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disoriented
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DimWiddy and Insoluble, let's see what you can do!

We are almost there :D

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03-28-2017 at 04:28 AM
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Insoluble
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disoriented wrote:
DimWiddy and Insoluble, let's see what you can do!

We are almost there :D

I think I'm going to pass for now and let the folks after me have a go at those two rooms. I'll try to get back to this soon though!

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03-29-2017 at 08:14 PM
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DimWiddy
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disoriented wrote:
DimWiddy and Insoluble, let's see what you can do!

We are almost there :D

My DROD muscles have atrophied a bit in the past months, but I'll scrabble something together!

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03-29-2017 at 08:16 PM
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disoriented
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Hi Xindaris,

I think a good idea would be to set a deadline (say, mid-September) for release of the hold to HA. That way we can include what we have without being blocked by the remaining people who have yet to finish their rooms.

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07-18-2017 at 07:09 PM
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Insoluble
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disoriented wrote:
Hi Xindaris,

I think a good idea would be to set a deadline (say, mid-September) for release of the hold to HA. That way we can include what we have without being blocked by the remaining people who have yet to finish their rooms.

I like this idea. I'll try to get on my last couple of rooms ASAP.

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07-18-2017 at 07:10 PM
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DimWiddy
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Probably a good idea. I've tried multiple times to come up with variations on the two rooms I can, but they never turn into anything non-trivial. I'm really sorry I've been such a squeaky wheel. :(

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07-19-2017 at 12:44 AM
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Dragon Fogel
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If you made rooms out of the trivial ideas, you could post them anyways. Maybe they'll turn out to actually be tricky to other people, or maybe you can get suggestions for how to build on them. Or, maybe your room can be the "easy" version of something, and whoever follows up can do a "hard" version.

Basically, if you've got something, it's better to post that than to leave it at nothing.
07-19-2017 at 12:54 AM
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jamesdenem
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Welp, I guess I might as well add the rooms that I have made for the remaining people I was waiting for my turn for.

Hopefully we can get everyone to finish their variations, but I feel that what we have so far is pretty great.

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07-19-2017 at 11:12 PM
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jamesdenem
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And here are the demoes for the rooms that I added.

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07-19-2017 at 11:12 PM
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Nuntar
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Just a note that someone should carefully merge jamesdenem's last hold with the previous latest hold -- jamesdenem's doesn't include all the rooms that had been built.

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07-20-2017 at 12:17 AM
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jamesdenem
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Sorry about that.

I guess I hadn't downloaded the latest update of the new merged hold before adding my rooms.

I specifically added a room to the following areas:

Limited Directions
Bomb Safety
Blorxery

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07-20-2017 at 02:00 AM
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disoriented
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I've added jamesdenem's new rooms to the latest version of the main hold and posted it here.

Since one of the new rooms in the Blorxery level set the player's weapon to a spear, I added a character in the adjacent rooms to set it back to a sword.

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[Last edited by disoriented at 07-22-2017 04:57 AM]
07-22-2017 at 04:44 AM
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disoriented
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Updated progress:


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[Last edited by disoriented at 07-22-2017 04:56 AM]
07-22-2017 at 04:52 AM
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disoriented
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Video of demo for Xindaris' version of Chaco's level

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07-24-2017 at 04:51 AM
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Insoluble
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I finally came back to this after a long time. The first thing I noticed is that none of the recent versions of the hold has a working demo pack. As I set out to try to re-record demos for the hold I could see why. I hate to say it but upon replaying this hold I was strongly reminded of Pass the Hold Around. There are some nice rooms in here, but there were also quite a few rooms that I personally found very tedious. I'll try to post some substantive feedback tomorrow when I'm not totally exhausted from playing through this hold for hours. I just wanted to start the conversation about what we might want to do in terms of play testing and editing this hold. Do we want to go the rout of Pass the Hold where anything goes and we leave each room up to each individual architect? Do we have some sort of play test review from folks who weren't involved in making the hold (thus impartial).

I count it as highly probable that some of the rooms I contributed are not great either, so please no one think that this is a criticism of any individual architect. I just think it might be a good idea to quality test this thing we've spent so much time on.

A couple of other things. I added a room finally to "Planning Ahead" I massively edited my original version of this room after testing out a bunch of stuff to make the manipulation as straightforward as possible. Hopefully it isn't awful. I recorded demos for a bunch of rooms. Not all of them. I got tired. I'll try to record more. But if anyone has demos for rooms, please feel free to add them. For anyone else who uploads a room, please make sure to attach as full a demo pack as you have. Lastly, I made a couple of edits in various places. I got around to providing the finishing touches for the "Insoluble Level" since that one is complete now. I'm vetoing the idea of a final puzzle room since it doesn't really make sense for this hold. There's a nice symmetry in which every architect is given the same weight in the hold. It doesn't make sense to ruin that. I noticed that a couple of challenge scripts went missing. That may have been intentional, they may have not been fun. But I put them back in for the time being so that we can discuss whether they should be included.

