Rabscuttle
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I'm a tar baby and I dance dance dance and I dance dance dance.

Go to Holds, that's where it is.

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[Last edited by Rabscuttle at 09-18-2006 06:16 AM]

agaricus5
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That's really cool.

I like the usage of the Serpents as Walls feature to do this.

Surprisingly, it's completable, although it doesn't appear to be so at first.

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Rabscuttle
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I was surprised at first too

Added two more rooms.

One with a tar-baby congo line, one using dancing babies to make uncrossable lines (the mimic puzzle isn't very hard)

techant
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Nice start. Keep going expand on the ideas you have maybe with simuliar rooms but with differnt takes on the problem.

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Tim
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Wow.

I've just played this, and the ballroom looks really incredible. The way the tar moves while you wait is beautiful.

The room with two babies was hard, I did have the feeling that I was using a lot of tricks in there at once.

The room with the mimics was really interesting, as I did not realise what was happening after it was too late. (Big plus for that.)

This idea has a lot of potential. I think you can make a lot more out of this. At least you should.

Try to look for some more ideas in the existing snake puzzles (the "snake run" holds, for example) And you might want to concentrate each room with just one or two ideas. Currently it just feel cluttered.

PS. In the room with the mimic, what was the mimic puzzle? Did you intend to have me killed both the brains with the mimic first? Because I did not have to do that...

Otherwise, a very nice hold.

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Rabscuttle
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Thanks

I'd actually half-forgotten about this. It originally was more of a 'hey, this looks cool', but if I can think of more ideas I'll try to make it into a proper hold.

The mimic room is really to demonstrate the "invisible barrier" idea. There should be two possible ways to escape the SE corner - killing the brain or hitting the orb.

Actually, I've had an idea or two just now. Hmm....

Stefan
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Rabscuttle wrote:
The mimic room is really to demonstrate the "invisible barrier" idea. There should be two possible ways to escape the SE corner - killing the brain or hitting the orb.

Or you could just

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Tim
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The way Stefan mentioned (see previous post) is how I solved this room as well.

Note that I'm not sure rooms with brains and arrows will work in JtRH the same way as in DROD:AE. You can read it here,
although I still don't understand it. I'm just refraining from using brains and arrows right now.

If you understand the post, please tell me.

-- Tim

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Rabscuttle
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Whoops - forgot about diagonal movement. *slaps forehead* You're not meant to be able to step on the arrow.

The change shouldn't affect the room (once I fix it).

The bug is that once you step on and off a force arrow, the brain no longer thinks it is an obstacle. With JtRH, once you step off the force arrow, the brain thinks it is an obstacle again and will treat it like a wall.

Tim
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Thanks!

Rabscuttle
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File: The Twist.hold (1.6 KB)
Downloaded 99 times.
License: Other
From: Unspecified

I'm coming back to this hold, although I'm busy at the moment so holding your breath waiting for updates is not recommended.

But! Here is a room which I think is pretty nifty. I don't know why I added stairs, I'm pretty sure it isn't completable. It will most likely end up in some form as a secret room.

It is a pity that 60 mod 8 = 4

TripleM
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File: TT Dizzy The Entrance Victory.demo (2.9 KB)
Downloaded 80 times.
License: Other
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Uncompletable?

Come on, nothings uncompletable on the DROD forum

I realised afterwards I probably didn't need to keep the mother alive as long as I did, but oh well.

Rabscuttle
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Heh, I had a feeling someone would prove me wrong.

Rabscuttle
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New Version in top post.

Changes:
JtRH-ified the hold.
Minor changes to Entrance
Moderate changes to 1S, 1W
New room at 1S1W
New half a room at 2S1W

Edit 01/04/06

Stealth update (because 1 room in 3 months is kind of sad )
New room at 2S2W

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[Last edited by Rabscuttle at 04-01-2006 03:32 AM]

Rabscuttle
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update yay!

New room at 2S1W.

New room idea at 1S2W which will be completed some time or another.

