Dragon Fogel
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Looked at the last batch of Lova's demos.

Guards 1W:



Giants 1N:



Tarstuff 1W:



Tarstuff 1S1W:



Tarstuff 1S1E:



Other Entrance:



Other 1S:



Rooms I didn't mention were done as intended.

Dragon Fogel
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Well, uh, I tried toughening up Tarstuff 1W and I came up with something. It might be a bit much. Also changed the specifics of how the eyes die.

Also put in the Giants 1N fix, and I'm trying out a Guards 1W fix so I can see if people think it makes the room better.

Now I should go to sleep.

LovaP48
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Dragon Fogel wrote:
Guards 1W:

Click here to view the secret text

×You "broke" this by doing something much more demanding than intended. In my solution, you only deal with the guard in close quarters and no walls are broken while you're on the inside.

I could prevent this architecturally, the simplest way I can see is replacing the walls with cracked orbs that prevent you from leaving the middle area. The main question is if I should. I definitely don't want people thinking this nonsense is what I expected them to do.

Uh... Oh boy, really? Yeah, cracked orbs shutting me in sounds like a decent idea if you want to prevent my previous thing

Alright, got it! That was indeed easier and I finally figured out what was the mirror for!
I think this version is better (if you're going for this solution), because it eliminates the potential of releasing things early.

Dragon Fogel wrote:
Giants 1N:

Click here to view the secret text

×Not sure if that's the most elegant enforcement, but it's less blatant than having the giant hold down a pressure plate.

I think the room is broken and unsolvable, because the entrance to Beethro's corridor is 1 tile too north. (Unless I'm missing a further trick)
To remedy this, make the initially closed door 3 tiles wide instead, so the traps still line up.
Another possibility is to just put the firetrap on (24,13), I'm pretty sure this still negates any possibility of Giantgoign in there in a meaningful way.

Dragon Fogel wrote:
Tarstuff 1W:

Click here to view the secret text

×Yeah, this is pretty easy, I mostly put it in because the activity is distinctive.

I guess I could try to toughen it up like I did the other rooms I thought were too easy, but I really don't have any ideas in that regard and I feel pretty drained on toughening things up.

Well, sounds like you did find some power to toughen it up, let's see what you made.

Okay, that was not easy, but I think quite satisfying, especially the decoy usage!
To me, this is much better room than its predecessor - that one was a little dull and the cleanup was kind of annoying; you solved both of those problems.

Dragon Fogel wrote:
Tarstuff 1S1W:

Click here to view the secret text

×I don't think decoy double-cuts on gel can be done with explosions because a tile would have to be changed from uncuttable to cuttable. This can be done on tar if the tiles are diagonal, that would probably be weird to set up though.

Yeah, I realised it's not feasible.
Though, perhaps, you took some inspiration from this for Once West?

Dragon Fogel wrote:
Tarstuff 1W:

Click here to view the secret text

×Well, the intended linchpin is spawning and trapping a baby on the tar side, but apparently that isn't necessary. Not sure I can reasonably enforce it, though, and doing that has a lot of overlap with what you do here.

Hm, I see, could be interesting, but I didn't try.
Does your solution require all 5 presses of the multiuse plate? As far as I can see, I only really need 4 in the current layout with my solution.

Dragon Fogel wrote:
Other Entrance:

Click here to view the secret text

×This is a pretty open room, my only concern is having it not be too easy.

Hm, I can say I needed a few tries until I figured out just the right approach - especially the start with the three goblins was rough for me.
It is not "free" by any means!

Dragon Fogel wrote:
Other 1S:

Click here to view the secret text

×I have a different slayer setup, but like the Entrance,this is largely a room where I'm content with any solution that works as long as it's not way too easy.

Again, initially, I took a few tries to solve this.
Today I tried again and managed it with just one keg - challenge potential maybe?
The fact it's possible does not make it easy, the setup is quite particular at the end, as the slayer does not like that particular position.

That's all; demos are attached.

Dragon Fogel
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Giants 1N is fixed, I put a seeding beacon in Giants 1W so the challenge can be re-attempted after the room is clear, and I put the suggested challenge in Other 1S and also added a seeding beacon there.

