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Dali
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icon Delta Dungeon (+3)  
Hello all, here's a hold I wanted to share, some informations:

-It's six level hold with around 80-90 rooms to play and conquer. So it may take several hours to finish.

-I finished the hold so I'm almost sure that all rooms are solvable.

- I suggest using DROD TCB (The city beneath) to play it. Anyone can edit the hold.

-There are many rooms with scripting. I usually explain it at the beginning of the room, but if it's not clear please let me know.

- I tried to go for fun with average difficulty, but if a room is too hard/easy, and ofc if there's an unintended solution, please let me know.

Also, probably later on I will upload it in the hold section. if any HA have seen that, please let me know to help me validate this hold.

Thanks and have fun. ;)

NOTE: NEWER VERSIONS OF THE HOLD WILL BE AVAILABLE IN THIS TOPIC

[Last edited by Dali at 03-25-2018 11:08 AM]
03-16-2018 at 08:41 AM
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Insoluble
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icon Re: Delta Dungeon (+3)  
Hi, and welcome back to the forums after all these years! I played through the first two four levels and enjoyed them quite a bit so far. This is a very nice average difficulty hold so far. I will definitely play some more soon. I have attached demos so you can see what I did. I'll also make comments on the two levels I played.

First Level
The Entrance: This was a very nice first impression of the hold. The room has an interesting puzzle that is not too tricky and fits the difficulty level you are going for I think. It may be nice to have a checkpoint at somewhere like (21,19) for players who manage to save a roach but make a mistake in the second portion of the room.
3N Seems appropriate difficulty for a secret room in the first level.
2N I think a green door at (18,25) and (16,25) would be nice. Otherwise players coming back through this room after have to go through the whole sequence with the fegundo again to exit the room.
1N1W: I like the way you explained the scripting. I also like that you did not make it too strict and gave more trap doors than are absolutely necessary.
1N1E: This one could use a checkpoint. I also am not sure if I am doing the pressure plates in row 21 the way you intended (see demo).
1W: This was very fun. I would suggest changing the scroll to say "The special mimic moves towards you 1 step..." instead of "The special mimic follows you 1 step..."
1E: I like this room a lot. For an extra challenge, you can solve the room without letting Beethro step on the grey-yellow triangle pressure plate (see demo).
2E: Another very fun room.
2S1E: This was an interesting room. I did not end up needing all 4 roaches in the bottom right, but it is nice to have extra in case you need them.

Second Level
The Entrance The exit stairs here lead to Level 1: the entrance instead of Level 1: 2n,1e as I would have expected.
2N This was a tricky room. I really liked it.
1N This looked intimidating at first, but the force arrows made it manageable. Fun room. Maybe put one checkpoint that is not on a trapdoor so that there is always one available.
1N1E: Another really interesting room.
1N2E One of my favorites on this level. These are a lot of fun. Again, I like the way you explain the scripting so that I don't have to just guess.
1W: This felt a lot longer than most of the other rooms so far, but it was still enjoyable. I was a bit surprised to not have any speech text about the scripting, but it's probably simple enough that it isn't necessary.
1E: I'm not sure about using dark ceiling to hide the hot tiles. I ended up just turning off alpha blending in my settings for this room, though I suppose right mouse clicking on tiles to see what they are would work too. I don't think this increases the difficulty in an enjoyable way though. If you feel that this room is not difficult enough on its own, you can always remove some of the invisibility potions instead of hiding things from the player. It was a fun room though, and I liked the use of invisibility potions to set things up here.
3E: Was somewhat tricky as the scroll said, but I enjoyed it a lot and don't think it necessarily needs to be marked as unrequired.
1s1w: On the other hand, I think it was a good idea to make this room unrequired. Stalwarts are notoriously fiddly and difficult to manipulate. That being said, I think this room is actually quite good. There is a bit of a puzzle involved in figuring out which corners you should do first and which ones to do last, and the yellow pressure plates are placed in a way that makes it fairly forgiving.
1S1E: Fun room. I don't have much to say about this one.
2S1E: This one was fun, but I also think it was good to make it a secret. The last section is fairly tricky, and it is more combat oriented than the rest of the level, so it works well as a secret.

