Mattcrampy
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A puzzle checkpoint is placed by an architect in a room that has no monsters in it. Puzzle checkpoints are invisible during play, but there can be more than one in a room. As they're invisible, it is advisable to fill a room with them.

If Beethro steps on any one puzzle checkpoint, the room counts for the purposes of CaravelNet, and Beethro is considered to have 'solved' the puzzle. Otherwise, empty rooms do not count for demos.

Matt

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Krishh
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While this would solve many of the 1 move demos in puzzle rooms, this suggestion does pose 3 problems.

1) It depends on the architect, therefore the architect is responsible for this to not be abused, or for this to work at all.

2) All the existing puzzle rooms in all the existing holds would need to be modified to avoid cheating if this is to be consistent.

3) If the architect needs to place something anyway to make demos work, he might as well just place a brain at the end of the room.

Mattcrampy
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Yeah, I did think of that. Well, the brain one.

Heyyyy....

What if empty monster rooms with red doors in them are considered 'puzzle' rooms, and the demo only counts if you drop the red door? This only works for red door rooms, unfortunately, but it's better than nothing. And there really is no way to tell if you've solved a yellow door room.

Matt

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Rabscuttle
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What about two sorts of markers - one for entrances and one for exits?

wmarkham
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I have only looked at the scripting features briefly, but I would like to have scripts that express the exact criteria for "room solved". Basically, the architect could create one or more scripts that would wait until whatever requisite events have occurred, and then issue a "room solved" command.

At any rate, in the scripting stuff, no special room elements are needed in order to detect Beethro stepping at a particular location. (or at least none are displayed in the editor) In my opinion, the "puzzle checkpoints" ought to be implemented without one as well.

agaricus5
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wmarkham wrote:
I have only looked at the scripting features briefly, but I would like to have scripts that express the exact criteria for "room solved". Basically, the architect could create one or more scripts that would wait until whatever requisite events have occurred, and then issue a "room solved" command.

I don't particularly like this idea. It's already possible to do this (although quite long-windedly) in the scripting system we have now, and making it more user-friendly is just going to be asking for abuse of the system. Hold builders might not bother making elaborate but visible defences to a solution, since they can instead just use an invisible script to do it more efficiently, which leaves the player with a lot of guessing to do.

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wmarkham
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agaricus5 wrote:
I don't particularly like this idea. It's already possible to do this (although quite long-windedly) in the scripting system we have now, and making it more user-friendly is just going to be asking for abuse of the system. Hold builders might not bother making elaborate but visible defences to a solution, since they can instead just use an invisible script to do it more efficiently, which leaves the player with a lot of guessing to do.

Hmm. I'm not sure that I like the idea that making something more user-friendly invites abuse of that feature. From what I've seen of the scripting, the way to do this would be to add, say, an inaccessible red serpent to the room with a script that closes a door on him. In other words, the scripting affects the subsequent gameplay. Please correct me if I am mistaken; I'm new to the scripting, of course! Honestly, I would prefer if the scripting were done in such a way that either it could not possibly affect gameplay, or it would be obvious to the player if the scripting would. Of course, this would not prevent hold creators from building some arbitrary, invisible criterion for determining that a room has been "solved". However, if a "puzzle checkpoint" is invisible during play, then I don't see how they are any better.

agaricus5
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wmarkham wrote:

agaricus5 wrote:
I don't particularly like this idea. It's already possible to do this (although quite long-windedly) in the scripting system we have now, and making it more user-friendly is just going to be asking for abuse of the system. Hold builders might not bother making elaborate but visible defences to a solution, since they can instead just use an invisible script to do it more efficiently, which leaves the player with a lot of guessing to do.

Hmm. I'm not sure that I like the idea that making something more user-friendly invites abuse of that feature. From what I've seen of the scripting, the way to do this would be to add, say, an inaccessible red serpent to the room with a script that closes a door on him. In other words, the scripting affects the subsequent gameplay. Please correct me if I am mistaken; I'm new to the scripting, of course! Honestly, I would prefer if the scripting were done in such a way that either it could not possibly affect gameplay, or it would be obvious to the player if the scripting would. Of course, this would not prevent hold creators from building some arbitrary, invisible criterion for determining that a room has been "solved". However, if a "puzzle checkpoint" is invisible during play, then I don't see how they are any better.

