Xindaris
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File: Explosives and Other Dangerous Things.hold (73.6 KB)
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License: Public Domain

I've been itching to post this for a while, even though I'm not really finished building it. And, I guess now is the time.

I had a few partly-complete levels involving what I think are some really cool custom elements lying around, and thought: "I should combine these and publish!". And then, I had an idea for one more weird custom element, and added that in too.

Here's a breakdown of said elements, if you're curious:

The levels aren't complete; if you see a blue door in a level, what's behind it is an unfinished (or probably un-started) room. Everything you can get to from "start new game" is a finished room, though. And I think the rooms that exist so far do a decent job of showing off the puzzle potential of the elements; I just think there's room for improvement, especially in Warp Woods and Over a Certain Chasm.

I'm eager to see people try these elements out, and maybe find any breaks or bugs in the rooms or with the elements. Or maybe suggest idea for a few more rooms to add.

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[Last edited by Xindaris at 05-25-2025 07:13 PM]

Xindaris
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Update:
-moved some internal notes out of the "playable area"
-added a few more blue doors to block off un-started rooms
-Most importantly, a thing I had concluded was "not a bug" with the rocket turtles was causing some really weird, unintuitive behavior when they get stunned. So I decided that it was a bug after all, and fixed it. This wasn't excessively hard, but did involve refactoring the code and changing "what" does the explosion effect.
-On a strongly related note, added the room 3N to Boom Beach.

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[Last edited by Xindaris at 05-05-2025 11:58 PM]

Xindaris
Level: Smitemaster

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Update:
-New room in Warp Woods (1S3E)
-Leak fix to a room in Warp Woods, but I don't want to say which one. The leak was really obvious and dumb.

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Dragon Fogel
Level: Smitemaster
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File: Explosives and Other Dangerous Things - Fogel demos.demo (32.2 KB)
Downloaded 23 times.
License: Public Domain

Started testing this. Played what's currently available in Over a Dangerous Chasm and started Boom Beach. Demos attached.

Over a Dangerous Chasm has a required room behind a blue door, so I can't properly finish it. But I cleared all the rooms that are accessible.

Xindaris
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Thanks for taking a look, Fogel, and the demos! I hope you're enjoying the puzzles so far. Honestly, the flying tiles are perhaps the weakest of the four elements; it's hard to come up with very many distinct things to do with it. Anyway, I don't see any particular breaks in your demos so far.

Update:
-Bug fix for Warped Time Token (bug was affecting 1S3E; has to do with how it detects potions).
-Added "level clear rooms" to the hub: 1W, 1N1W, 1E all have puzzles but are not presently accessible.
-Added a room to Over a Certain Chasm: 2N1W.

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Dragon Fogel
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File: EaODT Fogel Boom Beach demos.demo (34.3 KB)
Downloaded 23 times.
License: Public Domain

Here's what I managed to do in Boom Beach. I attempted the other rooms (1N1E and 4N2E) but got stumped.

Well, specifically I was stumped by the challenge in the latter, I made attempts that would have been fine if I'd saved some turns by stabbing brains. And I think I know what to do for the challenge, just make the west path longer rather than blocking it off entirely - but without any visual aids to help with that I don't really feel like doing it.

As for 1N1E, my first reaction was "I do not want to try to predict soldier behavior that precisely". Then I tried just getting him to hit the southeast plate and cross the middle plate on his way to the southeast. This was a bit awkward, but I managed it, only to realize that he had to hit the middle plate afterwards. And I don't even know where to begin on making that happen. Even aside from being stuck on that part, overall I feel "use the soldier to make the turtle fire in a specific place on a specific turn" is pretty painful and should remove complicating factors where possible.
I think a more bearable version would be a room where the targets are already set up for the stalwart and you just have to set up obstacles to make him go for the correct ones first. I'd also recommend adding an invisibility potion, because having the turtle fire on you doesn't really make the setup process more interesting. It just means if you're a little careless, a mirror or brain gets blown up and then you have to go back and do things slightly differently to avoid that.

