zex20913
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Is it okay to skip or not? Many would say \"No, level 13 must be there for a reason. Besides, it is a very well put together maze, and the creator should be praised.\" Others would say \"Yes, I thought it was the worst thing I have ever spent time on in my life.\" Which side are you on? Should there be a level 13?

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admin
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zex20913 wrote:
Is it okay to skip or not?

Sure, it\'s okay. Although, there are some people at the end of the game that will try to guilt you into going back.

Many would say \"No, level 13 must be there for a reason.

In this case, I just asked my friend Lucas to write a level, he gave it to me, and after judging its difficulty, I inserted it into the 13-spot and made a secret passage to skip past it.

Besides, it is a very well put together maze, and the creator should be praised.\" Others would say \"Yes, I thought it was the worst thing I have ever spent time on in my life.\" Which side are you on? Should there be a level 13?

I actually have yet to hear one person that liked it, other than me. It is the one puzzle in the game that pretty much requires note-taking to solve. I had a fun time working it out, but I realize it\'s not for everyone.

Also, I know that once you include a level in a game, it will be unsatisfying to skip past it. Puzzle-solvers often have a moral discipline that forces them to complete unpleasant tasks. Sorry, guys. No more big mazes. Well, unless there is a really interesting twist.

-Erik

ClaytonW
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In Caravel DROD, if you skip the labyrinth, you miss out on a portion of the ending, so I think it\'s worth it to go ahead and play it. When I played in Webfoot DROD, I always skipped it (as well as every other level that could be skipped), because it didn\'t matter in the end what you did and did not complete.

fatass
Level: Delver
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I used an interesting method for solving the maze. I copied and pasted a screenshot of the map of the maze (this wouldn\'t have been possible in Webfoot DROD) into a *.bmp. I then drew white over all the moving doors. Then I flooded the maze with yellow color starting from the entrance. The color spread to every possible direction you could go, and eventually spread to the exit. Figuring out the rest was simple.

ErikH2000
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fatass wrote:
I used an interesting method for solving the maze.

Good idea. I think Matthew Daly used that same approach with Webfoot DROD, but it was probably much more difficult since he had to copy and paste the rooms together.

-Erik

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Mikko
Level: Master Delver
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Everybody should complete it at least once. I liked playing it the first time, but the level has very little replay value IMO.

Watcher
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IMO, the biggest problem about level 13 is that you don\'t really complete each room. That\'s one of the great things about DROD, the \"I completed this room! Sweeet!\" feeling. Now, something like the two tar rooms in Neatherville is okay, but 24 rooms that function as one big challenge is really too much. I wouldn\'t recommend any more levels of this type.

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mrimer
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I actually have yet to hear one person that liked it, other than me. It is the one puzzle in the game that pretty much requires note-taking to solve. I had a fun time working it out, but I realize it\'s not for everyone.

I don\'t mind having the maze in there. It might be hard to swallow just because it is so different from every other level. (I mean, if DROD was just made as a game with a bunch of mazes, then people who like mazes would play it and say all the mazes were great...)

So I like the maze, but I think it fell short of its potential. I was expecting the gates to be part of the solution. Something like you have to go to different parts of the maze and configure the doors so that you can open up the path to the exit. But I guess since the rooms reset you can\'t really do anything like that.

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Korgath
Level: Goblin
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I didn\'t hate this maze but I did mindlessly wander in it for a few hours before I got the idea to screenshot and paste together every room. From there I started at the exit and traced a path to the begining. I also had a second path from the roach. I saved that gigantic .bmp file and still have it today.

Realized I didn\'t answer the question of the topic and edited it to show.

I think no room is supposed to be skipped. The game is great and constructed with care. Every room and floor deserves its time in the sun (or moonlight for the nocturnal people)

[Edited by Korgath on 02-04-2003 at 09:47 PM GMT]

eytanz
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I completed level 13 (by careful note-taking and a lot of trail-and error) back when I won Webfoot DROD. When I started playing Caravel DROD, I tried to solve it, but made a mistake somewhere - I\'m not sure where - and didn\'t feel like restarting it from scratch, so I ended up skipping it.

A question for the programmers - if I now pass the level, do I need to continue the same game and recompleted levels 14-25 in order to see the ending part I skipped? Or can I finish level 13 and then restore level 25 and see the complete ending?

Also, was I just missing the \"replay\" of level 13, or was there a more substaintial part of the end contingent on solving the level?