Third Level
2N: As with previous scripted rooms, I really appreciate the restraint you show here. The scripting is very easy to understand and the difficulty is not too severe. Maybe put a checkpoint somewhere in the central area?
1N2W: Nice room. I very much appreciate that I was not required to clear all the tar due to a black gate.
1N: The room is not really all that bad without the speed potion. You could possibly make it a challenge (if you are using the 5.0 engine).
1N1E: Interesting room. I went through the wrong way the first time before I saw the catch.
3W: This was maybe a little bit too straightforward. I don't know if it is maybe too easy for a secret room. I usually play with transparent tar (as I imagine a lot of people do these days). I can see how this may be a different experience if you can't see through the tar.
2W: A neat room. Nothing too difficult, but I like rooms like this that require you to think through the correct sequence for a series of tasks.
1W: Fairly straightforward.
1E: An interesting challenge (or secret room if you want) is to do this one without dropping the trapdoors. It's not all that difficult to do, but makes for another interesting constraint.
1S1W: Challenge: Don't step on the green sister gate. I know what I did in my demo is unintended, but it is ridiculously inefficient and probably not worth preventing.
1S: Nice little room that makes the player think through the initial choice for each section.

Fourth Level
1N1W: You can currently solve this one by just killing golems on the plates. If you want to enforce having the adders hold down the plates you'll need to build in some sort of delay for Beethro.
1N: This one was not as strict a timer as I first thought. Nice room. The tunnel isn't strictly necessary, but is nice to have.
1N1E: The snake length felt a bit overly generous here, but it was still a fun room.
2W: Challenge: only drop one trapdoor before hitting the orb (Probably best to not make this an actual scripted challenge.)
1W: Fun little room.
1E: You can hit the first pressure plate with Beethro instead of the snake. You can leave that in as an option (it's a fun optimization trick for the room), or you could have all the yellow plates close the door at {11,18) to prevent it. Personally I think it's more fun to leave it in as a trick for the perceptive optimizer.
1S: A fun variation on a classic type of room.
1S1E: Neat room. I like how it elaborates on the trick in 1W but elaborates on it. I also really like the use of invisibility potions here. Those don't get used enough in architecture these days and make for interesting puzzles.


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[Last edited by Insoluble at 03-22-2018 05:46 AM : played more levels]
03-22-2018 at 12:11 AM
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Nuntar
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File: Delta Dungeon (Nuntar).demo (14.6 KB)
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icon Re: Delta Dungeon (+3)  
Here are my demos and comments. I've also played just the first two levels and have to get some sleep now, but I'm looking forward to attempting the rest! Overall this is a fairly easy but really nice hold, well done! :thumbsup

First Level

Entrance: Very nice opening puzzle, you caught me out for a moment there :P I agree with Insoluble about adding a checkpoint.
1W: The character mimic has an aumtlich-like sidestep, which caught me off guard and probably isn't what you want. To avoid this, put "Imperative Normal beelining" as the first command of the script. [EDIT: Sorry, I forgot you're building this in TCB, so you won't have that command available.]
1N1W: Fun room. I feel it would be better to have the scripted mimic move before the roaches, which you could do (again only in TSS though) by going into "Options" in the script, and setting the processing sequence to 999.
2N: Interesting, if a bit easy because the fegundo's area has wall borders on two sides.
3N: Really nice secret room! :thumbsup
1N1E: Beethro can hit the pressure plates himself, or the roach can. To enforce using the roach, you could make them on-off plates.
1E: Another good room. Green door seems rather pointless.
2E: Some fun clone-switching. Checkpoint in the clone's area should be one tile north.
2S1E: Pretty tough, but very satisfying to solve.

Second Level

1W: Checkpoint (24,8) is watched by an eye, so you can't use it. Checkpoint (8,11) should come before the arrows so the player has free choice which side of the wall they want to come up on.
2N: Add a checkpoint at (14,12). I only used the corner pressure plate in the mimic's area.
1E: I got the trick here: the arrows at the top indicate where the hot tiles are.
1N1E: Nice room; going up felt a bit repetitive but coming back was tough. At (17,25) you have an on-off plate that opens a door; you probably want this to be a toggle to enforce bringing the mirror this far.
2E: I can just walk past the briar without releasing it, making Beethro's line at the end rather funny ;)
1N2E: Interesting. Maybe move the checkpoint a little north so it's more easily accessible from inside the room? I kept forgetting I had a checkpoint available.
3E: Very nice room, this got very tricky towards the end. Checkpoint (5,14) should be (4,14) as it's not easy to step on it, with the NW arrow preventing covering it with the mirror (unless you approach from the east, but then how will you ever drop the trapdoor with the SE arrow?)
2S1E: Another very nice secret room. Trapdoor in the SE corner seems pointless.
1S1W: I didn't feel like doing this room. I'll give it another go next time I play the hold.

