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Xindaris
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Traps! Traps! Traps!
Fire Traps! Floor Spikes! Hot Tiles! Pulse Cannons! Flowers! Spiketraps (not to be confused with Floor Spikes)! Sparks!?


Three level hold. Mixture of introducing two new custom "trap-type" elements (spiketraps and sparks) with making puzzles based on existing traps and custom traps (firetraps, floor spikes, hot tiles, pulse cannons, flowers) and the interactions between everything involved (whenever applicable).

Plan is three levels:
-First level is "here's what everything is and how it interacts"
-Second level is "now solve some moderate, hopefully enlightening puzzles to understand them better"
-Third level will hopefully be "now here are some tougher puzzles, to prove you're a master!"

The first level is organized very particularly. Before the blue door, the central lane introduces new things while the side-paths are basically "you know what this is/how to use it, right?" rooms: Proper puzzles for the 3 vanilla trap types and sort of general reminders for the behavior and properties of pulse cannons and flowers. After the blue door are some rooms displaying more advanced features of the new things, followed by an "interaction museum" room to show off how the various things react (or fail to react) to each other (well, pulse cannons had their interactions manually added, but I think they're logical ones).

The second level is more of a sprawling, free-form thing, with whatever kinds of puzzles I could come up with and some loose theming here and there.

There are already checkpoints everywhere, but maybe not in good places? Someone will have to let me know.

More importantly, I'm hoping for help identifying whether and how well the first level teaches/reminds of the needed information, feedback for the puzzles in the hold in general, that sort of thing. I'd like to get the first two levels good before worrying about the planned third one, or at least do both at the same time anyway.

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[Last edited by Xindaris at 02-24-2024 09:21 PM]
12-11-2018 at 04:17 AM
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Dying Flutchman
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Hi Xindaris,

Another one? You are very, very prolific. You should get a hold-proliferation award.

Would love to test, but can't promise. I have to build myself, you see. And I'm definitely not so fast as you are.

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12-11-2018 at 06:10 PM
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Xindaris
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Ideas possess me, and won't let me go until they're given form. At least, that's the poetic way of putting it. Or--I find it fun to procrastinate from things I should be doing with architecture sometimes because it's kind a "placebo achievement", I feel like I'm creating something. In short, I can't help myself. I was on a lot of sweet tea last night when I made the decision to go ahead and post this, but hey, now it's done so I wouldn't feel right taking it back.

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12-11-2018 at 06:50 PM
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Dying Flutchman
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Don't take anything back! It's good stuff coming out of your hold production facility.

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[Last edited by Dying Flutchman at 12-11-2018 07:10 PM]
12-11-2018 at 07:09 PM
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Xindaris
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UPDATE:
Added explanation/hint scrolls to first level. Also simplified design of 2N for hopefully more clarity.

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12-23-2018 at 03:45 AM
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Demos attached for 1 and a half levels. Having fun with this so far. We talked about some stuff in chat, but here are some more thoughts.

1st level:

1N1W: The second checkpoint is at a bit of an awkward spot. Would be nice if you could hit it before setting off the yellow plate. Maybe move to (20,15) or something like that. If I didn't know before hand that I could use Beethro to trigger the pulse cannon I'd have no real way of knowing it from this room which makes things a lot harder.
1N1E: Flowers are rad. Please move the checkpoint to just south of the plate instead of on it.
2N1W, 3N1W, and 2N1E were all fun. Challenge was tricky, but manageable horde manipulation. I didn't check for all sword orientations.
2N: we talked about in chat. Haven't checked the new version.
Post-blue-gate rooms all seemed pretty straightforward.

2nd Level
Entrance Only used one Spike trap. Why the force arrows blocking off the room to the north?
1W: This room kind of solves itself. Feels like there should be more of a trick to this one, or something more to do than just sit there while the snakes kill themselves on the traps.
1N1W: Pretty sure I broke the time clone widget. Please put a checkpoint under the time token.
1N: Super cool room! Probably my favorite so far. really nice use of alternate weapons.
1N2E: Neat room. I overthought this one at first thinking that I had to use all the elements for something, but it turns out I only needed one of the sparks and one of the cannons.

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12-23-2018 at 04:21 AM
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Dying Flutchman
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Hi Xindaris,

I did manage to play around with this a couple of days ago. Have been thinking if I should post, but I guess I should. I may seem pretty critical, but I'd rather hear a frank and critical opinion myself during architecture than after release. So here goes:

I do think that your traps have good puzzle potential. However, I don't see this in the hold. It just doesn't work for me.