I thought a puzzle checkpoint is something that tells DROD to upload the score for a room without monsters to CaravelNet.

From what I gather, you're asking for a script that has a certain set of criteria to meet in order to mark a room as "completed" and if not fulfilled, the player has to restart or complete the room again at a later time in order to open green or blue doors.

Of course, I may be misunderstanding you and you may have meant a script that tells DROD to upload a score if a room has been completed in a certain way, but this is still open to abuse more than a puzzle checkpoint, since an architect could still force a player to do an arbitary set of things to upload a score.

Also...

Hmm. I'm not sure that I like the idea that making something more user-friendly invites abuse of that feature.

Well, that would depend on how many other uses there are for the object which don't involve abuse, and for something like this, with only one main function, I would say it would make it more open for abuse. You could always argue that you could ignore holds that use it, but if the proportion of its usage in abusing the system is higher than its usage in proper ways, then I don't think it would be worth the effort to implement it.

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wmarkham
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agaricus5 wrote:
I thought a puzzle checkpoint is something that tells DROD to upload the score for a room without monsters to CaravelNet.

From what I gather, you're asking for a script that has a certain set of criteria to meet in order to mark a room as "completed" and if not fulfilled, the player has to restart or complete the room again at a later time in order to open green or blue doors.

Wow. That's exactly not what I was asking for! (Actually, I wouldn't even say that I'm "asking" for anything. I'm just suggesting what I feel to be a good solution to a problem.) I did mean, as you say, "a script that tells DROD to upload a score if a room has been completed in a certain way". I also envision it triggering the recording of a "victory" demo, by the way. My comments about game play were only because of your suggestion that the existing scripting system could already do what I am describing.

The sort of example I have in mind is something like a room with two parts: a monster-killing puzzle on the left and a trapdoor-dropping puzzle on the right. I am supposing that it is possible to clear the monsters out (dropping green doors) and leave, without ever entering the trapdoor puzzle. The player could then come back and complete the trapdoor maze. It is also possible for the player to skip the monster puzzle, and go straight to the trapdoor puzzle. (I don't know if this is a required room for dropping the blue doors. In fact, I don't know whether or not either of the puzzles must be completed in order to exit the level.) I am imagining that it ought to be up to the hold author to decide whether or not completing each individual half of the room is necessary for a "victory" condition.

I do concede that offering this sort of flexibility would allow authors to make the player do arbitrarily complex things in order to upload a score. The difference from the puzzle checkpoint is not, IMO, the arbitrariness, but rather the complexity. The potential for abuse stems from that arbitrariness. The author can easily place a puzzle checkpoint in an inconvenient, invisible location. (I am imagining it being somewhere within a complex force arrow maze, or a maze of orbs and doors. What? I have to try all of them in order to score a victory??) If I trust that the author will not abuse the puzzle checkpoints in this manner, then I, personally, trust them enough to give them even more flexibility in how they decide that I have "solved" a room.

Which, I guess, brings me back to:

Hmm. I'm not sure that I like the idea that making something more user-friendly invites abuse of that feature.

Well, that would depend on how many other uses there are for the object which don't involve abuse, and for something like this, with only one main function, I would say it would make it more open for abuse. You could always argue that you could ignore holds that use it, but if the proportion of its usage in abusing the system is higher than its usage in proper ways, then I don't think it would be worth the effort to implement it.

I think I might be on a different page here again, so just as a sanity check, I'll rephrase the statement that I was responding to: "making it [the scripting system] more user-friendly is just going to be asking for abuse of the [scripting] system." I didn't think that this was a statement that had anything to do with puzzle checkpoints. (And now I'm just not sure.) Did I misunderstand the antecedent of "it"?

Anyway, speaking in the abstract, I would say that making a feature more user-friendly generally does make it more "abuser-friendly" as well. If some feature (puzzle checkpoints or what-have-you) is already present within the scripting system, and it is there because the benefit of its proper use already outweighs the possible abuses of it, then I don't see the harm in making the proper use easier, even if it also makes the abuse easier.