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ErikH2000
Level: Legendary Smitemaster

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A question for the programmers - if I now pass the level, do I need to continue the same game and recompleted levels 14-25 in order to see the ending part I skipped? Or can I finish level 13 and then restore level 25 and see the complete ending?

The second one you said. You can also selectively replay rooms to change the ending.

-Erik

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mrimer
Level: Legendary Smitemaster

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Also, was I just missing the \"replay\" of level 13, or was there a more substaintial part of the end contingent on solving the level?

I think there was actually a bug (yikes) that causes the ending to poop-out early if you skipped level 13. (So I think for now that if you will just restore back to level 12 and enter level 13, then you should be able to see the whole ending.) This is fixed for the next release. (Yay)

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eytanz
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Really? IIRC, the ending sure seemed complete to me - I definitely got all the hints for a sequel, explanations of \"holds\", and so forth. Note that I visited all the rooms in level 13, I just never left it through the stairs down; once I realized I made a mistake and have to restart it, I restored level 12 and skipped it. Perhaps that was enough for me to count as having completed level 13 (I didn\'t kill the level 13 roach, though)?

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ErikH2000
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eytanz wrote:
Perhaps that was enough for me to count as having completed level 13 (I didn\'t kill the level 13 roach, though)?

I think that\'s probably it. I remember having some trouble writing code to detect if the player exited level 13, and settled on some simpler but not quite completely accurate criteria.

So I guess there is no further incentive for you to complete level 13 besides personal achievement goals.

-Erik

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eytanz
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erikh2000 wrote:
So I guess there is no further incentive for you to complete level 13 besides personal achievement goals.

Nah, completing it once in Webfoot was enough...

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Tscott
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zex20913 wrote:
Is it okay to skip or not?

Sure, it\'s okay. As they say, \"It\'s only a game.\"

Personally, I gave it my best shot my first time playing DROD. I don\'t like taking notes in games, so I just stumbled around a lot and actually made it to the exit once- too bad I hadn\'t found the roach yet. Then I made it to the roach and killed it, but I couldn\'t remember the way to the exit. By that time I was pretty fed up with the level and figured I had done the two things I needed to do to solve the level (find the roach & find the exit), just not in the right order, and have skipped it ever since.

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easycyan
Level: Roachling
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How do you skip level 13 on WEBFOOT drod?
And don't you have to skip it anyhow because level 13 is NON-PASSABLE?

[Edited by easycyan on 06-13-2003 at 10:40 PM]

[Edited by easycyan on 06-13-2003 at 10:40 PM]

zex20913
Level: Smitemaster

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There's a secret room in level 12 that would let you skip 13. Your version doesn't have a solution for lvl 13. Download Caravel.

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mrimer
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zex20913 wrote:
There's a secret room in level 12 that...

Is that what it does?! I thought it just led to a flaming pit of...oh, nevermind

Mattcrampy
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Well, there is some mothingness down there, but you have to look really closely.



Matt

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Almo
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I thought it had no place in DROD. It reminded me of the tube-maze in MYST. Which after 2 hours of note-taking I decided to give up on after one more click. That click took me to the exit.

I didn't feel I was solving a DROD puzzle; rather I felt I was doing a maze with inadequate equipment.

I didn't take notes. I just started with the center-most exit from the entrance, and methodically tried all the possibilities. My memory was good enough to do this, provided I did it in one sitting, which I did.

So no more of this kind of thing please.



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eytanz
Level: Smitemaster

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Well, you'll be glad to know that JtRH doesn't feature any mazes.

At least not ones that are larger than a single screen.

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gamer_extreme_101
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Mattcrampy wrote:
At the beginning of building the new hold, we were given one instruction, and one instruction only, and I quote: "NO pure labyrinths!"

I think Level 13 came about as a result of not having enough rooms to fill up the game, and a maze seemed both easy to make and a change of pace. And indeed it was, but it kinda sucked.

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Abbyzzmal
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Part of the joy of DROD is in its potential for the expeditious and adventuresome puzzle of exploration, which level thirteen exploited well. There are so few rooms in Dugan's Dungeon that depend upon the rooms around it that level thirteen seems fairly necessary.