I have been thinking why this is. I believe that we're not really talking traps here. Sure, hot tiles, fire traps, spikes are plain traps. They just stay there and call out: "Don't touch me". The characters that you devised, well, I'd rather consider them as monsters. They tend to move around, have various interactions that are easy to understand and describe, but difficult to plan through, etc.

This means that throughout the hold, the rooms feel way to crowded for me. Whereas a room full of hot tiles poses basically one fundamental restriction, a room full of - let's say - stalwards or gentrii or aumtlich easily poses a messy bunch of interactions. Especially, if all those elements combine.

So I would feel that the hold would very much benefit if focus would be on one or two 'traps' at most in one room. Then, you would have a good change of exploring the mechanics and interaction in interesting ways. As Isoluble pointed out: the rooms on the 2nd level tend to 'solve themselves'. This could be seen as amusing, I thought it a pity. For many rooms, I played around without too much thinking untill the room was solved. Often only one or two elements were involved and the other could be ignored. I'd love to see real puzzles involving your elements and I feel there is certainly enough potential.

There. Now I've said it. Don't get me wrong, I guess this is all very critical, but I do recognise many, many possibilities here. Especially since you managed to create little wonders of crisp and clear puzzle rooms in your last holds: Brains, SAND and Blockerture. Loved all of those!

Feel free to just ignore my comments. Insoluble likes the hold, so why bother with me? But perhaps I have inspired you in a small way.

Keep up the good work. Especially the scripting business!

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[Last edited by Dying Flutchman at 12-23-2018 08:52 PM]
12-23-2018 at 08:48 PM
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Xindaris
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Replies to things:
-Insoluble:
Suggested checkpoint placements will be in next update. More specific responses:
--L1 1N1W: Added clarification to the scroll as to what a target is (it now indicates that that includes monsters AND the player).
--L2 Entrance: This is one last "here's what thing does" room to inform the player of how spiketraps are pushed by stick-type weaponry. I don't really care how many/few of the "resources" are used for this one. The force arrows are there because I want the player to encounter the rooms 1W, 1N1W, and 1N in that order but also wanted to let a player return to the entrance easily. My options therefore were either a green door in 1N or the force arrows, and of the two I felt the latter was more satisfying and less annoying.
--L2 1W is supposed to solve itself. It's intentionally a "toy" room rather than a serious "puzzle".
--L2 1N1W: Think I found a good solution to your leak, a plate at (15, 14) that opens the firetraps rather than that being tied to the orbs. Will be in next update.
--L2 1N2E: This sequence of 3 rooms is all about "building your own machine". I'm perfectly happy leaving more resources than are strictly necessary. Glad to see you also found a "lazy" solution, I was kind of proud of mine too :D

-Dying Flutchman:
Even seeing the various "traps" used here as "monsters", there's really not that many of them at all in any particular room. I disagree that there's any real crowding problem, especially with the number of rooms that actually focus on one specific element (L2 1N, 1S, 2S1W (Sparks and Antisparks are basically two "halves" of the same element to me), 2S2E...).
The first level is supposed to be easy when it introduces the various things and their interactions, so the player can refer back to the various information later when they need it. I'm fine with rooms there "solving themselves" in general for this reason. As for the second level, I think there are some rooms (basically everything you go past 1S to reach) that you can't possibly have played to think they solve themselves. In fact the only room that does solve itself is 1W, and that's also the only one Insoluble mentioned as such.
Now, second level rooms are meant to be only moderately difficult, not too scary yet. I'm hoping to make puzzles with real "teeth" to them for level 3, but wanted feedback on basically how well the elements are introduced/explained/used in the first two levels first.

-General query I meant to include in first post:
Should 2S in the second level be altered to require the "hardmode challenge"? Or should I separate it off to a secret room or something? I found the challenge rather satisfying to solve but I'm curious of other people's opinions of what level of "necessary" I should make it.

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[Last edited by Xindaris at 12-23-2018 09:31 PM]
12-23-2018 at 09:27 PM
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Xindaris
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UPDATE:
-All changes mentioned in previous post
-Third level now has 5 rooms intended to be "tough". 1E and on from there is not yet built, however. I felt like giving these rooms "titles" for no particular reason.

Repeating my question from last post!

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[Last edited by Xindaris at 12-30-2018 09:24 PM]
12-30-2018 at 09:24 PM
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Demos from levels 1 and 2 are attached. :)

I found 2E tedious (maybe I solved it incorrectly) and 2S2E was somewhat annoying juggling the puffs.

