Scattercatt
Level: Delver
Rank Points: 36
Registered: 05-15-2016
IP: Logged

File: Extra Large Rooms.hold (8.1 KB)
Downloaded 66 times.
License: Public Domain

Hey yall. It's been a hot minute since I've posted anything here, but I can't help myself from coming back to this game.

So anyways, I had this idea of making a hold where each level is treated as an entire puzzle; instead of rooms being treated as individual puzzles themselves, the whole level is one big overarching puzzle.

The problem is, backtracking issues are inevitable and tough to work around with this style. There is also a problem with scoring since rooms are solved and unsolved many times for the higher levels.

I have compiled 3 levels with this style, and would love some feedback on it. Here's a few key details I want to know about your experience with them:

- How intimidating is it?
- How understandable is it?
- Did you have fun?
- Did you run into any backtracking issues?

I do warn any players that the difficulty spikes on the third floor.

navithmastero
Level: Smitemaster

Rank Points: 626
Registered: 01-03-2012
IP: Logged

I started playing this but didn't have time to finish off the third floor yet so I'll just say something on backtracking and hold etiquette, and hopefully comment on your actual hold later:

- With the rooms with the red arrows, generally people prefer it if you don't put arrows on the room edge if you can help it. If you put the arrows one space in front of the room edge then generally (though not always) you can achieve the same effect.

- For a hold to get published, a rule is that there are no backtracking issues. I'm not sure whether there has been / we would consider relaxing this for a 'special' type of hold such as this one but it's definitely something to keep in mind. One solution is to have scripting which acts as a restart key but for the whole level, reseeding each room and putting Beethro back to the level entrance - that way, backtracking in a sense will always be possible.

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[Last edited by navithmastero at 04-19-2022 12:08 PM]

Scattercatt
Level: Delver
Rank Points: 36
Registered: 05-15-2016
IP: Logged

navithmastero wrote:
I started playing this but didn't have time to finish off the third floor yet so I'll just say something on backtracking and hold etiquette, and hopefully comment on your actual hold later:

- With the rooms with the red arrows, generally people prefer it if you don't put arrows on the room edge if you can help it. If you put the arrows one space in front of the room edge then generally (though not always) you can achieve the same effect.

- For a hold to get published, a rule is that there are no backtracking issues. I'm not sure whether there has been / we would consider relaxing this for a 'special' type of hold such as this one but it's definitely something to keep in mind. One solution is to have scripting which acts as a restart key but for the whole level, reseeding each room and putting Beethro back to the level entrance - that way, backtracking in a sense will always be possible.

Thanks for testing this out.

For your first point, I would like to say I was aware of this fact going into this (hence the visible warning & checkpoints before each red arrow), but for some situations I found that they were necessary for the style of levels I was going for. I do believe there might be a way to space the arrow one tile further in the following room, but it would still lead to the same problems, since I would then have to add more actual force arrows in the first room. Sad to say, I think the red arrows have to stay.

For your second point, that is... a really smart idea. I wish I had though of it lol. I think I'm going to implement this.

KituU
Level: Master Delver
Rank Points: 221
Registered: 07-02-2014
IP: Logged

Hi, started playing.

First level was a lot of fun, and thought it was a creative idea!

However, second level was very frustrating, i got completely stuck, unable to do anything that would allow me to keep going.

I think it needs more careful positioning of seeding beacons, as there is no puzzle in the rooms, seems it is about solving the maze that goes through the rooms in the level and finding the correct order to clear and reset each room