Dali
Level: Master Delver
Rank Points: 174
Registered: 02-05-2005
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File: Epsilon Castle v1-4.hold (29.6 KB)
Downloaded 73 times.
License: Public Domain

This holds tries to innovates some scripting ideas. No more guessing, everything is explained with details in game. Most rooms are based on these form of concepts:

- Score/health management. Inspired from my hold -Delta dungeon 6th level 2S3W- but this time many other elements are involved.

- Skills with cooldown. example of skills: playing with a different character, another weapon, explosive kegs, or else... They activate when using special command, slayers wisp touches beethro, aumtlich gaz, ...

- Events interaction and efficiency, this means different events leads to other events but sometimes player needs to be accurate to be able to finish the room.

-Wubball, Basically in this DROD sport Beethro needs to dribbles monsters and move the wubba into the opponents cage in a limited amount of turns.

Anyone can edit. There's no real story line and levels are not themed, I went a bit "freestyle" building. just 5 levels of 5 rooms each and the wubball stadiums. Most rooms are pretty easy to complete, it's overall 4/10 difficulty. I mostly want to know which kind of rooms are the most interesting so I can work on them.
I'm pretty sure that the hold is full of bug scripts, trivial solutions... Help me fix all these.

Tell me what you think, hope you enjoy!


EDIT: 1.4 now available.

Testing progression:

6th level Wubball Stadium testing needed.

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[Last edited by Dali at 05-11-2018 10:20 AM]

Nuntar
Level: Smitemaster

Rank Points: 4590
Registered: 02-20-2007
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File: Epsilon Castle Nuntar.demo (8 KB)
Downloaded 44 times.
License: Public Domain

Great idea for a hold

I've played the Garden level, so here are my comments, and I've attached a demo pack:

1N1E: Happened to be the first puzzle room I entered, and it made a very good first impression, so maybe move it even closer to the entrance I love the way this uses the "scoring" theme from Delta Dungeon but combines it with traditional DROD elements -- in this case, the properties of each weapon and mini-puzzles like determining a route to awaken or avoid awakening certain eyes.

2E: Fun little horde room with a timer. However, the Character Brain doesn't affect other monsters like a real brain, which seems to be unintended. If doing the room with a brain is harder (which I haven't been able to test) then consider awarding a challenge for it.

1S1E: Also very nice. It looked trivial at first, but I had to think about how to hold off the roaches so I could kill an exact number before getting each pair of eyes. However, I only needed to drop 5 of the 15 trapdoors, so maybe my solution is simpler than intended?

1N: Same theme as 1S1E but unfortunately much less interesting. There is only one linchpin in the room (the trick with the mirror) and you have to carry out this trick four times. Also, the script doesn't notice when you wake two eyes at the same time, which isn't your fault but a limitation of DRODscript. It would be nice if the scroll warned the player about this.

1W: Very hard, because the timer is extremely tight. Also, the checkpoints are poorly placed: the player simply doesn't have time to spare to visit any of them until near the end. They should be placed at (10,15), (14,11), (18,15) and (14,19) - the tiles that you know the player will certainly cross. This was still an enjoyable room, but you might consider giving more moves or shrinking the room very slightly.

____________________________
50th Skywatcher

Dali
Level: Master Delver
Rank Points: 174
Registered: 02-05-2005
IP: Logged

Thanks again Nuntar for your testing

2E: Fun little horde room with a timer. However, the Character Brain doesn't affect other monsters like a real brain, which seems to be unintended. If doing the room with a brain is harder (which I haven't been able to test) then consider awarding a challenge for it.

As indicated in the scroll says, to activate the brain the player needs to go to hot tile, otherwise it'll stay a NPC.

However, I only needed to drop 5 of the 15 trapdoors, so maybe my solution is simpler than intended?

Nah it's fine, the trapdoors are there to help blocking roaches.

1N: Same theme as 1S1E but unfortunately much less interesting. There is only one linchpin in the room (the trick with the mirror) and you have to carry out this trick four times. Also, the script doesn't notice when you wake two eyes at the same time, which isn't your fault but a limitation of DRODscript. It would be nice if the scroll warned the player about this.

Ok I'll maybe add some tricks then, I'll see. I'll also add the info in the scroll.

