07-15-2011, 08:07 PM
1526312D09262D30262D430 wrote: Ugh. To fix all that, carefully -- would take a very long time. Much more than I was wanting to take at this point.
Sorry to be the bearer of bad news. I may have mentioned it in some of the emails back in April/May - though I didn't lay it out quite like I did in this thread. When you didn't really react back then, I sort of shrugged and continued with what I was doing. I did take some time to try and make sure that keys didn't cause a stuck situation. I wasn't able to find one. I thought I'd found one once, but it only forced Jack to take a nearly fatal drop. (I'll find the spot - it was in nightmare mansion).
I have to admit, I was a little surprised to see the numbers when I grouped them all together, and I had some idea of the extent of the problem.
All of those cases are not necessarily the same either. Some of the imbalances (like the one for Spider mansion) are barely worth mentioning. Another thing to keep in mind is that at least some of the imbalances were planned this way. Changing them fundamentally changes the character of the mansion (like the mansions that have a fork in them.).
Perhaps if we can group the imbalances into a few categories and better understand them, it will better tell us how to deal with them. I'm guessing a lot of these are fine as they are. Some may only need small changes.
As a recommendation for future work, it would be worthwhile for you to lay out stricter rules for in-game mansions for designers to adhere to. Reduce the amount of gray area. Such rules would be useful for designers and testers alike.