Red-XIII
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File: RA demos.demo (5 KB)
Downloaded 3 times.
License: Public Domain

1S1E: after playing the hard version first, this room seemed almost easy, though it is not actually trivial. A very gentle introduction to the concept, I liked it.

1S2E: when the roaches were in the wrong order, the room felt really hard. Now that they align perfectly, the room felt quite easy, once you figure out the trick. Unless I’m missing something, this feels quite straightforward.

1S3E: Again, huge break.

1N2W: I did not remember the trick to solve this so I had to figure it out again. For me, what helped to realize the trick was striking the orb facing SW and then moving east, but I can see what you went from with the arrow rotator setup.

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

Chaco
Level: Smitemaster
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Thanks for the testing!

OK, to tighten up 1S3E hopefully properly this time, an update:

2025-05-13 Changelog

- 1S3E updated as follows:

- New yellow door by south bomb keeps the bomb from reopening the deathtrap door until the east orb is hit

- East orb now has three yellow doors in front of it, one for each north pressure plate. The cracked orb Beethro hits closes all these doors, so they must be opened strictly after Beethro hits the orb.

This should better reinforce its intended theme of "a lot of events happening in one turn".

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Red-XIII
Level: Smitemaster

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File: RA Roaches 1S3E Victory.demo (3.8 KB)
Downloaded 3 times.
License: Public Domain

I can now see what you intended for the room, but there is still another way to avoid doing that, though this time it was not trivial.

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

Chaco
Level: Smitemaster
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I think I can simultaneously fix that break and also fix a potentially confusing part of the room to make more sense once the player looks at it.

2025-05-14 Changelog

1S3E updated. Fuse is widened so that now if the door under the fuse end closes, there is not an exposed end to light anymore. All three north pressure plates now close this door (changed from only one of them doing that).

The net effect of all this is probably to make the room easier, but I don't think that's a bad thing if it removes red herrings and also avoids trivial solutions.

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Dragon Fogel
Level: Smitemaster
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File: RA Roaches - latest demos.demo (31.3 KB)
Downloaded 3 times.
License: Public Domain

Ran through every room I didn't have a working victory demo for. Also redid a few simple rooms first.

I did some poking, but couldn't find a way to break 1S3E.

Other than that, only two points struck me:
-The demo in here for 1S2W is fairly simple, so you may want to confirm whether it's supposed to be that simple or you consider that a break.
-I did a bit of a double take at the new, more complex setup in 1N2W, but I did figure it out without too much trouble. You might want to think about if it's worth making an attempt to simplify the machinery, though.

Chaco
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2025-05-15 Changelog

- Updated 1S2W. I think copying one of the features from 2S2W, namely the vertical line of solid floor aligned in the same column as Beethro's position, seems to be a fair balance between making this room less trivial and not just making it the same room as 2S2W. There are still some fairly simple trapdoor patterns that will work, but it's at least a step in the right direction towards the patterns needed for 2S2W, which would be the ideal role for that room to play.

- I think at this point I'm going to leave 1N2W alone, it seems to be doing its job as similar preparation for 2N2W.

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[Last edited by Chaco at 05-19-2025 04:55 AM : typo fix]

Chaco
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Alright, things seem pretty good for this hold now.

I'm going to give it another week, then submit it to Hold Administration sometime next weekend, so if you want to play it and give any feedback, that's the timeframe.

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Dragon Fogel
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File: RA Roaches 1S2W Victory.demo (28.7 KB)
Downloaded 3 times.
License: Public Domain

Here's a demo for 1S2W, so you can see if everything is in order.

Chaco
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Dragon Fogel wrote:
Here's a demo for 1S2W, so you can see if everything is in order.

Yeah, that's the level of complexity I'd like to see for solutions to that room. (There are several variants that will also work.) Looks good to me.

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Spleen
Level: Delver

Rank Points: 40
Registered: 09-24-2021
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File: Spleen Roach Approach.demo (13.8 KB)
Downloaded 4 times.
License: Public Domain

Attached demos for all the rooms except 2N1E, which I don't know how to beat. I haven't exported demos before, hope I did it right!

