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Caravel Forum : DROD Boards : Architecture : The Tower (FINISHED! Needs testing. Any feedback appreciated)
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Scattercatt
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icon The Tower (+5)  
Just a hold I made in between completing TSS. It's my first hold and I thought I should get some experience making rooms.

EDIT: Still need feedback on the third, fourth, fifth, and roof levels.
EDIT: Working on post-mastery.
EDIT: Noticed huge oversight on 1E second floor. Fixed.
EDIT: I have decided to keep track of floor construction and test progress:
Click here to view the secret text


EDIT: The hold is finally complete! Please download and give it a try!:thumbsup

LAST EDIT: Submited

[Last edited by Scattercatt at 08-15-2017 01:09 AM]
08-06-2017 at 09:16 PM
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Xindaris
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icon Re: A random hold I made (+2)  
Always good to have fresh architecture blood! Some rapidfire first impressions from just pushing "New Game":

-"Entrance 1". I'm sure you intend to add some flavor text of some sort here explaining what's going on eventually, just don't forget about it.
-The decorations are extremely nice, much better than I did when I first started. It makes it slightly harder to find the roaches in the entrance but this room is so easy it doesn't really matter.
-Oh, you set shallow water to wade mode, that should be interesting.
-Uh oh, apparent room exits that don't go anywhere. People don't tend to like it when you leave things that way. If you don't add adjoining rooms to the east, south, or west of the Entrance, make sure to block off all the pathways going in that direction. This basically applies in general.


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[Last edited by Xindaris at 08-06-2017 10:13 PM]
08-06-2017 at 10:12 PM
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Xindaris
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icon Re: A random hold I made (0)  
Forgive the double post please, I've had some more time to actually start playing the hold. Going into the first floor there's no trouble seeing the roaches now that I really need to, and I'm already interested in the puzzles. Seems a really good treatment of monster pulling.

I'm a little concerned with the nature of the
Click here to view the secret text


1N1W: Great room. I'm not totally sure about the middle checkpoint, I think I had to avoid it in my solution to get the roaches to line up right.

1N1E: I don't mind personally, but a lot of people take issue with putting tokens and arrows on the same tile, as it makes the tokens a bit harder to read. It can be avoided with a series of arrow-token-arrow-token-arrow and there's space to do that here, but it's ultimately up to you. I don't know whether you've tested this room or not, or if I'm just missing something, but there doesn't seem to be any way to actually kill all 3 babies on either set of firetraps: The one closest to the orb always moves away as the orb is hit.

2N: Nice little "surrounded by roaches!" room. I found it pretty easy but maybe just got lucky with my choice.

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[Last edited by Xindaris at 08-07-2017 03:22 AM]
08-07-2017 at 03:13 AM
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Scattercatt
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icon Re: A random hold I made (0)  
Xindaris wrote:
Forgive the double post please, I've had some more time to actually start playing the hold. Going into the first floor there's no trouble seeing the roaches now that I really need to, and I'm already interested in the puzzles. Seems a really good treatment of monster pulling.

I'm a little concerned with the nature of the
Click here to view the secret text


1N1W: Great. I'm not totally sure about the middle checkpoint, I think I had to avoid it in my solution to get the roaches to line up right.

1N1E: I don't mind personally, but a lot of people take issue with putting tokens and arrows on the same tile, as it makes the tokens a bit harder to read. It can be avoided with a series of arrow-token-arrow-token-arrow and there's space to do that here, but it's ultimately up to you. I don't know whether you've tested this room or not, or if I'm just missing something, but there doesn't seem to be any way to actually kill all 3 babies on either set of firetraps: The one closest to the orb always moves away as the orb is hit.

2N: Nice little "surrounded by roaches!" room. I found it pretty easy but maybe just got lucky with my choice.

I'm glad you enjoyed the hold so far! And yes, i have tested the entire hold and everything is possible. 1N1E was pretty tricky, but possible.

Also, on the note of the secret room 1W, i added a seeding beacon, just in case. I also added one to 1N since if you killed the roach and exited without crossing, you couldn't proceed.

EDIT: Just in case you get too stuck on 1N1E, i have included a demo.