I hope you don't decide to make 1N1W any harder.



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01-02-2019 at 05:15 AM
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Xindaris
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Doesn't look like you broke 1N1W or anything, it seems fine to me.

No wonder 2E was tedious for you! While I consider that kind of solution valid, I wonder if perhaps it'd be better to put in an arrow trap for the sparks to discourage it.

More importantly, your demo for 2S1E exposes a bug with spiketraps, which I'm...pretty sure I've fixed now. That said...
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UPDATE:
-Spiketrap code altered: Spiketraps can no longer go against force arrows or onto walls just because there's a target there.
-New room or two in the third level.

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[Last edited by Xindaris at 01-03-2019 04:44 AM]
01-03-2019 at 04:34 AM
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Xindaris wrote:
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Yup.

BTW I do appreciate that you've expended some effort to keep the elements in each room from becoming overwhelming, as sometimes happened in Blockerture. Overall I'm enjoying this experience.

I haven't looked at the scripting code but you really are displaying a talent for implementing custom elements.

3rd level, demos attached:

Entrance is fine, tunnels are handy.

1N needs checkpoints. Otherwise, I guess I did what was intended?

1S1W: Definitely take out black doors and replace with green doors. I found this one somewhat annoying because when a tarspawn would occur at a bad time, it created impossible time constraints on one or both sides. Would you consider letting the player switch to a clone in shallow water in order to skip tar spawns?

1W: I don't care for 'blind' timeclone stuff, but maybe someone else does? At least the survival sequence was a pretty straightforward Ex3,Wx3.

1E: Another interesting room. While I appreciate the colored floor hint, it seems like trial and error to get the sparks into the proper movement pattern. More like happening upon a magic scripting edge-case than solving a puzzle?

1N1W: More checkpoints are needed in the small chambers. This room is very interesting to think about, but I haven't stumbled onto the solution yet. It seems that the path to the east bomb must be open to the free spark at the start, which makes it impossible for the free antispark to avoid that path later. I fear there's some weird edge case that's required, but maybe I missed something.

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01-03-2019 at 07:52 AM
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Xindaris
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Re-3rd level:
1N: Whoops, forgot checkpoints; they'll be in the next update. Any solution that kills the constructs "for you" after you go onto the north button is fine, although there is a more "elegant" solution that kills them within a turn of respawning every time.

1S1W: I put the black doors on purpose; having tar neat enough that you can clear it off at the end is an intentional part of the puzzle--as is inconveniently-timed tarspawns. The room is all about finding ways to mitigate those issues; you found a way to use flooding but a simpler solution is to
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.

1W: The southwestern chamber matching the northwestern one's geometry, and the fact the whole thing is on a 30-turn cycle, means the player can do it completely not blind if they're willing to push around their timeclones the right way. I admit it probably isn't the most efficient solution to do that, but it's how I went about it.

1N1W and 1E are not to do with "edge cases" but rather with advanced behavior understanding, similar to stuff like vertical preference or how brain pathmapping works. Two sparks with nothing to "latch on to" but each other will always have the movement pattern that 1E requires, and the room gives the player clear constraints to fulfill along with enough space to "play around" until they discover it. Then it's just a matter of "moving it to the right position". And 1N1W has a similar behavior that you need to understand to solve it. Namely:
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That being said, I do agree that I should probably point out these "advanced behaviors" before this point. I tried to show off the one just secreted in the first level 3N, but did not point out it was happening in a scroll. I'm not really sure how to force the player to really see this behavior apart from painstakingly describing it to them in a scroll.
The behavior that "sparks treat other sparks like walls", on the other hand, I think I probably can and should add to a room in the first level somewhere; then 1E should make more sense. I'll see what I can do.

(Also, more checkpoints will be in 1N1W next update.)

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[Last edited by Xindaris at 01-03-2019 04:05 PM]
01-03-2019 at 04:01 PM
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Xindaris
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UPDATE:
-Checkpoints in 3rd level 1N, 1N1W as mentioned above
-New room at 2nd level 1S1E to specifically show and explain two 'advanced behaviors' of (anti)sparks.
-Disconnected room draft at 2nd level 3S1E: Tougher version without enough "resources" to get the flower east in the originally intended way. Not sure if I want this to replace the original, or be a secret, or what...opinions welcome.

