navithmastero
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File: Collection.hold (24.5 KB)
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Hi all!

Although it has been a rather long time since I last posted on here, I've still been playing DROD from time to time and have built a few puzzles. This hold is a (story free) collection of puzzles that I've built, some more recent than others. A couple of you might recognise a few of the rooms as they were included in a hold I put on architecture a while back, but most are new. The rooms range in theme and difficulty ranging from maybe 5 brain rooms to 8 brain rooms.

I'd appreciate your opinion on the puzzles I've put together.

Thanks!

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[Last edited by navithmastero at 04-26-2017 06:41 PM]

uncopy2002
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Beautiful hold art and aesthetics in general! One thing that really worths mentioning is the lighting that changes by pressure plates. The interlocking areas are also pretty neat.

Gradually playing through the hold as I comment on and notable things:



Edit: 1S6W has a backtracking problem - you can't get back once you exit from either east or west exit.

Edit: more comments

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[Last edited by uncopy2002 at 03-01-2017 03:13 AM]

Insoluble
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File: Collection.demo (15.8 KB)
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Looks good so far. The hub level has some nice minimap art, though you might want to consider making navigation a bit easier (using tunnels at the room edges to hop from one edge to the next for instance.)

I'm playing through a level at a time. Just finished the time clone level. General thoughts: I liked the level on the whole. There are a lot of room breaks that you may want to fix and a couple of things that make rooms unsolvable that you'll definitely want to fix. On the whole there was nothing too tricky. I tend to prefer the rooms that asked me to do something interesting rather than just pre-record blind fighting, but that's mostly personal preference. Quite a few rooms had force arrows over disarm tokens which can be very hard to read. It would be nice to split these up using an arrow-token-arrow arrangement, but in a few rooms it seems unavoidable. Demos are attached so you can see what I did.

3N: Is something supposed to open the yellow gate at (3,3)? Seems impossible to kill the queen up there otherwise.

3N1E: Unintended solution:, I did not use the time token at all. See demo.

3N2E: Is something supposed to disable the force arrow at (30,4)? I am unable to exit the room otherwise. Also, unintended solution: I did not use the time token at all. See demo.

2N1W: Not sure if I was supposed to use pushing tricks to exit from the south, but I just exited to the east since it seemed easiest.

2N: This was the only room I outright didn't care for. It was mostly a bunch of elaborate set up just to get to a bit of blind fighting at the end. Blind fight rooms tend to have a lot of guess and check, and I find them to be the least enjoyable kind of time clone room. But I guess that's a subjective thing and others may feel differently.

2N1E Unintended solution: I didn't use the last time token at all.

1N1W: I can't put my finger on why, but I feel like I broke this one too. I feel like I was supposed to maybe do something differently to kill the roach and serpent. You can check my demo at any rate to be sure.

1N1E: This one was nice and clean. I liked the minimalism of it. I suppose it could use a checkpoint on the time token just for good measure.

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Insoluble
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Okay played through the Roach, Goblin, Serpent level and have some comments on that one. It felt to be in about the 5 brain level and seems very consistent in difficulty. I like how this level intertwines with the previous one. Demos are attached again.

General thoughts:

1E: This was a nice room to introduce the level. There were a few fun interactions, like using the goblin to block the roach.

2E: A classic using the spawn to block the queen room. It was a nice example of the genre though. Not sure what the queen at (24,22) was for.

2N2E: This was a fun goblin manipulation room. I'm glad I never had to fiddle with more than two at a time.

3E: I feel like I was supposed to kill the snake on the roach so i tried to do it in the alcove instead just to show that you didn't need the roach. Not really a break per se since it's probably harder than the intended way to do it.

1N3E: I'm almost certain my solution is unintended. I feel like I ignored half of the mechanisms in the room.

4E: And another really nice one. I like that a lot of these rooms ask me to use different monsters together in interesting ways while keeping the manipulation fairly straightforward.