Rabscuttle
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Update: Completed the room at 1S2W, but I'm not sure I like it. The last bit and the first bit are ok, but most of the middle seems just thrown together. Maybe I should make it into a number of separate puzzles with different movement baby movement patterns? Hrm.

I've used the floor to indicate how the baby will behave - IIRC, the 2-snake's head on sand means unbrained, on rock means brained.

==

I think there will only be one or two more rooms, so I'd currently like feedback on the relative difficulty of rooms. I'd like to lay out the rooms so that the easy ones are close to the start and the harder ones are further away. It's probably the wrong way round at the moment.

Rabscuttle
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Update.

Redid 1S2W. It's a bit difficult from randomness, so I'm not sure about it. There's a challenge that I haven't tried yet, but it's currently 3am so I'll wait until tomorrow.

Added an exit room in 1E

Revised The Twist and added it to the hold.

I don't think I'll be adding any more rooms (apart from another post master door one that will be a secret), so this is the final version, barring any changes.

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[Last edited by Rabscuttle at 09-02-2006 06:33 PM : made more changes than I thought]

Jatopian
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This is excellent, barring the side effect of having that chant stuck in my head for hours after playing.

____________________________
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Make your pressure plates 3.0 style!
DROD architecture idea generator

Rabscuttle
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File: tar.gif (561 bytes)
Downloaded 2839 times.
License: Public Domain

Thanks.

--

Original tar baby image so I don't lose it. (it's not still on the site anywhere, is it?)

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[Last edited by Rabscuttle at 09-04-2006 02:20 AM]

Rabscuttle
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Penultimate version. (for real this time)

* Added a final secret room.
* Changed 1S2W to make the SE corner less easy
* Checked that the challenge in 1S2W is possible (it is)

I plan to post it to holds in a week. The only change will be the addition of the other top-secret post-master room (actually, it's not that exciting, I don't know why I'm not just including it now)

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[Last edited by Rabscuttle at 09-04-2006 03:20 PM]

Tim
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Oh, I haven't played this one for some time...

To be honest, I could only clear 2 of them. The Entrance, and 2S1W.

1E: Checkpoint please. There's a trick I want to try out, but I don't want to restart the room every time for this.

3S2W: I still think you need to give a bit more hints. At least the movement order.

I can't do 1S anymore... The AE version was much easier

About the secret room: I think I've found the trick, although I still cannot finish it...

-- Tim

Andy101
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A great little hold!

I've finally managed to complete it (although not mastered) after several hours of solid play. 1s2w and 2s were my favourite rooms. I refuse to believe that 1s2w is completable if you strike the middle orb first but I have a nasty suspicion that's what your challenge is.

1w has what I assume to be an unintended solution as you can use the roaches to manouver the mimic to kill the snake and tar babies.

Now I've just got 1e and 3s2w to finish off and the third secret room that I haven't been able to find yet.

[Edit] Found and completed the disco secret room, it seemed easy enough once the snakes were dead. I've also completed 1e, nice little trick there, so that just leaves 3s2w.

____________________________
"True perfection has to be imperfect"

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[Last edited by Andy101 at 09-07-2006 12:50 AM]

larrymurk
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Rabs,

I'm glad you decided to resurrect this hold. It looks fun.

I'll comment on the rooms I've completed so far.

Entr- ok, maybe add ckpt in center? no big deal.
1E- ok
1W1S- ok
3S2W- good! yeah, this room finally forced me to understand what's going on. brained babies don't "see" characters, swords, or creatures OTHER THAN SNAKE BODIES (not heads). Phew! The other rooms i just got by playing around.

A room i've looked at.
1W- I was wondering if you could use the roaches to get the mimic into the snake, luckily andy101 says he did it already. I have a couple quibbles with this room. I prefer to not have arrows under the brains since you can't see them and in general I think giving full disclosure is best. Unless you like how it is, you could probably remove the arrows if you just make the brains be on ortho squares or something. Also, do we need 101 brains? It just seems like if you've got a good trick with the brain layout can you do it with fewer? If you don't have a good trick, why make the player hack through all those brains?


General comments-
I like the look of the rooms because they have-
1. Nice layouts
2. Nice floor coloring
3. The tar dances, dances, dances.