1W: Very hard, because the timer is extremely tight. Also, the checkpoints are poorly placed: the player simply doesn't have time to spare to visit any of them until near the end. They should be placed at (10,15), (14,11), (18,15) and (14,19) - the tiles that you know the player will certainly cross. This was still an enjoyable room, but you might consider giving more moves or shrinking the room very slightly.

Really, the timer is tight? I was easily able to reach the yellow door (and then just wait until it closes to kill the brain) in less than 190 moves, so I thaught 200 was ok. The player needs to clear trapdoors in a certain order to save a lot of moves. But ok I'll add more moves.
You are right about check points, I'll change their location.

Dali
Level: Master Delver
Rank Points: 174
Registered: 02-05-2005
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I brought some small modifications, and I revived my hold in architecture version for those who are interested in testing it.

I have a question: is it okay to submit a hold that is not fully tested ?

Insoluble
Level: Smitemaster

Rank Points: 1638
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Dali wrote:
I brought some small modifications, and I revived my hold in architecture version for those who are interested in testing it.

I have a question: is it okay to submit a hold that is not fully tested ?

There's no rule against it, but it's best to wait for at least one tester to play through it. If you need another tester I'll be happy to take a look tonight (about Local Time:05-05-2018 at 04:00 AM your time) and have some feedback posted shortly after. Also feel free to bump this thread to request testing:

http://forum.caravelgames.com/viewtopic.php?TopicID=41083

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Nuntar
Level: Smitemaster

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I have played further, so I'll try to get round to posting more feedback over the weekend.

In the meantime, I'll just say that before submitting, Level 4 1S1E should be looked at. Firstly, the player can walk to the conquer token at the start of the room, making highscores trivial.

Secondly, there's an unfortunate problem with DRODscript, which won't be fixed at least in the near future, where "Wait for event Monster stabbed" is activated by a monster dying on a firetrap. This means that in the cleanup phase, as soon as the first monster dies, Beethro loses his sword due to your scripting, and the room is unclearable if any gel babies are outside the force arrows. This is difficult for the player to foresee in advance and forces them to redo the entire room, which is already the longest and hardest room so far.

If you feel like being more lenient, this could be avoided by adding an active firetrap at 32,25, and changing the top character's script to this:

  Set player weapon On
  Set player role Guard
  Wait for event Monster stabbed
  If ... 
        Wait for entity Player 33,26,36,29
     Go to End
  Else 
     Set player weapon Off
Label End

____________________________
50th Skywatcher

Dali
Level: Master Delver
Rank Points: 174
Registered: 02-05-2005
IP: Logged

Nuntar wrote:
I have played further, so I'll try to get round to posting more feedback over the weekend.

In the meantime, I'll just say that before submitting, Level 4 1S1E should be looked at. Firstly, the player can walk to the conquer token at the start of the room, making highscores trivial.

Secondly, there's an unfortunate problem with DRODscript, which won't be fixed at least in the near future, where "Wait for event Monster stabbed" is activated by a monster dying on a firetrap. This means that in the cleanup phase, as soon as the first monster dies, Beethro loses his sword due to your scripting, and the room is unclearable if any gel babies are outside the force arrows. This is difficult for the player to foresee in advance and forces them to redo the entire room, which is already the longest and hardest room so far.

Thanks Nuntar, I fixed this now, i did a scripting where just once tarstuff is cleared beethro will always have his sword.

Also the sixth level had a huge trivial solution due to a scripting mistake on almost all rooms, now I fixed it on the new 1.2 version.

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[Last edited by Dali at 05-04-2018 07:45 PM]

Insoluble
Level: Smitemaster

Rank Points: 1638
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File: Epsilon Castle.demo (25.2 KB)
Downloaded 42 times.
License: Public Domain

Demos for the first few levels attached. This has been fun so far. The scrolls do a good job of explaining what the mechanics are for the most part. Many of them are not on optimal paths and people optimizing the room will have to read them first then restore to room start. That's not a huge deal, though.

Gardens:
1N: This was a fun room. Most of the scrolls were a bit out of the way for optimizers, but it is not a big deal.

1N1E: Fairly straightforward room. The sword token on top of a force arrow and trapdoor at (2,19) is hard to read. Instead of placing a force arrow at (2,19) you could just place walls at (2,20) and (2,18) to achieve the same thing.

1W: This was a fun room. I appreciate that you made the timer less tight. I managed it in under 200, but just barely. I think upping it to 220 makes the room more enjoyable. The scroll does not make it clear that killing roaches with hot tiles will not create new roaches. I would recommend adding this to the scroll.

