Swivel
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Currently, a mimic that is on a trapdoor does not drop the trapdoor when it is stabbed. Should it?

This relates back to metaphysical discussion or trapdoors here:

http://www.drod.net/forum/viewtopic.php?TopicID=3591

So, what do you think?

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Oneiromancer
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I think the solution is simple: having the trapdoor drop when the mimic is killed would break at least 1, and probably more, rooms that have already been published. Therefore we just accept that this is the way that it is and try to rationalize a reason for it.

Note that this would have to include a mimic being blown up on trapdoors, which would affect demos in at least one room in JtRH, and possibly other holds as well. I think it's here to stay.

Game on,

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Chaco
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Yes, there are a few rooms that require a mimic to get on a trapdoor but not drop it.

The important thing is: Poppies are sworded beings, as are Beethro and mimics. How come they don't drop trapdoors?

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Banjooie
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When Beethro or a mimic steps off a trap door, it falls.

When a mimic is stabbed, it never steps off the trap door.

Therefore, it doesn't fall.

QED.

Tahnan
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Chaco wrote:The important thing is: Poppies are sworded beings, as are Beethro and mimics. How come they don't drop trapdoors?

It's not a fact about swords, it's a fact about Beethro. Look at it this way. Suppose you taped a sword to a wubba...

Alneyan
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Banjooie wrote:
When a mimic is stabbed, it never steps off the trap door.

The mimic evaporates when stabbed, and does not leave any corpse on the trapdoor. Therefore, the mimic is no longer putting any pressure on the trapdoor, and it ought to fall. On the other hand, Beethro does leave a corpse when dying (assuming Beethro actually has a physical existence), so the trapdoor cannot fall at his death, since there is still something on the platform.

That the mimic steps off the trapdoor is irrelevant for the trapdoor: until further notice, trapdoors have about as much sapience as your average non-magical-non-Elven-crafted non-shining-blue-when-it-senses-danger sword. Therefore, the only thing that matters is pressure, or the lack thereof.

Oneiromancer
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Alneyan wrote:
That the mimic steps off the trapdoor is irrelevant for the trapdoor: until further notice, trapdoors have about as much sapience as your average non-magical-non-Elven-crafted non-shining-blue-when-it-senses-danger sword. Therefore, the only thing that matters is pressure, or the lack thereof.

There's gotta be something missing, because as previously noted, guards/poppies and Slayers don't drop trapdoors either, and obviously serpents, tarstuff, and rock golems are heavier than Beethro. There must be something that differentiates Beethro and mimics from everything else, which is flawlessly consistent, but we just don't know what it is yet.

Game on,

____________________________
"He who is certain he knows the ending of things when he is only beginning them is either extremely wise or extremely foolish; no matter which is true, he is certainly an unhappy man, for he has put a knife in the heart of wonder." -- Tad Williams

Alneyan
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It's gotta be them brains. If not... well, I suppose there's always hovercraft technology.

Mimics are blue, and they are created by Beethro. Therefore, they belong to a different universe than the red serpent, the red guard, who are part of our reality: it then make sense than the two groups do not follow the same rules. Don't even think about mentioning rattlesnakes (I could make a case for tar babies).

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[Last edited by Alneyan at 12-07-2005 09:43 PM]

Swivel
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I'm actually invented a room that goes by what the current standards are (a mimic does not drop the trapdoor) as part of a much larger hold.

But it's an interesting point: How would a trapdoor be able to "tell the difference" between a mimic stepping off and a mimic being lifted off of a trapdoor? A mimic being stabbed would have the same effect as that mimic being lifted. After all, one minute it's there and the next minute it isn't for both cases. But,

1. The developer is always right.
2. If the developer isn't always right, refer to Rule #1 (or check out the Bugs board).

jamie
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Naaah, when the mimic is stabbed, it's mimicary (don't explode, Swivel!! ) remains errr remain. DROD just saves us from this unsightly mess... It's clever that way.

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Swivel
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Pinnacle
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It's irrelevant.
EVERYTHING that Caravel creates is flawlessly consistent!
Funny how this keeps coming up

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Twice (adv.): Once too often.
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coppro
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I'm going to apply logic from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (or, for those of you who care, The Restaurant at The End of The Universe, being the second book in the trilogy of five).