[Last edited by Scattercatt at 08-07-2017 03:23 AM]
08-07-2017 at 03:21 AM
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Insoluble
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icon Re: A random hold I made (+1)  
This had a really great start. I thoroughly enjoyed "Outside the tower" and "First floor". Unfortunately "Second floor" has some incredibly fiddly stalwart manipulation puzzles that pretty much force the player to brute force their way through all possibilities until they randomly stumble onto a magic sequence of moves that works. Okay, so technically guards, not stalwarts, but the same problem arises since they both rely on the same movement pattern that is impossible for humans to predict. Check out this thread for a bit of a description of why stalwart path mapping is so bad.
http://forum.caravelgames.com/viewtopic.php?TopicID=42389&page=0#417350

That isn't to say that any room with a soldier is inherently terrible. It's just that you have to be really careful in using them or you'll turn off a whole bunch of players. If you are definitely planning to keep the couple of rooms that rely on guessing stalwart paths, consider this fair warning that you'll probably get quite a few complaints about it.

On to better things, here are some thoughts and comments on the rooms I played through so far. Demos for everything are attached in case you want to see what I did.

Outside the tower"
Really nice intro. You don't see many levels with shallow water traversability set like that. It makes for some interesting maneuverability around the roaches. I fond myself wishing the level were a bit longer and exploited the mechanic a bit more. I would definitely encourage you to think about expanding this level. I'll echo Xindaris's note that it would be nice to somehow indicate to the player that there are no rooms to the east and west, since the room connections make it seem like it might be possible to go that way. I'm definitely the kind of player that probes every potential room exit and gets somewhat annoyed when things that look like exits aren't. Also, there are no checkpoints at all. I know the rooms are pretty basic, but it's good form to put at least one in a room with monsters to kill.

"First floor" Neat level. I really liked the rooms here. I'll note that there are some backtracking issues that should probably be addressed. First, the player can move from the entrance to 1W while the entrance is cleared (see demo). That will make it impossible to get back out again. I don't see many players trying to do that, but it would be nice to guard against (maybe put another seeding beacon that can be accessed from the west?). The second issue is that a player could clear 1N while the entrance is still uncleared. If that happens a player would not be able to exit the level and would effectively be stuck and forced to restore. That's the type of thing that can prevent a hold from passing the HA process. It looks like you possibly put a seeding beacon in there to address this, but it needs to be on the other side of the green door (i.e. in the central part of the room.) If you do move the seeding beacon, you'd want to also watch out for the possibility that a player hits it then exits to the north, east, or west. You'd either have to put tunnels or some other sort of way to get back into the center of the room if the room is uncleared.

Otherwise I enjoyed this level. I especially liked the roach manipulation in the entrance and 1W. The gel baby manipulation in 1N1E was also pretty neat, though it did feel kind of like I was just doing the exact same thing for the top babies and bottom ones. I usually don't like rooms like 2N all that much, but I think the use of the eastern wall to block was a nice linchpin that an observant player will probably pick up on. That made this one feel like more of a puzzle and less of a "huess-the-move-sequence" kind of room. The room could use a checkpoint though, probably a couple scattered around the pressure plate would be good. Lastly, it's always a good idea to put a checkpoint by the exit of a level so that people can restore back to a completely cleared level when looking for secrets.

"Second floor"
There were some legitimately good rooms in this level, but I have absolutely no interest in rooms like 1N, 1N1W, and 1E. The entrance was pretty forgiving and I don't think many people will complain about stalwart path mapping in that one. It definitely needs some checkpoints though. 1W was probably my favorite on this level. Pushing a stalwart (yeah, I know it's technically a soldier) is a pretty neat task and the speed potion makes it much more doable. The speed potion also helps make 1S mostly okay. The other rooms though are much too unpredictable to be able to do much more than try random input sequences and hope that one works. I fiddled around a bit in 1N but decided to quit there.

I hope this doesn't come off as too negative, I really did enjoy most of the rooms on the first two levels. The stalwart manipulation is just very fiddly though and I think you'll probably get a lot of push back on those rooms.