Also, happy birthday

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[Last edited by Insoluble at 03-02-2017 05:45 AM]

navithmastero
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Thanks for the comments both! (and the birthday message insoluble).

I've checked through the USs you found and (I hope) have fixed most of them, check the original post for an update of the hold. Uncopy, would you be able to attach a demo for 4S1W please?

Oh, and 3S, I can remember the intended solution but can't seem to do it, it's so broken though that I think I'll just replace the room.

And re: 2N, I'll see what a few other opinions are, and see if others think it should be replaced.

Thanks again!

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[Last edited by navithmastero at 03-02-2017 09:56 PM]

navithmastero
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Update!

Changed 4S2E and added a room at 4S3E as well as other minor changes throughout the hold.

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navithmastero
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Update.

Added a few more rooms and changed those horrible tarstuff rooms to something more pleasant.

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uncopy2002
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File: C Puzzle Level 4S1W Victory.demo (13 KB)
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License: Public Domain

Oops, forgot to post demo for 4S1W. Here's a demo.

uncopy2002
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File: Collection demos_P.demo (29.5 KB)
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Done! Have a demo pack.

(This goes without saying, but obviously I might have broken a few rooms.)

navithmastero
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Update

(Hopefully) fixed a couple of the US that uncopy2002 found, and axed some rooms which I didn't like, as well as making some other minor changes here and there.

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uncopy2002
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File: C demos_3S_3S8W_P.demo (13.6 KB)
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I think 2S5W in the current version is unsolvable (the plate operating the fire trap below aumtlich is disable fire trap, not enable fire trap).

Also thanks for reminding me demos for 3S and 3S8W are missing (drod.log didn't show me those rooms were changed). Here are the demos for them.

navithmastero
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Thanks for that uncopy

Update.

Have changed 2S5W and 3S8W, as well as adding a challenge into 3S.

Unless I have a brainwave I won't be adding any more rooms, so I'm open to challenge suggestions now.

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navithmastero
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Update.

Added some more checkpoints and also made tokens more visible. Thanks Nuntar and Insoluble.

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navithmastero
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Update.

Added a new room - thanks to the chat, particularly Nuntar for helping with this one

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Insoluble
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File: Collection.demo (23.6 KB)
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Sorry for taking so long to get back to this! I'm playing the version uploaded today (17/April) for reference.

Old business:

3N: Looks fixed. I can clear the room now. Think what I did was mostly intended though I didn't use the pp at (9,8) for anything. It was an enjoyable room. This could maybe use a checkpoint at (5,14) or somewhere in that left area at any rate. I'm not the best with checkpoint placement since I usually just use U.U. for convenience, but with time clones it's nice to have a quick rewind to the bit right at the beginning of the recording.

3N1E: is Still broken, but in a slightly more interesting way now. See demo.

3N2E: Looks like the room is solvable now. Good room. Could maybe use a checkpoint in row 9 or 10 in the main combat area.

2N1E: I'm still not using that last time token for anything but I guess that's alright.

1N1W: Again, I'm still pretty sure I'm doing something unintended, but it's a slightly more interesting unintended solution.

1N3E: Pretty sure what I did was unintentional, so I guess I fail the challenge

3E: There's this odd secret wall path that is inaccessible and leads nowhere. Not sure if you are planning to add something there, but wanted to point it out in case it's a remnant from an earlier secret room that got cut or something.

New Business

Looks like I never commented on the rooms in "Other Tokens and Potions" though I have demos from a while back for most of them. A couple of rooms have been added and I tried playing through those as well. I will say that I didn't really care for a lot of the rooms here. I want to emphasize that I really enjoyed the other two levels a lot. The puzzles were fun and even the ones that aren't quite working as intended yet seem like they're interesting ideas.