Guards 1W:



Tarstuff 1W:



Other 1S:



I think this may be the final version, other than adding blue doors back in. But my preference is to get feedback from two people on all the rooms before submitting to HA, so I'll wait for Red XIII to comment.

LovaP48
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Dragon Fogel wrote:
Giants 1N is fixed.

Indeed, looks good to me!

Dragon Fogel wrote:
I put a seeding beacon in Giants 1W so the challenge can be re-attempted after the room is clear.

I personally would prefer to actually see the word "challenge" in the scroll, to keep the format of challenges consistent.

Dragon Fogel wrote:
Guards 1W:

Click here to view the secret text

×I led the guard up the west side rather than the east, but that's the only difference this has from my solution and it's not a big one. Satisfied here.

Fair enough, those two sound mostly equivalent.

Dragon Fogel wrote:
Tarstuff 1W:

Click here to view the secret text

×This is cleaner than the solution I found while testing, where I tried to make the key blob in the SE and wound up juggling mirrors between the northeast and southwest routes into the chamber. I'm glad this method works out, makes me feel much better about the room.

Maybe I didn't try hard enough, but

Dragon Fogel wrote:
Other 1S:

Click here to view the secret text

×This is actually the slayer position I used for my solution, I just had another keg north of the slayer. That made it harder to get the slayer into position, though, and I had to do some shenanigans. I don't think trying to encourage my particular approach is a good idea in this room, though.

Interesting, I feel proud of contributing a challenge

IMPORTANT NOTE:
Your challenges in Giants and in Other are broken at the moment - the player entity checker only executes for the first turn and then stays in the default value.
This means that I always succeed in the Giants, even when pressing the plate... And that the challenge in Other is impossible.

To fix this, I believe you need a go-to loop and a "wait 0 turns" type of thing:

  Set var "ChallengeFail" = 0
Label Checker
  Wait 0
  If ... 
        Wait for entity Player 7,3,7,3
     Set var "ChallengeFail" = 1
  If End 
  Go to Checker

(There may be a better way, but this is the one I know.)
I did not check the Fluff challenge, but my earlier demo got the "Player completed the challenge" text.
I'm attaching a zip with the two challenge room demos.

---

[Last edited by LovaP48 at 01-30-2025 09:50 PM]

Nuntar
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It's simpler than that. The first character in Giants 1W should remove the "If" and "If End", leaving this script:

  Set var "ChallengeFail" = 0
  Wait for entity Player 7,3,7,3
  Set var "ChallengeFail" = 1

Same goes for the first character in Other 1S; it's exactly the same problem. The "If" means the character is checking whether the condition is true on turn 0 only, rather than waiting until it's true, which happens to be what you want here.

____________________________
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Dragon Fogel
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It's clearly been too long since I scripted a challenge. Looks like I handled the Fluff 1E challenge entirely differently, so that one seems to be fine.

Fixed now, and the scroll in Giants 1W is rewritten, I just didn't change it from when I wasn't sure if I'd actually script it.

Dragon Fogel
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LovaP48 wrote:
Maybe I didn't try hard enough, but

Click here to view the secret text

×I thought you could not recover BOTH mirrors from the north-west corner, once you stepped on the pressure plate.

Slightly late responding to this, but it's absolutely possible. Not even a major trick, really, so I don't mind it not being necessary to solve the room.

LovaP48
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Nuntar wrote:
It's simpler than that. The first character in Giants 1W should remove the "If" and "If End", leaving this script:

  Set var "ChallengeFail" = 0
  Wait for entity Player 7,3,7,3
  Set var "ChallengeFail" = 1

Same goes for the first character in Other 1S; it's exactly the same problem. The "If" means the character is checking whether the condition is true on turn 0 only, rather than waiting until it's true, which happens to be what you want here.

D'oh! Nice one Nuntar
I assume doing it my way is only required whne I am not only making "one change" like here, but doing more complicated stuff in both branches, right?
Or am I just viewing it too much like a programmer?