I'm also going to flag 3N as a room I didn't have a very fun time with, even though I got through it in the end. It was just too annoying to have to watch where I was putting my sword while trying to get the mimic in the right position and have its staff in the right place on the right turn. Things got a little better once I cleared enough space to have a safe spot for the missile, but overall I really didn't like the room.

I thought the other rooms were fine, though. Even the horde rooms didn't feel too demanding once I started figuring out how to make actual progress.

Xindaris
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Thanks again! Some responses...



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[Last edited by Xindaris at 05-22-2025 08:05 PM]

Xindaris
Level: Smitemaster

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Update:
-Added Remote Research Facility 3N and 3N2E. I think I'm ready to consider this level "complete and beatable" now, hooray! I struggled an awful lot with 3N2E's design, and I'm still not entirely sure that it properly captures the idea I had, but..maybe it works? The level still doesn't really have a room expressly using the "you can push the remote bomb around with sticks/staves/etc." interaction in any serious way, but that's fine.
-Tried to reconfigure Boom Beach 3N to be a bit better (as detailed below...)

Some more notes:
Boom Beach 3N:


Boom Beach 1N1E: I tried placing an invisibility potion, but immediately noticed a problem: The "targets" for the soldier are brains, and if you're "within sight" of the brain, then the rockets will still be flying. So it wouldn't actually make the room any easier.


Edit:
There were 0 downloads since the previous update, but regardless, I've tweaked RRF 3N2E yet again...I think this finally enforces the idea I had for the room, but it might be too easy/obvious now. But I don't know, maybe that's a good place for it to be.

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[Last edited by Xindaris at 05-24-2025 05:38 AM]

Dragon Fogel
Level: Smitemaster
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File: EaODT Remote Research Facility - Fogel demos.demo (33.1 KB)
Downloaded 24 times.
License: Public Domain

Got through Remote Research Facility. I haven't looked at the newer version of the hold yet; just to make things simpler on myself, I think I'll run through what I can of Warped Woods on the version I currently have, then look at the updates and make notes on new or changed rooms.

Most of the rooms here felt very satisfying, but there's two that I feel a need to comment on.

-I only sort of understood what I was doing in 2N; I caught that I wanted to hit even numbers of orbs but then I just tried hitting two orbs with each explosion and won without fully understanding what the mechanism did. So overall I felt more confused than satisfied.
-3N1E felt like a chaotic mess. I wasn't even expecting to solve it, but I gave it one last try and stumbled my way to the exit. But on my first attempt where I did that, some of the snakes got stuck on themselves and would never reach the firetraps, and I resolved this by fumbling around some more until it didn't happen.
Basically, after blowing up the first few snakes I was not making a plan at all and it really didn't feel good even after I finished it.

Xindaris
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Well...2N isn't really meant to be a very complicated room. It's one of the first I came up with; your goal is just to hit the ones on the bridge tiles that open the way for the briar, with the "hit even number of orbs" as a restriction. I guess I could add some kind of "don't hit too many orbs total" restriction if I wanted to make it more interesting/challenging?

The whole idea with 3N1E is to be safe as long as possible, and then run for the east corner once you have to make things chaotic. Your demo basically does that; the only thing I'd identify as a mistake was killing the brain too early. The snakes will not get tangled if you keep them brained until all of them are dead.

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Dragon Fogel
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They absolutely will. That's what happened on previous attempts. I killed the brain early in the winning run because the snakes weren't stuck.

To be clear, what happened was a snake getting stuck on its own body while its movement options were limited. The brain being alive couldn't prevent that.

And also, unless this has changed in a newer version, the brain won't be able to affect their movement at the end because there are active firetraps. Which are brain obstacles.

