It has come to my attention that it has been a while since I have made a hold. While I did make quite a few rooms in various collaborative projects since TSS release, my last solo project was wayyyy back in 2013.
Here's a relatively small hold (13 puzzle rooms thus far, not going to be much more than that), with 3 puzzle levels: 2 have a common theme going, the third one is just various stuff.
A certain thingy in the hold has custom sprite. My drawing skills are mediocre at best so it's not particularly pretty, but hopefully distinct enough and not too terrible to look at.
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Changelog v02:
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×Nexus: added NPCs that taunt Beethro. Minor design changes: Entrance is not as empty as it used to be. 1E (exit room) is less empty too. Hold ending text is a bit longer.
Shrine of Variety: 1N - added two more trapdoors in NW section (fairly minor change. Should not break your demo *too much* unless you abused the square which the extra trapdoor is now on more than once, which isn't really intended. Recommendation is to restore to checkpoint on trapdoor and see if you can easily re-conquer room from there.)
Shrine of Variety: 1S - new room. Re-used old idea from one of my Halph rooms. Except this one uses a different element for similar concept. I think it works better this way overall.
Changelog v03:
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×Hordes 1S 1E - fixed unintended solution found by BoyBlue.
Shapeshifting 5N: Wubbas in NE corner changed to gentryi heads. For obvious reasons I don't want to include monster wubbas or wraithwings in the level, this was a small oversight. Should not affect demos in any way, since that is only used as a "lock" in case player fails to solve the room properly.
Shapeshifting 1N: now there's no sister green door under wwing transforming thingy. I'm not sure if its placement there was just precaution or it legit broke something, but whatever, there's just too much potential backtracking problems if I keep green door there. If it does allow unintended solutions elsewhere, do tell.
Shapeshifting Entrance: now has seeding beacon to allow re-clearing, and sister green gates at southern exit. Tar area is redesigned quite significantly. You will have to replay this. Fortunately it's still a rather simple and short room.
Getting secret should *only* be possible if you use tar baby generating-trick here, NOT purely though usage of seeding beacon. Current positioning of seeding beacon is to ensure that. If it is possible to get secret any other way, do tell. Clearing room should preferably only be possible through ordinary entrance, too, and that seems to be the case right now: I've tried reentering as wwing from the north and you don't seem to have enough time for goblins and tar mother this way.
Shapeshifting 2N: 2 extra force arrows near southern entrance so you can't return south at all from there. This is so you don't break entrance secret-reaching puzzle by hitting seeding beacon in entrance and then using stairs in 3N to reach entrance from above.
Shapeshifting 3N: Found a place for seeding beacon and mechanism to enforce re-entering as wubba from south if you do hit it. Hopefully shouldn't introduce new unintended solutions. Didn't break my wubba demo, did severely break Beethro demo, though (it's now a bit harder than it used to be).
Hordes 2E: I've looked at it again, and decided that I don't really want player to rush and hit SW or NE orb. So invis potions are now behind red doors. Technically you still can rush to one of those orbs but it's unlikely you will survive (if you do, then well done, you'll get faster solution and you deserve it, I'm not going to enforce running around from constructs even further here). I've also replayed it one more time and I actually think maybe it's not as bad as I thought. Being able to keep 10 of constructs behind on force arrows helps a lot with final clean-up.
Changelog v04:
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×Hordes 2E - I like the idea of hot tiles being under orbs, so they are now there!. However, there are no hot tiles in the corner anymore. There is, however, an additional set of arrows under black doors, and a mud blob you can clear to open the black doors. So overall, clean-up is now a lot more manageable. But if you don't clear the mud blob and do clean-up the same way I originally did - you get a challenge award! (I feel sorry for people who will try it)
Hordes 1N 1E - I've decided that I don't want to add extra roach queens, but I'm still not really fond of KituU's solution here, so I've added 1020-move timer.
In my defense, it only enforces optimal strategy and doesn't enforce optimizing this room to death - my demo is more than 100 moves ahead of timer and it's not even optimal atm. Since the concept of this room is originally based on optimally cleaning ridiculously large horde of roach queens, I hope it makes sense that I want to enforce efficient strategy here.
Also, the timer only starts when you enter the central chamber (from any entrance), and you only need to exit the chamber in time, not exit the room, so it still allows you the choice of any entrance there without losing any time.
Variety 1E - you now get a speed potion after you leave the southern chamber. My demo is about 1/2 of what it used to be movecount-wise and that's probably a good sign. Overall - a lot easier to manage tarstuff babies now. I also moved orb to SW (and NE) because why not. You don't really need to use orb that much now, though.
Changelog V05:
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×Only visual/text changes, puzzles unchanged.
Hold name changed a tiny bit.
Hold intro text, ending text, numerous dialogues rewritten because I felt that the little silly plot I have here took itself too seriously before.
Nexus Entrance: now has a signpost that tells which level is where when you step next to it.
Variety 1E: fixed that scroll. Yes, it is most likely going to remain in final version. Someday I'll learn to spell that hold's name right from the first attempt
Most of other "
commentary"
scrolls removed. A lot of them were out of date anyway.
Changelog v06:
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×"Shrine of Variety" renamed to "Shrine of manipulation", entrance text changed.
Several dialogue changes in Nexus.
Shapeshifting 2S - fixed KituU's unintended solution, but I may add this as separate version because it's pretty cool.
Shapeshifting 5N - some more checkpoints in here now.
Final(?) version:
Added challenge in Shapeshifting 3N, tested that it works.
Scroll in Nexus Entrance now credits people who have (so far) provided feedback.
Final-for-sure version:
Several minor text changes. And non-puzzle entrance rooms have 1-move conquer tokens so they are obviously unscorable.
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It really makes room look pretty easy and boring though which is not really good.