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01-11-2019 at 06:24 PM
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icon Re: Traps! Traps! Traps! (+2)  
Well, in my usual grand scheme of things, I've managed to complete one of Xindaris' architecture holds about three cycles behind the one currently in progress. Good times.

It's been a while since the last time I played this hold so I don't have very thorough notes about it, but here's a few. Demos are also attached, mostly from January but a few on the third level are from today:

---

In general, for sparks it might be nice to highlight the square of terrain they're going to check *next turn* for wall/empty floor status, much like the cannons highlight their target with an X.

It's a Trap 2N1E: The horde of brained wraithwings is pretty tricky to work with, even if you face East. Could maybe do with 2 or 4 fewer wraithwings; would still get the point across without requiring quite as specific a move sequence.

More Traps 1N2E: Not sure whether this solution is intended; Beethro doesn't even go into the roach area at all. Seemed like the least fiddly thing I could think of at the time.

Even More Traps 1N1W: It would be nice to include a pit by the brain - that both makes it easier to work with the mirrors (since you can use a stick for a direct stabbing move instead of a sword) and lets you still kill the brain even if you're holding a stick. Makes the room more convenient without making it any easier.

Favorite rooms on each level:
It's a Trap: 3N1W, 2N1W
More Traps: 1E, 2S1W
Even More Traps: 1N1W, 1N

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07-05-2019 at 07:55 PM
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Xindaris
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Thanks for taking a look, Chaco. This hold has kinda stalled in development for awhile, and doesn't quite have all the rooms I'd like it to...as opposed to some of the other stuff I have in this subforum that's just "done but needs testing".

I'm almost certain the only way I could highlight a square for the sparks that way would be using image overlays, which I still have no idea how to use. The only reason the pulse cannon has such nice graphics is because hyperme did all their scripting/graphicking. It also complicates things that they don't look in just one tile, they have a priority list of three. For example, if an antispark is facing south, then it first checks the tile to its west, then if that's empty, the one to the northwest (to see if it's at a corner), then if that's also empty the one to the southwest (to see if it should "jump" forward).

Sparks and antisparks do indicate which way they're facing at all times: Their "eyes" and "eyebrows" together form arrows pointing the direction they're currently facing, so unless they're already at a corner the place they're looking for another wall is just next to the direction they're looking in.

Your demo set doesn't seem to include one for IMT 1S1E, probably you finished that level before the update that added that one. It's supposed to elucidate a bit better how (anti)spark "jumping" works. I also noticed from your demo of IMT Entrance that I forgot to include stairs as an obstacle for the spiketraps, which I should probably do if possible to avoid bizarre behavior.

Based on my own demo, IAT 2N1E doesn't really require all that specific a move sequence; if your positioning is good then 8 or so of the wraithwings are totally irrelevant until after the brains and queens are dead.

IMT 1N2E: I think when I built this I originally thought Beethro should go inside the box, but there's absolutely no reason he has to. My own demo has him send someone else inside, too.

IEMT 1N1W: I wasn't exactly sure what you were talking about until I looked at your demo. The room can be solved without putting a mirror on the door; there's a configuration that requires no tampering other than when you light the fuse between the spark and the antispark. But I don't really consider your way a leak either, and I see no reason not to let the player kill the brain with a stick for just plain convenience. So I'll add water at (28, 22) and also (8, 22) for symmetry.

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[Last edited by Xindaris at 07-06-2019 05:23 PM]
07-06-2019 at 05:08 PM
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And again, in passing through "things I probably should've published", there's this hold.

It's clear from my old posts here that I was unsatisfied with how many rooms are in the 3rd level, but I dunno--the hold feels big enough to me overall, in the end. I did come up with a couple more rooms and a vague concept for one while poking through it. Ultimately, I might leave it at that after I give that third one a serious try at making something interesting of it. Therefore:

UPDATE:
-IMT now has 3S1E as an official secret variant of 2S1E.
-IEMT now has an actual room at 2N1E, and a new room at 2N. Both of these are probably easier than the rest of the level, and 2N is quite intentionally a dumb, silly breather. There's also a scribble for a potential room in 2N1W; we'll see if I keep that or not.
-The hold also has a final exit (in IEMT 3N), but it's not accessible until I actually finish 2N1W.


Okay, as with my other recent posts in this subforum, let me know if you've got any new feedback (or if it seems like I never addressed some old feedback!)

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[Last edited by Xindaris at 02-24-2024 09:26 PM]
02-24-2024 at 09:25 PM
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