I gotta say this hold seems fun!

I hope to test more, but I know you're about to release it so I figured I'd giv you these comments so far.

Rabscuttle
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Thanks for the comments!

1E: Checkpoint please. There's a trick I want to try out, but I don't want to restart the room every time for this.

Will do.

3S2W: I still think you need to give a bit more hints. At least the movement order.

Larry's comments should explain this room. I was going to comment in the hold post about the brain's eye view of snake bodies and heads. I will also add some scrolls in the entrance.

As far as movement order goes, I've made the rooms so that snakes will always move before the babies. This means that spawned babies will act the same way as original babies. The disadvantage is that if you want to work out which way babies will go, then you need to first move the snakes in your head. But I think the only place that could cause problems is in 1S2W where I've marked the floors.

I've finally managed to complete it (although not mastered) after several hours of solid play. 1s2w and 2s were my favourite rooms. I refuse to believe that 1s2w is completable if you strike the middle orb first but I have a nasty suspicion that's what your challenge is.

That's the challenge and it's completable.

1w has what I assume to be an unintended solution as you can use the roaches to manouver the mimic to kill the snake and tar babies.

Nuts. I'll try to prevent that.

Entr- ok, maybe add ckpt in center? no big deal.

Done.

A room i've looked at.
1W- I was wondering if you could use the roaches to get the mimic into the snake, luckily andy101 says he did it already. I have a couple quibbles with this room. I prefer to not have arrows under the brains since you can't see them and in general I think giving full disclosure is best. Unless you like how it is, you could probably remove the arrows if you just make the brains be on ortho squares or something. Also, do we need 101 brains? It just seems like if you've got a good trick with the brain layout can you do it with fewer? If you don't have a good trick, why make the player hack through all those brains?

I'll replace the arrows with green doors. I like lots of brains because it makes optimising the room more challenging, plus it slightly obscures the fact that something tricky is required. Of course, the latter could just me being a bad architect. Or is it a star architect. Or perhaps a conglomeration of the two. ;)

Hmm... 1W...

Rabscuttle
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Ok checkpoints added in Entrance and 1E.
Explanatory scrolls in Entrance
Changes to 1W - The mimic hopefully shouldn't survive meeting the snake now.

Hey, I need ending text :/

silver
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re: ending text

haven't played the hold, but the title makes me think of http://www.lyricsdomain.com/19/sweet/ballroom_blitz.html

____________________________

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[Last edited by silver at 09-07-2006 02:05 PM]

Andy101
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File: TB Dance Floor 1W Victory.demo (1.7 KB)
Downloaded 57 times.
License: Public Domain

Rabscuttle wrote:
Changes to 1W - The mimic hopefully shouldn't survive meeting the snake now.

<-

Sorry

____________________________
"True perfection has to be imperfect"

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[Last edited by Andy101 at 09-07-2006 02:26 PM]

Rabscuttle
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oh, like that? Were you able to get the mimic into the shake area before?

Hmmm...I guess if worst come to worst I just remove the queens. But I do like to keep things... interesting for the player. Although I guess it's not much trouble to kill the queens early anyhows. So I might just do that.

also: excellent music choice

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[Last edited by Rabscuttle at 09-07-2006 02:44 PM]

Andy101
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Rabscuttle wrote:
oh, like that? Were you able to get the mimic into the shake area before?

Yep, first time I did it I used the mimic to kill the snake, which your added bombs prevented.

also: excellent music choice

Is there a way of choosing music in DROD?

____________________________
"True perfection has to be imperfect"

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[Last edited by Andy101 at 09-07-2006 03:41 PM]

Rabscuttle
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well... I'm not actually going to include it in the hold, but it should conceivably possible to use it as "speech".

But it is an appropriate song to listen to while playing the hold, especially if you are high-score seeking.

Except in the first room, which clearly wants something in 3/4 time.

--

Update: I've just cut the queens from 1W.

And the super secret room is now included because I can't be bothered removing and replacing it again. I'm still testing some changes to it.

For the lazy curious: