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Caravel Forum : DROD Boards : Holds : Blockerture Science Laboratories (Custom Elements: The Blocks)
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Author Name:Xindaris
Submitted By:Xindaris
Hold Name:Blockerture Science Laboratories
Theme:Custom Elements: The Blocks
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Number of Levels:7
Number of Rooms:60
Number of Monsters:793
Version:DROD: The Second Sky (5.0.2)
High Scores:View High Scores
Hold Karma:2 (+2 / -0)
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File: Blockerture Science Laboratories.hold (11.8 MB)
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License: Other
From: Unspecified
icon Blockerture Science Laboratories  
Welcome to Blockerture Science Laboratories. Everything is definitely perfectly safe here, and it is all working exactly as intended. Let our state-of-the art, perfectly functional AI CuBEOS guide you safely and helpfully through a tour of our products.

A mid-size, 6 (or is it 7?) level hold introducing a family of custom pushables called the Blocks, centered on "trapdoor dropping" and "self-moving" behavior. Also a bit of a tribute to the Portal games.
08-11-2018 at 02:03 PM
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Dying Flutchman
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icon Re: Blockerture Science Laboratories (+2)  
Go play this. It's wonderful!

The puzzles are not too hard (well, not the first few levels at least) and give you a good introduction into some really nice custom elements.

And it's witty as well.

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08-29-2018 at 09:50 PM
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Insoluble
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icon Re: Blockerture Science Laboratories (+3)  
Totally agreed with the above post. After finally finishing this hold I have to say it is a terrific example of how to do a custom elements hold right. It avoids all the pitfalls that these kinds of holds often succumb to, and has an enjoyable story and voice acting too.

Xindaris introduces four new elements in this hold in the form of pushable blocks. These elements are so intuitive and fit in so smoothly with existing DROD elements that they feel like they could easily have been official elements. All the custom behaviors are introduced and explained clearly in the hold, so there's no guess-the-scripting nonsense. The only unintuitive edge case, differing behavior when body pushed vs when weapon pushed over trapdoors, is demonstrated early and mostly avoided. I never felt myself worrying that I was somehow missing some obscure interaction with the new elements while playing this. The graphic design also makes things super clear and easy to keep track of.

The puzzles were also a real pleasure in this hold. The block elements make for some super interesting puzzles and clearly have a lot of potential. Xindaris has an architectural style that encourages the player to jump into a room and experiment, and if you take that into account, the rooms were mostly an enjoyable 5 brain difficulty. And as mentioned before, the story and voice acting really add a lot to the experience, making this hold just a joy to play through.

If you make it all the way to postmastery some of the rooms there do make more extensive use of edge case scripting weirdness, but they're still highly enjoyable room. You also get treated to a couple of bonus rooms by guest architects and a room with full explanation of how to use these new elements in your own architecture. I really hope to see these used again in more holds, they're terrific new elements and have a ton of potential that can still be realized.

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11-14-2018 at 07:19 PM
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mrimer
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icon Re: Blockerture Science Laboratories (+2)  
Insoluble wrote:
Xindaris introduces four new elements in this hold in the form of pushable blocks. These elements are so intuitive and fit in so smoothly with existing DROD elements that they feel like they could easily have been official elements.
I'm so glad this hold was made, and kudos to Xindaris the creator!

Incidentally, a couple types of pushable blocks were considered as a new element in TSS, but we had to draw the line somewhere (heh...it was arguably past where it might have best been drawn, but still I'm glad we were able to include everything that we did) and these didn't make the cut with the team. I'm glad to see this element getting featured in a way that's way better than I probably would have done.

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[Last edited by mrimer at 11-16-2018 08:21 PM]
11-16-2018 at 08:19 PM
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