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Message: 5822
Author: andrewbroad
Date: 27/04/2006
Subject: Death TV v0.3... Andrew's third playtest
(This follows on from Message 5803.)
Previously I wrote:
>To the top-left corner of Room 0. So I must teleport again, this
> I guess for my third playtest I'll get through [23] using a
> harmless-guardians POKE, and see where that portal takes me...
time to [42]...
> [42] "": I'm not sure which World this untitled room belongs to,Compared with DTV2_taster of 13th May 2005, this room appears to
> but it reminds me very much of a room from Robin Burrows's
> _Platform One_ <http://www.tilemap.co.uk/platformone.html>.
> I haven't actually played it yet - only seen it from the top
> (after going down from [53]), and it's not possible to descend.
> The colours look wrong: Cell-class 3 (Earth) should surely
> have red PAPER, and Cell-classes 1 and 7 (Water) should have green
> INK for an attractive 'Megatree' atmosphere.
have taken a retrograde step!
Cell-class 4 (Ramp /) has the same colour-attribute as Cell-
class 7 (Water), so the Ramp / cells that you see in JSWED turn into
Water-cells in the game.
But I do think the following design-pattern in the v0.3...
revision is kind of neat:
||...../
|...../.
|..../..
||../.WW
||./..WW
||||||/\
-----------
Miner World
-----------
[17/29] "Rescue Esmer... I mean... Monty?": The hidden entrance to
this room in [4] is unfair - I only discovered it after I had
concluded that [17] was unreachable and teleported there! I don't
think it's fair to have tricks like this in a JSW64 game where there
are too many cell-classes to use process of elimination (in a
JSW48/128 room, I try to account for all 6 cell-classes - I find 6
much easier than 8).
I'm not sure I like the effectively-invisible item behind the
teleporter from [17] to [29]. That said, it's a nice (pair of)
room(s) overall.
[29] in v0.3... is a completely different room from "" [29] in
DTV2_taster, which uses invisible trampolines and fast Crumbly cells
to simulate the kind of effect I'll be able to have when I implement
vertical conveyors (the room is rather tedious, but it always feels
a shame to get rid of a MM/JSW room).
[18] "A Very Deep, Dark, Dank Place": An atmospheric but rather
pointless room as it stands. Going left gives you a Promised Land
view of [6], so an item at the far right of [6] would reward you for
crossing the top-left of this room.
The right half of this room is unreachable AFAICT. The top-
right looks like it should connect to something sensible. I hope to
see these loose ends tied up at some point.
[37] "Adding Insult to Injury": The way to reach this room from [13]
is devious! I must admit I didn't spot it in the second playtest, as
I had flicked a switch you're not supposed to flick...
"Adding Insult to Injury" is a very difficult room to avoid
sacrificing a life in, as there are three points at which you must
leave Crumbly cells to escape. At first I was glad it wasn't a No
Kamikaze room, but now I think it /should/ be, as there's much more
satisfaction in solving it properly than in collecting all the items
and then realising you can't get back out.
What is a "LOJCR"? ;-)
[37] "" in DTV2_taster is a completely different room from "Adding
Insult to Injury", and again it would be a shame to lose it.
[41] "Miner World": Seems to be a meaningless copy of an old
revision of [13].
---------
Toy World
---------
[25] "": Obviously a work-in-progress, with its basic design and
lack of proper connections. The right half is unreachable if you
come in from the left, so I teleported to the top-right in order to
collect both items.
[26] "Toy World": Obviously a work-in-progress, with its basic
design and lack of proper connections, but I love the Lego-brick
cell-graphics! I used to spend endless hours building things with
Lego (especially schools and castles, and always with lots and lots
of toilets) before I got into MM/JSW editing, with the ability to
save my work on computer and turn it into playable games! :-)
-------------
Machine World
-------------
I'm not sure what the start-room of this world is supposed to be, so
I teleported first to [24], and then to [32] which is to the right
of [24] (it's infinite death to go left from [32]).
[24] "A Great Big Pit Of Slime To Jump": Obviously a work-in-
progress, with its crude graphics, IDS below, and the way you can
get trapped between Earth-cells and have to reset the game.
[27] "Machine World": I like the way you have guardians passing
through Water-cells, finely avoiding pixel-collision, and collecting
the top-right item was fun for me (rushing through a swarm of
guardians until you reach the place where you can wait safely).
Unfortunately if you collect the rightmost item first, then it
is impossible to collect the leftmost without sacrificing a life, as
the slow HG turns into a fast HG when you collect the last item in
the room. This is unforeseeable and therefore unfair.
The left half of the room is unreachable from the right, and
the connections there don't make sense anyway.
[28] "Machine World": I had a devil of a job trying to crack this
room of Eugenes, triggers, opening walls and No Kamikaze. It's
unreachable AFAICT, so I had to teleport to the bottom-right to
collect that item and escape, then to the top-left to collect the
items there and escape, and I still don't feel like I solved it
properly.