Dragon Fogel wrote:
It's clearly been too long since I scripted a challenge. Looks like I handled the Fluff 1E challenge entirely differently, so that one seems to be fine.

Fixed now, and the scroll in Giants 1W is rewritten, I just didn't change it from when I wasn't sure if I'd actually script it.

The challenges now look good.
Just to be sure, I went into both rooms and purposefully did the challenge way AND the non-challenge way and got the award only in the former case.
I attach those demos in the zip here.

Other, 1 South:

Dragon Fogel wrote:

LovaP48 wrote:
Maybe I didn't try hard enough, but

Click here to view the secret text

×I thought you could not recover BOTH mirrors from the north-west corner, once you stepped on the pressure plate.

Slightly late responding to this, but it's absolutely possible. Not even a major trick, really, so I don't mind it not being necessary to solve the room.

Click here to view the secret text

×The first step is getting the mirrors next to each other orthogonally.

Hm, that didn't cross my mind intially, so I constrained myself according to that when planning.
Possibly to my benefit
I also attach a demo of rescuing the mirrors, I reckon you meant something like that?

Red-XIII
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Brains 1E: Is this broken? After I realized that I could kill 4 eyes without dropping a single trapdoor, I also realized that the most important pressure plates are three. So, I did not build a complicated path, I just dropped the trapdoors near those three plates.

Tarstuff 1W: Definitely harder than the original version. The critical thing is to find a good shape, so I tried this first, regardelss of the eyes, and then tried to rebuild that shape without waking the eyes.

Guards 1S: I liked the previous version as well, though this version is also nice. A bit fiddly, but not too much. The final manipulation is tough but again, nothing too bad, since it is clear what you need to do.

____________________________
There's not some other world out there where everything's gonna be okay.
There's just this one, just this rock.
-33th Skywatcher

Dragon Fogel
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So the issue in Brains 1E is that I just assumed all the pressure plates needed to be hit, without actually making that a requirement.

I should have that fixed later today. I'd fix it now, but at the moment I don't feel up to testing to make sure my fix doesn't have unfortunate side effects.

Dragon Fogel
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Added force arrows under the eyes in Brains 1E. I think this actually made the old layout impossible, so I made some adjustments to the pressure plates to change this. Confirmed it's solvable now.

LovaP48
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File: IMSR Brains 1E Victory.demo (3.2 KB)
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Dragon Fogel wrote:
So the issue in Brains 1E is that I just assumed all the pressure plates needed to be hit, without actually making that a requirement.

I should have that fixed later today. I'd fix it now, but at the moment I don't feel up to testing to make sure my fix doesn't have unfortunate side effects.

What?? That WAS a requirement there?
I thought the trick in that room was noticing that you do not in fact need all the plates to get rid of the eyes.
I felt so clever about that...

Dragon Fogel wrote:
Added force arrows under the eyes in Brains 1E. I think this actually made the old layout impossible, so I made some adjustments to the pressure plates to change this. Confirmed it's solvable now.

This took me quite a while, I kept on failing to set up the southern plates just right with the trapdoor carving.
The staircase said I spent an hour there, some of it was me just gazing into the void.
It's probably not AS bad as I made it for myself, but I missed a crucial thing...
Oh well, demo is attached; I hope this IS "the intended solution" now.

Dragon Fogel
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I think I noticed and used the trick in testing to kill eyes, but didn't register that it meant you didn't have to hit all the plates.

Dragon Fogel
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It took me a while to get around to looking at the last bunch of demos, but I just did that. Everything looks fine; Lova's solution to Brains 1E is very different from mine, but very cool in its own way so I don't consider it a break. Now I wonder if the previous version would have been solvable doing something like that.

Last I checked, Red had finished everything except Giants 1W and the newest version of Brains 1E. So I'm mainly waiting for him to get through those before deciding on whether I need to change anything else.

Red-XIII
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Brains 1E: after hours of thinking and a hint, I managed to find a path that worked for the last 4 plates. The first 4 plates have a completely different setup, which I found easier to figure out. I think the room is ok but I think it will require some hints for players unfamiliar with brained paths.

