (You'll see quite a few black doors in Tinytall Tower when I finally finish that nightmarishly hanging thing.)

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[Last edited by Trickster at 01-05-2013 07:23 PM]

Doom
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Tahnan wrote:

Tim wrote:
As the person who has found hundreds(!) of rooms with tar backtracking problems during HA testing, I would say something that prevents architects to make this kind of mistakes is very welcome.

I'm a little puzzled by this. Playing through old holds, I certainly found myself frustrated more than once at having gone past a green door after leaving a new tarstuff baby alive. But my understanding was that, if you conquered a room, de-conquered it, and then left by a route that you wouldn't be able to come back through, it was pretty much your own frackin' fault, and not in fact an HA-level backtracking problem.

I don't think this was ever enforced for this reason exactly. Last message I could find about this was here. Even the official holds are full of rooms where you can trap yourself. What we can do (and what Tim probably was referring to) is suggesting the architect to fix this for convenience, because it's usually easy to do via backtracking arrows or moving the green door to the edge of the room.

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A "Wait for clean level" script command has been added in 5.0.

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mrimer wrote:
A "Wait for clean level" script command has been added in 5.0.

That's not exactly what this is discussing, but it's still nice to know there's an alternative to cyan doors.

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Trickster wrote:

mrimer wrote:
A "Wait for clean level" script command has been added in 5.0.

That's not exactly what this is discussing, but it's still nice to know there's an alternative to cyan doors.

I agree. Also, my problem in this thread has been resolved and I don't need any fix for that part of the problem any more.

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Tim wrote:
I agree. Also, my problem in this thread has been resolved and I don't need any fix for that part of the problem any more.

I still need it if at all possible.

If spikes can be scripted and they kill the player on the turn the script is triggered, this would work okayish.

Or, a conditional "Player tries to exit room" that can perform a "Stop player" action to prevent it. That would be a more elegant solution.

The easiest solution might simply be to just have a checkbox for "Exits blocked until room clear". Then even noobs could do it. As for me, I don't care--I can do it with any of these, as long as I have at least one.

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Someone Else
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Honestly, I really don't like this idea. What I would prefer is something that queries "Do you want to leave this room? The room will not be completed if you do." whenever the player attempts to leave a room that has had green doors dropped but is incomplete. This way, it leaves all responsibility in the hands of the player without causing the architect to have to plan carefully (or just always use spiked gates).

In addition, this doesn't force the player to do anything specific - The spiked door doesn't really add any functionality other than preventing accidental backtracking issues, and it's more in line with the Friendly Note that Doom linked to.

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Just to throw in my own opinion.

Personally I don't really like the spiked green door idea. You'd have to cover all exists right along room edges, witch wouldn't look too good in my opinion. Also I'm kind of seeing a problem that you'd instantly die when entering a room. I mean these doors are supposed to be up (and kill you) when monsters are present. They have to be along room edges to be effective. Witch results in instant death when entering an unconquered room. And even if you allow initial stepping off, you couldn't leave the room before conquering it at all. So if you want to leave a harder room for later you'd have to use restore.

Tim wrote:
...

My preference would be a large, hard to miss token, one that does not need to be activated. With such a token, I can just look at the room in one look and find that it's backtrack-proof. Any other method like doors or scripting means even more testing than it is now.

Tim wrote:
...
I agree. Also, my problem in this thread has been resolved and I don't need any fix for that part of the problem any more.

I also wonder about how this problem got solved, but reading this thread gave me an idea that I think would be an acceptable solution.

A new token that is in effect from the start like the persistent movement token. The Smitemaster's Guarantee token. Initially this token does nothing. It becomes active, if the room enters a conquered state. This can be at the start of the room when entering an already cleared room or later it doesn't really matter. After the token is active, the player cannot leave the room if it has been reverted to an unconquered state. Trying to exit via stairs or room edge would result in a bump, and I think that even scripts that would make the player exit the room should fail.

This would basically be a backtracking proof token. Because once the room is conquered it would stay conquered. Of course this would only fix backtracking issues caused when reverting rooms back to unconquered state and leaving, but still.

Not only that, but it would still allow the player to explore without conquering the rooms uninterrupted.

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Someone Else wrote:
What I would prefer is something that queries "Do you want to leave this room? The room will not be completed if you do."

Now that I think, it may actually be possible to, whenever the player moves onto one square from exit and there are monsters, give the player a message and then pose a Question with no answers so the only option they can select is 0) Undo, which moves them back a square.

I'll have to try that to see if it works (after thesis).