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[Last edited by Nuntar at 03-22-2018 05:34 AM]
03-22-2018 at 04:43 AM
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Nuntar
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File: Delta Dungeon (Nuntar).demo (24.4 KB)
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icon Re: Delta Dungeon (+1)  
Demos through Level 4 attached. Some more nice rooms here, but unintended solutions are starting to creep in. Further comments:

Third Level

1E: Really nice room! I didn't need the trapdoors.
1N1E: Neat puzzle centred around a red herring.
1S: Pretty standard use of the 4x2 tar blob as a choice mechanism.
1N: Interesting concept. I didn't use the speed potion and I'm not really sure how it would help.
2N: Mostly this is about navigating the mini-mazes to reach the roaches without striking any tar. The last pressure plate could be closer to make the trivial clean-up phase take less time.
1S1W: I think the intention was to have the player grow the adder, but it's easy to get through the doors without doing that.
1W: Standard trapdoors-under-tar room.
2W: Needs a checkpoint near the disarm token. This is okay, but the weakest room on the level in my opinion; it's pretty obvious whether you need to be armed or disarmed for each task, none of the tasks required much though, and the last task is just clearing a rectangular tar blob. A couple of ideas for making it more interesting: change the pit tile to wall (so the player has to use the disarm token in a different way to kill the NE eye), and place wall from (15,8) to (19,8) and along the top row of the box, so it's harder to bring out and kill the group of eyes.
1N2W: Fun room. The easternmost trapdoor was pretty hard to reach, and I liked the linchpin of clearing a bit of the tar in advance to make this easier.
3W: Nice little joke room. Why not?

Fourth Level

1E: A fun room where the player has to construct a layout. Maybe the second (or, as Insoluble pointed out, the first) pressure plate should close the door at (11,18) rather than toggling. This is a personal preference, but I really don't like one-use pressure plates being toggles when nothing else affects the door.
1N1E: Scroll should say "Tail stabbed = mimics rotate", or you could write it out in full: "The mimics rotate each time you stab the rattlesnake's tail." This was another fun room, with a neat twist at the end that the last wraithwing on each side should be killed at the same time.
1N: Mostly a good room, but it was annoying that I had to redo the puzzle because my sword was in the wrong orientation for the tar blob. Sure, I could have realised ahead of time, but I think it's natural to overlook this given that it's not the main focus of the room. You could avoid this annoyance by placing an oremite tile in the exit corridor. If you don't want to do that, at least move the checkpoint to the tile before the invisibility potion so the player can restore and choose what direction to face before taking the potion.
1N1W: Manipulating the golems turned out to be a lot less fiddly than I feared. It was a bit annoying that they kept stepping on the pressure plates and re-closing the doors, so you could make those one-use, or move the pressure plates for the three western doors to the other sides of the doors. And indeed, it isn't actually necessary to kill 10 golems in each line at all :P
1S: A fun snake-loop room. There is an unintended solution where the snake gets caught up where the cracked orb was; you could fix this by making it a regular orb.
1S1E: Another good room. Getting all the roaches out before they trapped themselves was a bit tougher than I expected.
1W: Please add a checkpoint near the orbs. Fun room, and I like the way the snake trapped itself without the player having to do too much extra.
2W: Pretty simple but satisfying.

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03-23-2018 at 03:46 AM
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Dali
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icon Re: Delta Dungeon (0)  
Thanks Insoluble and Nuntar for your feedback, these were really constructive and useful :)
Indeed I'm one of the "old-school" drod player :P I enjoy building levels, and happy to see that you liked this hold.
Some rooms are even directly taken from old AE rooms, to tell you how old-school I am... :fun

So here are some modifications and comments about some rooms :
First level:

Entrance: added a checkpoint.
1N1E : added a force arrow to prevent an unintended solution.
2N: added green gate as requested, indeed it was necessary.