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08-07-2017 at 05:30 AM
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Scattercatt
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icon Re: A random hold I made (+1)  
Insoluble wrote:
This had a really great start. I thoroughly enjoyed "Outside the tower" and "First floor". Unfortunately "Second floor" has some incredibly fiddly stalwart manipulation puzzles that pretty much force the player to brute force their way through all possibilities until they randomly stumble onto a magic sequence of moves that works. Okay, so technically guards, not stalwarts, but the same problem arises since they both rely on the same movement pattern that is impossible for humans to predict. Check out this thread for a bit of a description of why stalwart path mapping is so bad.
http://forum.caravelgames.com/viewtopic.php?TopicID=42389&page=0#417350

That isn't to say that any room with a soldier is inherently terrible. It's just that you have to be really careful in using them or you'll turn off a whole bunch of players. If you are definitely planning to keep the couple of rooms that rely on guessing stalwart paths, consider this fair warning that you'll probably get quite a few complaints about it.

On to better things, here are some thoughts and comments on the rooms I played through so far. Demos for everything are attached in case you want to see what I did.

Outside the tower"
Really nice intro. You don't see many levels with shallow water traversability set like that. It makes for some interesting maneuverability around the roaches. I fond myself wishing the level were a bit longer and exploited the mechanic a bit more. I would definitely encourage you to think about expanding this level. I'll echo Xindaris's note that it would be nice to somehow indicate to the player that there are no rooms to the east and west, since the room connections make it seem like it might be possible to go that way. I'm definitely the kind of player that probes every potential room exit and gets somewhat annoyed when things that look like exits aren't. Also, there are no checkpoints at all. I know the rooms are pretty basic, but it's good form to put at least one in a room with monsters to kill.

"First floor" Neat level. I really liked the rooms here. I'll note that there are some backtracking issues that should probably be addressed. First, the player can move from the entrance to 1W while the entrance is cleared (see demo). That will make it impossible to get back out again. I don't see many players trying to do that, but it would be nice to guard against (maybe put another seeding beacon that can be accessed from the west?). The second issue is that a player could clear 1N while the entrance is still uncleared. If that happens a player would not be able to exit the level and would effectively be stuck and forced to restore. That's the type of thing that can prevent a hold from passing the HA process. It looks like you possibly put a seeding beacon in there to address this, but it needs to be on the other side of the green door (i.e. in the central part of the room.) If you do move the seeding beacon, you'd want to also watch out for the possibility that a player hits it then exits to the north, east, or west. You'd either have to put tunnels or some other sort of way to get back into the center of the room if the room is uncleared.

Otherwise I enjoyed this level. I especially liked the roach manipulation in the entrance and 1W. The gel baby manipulation in 1N1E was also pretty neat, though it did feel kind of like I was just doing the exact same thing for the top babies and bottom ones. I usually don't like rooms like 2N all that much, but I think the use of the eastern wall to block was a nice linchpin that an observant player will probably pick up on. That made this one feel like more of a puzzle and less of a "huess-the-move-sequence" kind of room. The room could use a checkpoint though, probably a couple scattered around the pressure plate would be good. Lastly, it's always a good idea to put a checkpoint by the exit of a level so that people can restore back to a completely cleared level when looking for secrets.

"Second floor"
There were some legitimately good rooms in this level, but I have absolutely no interest in rooms like 1N, 1N1W, and 1E. The entrance was pretty forgiving and I don't think many people will complain about stalwart path mapping in that one. It definitely needs some checkpoints though. 1W was probably my favorite on this level. Pushing a stalwart (yeah, I know it's technically a soldier) is a pretty neat task and the speed potion makes it much more doable. The speed potion also helps make 1S mostly okay. The other rooms though are much too unpredictable to be able to do much more than try random input sequences and hope that one works. I fiddled around a bit in 1N but decided to quit there.

I hope this doesn't come off as too negative, I really did enjoy most of the rooms on the first two levels. The stalwart manipulation is just very fiddly though and I think you'll probably get a lot of push back on those rooms.

I really appreciate the feedback! Thanks much. I will admit, i knew people weren't going to like the second level to begin with, but i was so eager to put this up that i just rolled with it. I have replaced 1E with a (hopefully) better and less fiddly room. I'll probably end up replacing 1N too but I haven't got any ideas so far.
Also i'm kinda sad you stopped at the second floor since I feel like my best puzzles were at the roof level, but I understand. Thanks so much for the criticism though! :)
08-07-2017 at 06:07 AM
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Insoluble
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icon Re: A random hold I made (+1)  
I really like the new rooms on floor 2! I've played through the rest of that floor as well as the next two now. You can check out my demos for rooms in the attachment.

