Dragon Fogel,
Nuntar, and I were discussing this in chat and figured it would be of use to the general architecture community. There are a lot of little details with hold construction that are easy to forget about. A lot of these details will be caught in beta testing, but you should be on the lookout for them yourself as well since beta testers can't catch everything. They are not things that the HAs will block a hold for, so its very possible that one of these issues will make it through with your hold when it gets published. Please feel free to add things to this list. I'll try to update the OP as suggestions are made. So without further ado, here is a list of things you should double check before submitting that awesome new hold to HAs.
Unintended Solutions and Optimization Exploits: A lot of more advanced DROD players will try to exploit whatever tricks they can to get the high score in a room. Some of these tricks are unintuitive to newer players and architects. here are things to watch out for.
[_] Can conquer tokens be hit by doubles?: Placing a Beethro double (mimic, decoy, or clone) on a conquer token will hit the token, awarding the player a score for the room on that turn. This often either makes high scores for that room trivial or makes solving the room trivial. Double check that no Beethro doubles can be placed on a conquer token. If they can, you can put the token on a open yellow door, trapdoor, or force arrow to prevent it.
[_] Can rooms be entered from the "
wrong entrance"
?: A lot of puzzles can be broken by simply entering the room from a direction that wasn't originally intended. Watch out for sneaky ways to exit and reenter a room from the "
wrong"
entrance.
[_] Can rooms be "
uncleared"
after the green doors are down?: This is a subset of the above. It is often possible to drop the green doors in a room, then "
un-conquer"
the room. You can do this by cutting a tarstuff baby off of a blob, or by hitting a seeding beacon. If you have green doors blocking the exit to a room, the player can use this exploit to exit the room then re-enter from the direction of the green doors. If the door is at the edge of the room, this won't be a backtracking issue and can lead to trivializing the room.
Scripting and challenges: Scripting can be very complex, so I won't go into everything here. But below are some common over-sites that won't always be caught in beta testing.
[_] Do challenges award every time you enter a room?: Make sure to put a check for clean room at the beginning of your challenge scripts. otherwise they will continue to award every time the player enters that room.
[_] Do challenges award even if the player gets stuck?: The last thing most challenge scripts check for is if the player has cleared the room. But sometimes the player can clear the room and get the challenge in a way that gets the player trapped. Make sure to check for this and try to add an additional check at the end of the challenge.
[_] Do scripted monsters re-spawn even if the room is cleared?: Similar to the challenge scripting above, make sure to have a check for clean room at the beginning of the script. But be very careful if there are seeding beacons in the room, since you'll want the scripted monster to reappear if the challenge is re-set.
[_] In general, did you remember to end scripts if you don't want them to repeat?: Don't want that cut scene to repeat every time the player enters the room? Make sure to use an end command then!
[_] Does the player role reset when it is supposed to?: If you are using a custom player role (i.e. other than Beethro.) make sure to check that it gets set back to Beethro when done. Be vary careful of multiple ways to exit a room or level with custom player roles since it can easily break whole levels if the player plays through it in the wrong player role.
[_] Does the player weapon reset when it is supposed to?: Similar to above but with custom weapon settings. If you set the default player weapon to anything other than Really Big sword, make sure that it gets set back!
Other considerations:
[_] Are your empty rooms marked non-high score-able?: Technically this is something to check
after your hold is approved by HAs, but so many people forget this that I wanted to include a reminder here. If your hold has entrance rooms without any monsters, or other rooms that you can't enter and exit in one move but contain no monsters or conquer tokens, please make sure to mark them as not high score-able. You can do this in the My Holds area of the forum once your hold is published.
[_] Music: If you have a cleared room that contains wubbas and certain other elements, puzzle music will play instead of ambient. If this bothers you you can force it to play ambient using scripting.
[_] Version check: Does your hold rely on features or behaviors that are only present in the latest build? (i.e. pushing a brain to stop brained movement does not work in versions of 5.0 before build 6060.) If so, it may be a good idea to make an explicit reminder on the hold page.
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