Second Level:
1W: added a scroll to explain the scripting
1N, 2N and 3E: changed the placement of checkpoints.
1N 1E: Indeed the plate in (17,25) has to be "toggle" rather than "open"
1E: I didn't know we could remove the "darkness" with alpha bleding. as Nuntar said, player had to guess from the hot tiles the location of the hot tiles in the dark tiles.
2E: added a gate to force beethro to drop briar. a "for fun" room ofc...

Third level:
1E: trapdoors are not needed but it might help some players.
1S1W: changed door location to force feeding the adder. Hope that will work now.
1N: same, speed potion can help to avoid and manipulate the babies.
2N and 1W: I could optimize these rooms, seems too easy indeed. I'll see.
2W: same, I'm not used to deal with non-swordish puzzles.

Fourth Level:
1E: plates now closes the door in (11,18) to prevent a trivial solution.
1N 1W: plates will now close the door in (30,17).
1N: Added an oremite tile to help in the final tar cut.
1S: the cracked ord became a normal orb.
1W: added checkpoints.

I'll attach 1.1 version here.


[Last edited by Dali at 03-23-2018 06:54 PM]
03-23-2018 at 09:26 AM
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Insoluble
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icon Re: Delta Dungeon (0)  
Dali wrote:
Second Level:
1E: I didn't know we could remove the "darkness" with alpha bleding. as Nuntar said, player had to guess from the hot tiles the location of the hot tiles in the dark tiles.

Yes it's pretty clear how to use the hot tiles to the north. But it's just quicker and easier to go into the settings menu and turn alpha blending off for the room so that's what I did. It's not really a big deal, but puzzles based on hiding information like this have fallen out of favor somewhat. There are all sorts of tools in the 5.0 engine that let you, for instance, make spiders always visible, and make tar transparent. I think the room is probably fine as it is though.

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03-23-2018 at 01:18 PM
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Nuntar
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icon Re: Delta Dungeon (0)  
So here's my complete set of demos, including the Level 2 secret, and all of Levels 5 and 6. Final comments:

Second Level

1S1W: Very nice, a lot less fiddly than it looked like it was going to be. There was a good logical linchpin about which eyes you had to kill last.

Fifth Level

Invisibility as a level theme is great fun. Like Insoluble said, it really doesn't get used as often as it deserves.

1E: I was stuck for a long time here, missing the trick with the very first move :P
1N1E: For a bit of a change, this requires efficiency in cutting tar. Also a nice room.
1N: Pretty simple. Another typo on the scroll: "exploses" should be "explodes".
1S: This was disappointingly easy, because no matter which way you go, the toggle orbs are always available. I would prefer it if you had to think logically about the orb positions to find a single intended route.
1W: Another nice and simple room, just think about what the pressure plate does and you can logic out the sequence.
1N1W: Finding a path around brains while invisible. I'm not sure what all the force arrows in this room are doing. Also, the central checkpoint is unusable as it's too close to the brain.
1S1W: Really nice puzzle! It seemed impossible for a while, and then slowly came together piece by piece.
2W: Rather strange, as I kept expecting the character to behave like a guard and had to get used to his behaviour. Not too hard, although some of the eyes were awkwardly placed.
1S2W: Another excellent puzzle! This looked simple at first, but I kept running into an impossible situation and had to do a lot of rethinking.

Sixth Level

The "scripting puzzles" theme was pretty fun, and the rooms could be worked out easily enough and didn't get too annoying, so I think you did a good job here, though this level won't be to everyone's tastes.

1E: Unintended solution, you can just put a mimic or decoy on the pressure plate.
1N: Silly trick. Fortunately the scroll tells you exactly what to do.
1S: Unexpectedly tricky to get all the trapdoors. The "horse" in chess is usually called a knight, and it can't move from (4,18) to (5,21).
1W: Another one where the scroll tells you exactly what to do.
1N1W: This is a more interesting room, because it's a bit of a riddle to work out exactly what the scroll means...
1N2W: ...but the follow-up was pretty obvious after having solved the first room.
2W: Some fun gel-clearing with a restriction.
1S1W: A little annoying that the target number of trapdoors is hidden, but I worked out that I could find it out by taking the longest paths first and then restoring.
2S1W: Deliberately putting checkpoints on forbidden tiles tends to be unpopular, but at least the room is simple enough that it didn't matter.
1S2W: Cute wubbas, who would want to hurt them? ;)
1S3W: This was a funny room. It took me a while to find the correct place for the mimic, even when I knew what to look for.
2S2W: Very easy, not much to say about this one.
2S3W: Another simple room, needs checkpoints.
2S4W: Well, that's a novel way of killing a Slayer :P
3S3W: Interesting concept. It was pretty easy to get a good score by handling each group of brains the same way. Only needed three mimics.
1N3W: I like the idea, although there's a small snag: two things in the room begin with M (mud and mirror) and only one of them is accepted.