Sorry if this post came off as negative. I was really excited to come back to this project after a long hiatus and think it can still be really good. I just think we need to get some objective play testers to comment on things that we could improve so that we don't fall into the trap of previous collaborative efforts similar to this one.

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07-24-2017 at 07:20 AM
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Nuntar
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Insoluble wrote: I'm vetoing the idea of a final puzzle room since it doesn't really make sense for this hold. There's a nice symmetry in which every architect is given the same weight in the hold. It doesn't make sense to ruin that.
I do get what you're saying, but you can't just destroy someone else's work without asking! It should either be up to Xindaris as project organiser, or decided by consensus.

In any case, this "symmetry" is already broken by the hub level.

I'm not sure why you changed your level's title back to "evil! (eyes)", since I seem to remember from chat that you strongly preferred "Exterminating Evil Eyes". I also think the outer border being wall looks much better than force arrows.

Side note: DaRD 2N1E (jamesdenem) and 3N1W (disoriented) both have a trivial solution. Place the clone on the top PP and wait.

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07-24-2017 at 08:22 AM
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Insoluble
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Sorry Nuntar. Definitely not trying to step on any toes here. Thankfully nothing has been destroyed and you can find earlier versions in the thread still. I had to download a bunch of previous versions of the hold in a desperate attempt to find demos that work and to find those challenges that got removed. Probably I shouldn't have bothered since the challenges aren't really that much fun. I'll try to play through the rest of the rooms this week and maybe post some comments and suggestions. I encourage others to do the same.

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07-24-2017 at 02:15 PM
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jamesdenem
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Looks like the quickest and easiest fix for both my room and disoriented's is to just put a south facing arrow on the PP.

I am personally fine with the final puzzle in the hub area.

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07-26-2017 at 01:53 PM
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disoriented
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I propose we set a cutoff date for the final set of rooms. Xindaris, would you be ok with this?

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10-17-2017 at 06:57 AM
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Xindaris
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Well, if we were going to make a cutoff date for building new rooms I think it would've long since been reached by now. Let's say for the moment that we are done with new architecture, enough rooms, it'll be okay.

That said, it has been quite a while, hasn't it? If we want (and I would rather like) for this hold to actually go through to the holds board, then there is some finishing up that needs to be done.
1: Somebody needs to play through every room. This is both for demo production purposes, as well as hopefully finding and plugging leaks, and also getting feedback and maybe improving any rooms that are especially painful (while hopefully keeping their original intent or spirit intact). My goal is essentially to publish this hold in as close to the current state as possible, but slightly better.
2: Permission must be established. What I mean is this: If you built a room for this thing and want a say on what gets edited in it, or even want it removed from this thing, please post here or I will assume we have permission to do whatever needs to be done. My assumption is that submitting something to this constitutes permission to alter if deemed necessary and to of course include it in the final form of the hold, mainly to deal with the fact that some of those who submitted rooms to this are either apparently absent from the forum or just may not have time to deal with this at the moment. And I've also heard that one or two rooms might have been migrated to other people's other projects, which presumably requires that they be meaningfully altered or removed to obey the HA rule of "no repeat rooms ever".

I'll try and find time to run through things myself this week, hopefully, and post any comments I have. I encourage anyone else to do the same if they've got spare time, and at least post demos so I can compile a complete demo pack. After some feedback is posted and discussion done on it--well, let's for the moment say that either Nuntar or I will make final decisions on edits from said feedback and post a new version of the full hold including them.

Now, speaking of "fixing things": The most recent discussion in this hold has me a bit perplexed. The version posted second to most recently by disoriented is different from Insoluble's version posted most recently, and I don't know in exactly how many ways. Just the title of Insoluble's level and a room added to Planning Ahead? Or more than that? I honestly can't tell. Also, the new room (1N1E) in Planning Ahead says "variation by jamesdenem" but jamesdenem made the original; is it Insoluble's variation? Is that what the scroll should say instead? For the moment I've just pasted that one room into the version from disoriented's post and attached the result here; if that's not right I need to know how it's not right and how to fix it.

