agaricus5
Level: Smitemaster
Rank Points: 1838
Registered: 02-04-2003
IP: Logged
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Informal Testing for Bavato's Dungeon (+2)
Started in June 2003, I spent a year and a month or two to build Bavato's Dungeon, and get it through alpha testing. Beta testing got the hold restructured and many trivial solutions were found. However, the final hold wasn't to be, for it itself had three critical bugs and many trivial solutions to be fixed, which meant that the hold had to be updated 7 times, which I still regret.
Although fully playable now (you can complete the present version entirely), it's certainly not completely finished, for recently, I made a number of alternate solution discoveries, which were totally unexpected, and made rooms a lot easier compared to my intended solutions. On replaying the hold, I discovered a few of them, some inspired by help topics, and all because I'm a better player of DROD compared to what I used to be. The player base has also expanded a great deal, with a pretty large number of pretty good DROD players out there, some of whom have completed or played through a lot of the hold. And so, with this vastly improved tester force, and a new version of DROD, I'm now going to update Bavato's Dungeon at some time in the future to make a new, improved version especially for DROD 2.0.
So... I ask for your help once again. If you've got the hold, and played through it once before, or are playing it now, you could, if you wish, help me test the hold, and stamp out any remaining bugs or problems left, or suggest minor improvements to rooms or structure. If you haven't played it before, you can still help me - all you have to do is download it from here and start playing.
Where do the mod points come into this, you may ask?
Well, I have amassed a collection of over 240 of them, being quite lazy, which should be put to much better use, and so, as a counter to this (admittedly) self-promotion, and an incentive to people to help, I'm going to distribute mod points to everyone who makes a valid contribution.
What I'm looking for:
If you find a trivial solution, a bug, or a solution that feels too easy to be intended, compared to the relative hold and level difficulty, I'll give you 5 rank points if I confirm it as trivial or definitely unexpected and requiring change.
If you have an issue with any particular rooms being unfair, tedious, unpleasant, or anything else negative or offputting, and have a valid reason for it (i.e. not purely because you need to be skilled at DROD, but perhaps because it relies too heavily on monster placement order, for example), then I'll give you 2 rank points, once I confirm it. Providing me with a suggestion for improvements will get you 3 rank points instead of 2.
If you've got a comment to make about improving a room's aesthetics, playability (i.e. checkpoint placement, for example) or anything else to do with improving the hold to make it better, then I'll give you 2 rank points if I agree with you.
If you just want to throw some support in (or something negative, with a reasonable explanation) and make a general comment about a level or the hold, or something else, then I'll give you 1 rank point for it (although if you wish to do this, I'd prefer it to be posted in the hold's thread, rather than here, so I don't get confused later when I go through everything).
If you spot or notice anything odd or inconsistent with the storyline, see improvement for rewording, catch a spelling or grammatical error, or anything else like this, either in the hold or on the first page of the hold's thread, then I'll give you 1 rank point for each one I confirm.
Anything else that is posted, which I find useful, but which isn't in any of these categories, will also get points.
I can predict that there may be significant problems with this, in the sense that everyone may start clamoring for the rank points, and so arguments or swamping this thread may happen, so I'm going to include one or two guidelines to follow here:
1. Please don't duplicate someone else's report or finding. If someone else has already found or suggested something, I won't award anything for a repeat report.
2. Please include a valid and preferably detailed explanation for a comment or finding. I'll only give you the points if I can actually see what you mean.
3. The hold is not going to be significantly restructured; only small, minor changes will be made that won't affect existing puzzles too extensively (I'm not replacing rooms or puzzles, for example).
4. Be honest with your comments. Don't post things here or in the hold's thread just for the sake of getting the rank point. The main idea is to improve the hold; rank points are just an incentive to get people involved.
5. It is up to my discretion whether I agree with you or not. I'm not too strict on such requirements, but there will inevitably be things that I don't agree with, and which I therefore won't do anything about, so don't be disappointed if I don't incorporate your idea. If it's been well written, and is understandably valid, you may still get the points, however.
And that's about all, really. I will look over any comments in the past month or so, and award points according to the above rules.
Edit: Oh, and I shall make L12 and L9 Entrance exceptions to this, since I am aware about possible comments for them, and will not be changing anything in those rooms.
[Edited by agaricus5 at Local Time:01-10-2005 at 10:46 PM]
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Resident Medic/Mycologist
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) (Nah, just very difficult) (I especially dislike trapdoors under tar. Now you know which rooms I skipped in level 7...)
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