"Outside the tower"
New rooms look super cool! I only just noticed that you added rooms after I exported demos and haven't had a chance to really check them out yet, but this seems really interesting.

"First floor"
It looks like 1N still has some backtracking issues. If I hit the seeding beacon in the entrance (un-clearing the room) and then clear 1N, I can never get back to the entrance without restoring. A 1 way passage from the middle of the room back to the southern exit might be the best way to fix that? A checkpoint by the level exit would also be nice (this is standard courtesy for secret hunters so they can easily restore back to the state where the whole level is cleared.)

2N could use a checkpoint.

"Second Floor"
As mentioned above I really like the new rooms! 1N was pretty lenient with the amount of kegs, but I ended up needing all the kegs provided in 1N1W. It may be doable with fewer, but the difficulty level felt good for a secret room for this level. These two rooms were super fun!

1E was a simpler version of this concept but a really nice room too. I'd suggest maybe moving the checkpoint on the southern trap door so that it is just before that trap door (so (11,22) instead of (10,23)) That way someone could in theory use it during the setup of the room and still be able to play around with the keg setup without having to undo.

1W has no checkpoints and probably should have at least one.

"Third Floor"
I have two demos for The entrance. One where I do it what I think is the intended way and one where I do it while armed and just exit using the stairs. If you want to prevent that second option you can always green door block the stairs. Also the room needs a checkpoint.

Just for fun I did 1N only using one rock giant. I noticed that there's no secret room on this floor, so that could potentially be a secret variety for this room. Also the room needs some check points.

1W could also use some checkpoints.

1E was brilliant. Terrific room.

Fourth floor.
The entrance could use a checkpoint by the exit.

I did 1W without the speed potion just because. Haven't tried the secret variant yet though.

I don't know what it is, but having to clear all the gel to drop the black gate in 1E seemed a bit tedious for some reason. I think it's probably good to have the gate there so that the player can't just rush kill the brain, so I'm not sure what can be done about that. Or it might just be me and the room is actually fine as is.

The arrow on the disarm token on the pressure plate is kind of hard to read all on one tile. Especially the arrow is pretty much not noticeable. Potential solutions include making an arrow-token-arrow corridor, or (probably more elegant) putting the disarm token on thin ice and just putting another disarm token on the black gate so the player can still re-arm.

I really enjoyed these rooms so far. The third floor is especially good, and I'm loving the new rooms in floor #2. Looking forward to playing some more!

____________________________
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[Last edited by Insoluble at 08-10-2017 05:59 AM]
08-10-2017 at 05:58 AM
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Scattercatt
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icon Re: A random hold I made (0)  
Insoluble wrote:
I really like the new rooms on floor 2! I've played through the rest of that floor as well as the next two now. You can check out my demos for rooms in the attachment.

"Outside the tower"
New rooms look super cool! I only just noticed that you added rooms after I exported demos and haven't had a chance to really check them out yet, but this seems really interesting.

"First floor"
It looks like 1N still has some backtracking issues. If I hit the seeding beacon in the entrance (un-clearing the room) and then clear 1N, I can never get back to the entrance without restoring. A 1 way passage from the middle of the room back to the southern exit might be the best way to fix that? A checkpoint by the level exit would also be nice (this is standard courtesy for secret hunters so they can easily restore back to the state where the whole level is cleared.)

2N could use a checkpoint.

"Second Floor"
As mentioned above I really like the new rooms! 1N was pretty lenient with the amount of kegs, but I ended up needing all the kegs provided in 1N1W. It may be doable with fewer, but the difficulty level felt good for a secret room for this level. These two rooms were super fun!

1E was a simpler version of this concept but a really nice room too. I'd suggest maybe moving the checkpoint on the southern trap door so that it is just before that trap door (so (11,22) instead of (10,23)) That way someone could in theory use it during the setup of the room and still be able to play around with the keg setup without having to undo.

1W has no checkpoints and probably should have at least one.