Giants 1W: It took a while but I managed to find some tricks that helps with the manipulation. Luckily, this is not trial and error, though I cannot find a way to place the last golem and get the challenge (though I could do it if the last golem was somehow in a different place at a certain time). Then, with the same manipulation, I could get it in place.
If you are worried about difficulty, then maybe you could add a scroll specifying that this room does not require movement order or trial and error, but some manipulation tricks.

____________________________
There's not some other world out there where everything's gonna be okay.
There's just this one, just this rock.
-33th Skywatcher

---

[Last edited by Red-XIII at 02-17-2025 08:23 PM]

Dragon Fogel
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I'm running through the hold myself, hoping I can get this ready for publication soon.

The main things I'm thinking about right now:
-Brains is pretty hard, especially with 1E toughened up. Should I move the level to be later in the hold? I'm thinking before Tarstuff.
-In Brains 1W, if you have the gel baby south of the tunnel, it ends up being very easy to have the right idea and barely fail the execution. This feels like something I can improve. Maybe I'll expand the gap between the tunnels.
-I still have lingering doubts about Giants 1W's challenge. I wouldn't mind nerfing the overall setup of the room if I could think of a way to, but nothing I've tried works very well.

I welcome any last-minute thoughts on these or other points. Unless I make a major change, I'm probably submitting to HA at the end of the month.

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Tentatively final version.

-Added in the blue doors. If somebody who hasn't played through already wants to do a last-minute test, let me know and I'll post a version that doesn't have them.
-Added a seeding beacon behind a green door in Potions and Mimics 1N1W, along with a scroll suggesting the player can look for more solutions.
-Moved Brains to before Tarstuff, and adjusted all relevant stairs.
-Moved the eastern tunnel in Brains 1W to be one tile further east.
-Added invisibility potions to Giants 1W; these have no effect on gameplay because the golems are always in decoy range. These are just a convenience so you can see the radius where the golems will react to you. The challenge scroll also notes that there is no need to make use of monster movement order.

I've played Giants 1W enough to conclude that the challenge can be done entirely with planning, there's no need to shuffle golems around without any idea what you're doing or worry about move order. It's hard, but it can be done systematically. That's good enough for me.

---

[Last edited by Dragon Fogel at 02-24-2025 04:59 PM]

LovaP48
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Dragon Fogel wrote:
Tentatively final version.

-Added in the blue doors. If somebody who hasn't played through already wants to do a last-minute test, let me know and I'll post a version that doesn't have them.

I have just blitzed through all the levels and everything seems to be working alright, including the forward and backwards staircases.

Dragon Fogel wrote:
-Added a seeding beacon behind a green door in Potions and Mimics 1N1W, along with a scroll suggesting the player can look for more solutions.

Neat touch!

Dragon Fogel wrote:
-Moved Brains to before Tarstuff, and adjusted all relevant stairs.

Probably a good thing to do, yeah; staircases do what they should.

Dragon Fogel wrote:
-Moved the eastern tunnel in Brains 1W to be one tile further east.

I think this makes the room flow better?
Probably.

Dragon Fogel wrote:
-Added invisibility potions to Giants 1W; these have no effect on gameplay because the golems are always in decoy range. These are just a convenience so you can see the radius where the golems will react to you. The challenge scroll also notes that there is no need to make use of monster movement order.

I've played Giants 1W enough to conclude that the challenge can be done entirely with planning, there's no need to shuffle golems around without any idea what you're doing or worry about move order. It's hard, but it can be done systematically. That's good enough for me.

The invisibility potion really helps to see things, yeah!
And indeed, it's tough, but very much logically doable.

Well done, Fogel, and good luck in the HA process!

NoahT
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Here are my demos if they are of any use.

____________________________
And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make.

My stuff:

Dragon Fogel
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Well, you found another simple solution to Fluff 1E, even simpler than the one I found. But that room has the challenge implemented to force trickier solutions, so I don't mind.

Everything else is either intended, or the room is relatively open and your solution doesn't break my expectations. So I'm more confident this is ready to go now. Thanks!