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File: The Island of Doctor More-so.hold (230.1 KB)
Downloaded 394 times.
License: Other
From: Unspecified

Beethro encounters a new monster. The hydra are ferocious and hungry serpents. And even worse: when you stab them, they'll split to form two new hydra!

Dying Flutchman
Level: Smiter

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Thanks to the HAs (Chaco & Doom) for making this hold official.

This hold contains a fair unreasonable amount of scripting, so testing, suggestions and scripting help were even more indispensable than usual.

A huge thanks to KituU, Mauvebutterfly, Nuntar and Xindaris.

Also: thanks to Mike Rimer for granting me permission to base my sprites off the existing drod serpent graphics.

Hope you'll enjoy playing this hold!

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Autocorrect is not my friend. Apologies for the typos.

disoriented
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Someone actually went ahead and scripted a custom serpent. What are you waiting for, go download this and try it out!

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34th Skywatcher

Best to PM me, since I might miss your message on CaravelNet chat.

Dying Flutchman
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File: The Island of Doctor More-so.hold (230.1 KB)
Downloaded 54 times.
License: Public Domain

OK, this is stupid. Online for 24 hours and now I found a bug that makes one of the rooms completely trivial / stupid / useless.

Can I pleeeeaaase haven an update? No-one has played this room yet, so I guess it's ok?

Edit: also fixed the challenge scripts.

Why is it so hard to get everything right the first time

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Autocorrect is not my friend. Apologies for the typos.

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[Last edited by Dying Flutchman at 10-11-2019 04:23 PM]

disoriented
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If an update is forthcoming, you may also want to check the challenge scripting in The Challenge 2N. I cleared the room without doing the challenge and re-entered the cleared room, and somehow it awarded the challenge.

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34th Skywatcher

Best to PM me, since I might miss your message on CaravelNet chat.

Dying Flutchman
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disoriented wrote:
...you may also want to check the challenge scripting in The Challenge 2N...

Tnx, fixed in the post above.

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Autocorrect is not my friend. Apologies for the typos.

Doom
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I've looked at Dying Flutchman's changes. TLDR: Doesn't break anything that I can tell

Challenge scripts have been changed in five rooms. All of these look good

However there's another challenge scripting issue. The one in Challenge: 1S1W becomes unobtainable without restoring if you reset the room with a seeding beacon (badly placed "End" command). This applies to both the old and the new versions. I'd recommend fixing this before considering the hold for an update. The rest of the challenges didn't have the same issue.
edit: confirmed that this part is now fixed

Finally, an aumtlich has been rotated in Challenge: 2S3E. The room is still solvable. This can break demos, but none have been submitted yet.

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[Last edited by Doom at 10-11-2019 04:36 PM]

Dying Flutchman
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Doom wrote:
...challenge [...] becomes unobtainable without restoring if you reset the room with a seeding beacon (badly placed "End" command).

Fixed that challenge as well.

Doom wrote:
Finally, an aumtlich has been rotated in Challenge: 2S3E. The room is still solvable. This can break demos, but none have been submitted yet.

Yes. The entrance was placed at the other side of the room when making the final arrangement. The rotation makes sure the aumtlich gets stuck on the mirror. Otherwise, a trivial solution is possible.

Thanks a lot for your cooperation and thorough checks!

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Autocorrect is not my friend. Apologies for the typos.

Aquator
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I'm not sure if I am missing something and this is intended, but
Maybe this also warrants a hold update?

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[Last edited by Aquator at 10-12-2019 04:41 PM]

Dying Flutchman
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Aquator wrote:
I'm not sure if I am missing something and this is intended, but...
Maybe this also warrants a hold update?

Well, it's not intended, but I don't really think I want to fix this. Most players would want to play the level, I guess

So, I'm comfortable with leaving this as it is.

I assume you have a nr. 1 high score for at least one room now. Congratulations

Edit: I keep being amazed by the proficiency all you drod-veterans seem to have in breaking *everything*

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Autocorrect is not my friend. Apologies for the typos.

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[Last edited by Dying Flutchman at 10-12-2019 05:02 PM]

Dragon Fogel
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Well, there is a script oddity that got me a pretty fast win in The Challenge 3S.



I'm not actually sure how to do the room without this and I don't know that it's reasonable to fix within the limitations of DROD scripting. Still, I thought I should note it just in case.

Dying Flutchman
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Dragon Fogel wrote:
Well, there is a script oddity that got me a pretty fast win in The Challenge 3S.

There is another way. And that is the intended way.

The behaviour you found is not intended, but it is also unfixable indeed.

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Autocorrect is not my friend. Apologies for the typos.

Dragon Fogel
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I realized the other option just after I posted that.

Insoluble
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For those of you still lamenting the fact that TSS didn't have a cool new serpent for us to play with, take heart! Dying Flutchman had managed to work some scripting magic and make a serpent that both looks and feels like it could easily be an official monster! For those of you still rejoicing the fact that TSS didn't have a cool serpent for us to play with, take heart! The hydra manages to behave in a very serpent-like manner while discarding some of the more arcane aspects of serpent behavior. It still feels very serpent-y, moving once per turn and only orthogonally. But gone is the 5 count horizontal/vertical preference. Because of this, hydra's feel much more like brained serpents or roaches on ortho-squares, but in a good way. Manipulating them is natural and logical.

And that really is the magic of this hold. This new scripted serpent really lends itself to fun puzzles involving lots of logical deduction and very little fiddling about. Flutchman has also made sure that the rooms in this hold are very reasonable in terms of execution. Nothing feels arduous or tedious. A lot of rooms allow for multiple approaches, and I don't think I hit any that require more than a couple of hundred moves. The difficulty is varied, but most of the rooms end up being much more manageable than they may first appear.

All of that would be more than enough for me to recommend this to just about anyone. But I'll also go ahead and mention that Flutcham went all out for this one, including a silly story with a really charming intro involving Beethro and Halph. It also has some really nicely designed level aesthetics. Super cool hold!

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