A lot of the rooms in this particular section though just seem like fiddly magic dances. There isn't much to figure out, it's just a matter of putting in the right sequence of key strokes to get a mass of basically unpredictable monsters to move just so. There's not much in terms of logical deduction so I had to resort to guess and check. Not all the rooms were like this, but enough were to make me not really want to finish the level. Some folks are into this kind of room and at least one hold was published last year that focused on it (though to mixed reviews to be sure). So if you really enjoy this kind of room you aren't alone, but you'll probably hear other people complain about these rooms too. So fair warning I guess.

3S1W: This felt a bit on the fiddly side to be honest. I decided to shorten the snake a bit up front. I'm not sure if that helped or made things worse though. At any rate, I definitely felt like I relied more on guess and check than logic here. Not sure what the deal is with the pressure plate at (3,21) since it seems an automatic fail condition. Is that just there for pathmap reasons?

3S: Challenge awards even when I haven't made thin ice at all. Maybe make the scripting wait until the player has exited the main area. Not sure how to set off the PP at (35,16). If it is held down for more than 1 turn the room goes into a fail state, so Beethro can't do it. The only way that seems to work is to push a gel baby into a puff on the plate. That works fine, but then I'm trapped in by yellow doors and can't make it out without stepping on the plate again. Can't lure the gel baby on to the plate due to how they move.

3S2E: This was definitely not the kind of room I enjoy, but it was much more approachable than it's cousin at least. Glad you made that other version a secret. Maybe move the checkpoint to (11,17) so that you can hit it before you drop the red door? Again, I'm not actually all that good with checkpoint placement so I might be wrong about that.

4S2W: I feel like I maybe cheesed this, but oh man am I glad that was possible. Manipulating a whole bunch of goblins while presumably keeping a soldier alive seems like a royal pain.

4S1W: Hmm, I was going to say that this room has a nice bit of misdirection, but it looks like you removed that and it is now just an annoying horde room. Honestly it was much better before. I might try to solve this the messy way I guess, but last time I attempted to solve it the direct way it was seriously not at all fun.

4S1E: Okay, this was a neat little room. Probably the highlight of the level for me. It was definitely execution focused like some of the others, but the manipulation involved was a neat trick, and it focused on one specific technique. The repetition really forced me to realize I had to look for a repeatable pattern and not just bash my way through with guess and check. Nice room.

4S2E: Hmm. This definitely felt like guess and check. You have 8 available spots to place decoys (though 4 make more sense than others.) and 10 possible times to place them. I feel like it's probably more fun to write a computer program that just brute force checks all the possibilities than it would be to try them myself. Room solved, details are left as an exercise to the student. I'll note that if you had given one more decoy there is a neat solution relying on logical deduction and no guesswork at all.

5S2W: This has a break that makes it rather trivial. See demo.

5S1W: This one also has a trivial break.

5S: Haven't found the magic dance that makes the last part work yet. I'll continue to try to brute force my way through it though I guess.

5S1E: Nope.

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[Last edited by Insoluble at 04-18-2017 07:27 AM]

navithmastero
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File: 3S Demos.zip (6.7 KB)
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Thanks for taking a look Insoluble, and for your comments, I've changed a couple of rooms thanks to your comments, and so I've updated, the hold.

-Added an extra decoy into 4S2E and added a challenge to do it with 2 decoys rather than 3.

-Added a secret room.

-Fixed (hopefully) 3N1E, 3S, 5S2W and 5S1W and removed 4S1W.

Attached is two demos for 3S.

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[Last edited by navithmastero at 04-18-2017 09:22 PM]

Insoluble
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I'll definitely check out the changes soon, but first I wanted to post some comments to the Various (mixed) level, mostly because it was super fun. Difficulty of rooms ranged from 4 brains to 6.5 brains or so, with the average feeling in the 5 to 6 range. There was a good mix of linchpin and manipulation difficulty here. Lots of variety which was nice. Demos attached as usual.

