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https://www.dropbox.com/s/syzigoggpu3adau/Blockerture%20Science%20Laboratories.hold?dl=0
Blockerture Science Laboratories is a work-in-progress hold intended to introduce and fully tutorialize/tantalize the uses of a set of fully-scripted custom-made pushable DROD elements, which together fall under the name "
Blocks"
. Aside from asking a bunch of questions for help with the scripting, I did all the work to make the blocks--their appearances, sounds, and behavior. I give permission and, in fact,
strongly encourage other architects to use these elements in their hold, and once I'm sure they're working entirely correctly I will put their scripts in text form along with all relevant assets in a zip file attached to a post. (I do ask politely if anyone using them gives me credit, though? A little mention in a scroll or something, you know what I mean.)
Blocks are pushables with various unique traits; particularly they can be pushed by both body and weapon like a mirror, but drop trapdoor-type tiles. Aside from regular Blocks that push like mirrors, there are Teleport Blocks that teleport in the direction they're pushed, Momentum Blocks that have "
Momentum"
, and Gravity blocks that constantly "
try"
to move in their chosen direction. The direction of Gravity Blocks can be changed, and all blocks can be made to Float, using a few custom tokens. Ideally, the best way to come to understand their behaviors will be just to play this hold.
The hold's final form will have 7 levels; it currently has 6. The first 5 each introduce a new things, and the 6th level is intended as a final exam/show-off of the sorts of puzzles these Blocks are really capable of. The 7th level will be a post-mastery area accessible by finding the one secret room in each of the first 6, and possibly contain rooms made by people other than me?
I'm looking for feedback on the hold's puzzles (where there are puzzles, that is), "
writing"
(the "
spoken"
tutorial information), and of course any and all strange, unexpected, or glitchy behavior of the custom elements. Below, in a secret, I will list
known problems with these elements as they presently are.
Click here to view the secret text
×Known Issues:
-If a self-moving block (Gravity or Momentum) is on a pressure plate plate with a pit, water or shallow water in the direction it's "trying" to move, it will move forward and fall in even if there is an obstruction (obstacle, creature, arrow pointing the wrong way): This is a consequence of the programming and I don't think it can be fixed until/unless a simple "Push down pressure plate at" command is created. The alternative would be an exceptional case where self-moving blocks won't go into pits if currently on a plate, which is worse in my opinion.
-All 3 block-related tokens don't quite work right with doubles: Specifically, if an active clone (which is marked by scripting as "Player") steps onto a token and then a different clone moves the next turn, the token will activate again on that next turn (being marked now as "a Clone"). This would also happen again if, afterward, the player switched back to that clone and waited a turn on the token. This is because the coding that's supposed to prevent a player or mimic currently standing on top of a token from repeatedly activating it distinguishes between a "Player" entity and a "Double" entity so that, for example, Beethro followed by a mimic stepping on the token WILL activate it repeatedly. Another symptom of this coding is that if one mimic (or time-clone, whatever) steps off of a token and another mimic (etc.) steps onto the same token at the same time, it is NOT activated that turn. What I really want is a way to make something activate exactly the way native tokens do, and I'm not sure how to do that.
-Strange disappearances: In some edge cases, all types of blocks can temporarily disappear from existence due to trying to "appear" on top of something that they can't appear on. The main case I'm aware of involves a character body pushing the block onto a plate while in the same turn changing from a disarmed to an armed state, for example when coming out of shallow water. A somewhat worse case of this is the Teleblock, which disappears any time it's teleported onto the same tile as a non-Beethro weaponed entity's weapon. The workaround that makes it not do this with Beethro entities (Player, Clones, and Timeclones only) is a little strange, involving the "Player Weapon On/Off" commands, but hasn't caused any noticeable issues yet. The one room in the entire hold that has both a teleblock and armed decoys has a further workaround using a disarm token which is slightly noisy but otherwise functional. It's impossible to fully fix this without some command that doesn't yet exist, like a "wait for weapon" command or a way to set the armed/disarmed state of an arbitrary entity in the room.
Also a part of this bug: Body-pushing any block directly into shallow water with a weapon equipped and pointed in the direction of the block will cause the stepping stone's appearance to be delayed until after the tile is free of weapons and any other entities. This is relatively minor and it's hard for me to think of a puzzle it would actually break.
These issues boil down to the following rules for using blocks:
-In rooms with Momentum or Gravity Blocks, no tile adjacent to a pressure plate should simultaneously have water/shallow water/pit/anything that turns into one of those and a non-wall-tab obstruction (force arrow, obstacle, etc.)
-Try not to place a pressure plate too close to shallow water or oremites in a way that would allow the player to simultaneously re-arm and push something onto said plate.
-No non-Beethro weaponed entities (including decoy/mimic potions and soldier horns!) in the same room as any teleblock, unless it's impossible for the two to interact.
____________________________
109th Skywatcher
Here are some links to Things!
Click here to view the secret text
[Last edited by Xindaris at 07-06-2018 01:55 AM]
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