"In major cases of discrepancy, it's always reality that's got it wrong."

KevG
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Do we actually know that it's pressure that activates a trapdoor? Suppose instead that there's an invisible force field around the edge of a trapdoor. It can tell the difference between Beethro and monsters; like monsters it's fooled by mimics. If the field is broken by Beethro stepping off the trapdoor then it falls. Clearly a mimic being stabbed never activates said force field.

Personally, I think a stabbed mimic should drop a trapdoor. But, I figure it's better to concoct a half-baked explanation for why not than break the game logic.

jamie
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Swivel wrote:

Oh dear.. And I was so careful not to say "When the Mimic is smitted" too!

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RoboBob3000
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The Mothingness has all of the trapdoors tied to little pieces of string. It only tries to pull one down whenever Beethro is standing on it, but he always seems to be a little late.

It's colorblind, too. Can't tell yellow from blue.

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Krishh
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For one thing Mimics do leave corpses, as evidenced by the dilemma Beethro pondered about: eating one. As for trapdoors dropping, WARNING, JTRH SPOILERS:

Mattcrampy
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I reckon trapdoors are rigged up so that there are specific places where you can stand that take the weight off. Beethro doesn't know about them, so he blunders through (and he'd have some difficulty even if he did know - the safe areas are tiny, which is why so many Empire citizens wear pointed shoes). Most monsters and dungeon denizens are familiar with the trapdoors, and so take care to step so that the trapdoors support their weight.

Mimics are shells - they hit as hard, but they aren't solid. Trapdoors only fall while mimics are on them because they're following Beethro's movements as he stomps around. A light-footed smitemaster wouldn't have the same problem with mimics as Beethro and his burly guildmates do, but then when do you see a light-footed smitemaster?

Then again, it's hard to argue with the string explanation.

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[Last edited by Mattcrampy at 12-08-2005 04:40 PM]

eytanz
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Mimics don't exist.

Really, that's the explanation for it all. You drink some mysterious liquid you find lying around and suddenly you think that life-sized doubles of you are popping out of thin air and copying your every movement? We all know what's going on.

So called "mimic potions" are quite clearly hallucinorgenic drugs. However, it so happens that Beethro is a very, very convincing person. So convincing, in fact, that if he acts like there's a double of him out there, everyone else comes to believe it too. The monsters that the "mimic" slays aren't dying of sword wounds. They are dying of spontaneously induced self lacerations brought forth by the power of suggestion. Similarly, they won't enter the same square as the mimic, not because it's there, but because they think it's there.

In fact, Beethro is so overwhelmingly suggestive, that he even convinces inanimate objects. The orbs believe that they are being struck, so they act like they are being struck. The trapdoor thinks it should fall, so it does. Of course, if the "mimic" gets stabbed, Beethro thinks that it died. And, being the insensitive kind of person he really is (drinking drugged potions all the time doesn't make you a very considerate person), he never gives much thought for what happens after something is dead. So, obviously, the illusion is shattered. And, the trapdoor realizes that not only it doesn't have something on it, it never did. So, it might be a bit embarassed for its mistake, but it definitely can get to lord it over its neighbouring trapdoors that have already dropped for no good reason. So it'll stay up there, proudly, at least until Beethro steps on it or maybe another "mimic".

For extra credit, you can see how invisibility potions work by the simple principle that if Beethro believes he can't see himself, other monsters can't either.

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stigant
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For extra credit, you can see how invisibility potions work by the simple principle that if Beethro believes he can't see himself, other monsters can't either.

Indeed, in fact its an immediate corollary of the "If I can't see you, you can't see me" principle which doomed the infamously stupid Bugblatter beast.

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Tahnan
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eytanz wrote:
So called "mimic potions" are quite clearly hallucinorgenic drugs....

Good Lord. This post pretty clearly demonstrates that Beethro isn't the only one drinking heavily from the mimic potions...:-)

Chaco
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Actually, here's a very logical solution:

Trapdoors only drop when pushed four times. The first two come from stepping on, and the other two from stepping off. When a mimic is stabbed, obviously the next two steps never occur and the trapdoor doesn't drop. Guards know this, so they jump off of trapdoors and don't drop them.