"Third Floor"
I have two demos for The entrance. One where I do it what I think is the intended way and one where I do it while armed and just exit using the stairs. If you want to prevent that second option you can always green door block the stairs. Also the room needs a checkpoint.

Just for fun I did 1N only using one rock giant. I noticed that there's no secret room on this floor, so that could potentially be a secret variety for this room. Also the room needs some check points.

1W could also use some checkpoints.

1E was brilliant. Terrific room.

Fourth floor.
The entrance could use a checkpoint by the exit.

I did 1W without the speed potion just because. Haven't tried the secret variant yet though.

I don't know what it is, but having to clear all the gel to drop the black gate in 1E seemed a bit tedious for some reason. I think it's probably good to have the gate there so that the player can't just rush kill the brain, so I'm not sure what can be done about that. Or it might just be me and the room is actually fine as is.

The arrow on the disarm token on the pressure plate is kind of hard to read all on one tile. Especially the arrow is pretty much not noticeable. Potential solutions include making an arrow-token-arrow corridor, or (probably more elegant) putting the disarm token on thin ice and just putting another disarm token on the black gate so the player can still re-arm.

I really enjoyed these rooms so far. The third floor is especially good, and I'm loving the new rooms in floor #2. Looking forward to playing some more!

Thanks for giving it another shot! I have fixed some of the problems you mentioned.

Also I just want to say I'm completely open to criticism as I believe it's what makes the hold better, so don't hold back if you play a room you don't enjoy.

Here are some fixes I made:

Added checkpoints where needed

First floor 1N: Added seeding beacon so that room is reset able.
Second floor EN: Fixed re-arming exploit
Fourth floor 1E: May be replacing this room. After looking back on it, I don't like it very much.

Really glad you enjoyed the first four levels and i'm excited to hear your opinion on the rest.


08-10-2017 at 08:54 AM
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Insoluble
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icon Re: A random hold I made (+1)  
Old business first:

First floor: 1N Unfortunately while this fixes the first backtracking issue it creates another. You could theoretically exit to the north, east, and west with the room uncleared now and lock yourself out of 1N. Having a 1 way path to get back into the center of the room from the north, east, and west should fix this. You might be able to find a better solution though, that's just the first thing that comes to mind.

Third floor: the entrance Looks fixed.

I didn't get a chance to go back and check anything else in the first four floors yet. So on to new business. I definitely agree with you about the Tower Roof. It was my favorite level of the lot I think (though the third level is a close second). Some really neat puzzles here. For the most part this level feels like it's at a higher difficulty level than the rest of the hold. That's fine though since it is the last level. there were also a couple of easier rooms mixed in. Super fun level to end on though!

"Fifth floor"

The entrance: This has the same exploit for re-arming that the previous floor's entrance did. Same fix as before should fix it. This room could also use some checkpoints. Two demos are included in the attachment.

1W: There's a trivial solution in which you just use the decoys to stab the roaches. I've included a demo of this solution as well as the intended one. There are a few ways you could go about preventing this. Probably the easiest is to have the briar open a door that leads to a third roach or a conquer token in the area with the roaches (in addition to the doors it already opens I mean).

1N:, 1N1E Decent brained horde rooms. They felt very frantic but never overwhelming or painful to execute. Secret version was harder of course, but still in line with the difficulty of the hold.

1E: Fun room. It needs some checkpoints though. The weapon token on top of the force arrow at (15,5) is a little hard to read. Maybe consider replacing the arrow with a trapdoor for readability.

1S: Nice room. I have no real comments about it.

"Tower roof"
The Entrance: Wow, this level started with a bang! This room is definitely trickier than most of what has preceded it in the hold. It took me a while to get an arrangement that works. Thankfully the level's open format makes it so that having difficult entrance room isn't too off-putting. Checkpoints would definitely be welcome here. I also think that this is the first time that shallow water traversibility is set back to the default. That's fine though since it's consistent throughout the level.

1N1W: I feel like I was maybe supposed to use the eye for leverage but I didn't end up needing it.

1N1E: Heh, I fell for your trap on this one, thinking I'd be able to use the mirror to get past that row of three diagonal eyes to cross the top of the room. The other shoe dropped when I realized that I needed the mirror to get past the bomb at the end and had no way of getting it back! Nice room.