2E: Doing the room with the brain isn't much more difficult than doing it without. If you want to keep it as a challenge, maybe keep the timer the same for both versions.

1S1E: The trapdoors scattered throughout the room seem unnecessary here.

Desertification fields
1N: Did something in the scripting change? Stabbing the adder does not seem to change the number. Maybe mention on the scroll that special command will display the number.

1N1E: This was a fun room and I like the concept a lot. Probably my favorite on this level.

1E: A fairly straightforward room. Possibly place a vision token in all three entrances to the room?

2E: A very nice room. I like a bit of arithmetic. It would be nice if I could push special command to get the current number like I could in 1N.

1S: This one was a bit tough. It felt very heavy on trial and error. Force arrow on the same tile as the staff token is hard to read. You could replace the force arrow with a trap door to make it more readable.

Silo Storage (my favorite level so far!)
1N: Very fun room. The rotating mimic is a classic scripted character, but it was used really well here.

1E: The force arrow on top of the disarm token makes it hard to read. Consider replacing the force arrow with thin ice.

2E: This was a creative twist on the trapdoor puzzle. I liked it a lot.

1S: The challenge here was not too bad.

1S1E: A terrific room. I really enjoyed this one. The trick to getting the plate at (25, 13) was very nice.

I will try to play the second half soon to post more feedback.

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Dali
Level: Master Delver
Rank Points: 174
Registered: 02-05-2005
IP: Logged

Thanks a lot for the testing Insoluble !

1W: This was a fun room. I appreciate that you made the timer less tight. I managed it in under 200, but just barely. I think upping it to 220 makes the room more enjoyable. The scroll does not make it clear that killing roaches with hot tiles will not create new roaches. I would recommend adding this to the scroll.

Added that to the scroll.

2E: Doing the room with the brain isn't much more difficult than doing it without. If you want to keep it as a challenge, maybe keep the timer the same for both versions.

Hmm you maybe right, I may keep timer for both, I'll test that.

1S1E: The trapdoors scattered throughout the room seem unnecessary here.

The trapdoors are just there to help players who want to use them.

Desertification fields
1N: Did something in the scripting change? Stabbing the adder does not seem to change the number. Maybe mention on the scroll that special command will display the number.

Stabbing the adder indeed won't change the number. The adder needs to eat something to gain 10 points. I mentionned on the scroll (monster stabbed/eaten).

1S: This one was a bit tough. It felt very heavy on trial and error. Force arrow on the same tile as the staff token is hard to read. You could replace the force arrow with a trap door to make it more readable.

At first, each plate opens one door, but it was too easy. So I decided to open two doors, It's a bit tough indeed but I think with time players will have good timing skills.

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Glad you enjoyed many rooms I changed most unreadable arrow/weapon stack as requested to a more readable thing. Thanks again !

Insoluble
Level: Smitemaster

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File: Epsilon Castle.demo (34.4 KB)
Downloaded 43 times.
License: Public Domain

I played through the rest of this finally. Well, not all the rest. I saw in the editor that there are a bunch of wubbaball rooms and the four I played were tedious enough to dissuade me from playing the rest. Demos are attached. I think the wubaball rooms would be much less tedious if they did not have timers. The timers didn't add much to the rooms and mostly made it seem like I had to use brute force trial and error to find some fiddly sequence of moves rather than use strategy to find a safe but reliable pattern.

Cold Nest
1S1E: Fun open ended room.

1S2E: Very interesting room showcasing the different movement patterns of the three monsters. I found the roach to be the trickiest of these actually since its movement pattern is so simple. Only two potions are required, but it's probably fine to have three.

2E: I cleared this mostly through trial and error. The difficulty was not too bad at least. A few times during my demo I ended up in the weird, but at this point well accepted situation where a monster was on Beethro's sword and survived. This is hard to avoid with this kind of scripting though and is probably fine as it's a pretty well known consequence of turn order. The scroll has a typo. "gaz" should be "gaze".

1N2E: The challenge is actually an enjoyable exercise in aumtlich manipulation. There should probably be a checkpoint in the middle area with the 3x3 pressure plate for those attempting the challenge.

1N1E: Fairly straightforward room and similar to the other one where you only have your sword some of the time. It would be nice to maybe have a checkpoint in the little room with the keg and in the room with the tar.

