Beta 4: Dr. Demented's Den

[jamesbolton@cox.ne]

417C7140767674767F130 wrote:

Jim - I also appreciated your feedback and willingness to try the mansion out despite the rapid fire changes.


Rob

My pleasure Rob, it was a blast. Thanks for all your efforts to make this mansion happen.

jim

[margherita64]

7D404D7C4A4A484A432F0 wrote:

What are your thoughts on the overall difficulty level? It's already considerably easier than it was initially. Do you think it fits in with other included hard mansions? Do you feel it's an improvement over the original Hard version?

One of the things I sort of like and dislike is all the save platforms. I like having a lot of save areas, but I don't like the idea that they all necessarily grant Jack additional lives.

It really makes me wish that MM supported two types of save platforms. One which can be used one time and resets lives to 6 (if Jacks total is less than 6 like we have now), and another type which could be used as many times as the player wants, but doesn't add any more lives.

If I were to ask you to choose 4 save platforms to remove, which ones would they be?

I think that now the difficult is ok!
About the saving point: when I was playing I found useless these 3 platform because in my path 15298 and 16309 were very close to my previous save and i found 16694 at the very beginning of the path, in the dark.
I can't say if this is true for all the players... Semi Native? What do you think about?

[Semi-Native]

There are a lot of Save points, and some of them are very close together, but depending on the path the player takes, they may not be. I've found myself leaving some of them and coming back to use them later and being grateful they were available. So, I guess my thought is that I'd leave most of them in.

As far as difficulty, it is a lot easier than it was before, but it's still pretty difficult. I think it seems easier to us testers because we've played through it so much, we know what to do. I can't really guess how players will judge it the first time through.

Rob, you've done an amazing job with this mansion, and you've put so much effort and many, many hours into it. Great work! I know how anxious you are to get your life back.

;D

[Semi-Native]

I just finished with only 91% secrets and a lot less money. I missed a yellow key somewhere. My bad. :-[

15300 Jack got the last set of keys from 15298, travelled right to 15300 on the blue bat platform. It now has a down arrow, but nothing happens when Jack jumps on it, it doesn't move. (see pic)

margherita, congratulations for getting 100% and all money, that's awesome!!!

[RobSeegel]

5C6A626622416E7B66796A0F0 wrote: I just finished with only 91% secrets and a lot less money. I missed a yellow key somewhere. My bad.  :-[

15300  Jack got the last set of keys from 15298, travelled right to 15300 on the blue bat platform. It now has a down arrow, but nothing happens when Jack jumps on it, it doesn't move. (see pic)

margherita, congratulations for getting 100% and all money, that's awesome!!!

Just seeing that image made me realize there's another issue even with this fix. You wouldn't have had space available to get that key even if it had gone down, which is a problem. I do have an idea for it though, which I'll fix when I get home.

I could put up a trigger that will permanantly create a platform going back up if Jack comes down that way, so that even if he missed it the one time, he'd be able to go back up easier and get it later.

I have had another thought on how to fix this key business.... I could move those blue keys in each of the green key rooms (except for the last one) so that there are behind the green doors next to the levers. This would mean that Jack would only have as many as 1 green and 1 blue key at a time.

The downside here is that Jack would have to make multiple trips. I had initially thought to leave this up to the player when deciding when to pick up the various keys, because at worst it would mean that Jack might have to make a few extra trips. If I go with the other approach, I'm basically forcing Jack to go after one key at a time.

Kind of a bummer - on one hand key management was always going to be one of the challenges (for the player), but because of how things are spread out, I can see how frustrating that would be. Oh well... it will give me something to think about during my commute home.

[RobSeegel]

5F5340555A57405B46530406320 wrote: I think that now the difficult is ok!
About the saving point: when I was playing I found useless these 3 platform because in my path 15298 and 16309  were very close to my previous save and i found 16694 at the very beginning of the path, in the dark.
I can't say if this is true for all the players... Semi Native? What do you think about?

Do you mean you were able to get to 16694 in the beginning when it was dark? Hmmm... that shouldn't have been possible. I thought I had a gray door blocking it that would only open from the other side. Even so, that one isn't all that far from the previous one. I'll check this out.

I also agree with the one in 16309, but I'll think about it some more tonight.

[RobSeegel]

73454D490D6E4154495645200 wrote: 15300  Jack got the last set of keys from 15298, travelled right to 15300 on the blue bat platform. It now has a down arrow, but nothing happens when Jack jumps on it, it doesn't move.

It just occurred to me... I know what happened here. Ugh, boy do I feel stupid. I'll fix it... but I think I might end up changing this screen back to the way it had been before.

I'm leaning very heavily at the moment with putting two of the blue keys behind green doors in the room with the four green doors.  I need to do a little figuring, but that might be enough to prevent the worst problems.

[Semi-Native]

Rob, I wouldn't make Jack have to make even more trips back to get keys. He has to do a lot of backtracking as it is.

Could you do away with some doors without too much reconfiguring? That would solve the problem.

[RobSeegel]

13252D296D0E2134293625400 wrote: Rob, I wouldn't make Jack have to make even more trips back to get keys. He has to do a lot of backtracking as it is.

Could you do away with some doors without too much reconfiguring? That would solve the problem.

The easiest thing I could do is trigger some mechanism that makes it possible to easily return and get that yellow key later, once you dump at least one of those green keys, which should be fairly easy depending on which green doors are still locked. Do you remember which ones were still closed? Depending on which one it is, there would be minimal backtracking. I feel less bad about forcing Jack to backtrack for yellow key than a green one.

That is.. once I fix the top. I had put a trigger up top to stop the platform Jack was riding on. I didn't intend for it to be hit from where you were though.

Because Jack is on a blue platform, he could choose to go back up the way he came (once on the bottom several screens down). If he did, I wanted the platform to stop when he got back to the top.

[RobSeegel]

I tried to minimize the changes and resisted temptation to add anything else that resulted in significant backtracking.

(from semi native's post(s))
15300 - removed top trigger which stops the platform. It turned out to be unnecessary. If Jack should take the platform back up, it will stop underneath the ledge, any jump Jack takes should take him off the moving platform - his

punishment

for coming back up this way. It's not much of a punishment. Jack could take the pole down, or go back over to the green key room, and ride the platform back down.

15900 - Here was the area I was concerned about. If you had taken the platform above down here with no slots then you'd have been unable to get the key without getting rid of one and going back to the top to get it. I considered leaving it as is (given that it's an optional yellow key) but felt a little generous. Instead I set up a trigger which if you were unable to get the key, starts up a moving platform that you can use to get the key from this room after you go and use up a key. This means a *little* backtracking, but saves you the much longer trip back to the top.

Since that was the last of the 5 yellow keys, I shouldn't have to mess with any of the others.

(from margherita's post)
16494 - I ensured that Jack could not open the gray door from the right side. That was completely unintentional, and would mean that Jack would enter the underground without a lantern nearby (and grant early access to a save point).

The vault and various rooms: Removed all backpacks except for 1. Reduced overall gold to 80000. It's a lot of treasure, but a lot of it it is in the vault scattered throughout, and is more a means of tracking score than anything else.

I'm not 100% sure how the high scores are arranged (aside from the obvious), but I would expect that a lower time would be ranked higher than a higher one given two identical scores. There are different approaches that can be taken which are faster than others.

I left the save points alone for now, though I still think there are a few too many.