1W: and 1E: These two rooms felt surprisingly easy compared to the rest of this level. There's nothing wrong with having some easier rooms mixed in on a harder level to give the player a bit of a break though. 1E: should be interesting to optimize too.

1S1W: Nice room! This was probably my favorite on this level, also probably the hardest one. It took me a bit to parse exactly what needed to be done then a bit more to find an optimal decoy placement for getting it done. Super neat!

1S: Classic multi-push setup. I like that you kept this very simple too and didn't try to add all sorts of other requirements to the room. I think that fits in nicely with the overall difficulty you are aiming at. At the moment the multi-push isn't strictly enforced and I included a couple of demos showing different ways you can break this one (along with a demo of the intended solution.)

This one is going to be tricky to enforce, but there are some possibilities. You could extend the open door to fill up most of the area inside the rectangular walled in region. That would prevent the player from placing a mimic in there. If you go that rout make sure to get the conquer token too! Unfortunately that isn't very elegant and messes with the room aesthetics. It also calls attention to the patch of shallow water in a way that may be a bit too obvious. An alternate rout would be to use pre-placed mimics with sticks. This unfortunately gives the player less control over the move order and generally makes the execution less pleasant. A third option is to replace the conquer token with something Beethro only. Or possibly put tunnels in front of the things that Beethro needs to get to. There are other options too, but you may have to play around with this one for a bit.

1S1E: This is a fairly common room variety where stepping on a pressure plate releases monsters around you. It's a kind of room I don't particularly enjoy, but there definitely people who do so it's fine to have a room like this. It isn't all that bad though since the space of possible moves isn't huge for this one.

I have one more secret room to clear before getting to the post-mastery, but I should be able to get to those soon and give you another update with a full demo pack. Still having lots of fun with this one!

____________________________
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08-11-2017 at 02:47 AM
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Scattercatt
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icon Re: A random hold I made (0)  
Insoluble wrote:
Old business first:

First floor: 1N Unfortunately while this fixes the first backtracking issue it creates another. You could theoretically exit to the north, east, and west with the room uncleared now and lock yourself out of 1N. Having a 1 way path to get back into the center of the room from the north, east, and west should fix this. You might be able to find a better solution though, that's just the first thing that comes to mind.

Third floor: the entrance Looks fixed.

I didn't get a chance to go back and check anything else in the first four floors yet. So on to new business. I definitely agree with you about the Tower Roof. It was my favorite level of the lot I think (though the third level is a close second). Some really neat puzzles here. For the most part this level feels like it's at a higher difficulty level than the rest of the hold. That's fine though since it is the last level. there were also a couple of easier rooms mixed in. Super fun level to end on though!

"Fifth floor"

The entrance: This has the same exploit for re-arming that the previous floor's entrance did. Same fix as before should fix it. This room could also use some checkpoints. Two demos are included in the attachment.

1W: There's a trivial solution in which you just use the decoys to stab the roaches. I've included a demo of this solution as well as the intended one. There are a few ways you could go about preventing this. Probably the easiest is to have the briar open a door that leads to a third roach or a conquer token in the area with the roaches (in addition to the doors it already opens I mean).

1N:, 1N1E Decent brained horde rooms. They felt very frantic but never overwhelming or painful to execute. Secret version was harder of course, but still in line with the difficulty of the hold.

1E: Fun room. It needs some checkpoints though. The weapon token on top of the force arrow at (15,5) is a little hard to read. Maybe consider replacing the arrow with a trapdoor for readability.

1S: Nice room. I have no real comments about it.

"Tower roof"
The Entrance: Wow, this level started with a bang! This room is definitely trickier than most of what has preceded it in the hold. It took me a while to get an arrangement that works. Thankfully the level's open format makes it so that having difficult entrance room isn't too off-putting. Checkpoints would definitely be welcome here. I also think that this is the first time that shallow water traversibility is set back to the default. That's fine though since it's consistent throughout the level.

1N1W: I feel like I was maybe supposed to use the eye for leverage but I didn't end up needing it.

