Insoluble
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There is no concise way of describing this, but I will try. I'll also link to the post were this was discussed a while back.

http://forum.caravelgames.com/viewtopic.php?TopicID=40463

CHaco's description of this:

Chaco wrote:
Okay, here's a strange incident we were discussing in chat.

This room contains a brain, and a snake in an enclosed chamber in the northwest corner. If the snake goes North, it gets trapped and the room is unsolvable. If it goes South, it's solvable.

If Beethro doesn't take the invisibility potion, the snake goes North on unbrained horizontal preference turns (0-4, 10-14, 20-24) and South on unbrained vertical preference turns. So far, so good.

If Beethro takes the invisibility potion, and moves the snake via the brain, though, the snake goes North no matter what turn it arrives at the intersection. I would expect it to go South on some turns - either the unbrained vertical preference turns or the brained vertical preference turns (even ones, if I remember right).

After talking about it, Schik mentioned that in this *particular* situation - a snake that can't see any targets, but is told by a brain to move, the snake won't know where Beethro is but knows that it has to move, so will then just try moving N, E, S, W in that order.

Insoluble says "please, nobody make a puzzle out of this".

At the time there was no consensus as to whether or not this was a bug. I'm posting here because it came up in chat again today. It seems pretty buggy to at least a few of us, but it is also an interaction that has been possible since AE and could potentially break some very old demos if changed. For what it's worth, I checked with the room search tool
http://forum.caravelgames.com/roomsearch.php

And there are 67 rooms where this could potentially be an issue. I used the search ((Serpent >= 1 OR Rattlesnake >= 1 OR Adder >= 1) AND Brain >= 1 AND (Invisibility Potion >= 1 OR Shallow Water >= 1))

Now in some of those rooms it may not be possible to cut off the pathmap so this wouldn't actually be applicable to those rooms. I imagine that it probably won't be changed at this point, but I would be inclined to consider this a bug still and just accept that it is a bug that will be left in the game and should not be used in any actual rooms.

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Chaco
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It's worth noting that any time you have a decently long serpent, you can "cut off the pathmap" by just enveloping yourself in serpent body.

This is usually not a good idea if you're trying to optimize the room, but it's still possible a demo may rely on it in order to get serpents away from Beethro.

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disoriented
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I just want to point out that the room search tool doesn't always find all matches.

I did a search for "contains at least 1 gentryii and at least one fegundo", and the tool did not find the room in Gardeviance which has both of those.

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Insoluble
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That is because Gardeviance is such an awesome hold that the search tool refuses to believe it contains gentryii.

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disoriented
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That's very kind, but I do think the search tool is broken. I messaged skell but that might not be the right person to look at it.

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34th Skywatcher

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Insoluble
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It probably is (broken that is). I think Schik did mention that it is an unofficial thing that hasn't been thoroughly tested and isn't really intended for general public use.

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[Last edited by Insoluble at 07-14-2016 01:23 AM : clarity]

Schik
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disoriented wrote:
I just want to point out that the room search tool doesn't always find all matches.

I did a search for "contains at least 1 gentryii and at least one fegundo", and the tool did not find the room in Gardeviance which has both of those.

Well, the problem there is (was) that since the tool is... let's call it alpha, the code to parse a hold and put all the data into the room search database doesn't run automatically when a hold is published. Now that I've run it on Gardevience and all other new holds, it finds that room fine.

That said, bug reports for this tool are welcome!


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disoriented
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Schik wrote:
That said, bug reports for this tool are welcome!

Cool. I'll post one over on the Site board.

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34th Skywatcher

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skell
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Reminder to myself to see how fixing this would affect demos. Also Q: any known holds which deliberately use this mechanic?

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Dragon Fogel
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I can't remember anything which deliberately uses it.

Room search shows 113 rooms but it's too late at night for me to check them all right now. Not all are scorable, or even accessible - one of them is a room in A Quiet Place in an editor-only level. A decent number have snakes on fixed paths where the issue will never come up.

So at a quick glance, I would guess that less than a hundred rooms would have the demos break if this were changed. I can look a little more thoroughly tomorrow.

navithmastero
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Sorry, I did.

For the Sake of Succulent Burgers: 1S1W.

You can see this in action here (from 2:00, onwards):



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skell
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Thankfully this will not break the room but rather provide an unintended solution. Any other rooms?

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skell
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Looking at the code it seems like it might have been an oversight or it might have been intended, or might have been an oversight back when webfoot drod was written and became intended later...

Either way, I've changed this behavior. We'll know the full effect of this change after test spider eats through a bunch of demos. PR

As usual, I welcome any discussion about this change.

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kieranmillar
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I can confirm that in 5.1.1.alpha.2020-10-16 that brained snakes that have no path to you but see you when invisible because you are in range of a brain will properly exhibit unbrained horizontal and vertical movement preference instead of always jumping immediately to NESW preferences.

navithmastero
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skell wrote:
Looking at the code it seems like it might have been an oversight or it might have been intended, or might have been an oversight back when webfoot drod was written and became intended later...

Either way, I've changed this behavior. We'll know the full effect of this change after test spider eats through a bunch of demos. PR

As usual, I welcome any discussion about this change.

Cool, I'm not bothered that it breaks my room as I was always aware it was an edge case. Would it be acceptable for me to add a scroll into the room for historical record and to request an update when this version is no longer in alpha / beta?

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skell
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Sure thing! PM me a link to download an updated version of the hold and I'll take care of uploading it once 5.1.1 is out properly.

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skell
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I am running some spider tests and I can already see top 1 demo failing in the following rooms, related to this change:

1. Smallsome Swicks, Shallow Down 1S1W
2. Unfortunate Architect Compilation, Restricted Resources, 1N1E
3. Beethro and the Secret Society, The Headquarters 1E
4. The Consequence, Primary the First 2N

If someone could go ahead and check in 5.1.1 Beta if these rooms can be completed it would be great!

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[Last edited by skell at 11-12-2020 11:51 PM]

Dragon Fogel
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Have not checked in the beta yet, but glancing over these rooms in 5.1.0.6512:

1. Smallsome Swicks, Shallow Down 1S1W
No reason this should be unsolvable. You can escape the snakes without being in brain range, and you can kill the snakes in the upper-right corner once the brains are gone. Should still be tested, but I don't foresee any problems.

2. Unfortunate Architect Compilation, Restricted Resources, 1N1E
Unless you deliberately drop trapdoors, the brain pathmap doesn't break until you cross the force arrow. Once you do, you can't get west of the snake while still being in range of the brain. So I think the only effect is that you can kill the snake in the force arrow passage, which is not a major factor in the room as far as I can tell.

3. Beethro and the Secret Society, The Headquarters 1E
In my demo, Beethro is only in range of a brain with a snake out of visibility range at one point, and at that point the snake only has one direction to go.

4. The Consequence, Primary the First 2N
In my demo, I am only in brain range briefly. At this time, most moves give the snakes only one movement option. There is only one turn where a snake has multiple options, and at that point it is blocked to the north and to the west.