eatmorepies
Level: Goblin
Rank Points: 26
Registered: 11-24-2010
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The lack of checkpoints in KDD is astounding. Fifteenth Level is especially unforgiving; it focuses on trapdoors, and several of the puzzles on that level involve clearing a whole room full of trapdoors with few or even no save points. If you were to make one tiny mistake, the whole puzzle has to be restarted.

Speaking of Level 15, I really think it relies too much on red doors. Every time you have to cross through a room that focuses on red doors, you have to re-solve a puzzle just to get to where you want to go. I really think the implementation in later games is better; they typically have rooms that are blocked by green doors, and there is one roach that is behind a red door that can open up a green one. With that implementation, the player doesn't have to do the tedious task of completing a room several times.

Dragon Fogel
Level: Smitemaster
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The 5.0 update allows you to press the special command key to re-traverse most of the rooms with red doors, though I'm not sure if this is explicitly mentioned.

ezequielb
Level: Disabled
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Registered: 01-21-2019
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Well, I've lost my mind with level 8, so I can see why you would want more checkpoints (as if I hadn't craved them after going through a room full for tar). But games need to be challenging. You must come up with resources to know which trapdoors to step on, so when you restart, you are in a better position than before. It's quite simple: use Word when you need to write things down, and Paint to take screen captures of the room and write over them.

Nuntar
Level: Smitemaster

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I think it's important to have a balance. The game should be challenging (and it is), but it shouldn't be unduly punishing or frustrating. Checkpoints exist to limit the amount of progress you lose if you make a careless slip, the cat jumps on your keyboard, or something comes up and you have to quit and come back the next day. In lengthy rooms like this one, it would be extremely annoying if you had to start the entire room over:



The 5.0 update does add more checkpoints to the earlier holds. That's partly because we've had a lot more experience of playing through these rooms and getting a feeling for where more checkpoints are needed. It's also because AE has a technical limitation in that checkpoints can't be placed on trapdoors, so rooms like this were left without checkpoints out of necessity:



____________________________
50th Skywatcher

ezequielb
Level: Disabled
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Registered: 01-21-2019
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I was thinking... the original Webfoot game had no checkpoints whatsoever. And, have you listened to the soundtrack? It has loud percussion, exciting rythms and it keeps you hooked. Architecht's Edition introduces checkpoints, and the music is much more calm. I think the sountrack in Webfoot DROD was designed to keep people playing it; to make them overcome disappointment and frustration. Then, as things were made easier, as you could restart from a halfway point, the music wasn't used to keep up the spirit. What do you think?

ErikH2000
Level: Legendary Smitemaster

Rank Points: 2794
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ezequielb wrote:
I think the sountrack in Webfoot DROD was designed to keep people playing it; to make them overcome disappointment and frustration. Then, as things were made easier, as you could restart from a halfway point, the music wasn't used to keep up the spirit. What do you think?

That might be the end result, but it wasn't how I was thinking.

I just liked the music of Lars K. Aasbrenn a lot. So I hired him to make it for Webfoot DROD. I wasn't thinking so much like "this music will keep the player excited". It was more like... hey, this sounds good to me. And I don't think I gave him much instruction on how to make the music, other than song length and number of tracks. It was all just "video game music", and I knew Lars' synthpop style would come through.

I can't remember exactly why I switched to my music in DROD:AE, but I think it was for legal reasons--what I paid Lars only covered his work being included in Webfoot DROD. Or something like that. I had a bunch of songs that I'd written over the years, and I figured I might as well use them in DROD:AE.

You might be right about one thing. When I started writing DROD, it seemed a lot more action-oriented to me. And then later, I thought of it as a more contemplative game. In JtRH music, we made this dichotomy official, and rooms had separate action or contemplative music based on the monster count in the room.

-Erik

____________________________
The Godkiller - Chapter 1 available now on Steam. It's a DROD-like puzzle adventure game.
dev journals | twitch stream | youtube archive (NSFW)

ezequielb
Level: Disabled
Rank Points: 1
Registered: 01-21-2019
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ErikH2000 wrote:
I just liked the music of Lars K. Aasbrenn a lot. So I hired him to make it for Webfoot DROD. I wasn't thinking so much like "this music will keep the player excited". It was more like... hey, this sounds good to me. And I don't think I gave him much instruction on how to make the music, other than song length and number of tracks. It was all just "video game music", and I knew Lars' synthpop style would come through.

I can't remember exactly why I switched to my music in DROD:AE, but I think it was for legal reasons--what I paid Lars only covered his work being included in Webfoot DROD. Or something like that. I had a bunch of songs that I'd written over the years, and I figured I might as well use them in DROD:AE.

I have some questions, I don't know if you'd like to answer them here but I really want to know. I rememebr you telling me that at the start it was "just you on your Pentium with VGA graphics". How big a company was Webfoot? Was it you who hired Aasbrenn or was it the company who paid him? And how did you meet Aasbrenn? Is he a musician who played at concerts?
And are you a musician as well? Do you compose?

ezequielb
Level: Disabled
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Registered: 01-21-2019
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Hey ErikH, sorry if my questions were impertinent, I just really wanted to know.

ezequielb
Level: Disabled
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Registered: 01-21-2019
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Wow, okay. I get no answer, I apologize, and still no answer. It surprises me that I said that I wanted to punch the designer in the face because of the tar, and I got replies; now I want to know a little more about the past of the company that produced DROD and all of a sudden a complete silence befalls. I just don't know what to do anymore with you people.

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[Last edited by ezequielb at 02-05-2019 05:37 PM]

navithmastero
Level: Smitemaster

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I'd advise not being rude for one. This is a really small community and often stuff can get lost if someone reads it and thinks they'll reply later but doesn't, I'd hang on a little bit longer and see if Erik sees this. The likelihood is he's not ignoring you and rather has not seen this thread. People have lives outside of DROD.

____________________________
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One of your local HAs.

My stuff:

ezequielb
Level: Disabled
Rank Points: 1
Registered: 01-21-2019
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I sent him an e-mail and hasn't replied either. I'll apologize wholeheartedly if he's not ignoring me, but it does seem like it.