But the bigger point is that if this is the intention of the room, I think it's a bad intent. There's a point at which the room feels entirely out of my control and it almost made me give up. As a player, I can't tell the difference between "now's the time to make a run for it" and "I screwed up, the snakes are out of control, guess I need to try something different". I did essentially similar things on the earlier attempts I gave up on, it's just that this time I noticed I happened to be close to the exit. And then the snakes got stuck.

Oh, one more thing: apologies if I'm pointing out something that's been fixed already, but in Warp Woods 1N2E, you can place the clone beyond the green door. If you go east before clearing the room, you're stuck.

Xindaris
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Weird, that never happened in any of my testing. But that's what I get for assuming. Perhaps a "checkerboard" of firetraps in the central section that aaaalll get turned on would prevent the issue, or at least make it a lot less likely.

The thing is, I originally set out (when building the room) to have a "fully safe path" to the "exit", after which pressing the button should just kill everything for free. But the constraint of exclusively using rattlesnakes as both wall and obstacle makes that basically impossible, and I feel the room wouldn't be nearly as interesting without that constraint. Having a point that is (to me obviously) near the end, at which things get slightly chaotic and you have to make a run for it, was the compromise made. Maybe I just didn't do a good enough job of building it, though.

Anyway--I posted my last reply before really looking at the rest of the demos. All looks pretty much fine, although 3N1W was supposed to require you to use the remote bomb as an obstacle for the soldiers at some point, exploding it to get it out of their way. And I'd pictured only a sworded player going into the passage with the roach at the end of the room. But your solution seems like overall a good enough alternative, and still does what I'd expect to be necessary in the central section.

Good catch on Warp Woods 1N2E. And so, for now...

Update:
-Added some force arrows to WW 1N2E so you can't get yourself stuck by placing a clone
-Added the room 2N2E to Warp Woods

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[Last edited by Xindaris at 05-25-2025 07:16 PM]

Dragon Fogel
Level: Smitemaster
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File: EaODT Warp Woods Fogel demos.demo (33.3 KB)
Downloaded 21 times.
License: Public Domain

Okay, done testing Warp Woods in an older version. By "done" I mean "I got down to one room (1S3E) and made a demo of my best attempt at it". Apparently I need to be more efficient even to get out, let alone go for the challenge.

In addition, it seems Warp Woods runs into an undo bug, which should probably be reported. Basically, if you undo back from recording, you don't get taken back to when you were recording; you get taken back to the turn before you stepped on the time token! This makes it hard to adjust recordings, though to be fair I only noticed it in 1S3E, so most of the level is pretty reasonable to record in. I recommend you report this, since you're the one who made the token and you know how it works.

There were some rooms that had me confused for a bit on this level, but mostly I was just having trouble finding time to play this when I was alert enough to think about the rooms properly. I didn't much care for 1N1E, though; basically I messed around, killed the roaches in the north, recorded a demo, and followed the demo with the timeclone. If the demo had ended up any more complex I would probably have given up on the room entirely.

I've grabbed the new version, but I'll probably take a short break from this before looking at new/changed rooms.

Xindaris
Level: Smitemaster

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Oh, yeah, I noticed the issue with undoing and...somehow it didn't occur to me to treat it like a real bug, investigate and/or report it. I just tried to place checkpoints carefully as a workaround. Some kind of weird brain fart on my part. It looks like it's still there in the 5.2 build, so I'll post a report soon.

Anyway, demos mostly look good. 3E was supposed to force the player to take advantage of the fact that horns (like potions) cease a recording...maybe I could tweak it slightly to still require that?

As for 1S3E, all I can say is that the solution the briar is timed to requires at least a little bit of "simultaneity". That is, I made the challenge after finding something a bit more optimal in that way.


...For the record, it is in my mind to rebuild RRF 3N1E a bit. One constraint I was really struggling with was trying to ensure that each rattlesnake would be freed by another one moving, but if I place firetraps on rattlesnake heads, then some of them can be stuck by their own tails instead, making them perpetual walls during the main part of the room, and that might make it easier to build something slightly less chaotic.


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[Last edited by Xindaris at 05-31-2025 04:30 AM]