1N7W: Really neat room. I love rooms like this in which part of the puzzle is to mold the room into the shape you need. I ended up using all the golem corpses. This room could use some checkpoints, probably in the vicinity of the 2x2 clock the serpent is supposed to end up in since you need to put a bunch of corpses in that area.

1N6W: Fairly straightforward roach blocking room, but still fun.

1S8W: A vision token so that the eye beams appear would be nice. I mostly used guesswork for this one, but it was fairly short so it didn't feel frustrating in any way.

1S7W: I'm a bit torn on this one. On the one hand, a bit of strategic thinking is necessary to reason out that you mostly want the aumtlich to be coming from one direction and how to get that to happen. On the other hand, it still felt like I had to resort to guess and check a lot. But since there's a lot of variety on the level, it's not bad to have one or two rooms like this. And there aren't all that many possibilities to check out so in the end this one wasn't really so bad. Probably the one I had the hardest time with though.

1S6W: Rooms with 3 or more wraithwings can be on the fiddly side, but this one was pretty forgiving. I'd imagine you may want to put a checkpoint in though, say on the pressure plate?

1S5W: When I played this one boyblue immediately sprang to mind, I think because I remembered a similar trick being used in his hold Blue Rooms. This room is pretty similar actually.

1S4W: Very nice brain barrier puzzle! This kind of thing probably is in the 6 brains or more category just due to the mechanics involved. Even knowing about using brains as brain invisible barriers to block up monsters it took me a little bit to get the configuration just so. Great room!

2S8W: A nice snake manipulation room. Not too bad to figure out that you need to time the snake release to get the required configuration. This could also use a checkpoint I suppose.

2S7W: I liked this one a lot too, though I don't really see the need for the tar mother.

2S6W: I think I may have an unintended solution here since I only ended up using one mirror. Brained snakes are a pretty powerful tool for the player since you can pretty easily get them into whatever shape you want. It's probably not really worth changing since the way I did it is pretty tricky (involves timing the roach so that it's on the right parity with the serpent and getting exactly the right shape going into the narrow pass). Challenge maybe?

2S5W: This one took me a little while to parse, but was very nice when I figured out what to use everything for.

3S8W: Absolutely brilliant! What a wonderful brain pathmap room! I really like that the challenge was all in carving out the shape of the room that you need and that the execution was very straightforward once you had that. This is the kind of room I love, though I guess these things are somewhat subjective. The great thing about this level though is that there's a lot of variety in types of rooms and types of difficulty. Still, this one was probably my favorite.

3S6W: Pretty sure what I did was unintended and makes the room pretty trivial as is.

4S7W: Neat little room. Dancing guards around is always fun. Column 15 has a bunch of secret walls that can't be accessed in the north side. Not sure if that is supposed to be there.

5S7W: This was a bit of a tricky one. I had to experiment a bit to get it, but it still ended up being a fun room.

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navithmastero
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Update.

Awesome, thanks for the comments Insoluble

1S8W: Added a vision token.
1S6W: Added checkpoints.
1S5W: Huh, never played that hold, it's a simple concept though so I guess it isn't so bad that they're very similar.
2S8W: Added checkpoints.
2S7W: That's because you found an unintended solution - updated.
2S6W: Yep, that's unintended, I don't really like the way you did it though - I think it's easier than the intended solution so I don't think I'll make it a challenge. Updated.
2S5W: Your solution was slightly unintended, so I've updated the room.
3S6W: Yep, I've hopefully updated it to get rid of that US.


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Insoluble
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File: C Puzzle Level 2S6W Victory.demo (14 KB)
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Only had a chance to take a quick look. Hopefully I'm doing 2s6W correctly this time. It's pretty similar to what I did last time except that I didn't have to worry about parity with this solution. See attached demo.

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navithmastero
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File: C Puzzle Level 2S6W Victory.demo (3 KB)
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Nah, it's not unfortunately. I think the room's poorly set up by me so I've updated the hold to hopefully fix this. Attached to this post is the intended solution for the room.

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