Both exits from this room - left and down - are infinite-death
scenarios.
[30] "Machine World": The item at the bottom-right feels redundant,
as the player is almost certainly going to go down and collect it
immediately after collecting the middle item. The bottom-right item
would be better placed at the bottom-left, to reward the player for
getting there.
My policy on items is to reward each distinct challenge with a
single item - especially in a 128-room game where you're limited to
an average of two items per room (in a 64-room game I can afford to
be more profligate, for I do love the sound of collecting multiple
items together).
[31] "Machine World": The guardians at the right remind me of the
pan-lights in _Bruce Lee_, only slower and closer together.
[32] "Machine World": I entered Machine World by teleporting to the
top-left of this room, although in retrospect I should probably have
started at the bottom-right, in order to experience all the
constraints of this room in terms of the switch and opening wall.
This room has two traps to avoid: jumping onto the ledge below
the middle item forces you to sacrifice a life, and getting stuck
below the magenta HG in the top-right forces you to reset the game -
these two punishments are probably commensurate with the stupidity
of falling into these traps, although a time-limit (e.g. an air-
supply) would be nice in the latter case.
It's also quite clever how the HGs and VGs in the middle square
cross each other's paths, but remain in phase so that they never
collide (although maybe this would be desirable to impose the
aforementioned time-limit!). As a player you tend not to expect such
overlaps, which can even fool you into moving too soon, like a
stupid car waiting behind a more cautious car at a roundabout.
The v0.3... revision has lost some things from the DTV2_taster
revision: in DTV2_taster there's an extra item and an Earth-cell
that has to be walked left through at head-height, and you can't get
stuck under the magenta HG, not to mention the different VG-sprites.
[33] "Machine World": An extravagant 'Bathroom', though you'll
probably want to change the 'Willy in toilet' sprite (#A640).
[34] "Machine World": Going right from this room results in infinite
death in "" [36].
[36] "" (the room formerly known as "Machine World"): In v0.3...
this is an almost blank room where you just fall to your infinite
death on entry (left from [28] or right from [34]). In DTV2_taster,
however, it's a proper playable room from where you can go up to the
bottom-right of [32] - it would be a shame to lose that.
[38] "Machine World": It's nice to see that you can still have
invalid arrows in JSW64. But what's the point of this room?
[40] "Machine World": I like the way you have to move with the
knives. This is the way such guardians should move: smoothly, not
jerkily!
I can find no way to leave the [27,30,31,32,34,39,40] cluster (other
than the infinite-death scenarios listed above).
---------------
Nightmare World
---------------
[43] "Nightmare World": I teleported to the left-hand side of this
room (going left just takes you to [0], like so many exits in this
game).
There's more to this room than meets the eye, with Crumbly
cells having the same appearance as Water-cells, and an invisible
conveyor-ramp which is presumably intended as the entrance to this
room.
[44] "Good Lord! They Caught You At It": At what? This room is just
a near-copy of "On top of the house" from the original JSW.
-----------
water world
-----------
[51] "Pick a Death": What's the point of this room? It looks like it
could be the Death TV world-selector, but it lacks any sensible
connections, or teleporters...
The room-name seems to have more meaning in the DTV2_taster
revision, which has five gaps at the bottom of the screen.
[57] "off": Making the player try to pass the yellow & green VGs
whilst wearing that diving-costume that cannot stand in one cell-
column is a cruel torture, and I have to conclude that it is
probably impossible, and had to collect the items by cheating.
After collecting the leftmost item, you can either walk into
[58] and fall to the room below, or jump left into [58] and face an
infinite-death scenario. I can't find a way from [57] to [58]
without cheating.
[58] "off": I like the way you have to find the correct alignment to
jump off the tallest Water-column onto the one on the left (going up
takes you to infinite death in Egypt World).
[59] "off": The bottom two items can't be collected without
cheating, which is a shame because it looks like you should be able
to collect them by jumping over Fire-cells and landing /inside/ the
adjacent stand-onable cells.
[60] "off": A good 'sunken ship' atmosphere, but it could do with
one more item to completely hide the skeleton that walks behind them!
[73-76] "water world" are completely different rooms in DTV2_taster
from in v0.3... The old rooms just kill you on entry due to
guardians colliding with the scenery. They look like they might have
been part of an animated teleporter-sequence?
[77] "water world": A superjump-experiment by the look of it, which
seems very appropriate to Water World, but the layout is meaningless.
[78] "water world": This appears to be a corrupted copy of [54].
Items collected 129 Time 9:43am
I still need to explore [64-71] and [79-92]. One more playtest
should do it...
--
Dr. Andrew Broad
http://geocities.com/andrewbroad/
http://geocities.com/andrewbroad/spectrum/
http://geocities.com/andrewbroad/spectrum/willy/
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