admin
Level: Legendary Smitemaster
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File: A chunk of the Eighth.hold (29.1 KB)
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note: I use raven as my drod player. This is a rather simple hold smiting wise, a rather complicated hold scripting wise, and was a lot of fun to make.

Tahnan
Level: Smitemaster

Rank Points: 2459
Registered: 11-14-2005
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I'll be honest: when I saw "a rather complicated hold scripting wise", my heart sank, or perhaps it was just my stomach rising. Scripting is very easy to do very badly.

What I found when I played this hold was that the scripting was indeed not terrific (there are a number of places where dialogue repeats when you re-enter a room; some of the writing is very stilted), but that it wasn't particularly bad. On the other hand, the other rooms (smiting rooms? monster rooms?) were remarkably pleasant--not necessarily difficult, but generally interesting at at their worst merely forgettable but never tedious or annoying, which puts this hold well above some we've seen.

All in all, it's worth playing; it goes fairly quickly, I thought, and might even be a very good transition between newbie-level holds and expert-level holds.

Rinaldo
Level: Delver
Rank Points: 50
Registered: 04-07-2007
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I too found the "action" rooms a fun challenge, set nicely at the in-between difficulty level that's just right for me.

A couple of comments about the overall structure, though: The abandonment of the usual levels whereby a new area is opened up only after a previous one is completed in favor of overlapping "quests" -- this created some problems for my traversal. Specifically:

Something seems to be set wrong in relation to "Hints and Solutions" (which I seem to be the only one to use for this hold *blush*): the minimap shows all the rooms for an area, but the larger map is always black, no matter how many times I've conquered a room (and even sent my records to Caravel specially, just in case).

And the City of Secrets: Is it

Let me reiterate that I really enjoyed the action portions of this hold. Some of the challenges seemed agreeably new to me, like the adventures with water skippers in shallow water.

bwross
Level: Smiter
Rank Points: 376
Registered: 04-17-2005
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Rinaldo wrote:
A couple of comments about the overall structure, though: The abandonment of the usual levels whereby a new area is opened up only after a previous one is completed in favor of overlapping "quests" -- this created some problems for my traversal. Specifically:

Click here to view the secret text

×Clearing out the pirates in the grotto before anybody asked me to means that the captain will never take me to Tueno, because I cannot now do what he asks (I've already done it). And less destructively, if I clear out the ruins before taking the ruins-searching guy along, the area doesn't register as completed apparently, and I keep having to do it again.

Oddly, I don't have either of those problems:


Have you been using check points as teleports? These sound like the type of problems people who were doing that had in GatEB, where they were using characters from the wrong point of the time line to try and do things. One problem with this hold is the lack of check points... if you restore to a room you almost always get put back to when you first entered it, as there's no save points in non-puzzle rooms that you can tag to be able to get to a more recent point. Casually restoring in this hold isn't like most holds... you need to pay more attention, because you'll be thrown all over the story, not just to the most recent pass through a room.

And the City of Secrets: Is it

Click here to view the secret text

×behind the Master Wall? (It seems so, as I'm now allowed to pass the yellow door.) If so, this is the only hold I know in which a Master Wall is used to block the continuation or conclusion of a game, rather than providing access to an optional area. Which in turn means that I can't check where I might have missed a secret room, as the full Restore information isn't available till I've reached the end. The in-game Restore tells me I've conquered 62/62 rooms, but I don't know what to do now.

Click here to view the secret text

×Look closer at the master door... or rather just beside it.

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[Last edited by bwross at 08-28-2012 05:10 AM]

Rinaldo
Level: Delver
Rank Points: 50
Registered: 04-07-2007
IP: Logged

Oh man, as simple as that. Well, like I said, I'm not very bright.

Have you been using check points as teleports?

I don't think so. I was doing a lot of physical backtracking and literally walking to where I'd been before, for the reason you mention.

But honestly, now that I've finished, found the 2 secret rooms I'd missed before, and thus Conquered the hold, I'm not going to be re-exploring any of it for a while (I must have cleared some of these rooms 5 or 6 times now). Time to give it a rest. Thank you for your kind help.

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[Last edited by Rinaldo at 08-28-2012 12:17 PM]

adS
Level: Master Delver

Rank Points: 214
Registered: 05-02-2010
IP: Logged

The scripting seems to be broken, indeed.

I have mastered all secret rooms and got the message that I have mastered the hold.

When I have passed the master wall I get the message

"You conquered A chunk of the Eighth"

"And so you proceed into the city of secrets."

An then - the game ends.

Any idea, anybody?

adS


____________________________
pauca sed matura

Chaco
Level: Smitemaster
Rank Points: 3624
Registered: 10-06-2005
IP: Logged

To clear up some confusion, the hold is intentionally designed to end at the City of Secrets, because that's the end of the story for this hold.

The architect said that he may make a sequel which is all about the City of Secrets.

____________________________
Quick links to my stuff (in case you forgot where it was):

adS
Level: Master Delver

Rank Points: 214
Registered: 05-02-2010
IP: Logged

Chaco wrote:
To clear up some confusion, the hold is intentionally designed to end at the City of Secrets, because that's the end of the story for this hold.

The architect said that he may make a sequel which is all about the City of Secrets.

OK - I mixed up "City of Secrets" with the level "The empire".
Apparently I can't figure out how to enter the empire.
What did I miss?

adS

____________________________
pauca sed matura

junglejane
Level: Delver

Rank Points: 55
Registered: 11-15-2006
IP: Logged

adS wrote:
The scripting seems to be broken, indeed.

I have mastered all secret rooms and got the message that I have mastered the hold.

When I have passed the master wall I get the message

"You conquered A chunk of the Eighth"

"And so you proceed into the city of secrets."

An then - the game ends.

Any idea, anybody?

adS

Broken indeed. I have the same problem as you and now it seems that what I am looking for is not yet designed?? I dropped the Master Wall. I don't understand why it can be bypassed, Either way the game ends there or so it seems.

____________________________
I keep six honest serving-men
(They taught me all I knew);
Their names are What and Why and When
And How and Where and Who..... Rudyard Kipling

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[Last edited by junglejane at 11-20-2012 02:28 PM : spelling]