But hey! Speaking of scrolls. It might be a good idea to "standardize" the way scrolls are written a bit. I noticed just poking around in Planning Ahead a few different phrasings used. Ideally I think scrolls should be formatted as "Original by X", or else "Variation of X by Y" where "X" can be "Original" or "Z's Variation", and leave it at that. This formatting would make it reasonably doable to trace how a double- or triple-variation evolved, the few places those occurred, and otherwise be a very clear, easy-to-understand description of which room the player is playing. However, I'd like opinions on this too, if someone disagrees or agrees or something, before going and trying to fuss with some 50+ scrolls.

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[Last edited by Xindaris at 03-10-2019 08:15 PM]
03-10-2019 at 08:13 PM
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Nuntar
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Thanks for bumping this. I hope we will be able to get it rounded off (even if we won't reach the original goal of 100 rooms) and promoted. Rather selfishly, I also hope I'll be able to add my variation of jamesdenem's room, since I had a nearly finished room and then lost it at some point by importing a version of the hold that didn't contain it :(

Anyway, the first priority is to prevent versioning issues by compiling all the rooms into a single "master hold". I'll go through all the levels in the two recent holds and list all the differences, so as to be open about changes made to the hold.

Let's call the two holds V1 and V2. V1 has all levels dated October 2, 2016; V2 has all levels dated July 24, 2017. V2 is also a bit more up to date, so as I look through, if there's anything V1 has that V2 is missing, I'll paste it into V2.

* * *

Entering a Level (hub): V1 has a blank entrance, V2 has the intended puzzle room.

Limited Directions: Both versions have the same level (8 puzzles).

Bomb Safety: V1 has jamesdenem's variation at 1W; V2 has it at 2N. (The room itself is identical.) It doesn't matter much, but if we're not adding more rooms, having it at 1W makes for a neater layout, so I'll move it there in V2. Other rooms are the same (5 puzzles).

Reaching a Brain...: Both versions have the same level (complete, 9 puzzles).

Lazy Soldiers: Both versions have the same level (complete, 9 puzzles).

Dropping a Red Door: V1 has the complete level (9 puzzles); V2 is missing 3N1W (disoriented) and 3N1E (Chaco). I've pasted these two rooms in and fixed the outer walls. Since it was pointed out, I've fixed the US in 2N1E and 3N1W (place the clone at (19,5)) by putting a south force arrow on the PP.

Blorxery: Both versions have the same level (4 puzzles).

Exterminating Evil Eyes: Both versions have all puzzles, but V1 has force arrow borders on the outer rooms, V2 has a wall border (as well as the changed title). I remember this was discussed in chat at the time and Insoluble approved of changing to the wall border, so we'll keep that.

Sea Serpents: Both versions have the same level (complete, 9 puzzles).

Planning Ahead: V2 has an extra room at 1N1E. As Xindaris said, this has a scroll saying "Variation by jamesdenem" even though the original is by jamesdenem. Not sure how that happened, but we will look into it. At least the room itself is preserved now.

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03-10-2019 at 10:19 PM
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Xindaris
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I gave a try to all of the rooms in Reaching a brain (above version of hold). I've attached the demos for what rooms I could solve, and comments are below for all of them. Overall, assuming that someone more clever than me can solve the ones I couldn't, I don't see any terribly glaring issues; maybe a couple of unintended solutions but nothing I'd call trivializing. Everything I could solve, I pretty much enjoyed.

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[Last edited by Xindaris at 03-11-2019 01:54 AM]
03-11-2019 at 01:46 AM
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Nuntar
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Here's a demo for my room in Reaching a Brain.

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03-11-2019 at 02:04 AM
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For Reaching a Brain 1E (the original), there's a much cleaner solution involving:

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I found your solution a little earlier in testing but figured it'd take more effort than it's worth to fix. It's also slower than the intended solution so highscorers will need to be more elegant. :)

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03-11-2019 at 02:40 AM
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Regarding RaB:1S3E - no, you were just efficient.
03-11-2019 at 11:50 AM
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DimWiddy
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Please, feel free to edit my rooms! My brain's forgotten how to build DROD rooms, as much as I still love the game... :weep

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03-12-2019 at 08:59 AM
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Xindaris
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More testing done. Demo pack in this post includes most (in fact, all but 1E) in Lazy Soldiers. And, commentary for that level:

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03-13-2019 at 03:19 AM
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jamesdenem
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For my room in Reaching a Brain, it is a simple matter of having some knowledge of brain pathmapping. As show in my attached demo, you can trick the serpent into the trap with enough spacing to make it to the button to lock it in.

Edit: After looking at my room for Lazy Soldiers, one way that could make it a little more readable would be to move the yellow door over the disarm token, extend it 1 tile to the north and south, then place an obstacle over the added tiles to preserve the layout of the room.


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[Last edited by jamesdenem at 04-02-2019 02:29 AM]
04-02-2019 at 02:04 AM
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