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Syntax
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Do we actually know that it's pressure that activates a trapdoor? Suppose instead that there's an invisible force field around the edge of a trapdoor. It can tell the difference between Beethro and monsters; like monsters it's fooled by mimics. If the field is broken by Beethro stepping off the trapdoor then it falls. Clearly a mimic being stabbed never activates said force field.

I almost agree but this is how I think of it:

Every trapdoor has a circuit around it as so...

+-----O
|     |
|     |
|     |
|     |
O-----O

Where the symbols | and - represent tripwires, O represents sensors, and + represents a generator. The trapdoor will only fall once at least one of the sensors loses power.

So, when Beethro steps on the trapdoor, a tripwire is broken but all the sensors still have power. Once Beethro steps off, a second tripwire is broken, turning off between 1 and 3 sensors hence triggering the trapdoor.

Obviously, as this trap has been set by the enemy, they know about it and so they don't trigger it by stepping *over* the tripwire. I'm not saying beethro is clumsy, but he obviously doesn't know how the trapdoors really work.

As an aside, snakes slide *under* the wires.

RoboBob3000
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Aha! But what if a mimic enters the trapdoor from one direction, dies before leaving, and then Beethro enters from a different direction?

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Syntax
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Mimics dont exist! bah!

agaricus5
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eytanz wrote:
Mimics don't exist.

Really, that's the explanation for it all. You drink some mysterious liquid you find lying around and suddenly you think that life-sized doubles of you are popping out of thin air and copying your every movement? We all know what's going on.

So called "mimic potions" are quite clearly hallucinorgenic drugs. However, it so happens that Beethro is a very, very convincing person. So convincing, in fact, that if he acts like there's a double of him out there, everyone else comes to believe it too. The monsters that the "mimic" slays aren't dying of sword wounds. They are dying of spontaneously induced self lacerations brought forth by the power of suggestion. Similarly, they won't enter the same square as the mimic, not because it's there, but because they think it's there.

In fact, Beethro is so overwhelmingly suggestive, that he even convinces inanimate objects. The orbs believe that they are being struck, so they act like they are being struck. The trapdoor thinks it should fall, so it does. Of course, if the "mimic" gets stabbed, Beethro thinks that it died. And, being the insensitive kind of person he really is (drinking drugged potions all the time doesn't make you a very considerate person), he never gives much thought for what happens after something is dead. So, obviously, the illusion is shattered. And, the trapdoor realizes that not only it doesn't have something on it, it never did. So, it might be a bit embarassed for its mistake, but it definitely can get to lord it over its neighbouring trapdoors that have already dropped for no good reason. So it'll stay up there, proudly, at least until Beethro steps on it or maybe another "mimic".

For extra credit, you can see how invisibility potions work by the simple principle that if Beethro believes he can't see himself, other monsters can't either.

So what if a mimic stabs Beethro?

Hmm... Beethro could be that drugged that he hallucinates being stabbed by his double, convinces himself that he actually is dying, and so produces a self-induced stab wound while swinging his normal sword around in his death agony.

If it could invent such a potion, the Empire would have the perfect weapon against Smitemasters and other intruders. Indeed, I shall now inform the Mixing Agents and Alchemists about this possible new line of research. Nothing should be overlooked in the hunt for new defence strategies for the Empire.

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AlefBet
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agaricus5 wrote:
So what if a mimic stabs Beethro?

Simple. Mimics never do stab Beethro. In fact, Beethro never dies. Whenever he thinks he's died, he wakes up from a dream to find himself at the start of the room.

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Pinnacle
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AlefBet wrote:

agaricus5 wrote:
So what if a mimic stabs Beethro?

Simple. Mimics never do stab Beethro. In fact, Beethro never dies. Whenever he thinks he's died, he wakes up from a dream to find himself at the start of the room.

What if Beethro finishes the room, and later the blue door drops.
If it was a dream, he never finished the room for real.

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Twice (adv.): Once too often.
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jamie
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jamie wrote:

Swivel wrote:

Oh dear.. And I was so careful not to say "When the Mimic is smitted" too!

Can't believe someone just modded this post -1, 11 months after the post was made ? :cry

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Ezlo
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It's Maurog. You quoted a blow-up smiliey. That's almost twice as worse as posting one. Watch out, you also just posted a two deep quote, hopefully that's not too much.