Fortifications
1W: Very fun room. The mechanic is used well to make an interesting puzzle about accessing areas in the correct way. The eyes seem to spawn two at a time sometimes, possibly when I kill more than one monster. This is a bit strange, but not really a huge problem.

1N: Fairly straightforward snake manipulation room.

1N1E: A bit of a tight timer horde room. It's nice that you can shut the horde off with the special command though. This was a bit more difficult than anything else on the level.

2E: I mostly just danced around and eventually got this through trial and error.

1S: A fairly straightforward guard manipulation room.

WubbaBall Stadiums
I already mentioned these above. I did not particularly enjoy this. Others may have a better time of it through. You may want to get more feedback on this level.

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Dali
Level: Master Delver
Rank Points: 174
Registered: 02-05-2005
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Thanks a lot Insoluble.

Cold Nest:

1N2E and 1N1E: I added some checkpoints where you requested.

Fortifications:

1W: Very fun room. The mechanic is used well to make an interesting puzzle about accessing areas in the correct way. The eyes seem to spawn two at a time sometimes, possibly when I kill more than one monster. This is a bit strange, but not really a huge problem.

Yes I know, scripting has often some small bugs that are sometimes hard to correct. But I'm sure it's possible.

1N1E: A bit of a tight timer horde room. It's nice that you can shut the horde off with the special command though. This was a bit more difficult than anything else on the level.

I will increase the timer from 300 to 400.

The wubball stadiums:

I saw in the editor that there are a bunch of wubbaball rooms and the four I played were tedious enough to dissuade me from playing the rest. I did not particularly enjoy this.

Oh I'm sad to hear this. Some rooms maybe tough because of the timer, and others are tedious even without the timer (especially when dealing with 2 aumtliches, 2 guards).

-I think will drastically increase the timer for all rooms. Removing the timer will make the level not interseting as the player will be able to do whatever he wants and then gets back to the wubba scoring it. in addition, some rooms are based on efficiency.

-I will rework rooms that may be really tough even without timer.

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[Last edited by Dali at 05-11-2018 08:45 AM]

Dali
Level: Master Delver
Rank Points: 174
Registered: 02-05-2005
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1.4 Hold update:


Added/changed location of checkpoints in some rooms.

Wubball Level:

- Increased drastically timer of all rooms.
- Reworked some tough rooms.
- Added a ranking system depending on the efficiency of players at the end of the level. I could do it for each room individually, but it may take too much time for testing.

Insoluble
Level: Smitemaster

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File: Epsilon Castle.demo (36.5 KB)
Downloaded 41 times.
License: Public Domain

The extra time in wubbaball helps a lot. I finished the level and demos are attached. One thing to note is that the monsters will remain in the rooms in this level even after you have cleared them. If you'd like to avoid this you can add an "If wait for room clear, end" set of commands at the beginning of each monster's script.

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bbb
Level: Master Delver
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I completed the previous version a while ago, but never got around to sending comments. If I don't send them in the next few days, feel free to remind me.

A general comment I remember about the wubba-ball level, is that the timer only starts when you approach the wubba, allowing you to clear the field early.

I agree the timers are not necessary. High scores can provide incentive to hurry up, and challenges can be used if there is a specific strategy you want to force.

Dali
Level: Master Delver
Rank Points: 174
Registered: 02-05-2005
IP: Logged

Insoluble wrote:
The extra time in wubbaball helps a lot. I finished the level and demos are attached. One thing to note is that the monsters will remain in the rooms in this level even after you have cleared them. If you'd like to avoid this you can add an "If wait for room clear, end" set of commands at the beginning of each monster's script.

Thanks Again Insoluble. You are right about the monsters, I will probably add these commands.

But looking at your demos, your score should be around 700 and not 335. Did you play one time quickly and a second time in a much better way ? If not, there's surely a problem in scripting.


bbb wrote:

A general comment I remember about the wubba-ball level, is that the timer only starts when you approach the wubba, allowing you to clear the field early.

Yes I discovered that once and It was fixed in an earlier update.

bbb wrote

I agree the timers are not necessary. High scores can provide incentive to hurry up, and challenges can be used if there is a specific strategy you want to force.

I didn't have in mind high-scores. I'm not used to play with high-scores as I can't subscribe to the caravel membership. You are right about that, but now timer is a lot higher so I hope it's fine.

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[Last edited by Dali at 05-13-2018 12:51 PM]