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Caravel Forum : DROD Boards : Architecture : Hold Development Tips?
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Professor Tio
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icon Hold Development Tips? (+5)  
So hi, my name is Matt, or Tio as I tend to go by with some of my friends online. I'm currently working on a hold that I wanted to focus around a central gimmick utilizing evil eyes and citizens. I wanted to share this first miniature preview of the hold, see what tips I could get for it. Tips and ideas are welcome!

(Just to clarify for anyone wondering about the file, check my 2nd post on this thread for the file.)

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[Last edited by Professor Tio at 02-02-2019 03:02 AM : Clarifying the file location]
01-30-2019 at 07:11 PM
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Professor Tio
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File: Waving Views Snippet B.hold (5.3 KB)
Downloaded 23 times.
License: Public Domain
icon Re: Hold Development Tips? (+1)  
Ah frick, I forgot the hold file itself...

____________________________
Hold stuff I guess!
Click here to view the secret text
I had an avatar at some point but then the thing stopped cooperating, ah well-

[Last edited by Professor Tio at 02-02-2019 01:34 AM : Updating the hold version]
01-30-2019 at 09:13 PM
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Insoluble
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icon Re: Hold Development Tips? (+1)  
Welcome to the forum! Folks here are generally pretty happy to give feedback on architecture. It doesn't look like there's a hold attached to your post though. Can you re-attach? EDIT: Heh, looks like I posted too soon! Eyes and citizens sound like an interesting combo, I'm looking forward to checking it out!

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[Last edited by Insoluble at 01-30-2019 09:14 PM]
01-30-2019 at 09:13 PM
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Chaco
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File: Waving Views_firstfour_chaco.demo (5 KB)
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License: Public Domain
icon Re: Hold Development Tips? (+2)  
Cool theme for a hold! I wonder if this is going to be a one-large-level hold or if the rooms are going to be organized differently. Attached are some demos for the four rooms provided, and here's some comments as well:

Entrance: Not much to say here, although this does implicitly show off three useful points, that citizens are normal monsters that don't get any special movement order privileges like guards or Slayers, evil eyes can see through lamp-posts, and pressure plates pop up at the end of a turn.

Once East: Very tricky room to do properly since it's slightly cramped quarters. I think I broke this one by having Beethro step into the north "end" passageway very early, negating the penalty for waking up any evil eyes by just waiting in final position and letting the Stalwart do his work.

Once North Once East: Looked tough at first glance, but then since I realized the "scanning" only happens every two turns rather than every turn, you have a lot of freedom to get far ahead of the scanner and lose a bit of time making vertical moves. That combined with being able to use the tunnels twice instead of just once made for plenty of freedom to get those trapdoors done. Happy this was a small trapdoor field.

Once North: Neat combat room, but it was a little tough to predict ahead of time which doors were going to be open when. Unlimited Undo was extremely helpful for not getting caught out by waterskippers at bad times; I suspect Nuntar and other folks using regular checkpoints might appreciate a couple more at the top and bottom of the room. The lamp-posts make traversal a little tougher than normal; you might consider replacing those with walls or water for readability purposes but otherwise it's not a huge problem.

After solving these rooms I was definitely left wanting more, so you're doing great :)

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[Last edited by Chaco at 01-30-2019 11:25 PM]
01-30-2019 at 11:24 PM
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Insoluble
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File: Waving Views.demo (18.1 KB)
Downloaded 21 times.
License: Public Domain
icon Re: Hold Development Tips? (+2)  
Here are some more demos for you:

The general concept is neat. Using citizens to toggle doors like that reminded me a bit of a level in Xindaris' First Hold that did something similar. Specifically there was a room with evil eyes in it and yellow doors that were toggled by citizens in a way that continually altered which tiles were safe.
Click here to view the secret text


It's a neat idea and I can see a lot of potential for it. I really appreciate that the citizens are set up in such a way that it is always obvious what the pattern of the doors is going to be. Something like this really wouldn't work if I had to worry about not being sure of the room state a couple of turns later.

The Entrance: Appears to just be a demo of the main mechanic.

1E: I think you'll probably hear some complaints about this one. Stalwarts are notoriously fiddly to manipulate and I don't think I'd enjoy doing this one the way I think you intended it. Thankfully there are a whole bunch of alternate solutions. In addition to what Chaco mentioned (which I haven't tried), you can also easily push the stalwart onto the pressure plate that kills the eyes. It also should be possible to wake one of the eyes and still solve the room, since you can push the stalwart onto the water tile but his sword will get a chance to stab the eye before he dies. It's probably pretty simple to prevent that first alternate by putting a Beethro only tile (like a tunnel) between the trap door and pressure plate, though I kind of think that waking an eye then solving the room would make a cool challenge.

On a more structural note, the staff token on a force arrow and invisibility potion on a force arrow at the beginning of the room are somewhat hard to read. Having a bunch of things on the same tile can be difficult to parse correctly, so I'd encourage spreading those out. Force arrow - staff - force arrow -potion on four consecutive tiles should accomplish the same thing while being somewhat more readable to the player.

1N1E: This was my favorite room. It was hands down the room that felt the most like I could logically deduce how to proceed in. I got within one turn of clearing the room after passing through each tunnel only once before I realized that was not actually one of the restrictions. I feel like this one could have been made a bit stricter since it's pretty reasonable to figure out successful strategies.

1N: This room was pretty chaotic, but I suppose that's what you'd expect from a horde room. I didn't really bring a coherent strategy to this one, but mostly relied on trial-and-error. It's nice that this was fairly short and compact. I think water skipper nests work best when it's only a handful of them like in this room.

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Links to neat forum tools that I always have trouble finding:
Click here to view the secret text

01-31-2019 at 04:13 AM
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Professor Tio
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icon Re: Hold Development Tips? (+1)  
Hold updated, with feedback taken into account for the first 3 legitimate rooms! Check the 2nd post in the thread for download.
Changes:
- Room changes!
Click here to view the secret text

- 2 new rooms added. I think this may be a trend where I do 2-room updates, but hey, 2 rooms is better than none, right?
- Tile-set style change for whatever reason.

____________________________
Hold stuff I guess!
Click here to view the secret text
I had an avatar at some point but then the thing stopped cooperating, ah well-
02-02-2019 at 01:43 AM
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