1S3W:

1N2W:

2N2W:

1S3E:

1N3W: I like the mechanism.

1N: It's a funny room, I started with it just because the corridor leading into the room is thin. Anyone else?

1S2E:

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[Last edited by Spleen at 05-20-2025 07:49 PM]

Chaco
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Spleen wrote:
Attached demos for all the rooms except 2N1E, which I don't know how to beat. I haven't exported demos before, hope I did it right!

You did it correctly, I see all the demos for the rooms you selected.

1S3W:

Click here to view the secret text

×I very easily broke this room, to the point where I was able to do the room while not hitting the orbs, see the 2 demos.

Whoops, that's a big oversight. I think I can fix this by moving the pressure plate that opens the SE roach cage.

1N2W:

Click here to view the secret text

×Am I crazy for thinking that it's a bit weird to give the solution to the puzzle during the puzzle? Funnily enough, I was so busy trying to figure out the point of all the mechanism in the room that I did the trick without even noticing, so it didn't even help me!

As you can see from the rest of the thread this went through a couple of revisions; the earlier room pretty much just had the bare problem and forced the player to figure out the trick from scratch. I'm aiming for required rooms being relatively accessible to newer players and this trick isn't necessarily intuitive, so I'm OK with this room teaching the trick and 2N2W being much harder.

1S3E:

Click here to view the secret text

×Is the point of this room meant to be the wacky turn order thing? Not sure what else it could be. Seems like a lot of mechanism just to force that.

Yeah, it's meant to highlight

1S2E:

Click here to view the secret text

×Do you think you could get a good room out of this idea but with kegs, so the player has to set up the situation? Or too obtuse? I solved the room and didn't even realise why until looking back at the demo now.

Making the player set up the mechanism themselves wouldn't add much to the room IMO, I think it would make the room more complicated and take longer but not really be more interesting. Much like 1S3E it's more meant to be a demonstration that this kind of thing is possible and is useful for this purpose.

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Chaco
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2025-05-20 Changelog

* 1S3W: Moved the pressure plate inwards so that the player is restricted to the northwest quadrant after hitting the plate - the southeast roaches can't be manipulated west-and-east from outside the trapdoor area. Scroll has been updated accordingly with new white-plate coordinates.

* 1S3W, 2S2W: Minor change, added more trapdoors near the east tunnels so that if the player wants to use them more than once (to aid in dropping trapdoors in particular patterns), they can use them multiple times instead of just once. This doesn't really affect any solutions, it's just for some minor quality-of-life.

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[Last edited by Chaco at 05-20-2025 08:43 PM]

Nuntar
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File: RA Roaches 1N2W Victory.demo (1.3 KB)
Downloaded 4 times.
License: Public Domain

Sorry to be contrarian... I've attached a demo for 1N2W so you can see what I'm doing. I don't understand how this fits with the above comments. I don't see what is being "taught"; I just lead a roach through a bunch of unrelated mechanisms and then do the sword direction trick to complete the room.

This room was much better before

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Chaco
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No worries. I think it's fair to point out that the added complexity for 1N2W isn't enforcing what it's meant to enforce and thus isn't serving its purpose.

So, the way to fix that is not going to be to make that room even more complicated, I think I have an idea for how to redesign it and make it simpler.

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Chaco
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2025-05-20 v2 Changelog

* 1N2W edited, the west section now features forced sword direction SW and hot tiles to pretty much force the player to execute a smaller version of The Trick in order to get the roach out. They must then apply the trick to the more open-ended part in the east.

This probably makes the room easier but also cleaner, which is the goal.

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Chaco
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2025-05-25 Changelog

* The Entrance: Added an extra checkpoint in the central area (i.e. not behind the blue door) for convenience's sake

* The Entrance: Added a tester credits scroll.

I've now submitted this to Hold Administrator review; thanks everyone for your helpful feedback!

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