Good luck with fixing things and getting the hold promoted! :thumbsup

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03-24-2018 at 02:29 AM
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Insoluble
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icon Re: Delta Dungeon (+1)  
Played the last two levels. Demos attached as always.

Fifth Level
On the whole this level felt maybe a bit less difficult than some of the previous ones. It is nice to see some good use of invisibility potions though.
1N1W: The classic brain maze while invisible has been done before, but it's still fun.
1N: Fun little timing puzzle.
1N1E: A nice tar efficiency puzzle.
2W: The scripted movement is a bit weird, but it is forgiving enough to make it not too difficult. He will kill you in certain circumstances, but it is pretty easy to avoid his sword.
1W: Very straightforward.
1E: Another straightforward one. Just take the long way around. Nice use of invisibility potions though.
1S2W: Nice little room. I suspect there are multiple ways to go about this, but it was interesting to work out a path.
1S1W A fun room. Mostly just a matter of avoiding de-synchronization of the two that can not be caught by the orbs. Is the roach in the upper right just there to ensure that the player takes the potion on turn 1? If so, why not put a hot tile under him so that the player doesn't have to go out of the way to kill it?
1S: Another fairly straightforward room.

sixth Level
I won't comment on each room individually here. Most of these fall into the "guess the scripting" category, and I suspect that this won't be the most popular level. For some of them it is not too difficult to guess the intent, but for others it is a bit more cryptic and just easier to look up in the editor. I honestly just don't particularly care for this type of room. Many of the rooms were broken. 1S and 1E were easy enough to just solve normally with the potions provided, and in 2S4W it is easy enough to kill the slayer without resorting to scripting. Most of the other rooms were pretty straightforward to execute and suspect the difficulty is supposed to rely on guessing what the goal of the room is.



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03-24-2018 at 05:01 AM
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Dali
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icon Re: Delta Dungeon (0)  
Thanks again for both you for the testing.

Fifth level:
On the whole this level felt maybe a bit less difficult than some of the previous ones.
I agree this level is pretty easy, its plenty of old AE rooms.
I hope it's still enjoyable. I'll add some modifications to make them a bit more challenging, especially 1W, 1S, maybe 1E.
(btw, maybe you guys are too skillful comparing other players? :D )

Sixth Level:
For overall, I took a risk for trying this kind of puzzle but it seems to be a bit unpopular ? Anyways, The editor is still there if someone is stuck(it will still be "anyone can edit" even after I eventually upload it in the hold section) so thinking just a litte bit to figure out scripting won't hurt anybody :P
1S and 1E were easy enough to just solve normally with the potions provided
You are right. I added arrows and gates to prevent this trivial.
2S4W it is easy enough to kill the slayer without resorting to scripting
Can you tell me how? I can't open the demos you've attached, sorry. I'm just relying on your comments.
2S1W: Deliberately putting checkpoints on forbidden tiles tends to be unpopular, but at least the room is simple enough that it didn't matter.
That was the trick, resist the temptation! It is possible to finish the room without opening red door and using the checkpoints.
1N3W: I like the idea, although there's a small snag: two things in the room begin with M (mud and mirror) and only one of them is accepted.
Thanks, you are right, I removed the mirror. (kept the one with the aumtlich though).

This hold is just a "warm up", in the future I'll probably do some better holds with more worked and thinked puzzles :)
03-24-2018 at 08:59 AM
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Insoluble
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Dali wrote:
Can you tell me how? I can't open the demos you've attached, sorry. I'm just relying on your comments.
Oh, sorry about that! I am playing in the 5.1 engine, so if you are viewing in 3.0 it won't let you view the demos. I am using a variant on this method of killing the slayer.
http://forum.caravelgames.com/viewtopic.php?TopicID=30782&page=0#303249
I doubt it is worth the bother of trying to prevent this.

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03-27-2018 at 05:50 AM
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