While we're on the topic of clunkiness, however, is there any way to do exits to the same room that don't pause to load the level and the exact same room again? I know "tunnels do that" but they're a bit limited; I'm thinking a scriptable exit where you can check "simply appear here if entered from the same room". Currently you can check something like "skip entrance message" but it would be nice to skip the load entirely if it's to the same room (or even to another room on the same level, if that can be done quickly and seamlessly; useful for porting between multiple copies of a room with minor differences (e.g. the room actually appears to change in non-scriptable ways) particularly now that we can custom name the rooms).

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Someone Else
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Trickster wrote: Now that I think, it may actually be possible to, whenever the player moves onto one square from exit and there are monsters, give the player a message and then pose a Question with no answers so the only option they can select is 0) Undo, which moves them back a square.

No. It'll be yes/no. However, you can have it ask infinitely many questions until the player answers undo.

While we're on the topic of clunkiness, however, is there any way to do exits to the same room that don't pause to load the level and the exact same room again? I know "tunnels do that" but they're a bit limited; I'm thinking a scriptable exit where you can check "simply appear here if entered from the same room". Currently you can check something like "skip entrance message" but it would be nice to skip the load entirely if it's to the same room (or even to another room on the same level, if that can be done quickly and seamlessly; useful for porting between multiple copies of a room with minor differences (e.g. the room actually appears to change in non-scriptable ways) particularly now that we can custom name the rooms).

AFAIK, also no. You can move the player by changing _X and _Y, but I think that's the best you can do.

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Someone Else wrote:
AFAIK, also no. You can move the player by changing _X and _Y, but I think that's the best you can do.

Oh! You can change _X and _Y in 4.0? Well, sweet. That works.

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mrimer
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Trickster wrote:
I'll have to try that to see if it works (after thesis).

Hadn't thought of that. Creative!

While we're on the topic of clunkiness, however, is there any way to do exits to the same room that don't pause to load the level and the exact same room again?

I'm not sure what you mean by load. The game's loading time is probably a millisecond. Are you possibly talking about the fade out-and-in effect?

But...yeah -- if you want to go to a different spot in the same room, then there's no need to exit the level unless you want to force the room or the player's move sequence to reset. Just changing the player's _X and _Y should be sufficient.

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mrimer wrote:
Hadn't thought of that. Creative!

Yeah. I learned how to do that in order to preserve some scripting choices without the whole exit/enter level thing happening for my current hold project. It's not a very elegant solution to ensuring a clean room, though...it works best when there's a single choke-point to step through.

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[Last edited by Trickster at 06-07-2013 09:40 PM]

skell
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Let me bump this, since it wasn't ultimately resolved and I guess it's still an issue.

To summarize what I understand so far, the following ideas were suggested:

Spiked green gates - they'd auto close when room becomes unconquered killing the player if they stand on them.
Pros:
- Are intuitive and easy to use
- If sister versions are introduced they can be a bit more versatile
Cons:
- An architect still has to chose to use them
- They are not the prettiest, since you'd have to cover all room exits
- Won't work on invulnerable player roles

Token - various suggestions were given: block spawning, prevent leaving, alter how doors work, prevent leaving if room became unconquered.
Pros:
- A solution that works the same across all holds
- Has a visual clue
Cons:
- An architect still has to chose to use them

Scripting preventing unsolving a room - a scripting command that would prevent tar from spawning when cut.
Pros:
- Interesting command
Cons:
- An architect still has to chose to use them
- No universal visual clue telling that it's active

UI change - Someone Else has suggested a question popup, my suggestion is a setting option "Auto lock room exit when unconquering a conquered room", which would auto lock the room with a message indicating that it happened.
Pros:
- Works even for already published holds
- Architects do not have to think about it
Cons:
- A stubborn player can ignore the warning and get in trouble.

Thoughts?

Edit: Oh and I guess it's fair to mention it - I have ordered the suggestion in the order from most amount of work required to implement to least amount of work required to implement.

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[Last edited by skell at 11-04-2020 08:48 AM]

Kalin
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I like the UI option. Specifically, I was going to suggest soft-locking all unconquered rooms.

If a player tries to leave a room in a manner that would result in it becoming/remaining unconquered, a prompt appears asking "Do you want to leave this room unconquered? (Y/N)".

Answering "No" undos the last move. Answering "Yes" leaves the room, and the player deals with the consequences knowing they were warned.

This works without any effort from the architect, and (in my mind) would remove the need for the current room lock feature.

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Nuntar
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That's a really bad idea, because leaving a room unconquered is something the player does all the time, whether because they want to look at several rooms before deciding which one to tackle, or are just passing through rooms to reach a favourable entrance. A prompt appearing every single time would be a severe annoyance.

I'd like to throw one more suggestion into the pile: a token that, if it exists in a room, then when the room is cleared, it remains cleared even if new babies are created.

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