1N1E: Heh, I fell for your trap on this one, thinking I'd be able to use the mirror to get past that row of three diagonal eyes to cross the top of the room. The other shoe dropped when I realized that I needed the mirror to get past the bomb at the end and had no way of getting it back! Nice room.

1W: and 1E: These two rooms felt surprisingly easy compared to the rest of this level. There's nothing wrong with having some easier rooms mixed in on a harder level to give the player a bit of a break though. 1E: should be interesting to optimize too.

1S1W: Nice room! This was probably my favorite on this level, also probably the hardest one. It took me a bit to parse exactly what needed to be done then a bit more to find an optimal decoy placement for getting it done. Super neat!

1S: Classic multi-push setup. I like that you kept this very simple too and didn't try to add all sorts of other requirements to the room. I think that fits in nicely with the overall difficulty you are aiming at. At the moment the multi-push isn't strictly enforced and I included a couple of demos showing different ways you can break this one (along with a demo of the intended solution.)

This one is going to be tricky to enforce, but there are some possibilities. You could extend the open door to fill up most of the area inside the rectangular walled in region. That would prevent the player from placing a mimic in there. If you go that rout make sure to get the conquer token too! Unfortunately that isn't very elegant and messes with the room aesthetics. It also calls attention to the patch of shallow water in a way that may be a bit too obvious. An alternate rout would be to use pre-placed mimics with sticks. This unfortunately gives the player less control over the move order and generally makes the execution less pleasant. A third option is to replace the conquer token with something Beethro only. Or possibly put tunnels in front of the things that Beethro needs to get to. There are other options too, but you may have to play around with this one for a bit.

1S1E: This is a fairly common room variety where stepping on a pressure plate releases monsters around you. It's a kind of room I don't particularly enjoy, but there definitely people who do so it's fine to have a room like this. It isn't all that bad though since the space of possible moves isn't huge for this one.

I have one more secret room to clear before getting to the post-mastery, but I should be able to get to those soon and give you another update with a full demo pack. Still having lots of fun with this one!

First floor 1N: I think i got it fixed.

Fifth floor EN: Fixed

Fifth floor 1W: Fixed

Tower roof 1S: Fixed. Although the set up is a little messy, i'm pretty sure it works

Tower roof 1N1W: Wow! After looking at the demo, you solved this completely different than intended. I have fixed that solution since its a bit too easy.


Another thanks for trying out the levels. I think you're gonna enjoy post mastery the most though. Although, I'm sure you will find more unintended solutions :lol. Can't wait to get this published.

[Last edited by Scattercatt at 08-11-2017 03:37 AM]
08-11-2017 at 03:35 AM
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Red-XIII
Level: Smitemaster
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icon Re: The Tower (+1)  
This is really a good hold and also your first one, well done, I'm really enjoying it, here's some comments and demos.

First floor
Click here to view the secret text


Second floor
Click here to view the secret text


Third floor
Click here to view the secret text


Fourth floor
Click here to view the secret text


The aesthetic is really really good!


____________________________
There's not some other world out there where everything's gonna be okay.
There's just this one, just this rock.
-33th Skywatcher
08-11-2017 at 04:09 PM
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Insoluble
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icon Re: The Tower (0)  
I have a demo set for all rooms now if you need it. I went back and played the secret on the fourth floor. I had skipped it originally since for some reason I decided to do the non-secret version without taking the speed potion and didn't want to repeat the process immediately after. That being said I notice that the secret room entrance on level four lets you circumvent the enforcement mechanism (see demo #2). To enforce this without giving away secret walls you could possibly have the fail pressure plate close off the way out of the mud mother's chamber instead of the room exit.

Post mastery stuff looks good. 3S1E was my favorite. I did not need all the golems in 3S nor did I need the trapdoor corridors for anything, though those might have been just decorative. I kind of just blindly stumbled through 2S1W. Brained wraithwing hordes are pretty much impossible to predict. The room was pretty forgiving though, so I ended up enjoying it.

____________________________
Links to neat forum tools that I always have trouble finding:
Click here to view the secret text


[Last edited by Insoluble at 08-13-2017 07:51 AM]
08-13-2017 at 07:44 AM
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Caravel Forum : DROD Boards : Architecture : The Tower (FINISHED! Needs testing. Any feedback appreciated)
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