Also, I always play DROD with a pen in my hand, so it was really pretty easy for me. Besides, compared to 11 or 15, 13 is a very fair maze. My first time through Dugan's, I had to solve most rooms in eleven and fifteen twice, and the process for moving through rooms in those levels is hardly efficient, all the tar stabbing and walking on every piece of flooring in the room. But of course, I enjoyed those levels as well.

Why?

Because navigating a labyrinth is a Spiritual Journey. At least for me and legendary puzzle-master Robert Abbott (no relation).

-MWA (Defender of Sacred Paths)

Maurog
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I actually enjoyed the level 13 maze. It goes well with the rest of the DROD puzzles, for several reasons. For starters, it's not easy. In fact, it's pretty hard, at least before you figure it out. Then there is this "kill the roach" part, which is the trick that solves it, you sure are familiar with the feeling of finding the trick of a DROD puzzle. And the last thing, when you finish it, you have the "I'm so good, aha, aha, I'm so 1337, I solved it all by myself, I'm the king of the world!" feeling you usually get after solving them hard puzzles.

PS: Using sketches and programs to solve it is cheating in my book, as well as skipping the level. I wouldn't want to finish the game without doing every puzzle possible, it's like admitting defeat.


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eytanz
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Well, my issue with level 13 is basically that it requires a different skill set from other KDD levels. All other KDD levels are designed so you can solve them room by room; in order to do so, you need to be good at incorporation a lot of information you can see (or find out) and planning ahead. There's some memorization involved in the case of orb/door relationships and stuff hidden under tar, but everything important to solving the room is right there.

The maze requires you to keep track of a lot of spacial information, and remember the directions and connections between passageways currently invisible to you. It's possible to solve it by using methods such as the right-hand rule, but it's not easy since a single misclick can screw you up.

It's sort of the same problem that you'd find in an adventure game with an arcade sequence thrown mid-game, just not quite as extreme.

So, it's not that there is anything wrong with level 13 on its own. If it was there as a seperate entity - anachronistically speaking, another hold - then it would have been great. But requiring players to suddenly shift paradigm mid-game and then shift back was, to me, a rather annoying trick.

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Maurog
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I thought that making you think is the whole purpose of the game. A paradigm shift is required so many times that this doesn't seem unusual at all. The game offers so many different types of challenge, and you have to think in many patterns:

"Hack-And-Slash The Living Breeding Horde"
"Cut Your Way To The Heart of The Growing Tar"
"Find The Correct Button Combination"
"Drop All The Pit-Traps"
"Push The Goblin Into The Snake's Cage"

The list goes on and on... the "Find Your Bloody Way Through The Bloody Endless Maze" thinking doesn't seem any more special than the other ones.


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eytanz
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Well, it's not a really huge paradigm shift, I must admit. But I think the problems many people had show that it's still a significant one.

And yes, there's definitely a lot of variety among the other levels as well - but there are some basic ground rules that they all obey and one of them is "you don't need to know what's in other rooms to solve this room". The only exceptions are level 13 and the tar puzzle in level 24, and unsurprisingly, people have a lot of trouble with those two.

Now, it's not as if I'm saying that level 13 is a huge problem or that it's presence is a blot of KDD's name or anything of that kind. I just think it's an unfortunate design decision that makes it harder to find a target audience for DROD, because there definitely are people who would love everything else in the game but not that puzzle. I'm one of them.

Of course, some people are not - some people, such as apparently yourself, are equally (or close enough to) comfortable with level 13 and the rest of the levels. That's great. But I'd be very surprised if there are people for whom the lack of a maze would have been a problem. If they would have played through levels 1-12 and then said "ok, if there's no maze in the next level I quit".

So basically, level 13 is a problem for some, but the lack of level 13 would have been a problem for none, if it hadn't been there in the first place. Which is why I think it was an unfortunate design decision. Of course, it actually is in the hold. And no-one is advocating taking it out. It's just that putting it in had mixed results rather than purely positive results, and therefore future official holds won't make the same choice.

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[Last edited by eytanz at 02-01-2006 12:26 AM : Belatedly fixed a typo]

rowrow
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What I think should have been done is that it should have been a "prize" that you can play that level if you finish the game.But it might be a better "prize" to make it not there.The #1 way to waste your time or your hair.

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b0rsuk
Level: Smiter

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I like it.

Using left hand rule it made it quick. There were many more frustrating levels in my opinion.

There should be level13 in JTRH, because what's there to swear about, otherwise ? Anyway, it's unlikely that I'll buy full JTRH.

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