leventdal
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If this mimic is placed where its sword touches a brain, it will not kill the brain but disable its effect. (Name pin may be more appropriate)

It won't have the ability to move or rotate, and this will enable Beethro's free movement. (But a more cruel type that moves with Beethro can be used) Because of its inability to move Beethro must be correctly rotated before reaching the mimic.

Afterwards Beethro can travel to kill the brain.

As another option this mimic can be killed by other monsters when they walk over it. The monsters won't aim at it (unless there is a new mimic-hunter monster) but if its on their way they will not avoid thrashing it. This will require planning of the path to be travelled before acting.

Putting more brains than mimics in a room will require a selection of places the mimics are going to be used.

Also again as another option the pin can be used for fixing other monsters to their places. This can be highly effective on roach queens. Also some some monsters can be pin-resistant.

[Edited by leventdal on 06-26-2003 at 09:54 PM]

zex20913
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Now this has much potential right off of the bat! I like it, give it the stamp of approval, all that rot. The only thing I would suggest different from your description is to not make it mimic based. Just a potion to negate the monster's effects as if it were dead. Maybe it could be something like a paralysis potion that requires a monster to move in front of its face to break free from. Great idea!

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Mattcrampy
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Actually, what I'd like to see is for it to be more conditional. Say, Beethro has to be facing one of a handful of different directions for it to be active, or possibly it only works every second turn. If you just have a potion that kills off brain effects, it's pretty much the same as putting a brain where the potion is.

Matt

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zex20913
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But if you have more than one brain you would want to pin...then can you see the decisions? Options! Choices! They resound!

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eytanz
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I keep repeating myself here, but making things more complicated is not a good thing. A way to neutralize brains before reaching them, perhaps temporarily - interesting. Making it depend on pre-designed sword angles - that just limits the amount of rooms you can place it in.

Make new additions as widely useful as possible. Then, make it the room designer's decision to see how it works. Otherwise, you're just removing variety, as well as making things harder for the player to understand.

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leventdal
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I keep repeating myself here, but making things more complicated is not a good thing. A way to neutralize brains before reaching them, perhaps temporarily - interesting. Making it depend on pre-designed sword angles - that just limits the amount of rooms you can place it in.

Make new additions as widely useful as possible. Then, make it the room designer's decision to see how it works. Otherwise, you're just removing variety, as well as making things harder for the player to understand.

I partly agree with the positioning of the pin. But in most cases player is already correctly positioned before reaching a mimic to save time. Also in many rooms, mimics are in safe areas.
As another option placing the pin can be composed of two parts: choosing location and position. As mimic, different than pin, rotates with Beethro, the positioning was unneccesary.

eytanz
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As far as I can see, remote turning off of brains isn't so interesting - as Matt pointed out, you can do something virtually identical by just moving the brain to where the thing that turns it off is.

What is interesting about the idea is the possibility of temporarily turning off the brain - that could generate levels where you need to turn off the brain to acheive a certain task (say, get into a room which is impossible with smart monsters), and then turn it on again to do something else (say, a monster which needs to be smart to get to the player).

[Edited by eytanz on 06-26-2003 at 11:14 PM]

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Oneiromancer
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Yeah, I guess I don't see why there are really that many times when one would have to "choose" which brain to pin. I mean, the whole point of having multiple brains in a room is to make you decide between running around killing all the brains or killing all the other creatures.

If you really want to use this for brains, why not make the potion a "mind blast bomb" or something like that. When Beethro steps on it, he picks it up and throws it (or perhaps he trips and breaks it, whatever) and this fills the room with a gas that makes the brains stupid (or perhaps it stops them from sending out psychic waves) for 30 clicks.

But, eh, I don't really dig on the pin thing.

Game on,

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ErikH2000
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eytanz wrote:
What is interesting about the idea is the possibility of temporarily turning off the brain - that could generate levels where you need to turn off the brain to acheive a certain task (say, get into a room which is impossible with smart monsters), and then turn it on again to do something else (say, a monster which needs to be smart to get to the player).

I agree this is an interesting twist, and the great thing is, we will get it in the DROD:AE release.

The brain's new reaction to invisibility can be used to create these kinds of puzzles. If Beethro is within smell-range of a brain, all the monsters in the room are given brain-directed movement. So turning the brain behaviour on and off is possible by walking to different parts of the room.

-Erik

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leventdal
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An important point is being missed:

The pin is breakable. So this will require putting the pin on appropriate brains or move in a tense path.