Maze Room

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

You can have one of his hands holding an eyeball and the other hand holding a wrench or something.  That way both show pretty obvious differences.

[Dualnames]

You can have one of his hands holding an eyeball and the other hand holding a wrench or something.  That way both show pretty obvious differences.

I used to have this wrench on the older version of the gui (I think I borrowed that from LL), so it seems like a really nice idea, and I've actually embraced it.

[Dualnames]

Sorry for the DP.
BUMP

ISSUE 3# Maze Room

There's this room in HHGTG, that well, nevermind how you actually get there, but anyway, there's this room, you need to find a way out. There's no time pressuring you, and you're supposed to be inside your brain, where all is artistic choice actually and you need to find a black particle, which if you examine it means that it's your common sense. A fact that I find totally funny. Now, I haven't gone much drawing it but the sketch. So it's mostly raw and I want to see how certain stuff would actually work in-game.

So here's a pic of the room.

And here's what you should actually get as a resource.

downloadable playable version of the room below.

[GarageGothic]

Um, nice interface and I like the tracer effect on the character, but what exactly are you asking for criticism on in regards to this room? Maybe I'm missing something, but all I could do was pick up the particle on the desk? From the screenshot I expected that you would keep walking through the doorways and off the sides of the screen only to appear at a different entrance to the same room until the particle appeared. If it's the room layout that you want feedback on, could you please describe the gameplay of it in a bit more detail?

Since it's work in progress the only thing I would point out in terms of artwork is that the scroll speed of the staircase should be slower than scroll speed of the room (walls). At the moment it seems to have the same parallax depth of the lamps.

[Questionable]

Um, nice interface and I like the tracer effect on the character, but what exactly are you asking for criticism on in regards to this room? Maybe I'm missing something, but all I could do was pick up the particle on the desk? From the screenshot I expected that you would keep walking through the doorways and off the sides of the screen only to appear at a different entrance to the same room until the particle appeared. If it's the room layout that you want feedback on, could you please describe the gameplay of it in a bit more detail?

Since it's work in progress the only thing I would point out in terms of artwork is that the scroll speed of the staircase should be slower than scroll speed of the room (walls). At the moment it seems to have the same parallax depth of the lamps.

Seconded

P.S. I will edit this post when more information is given.

[Dualnames]

Um, nice interface and I like the tracer effect on the character, but what exactly are you asking for criticism on in regards to this room? Maybe I'm missing something, but all I could do was pick up the particle on the desk? From the screenshot I expected that you would keep walking through the doorways and off the sides of the screen only to appear at a different entrance to the same room until the particle appeared. If it's the room layout that you want feedback on, could you please describe the gameplay of it in a bit more detail?

Since it's work in progress the only thing I would point out in terms of artwork is that the scroll speed of the staircase should be slower than scroll speed of the room (walls). At the moment it seems to have the same parallax depth of the lamps.

Nice points there. For one I can't decide whether it's better to have the black particle stand there being the only interactive part of the game, or whether I should add more hotspots, so you see you gave an answer to a question I didn't make. Wondering however wouldn't it be hard to actually trace the black particle, and wouldn't you end up a 'try everything on everything' tactic?

However combining this problem with what you said about entrances, how about either do what you said, having the particle appear, or ... move the particle in different spots on the room so it can actually end up obvious and end up into a game of see the differences. As an in-joke, your common sense requires you being able to observe doesn't it?

On the entrances account, There are two, but I could use left and right.
Also on the tracer effect account, are the colors okay?
As for the background itself, should I actually go ahead and color or does black and white(with adding shades) seems better to you?


Solutions
-Add more hotspot thingies.
-Entrances.
-Fix scroll speed of the staircase.

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

Before playing the demo I felt the background might be at too steep an angle, but after seeing it in game I think it works.  The only thing I would suggest is that if proportions are at all valuable in this room to make the doorways tall enough that Arthur could walk beneath them with a foot or so clearance.  If any sort of realism is unimportant since this is in his mind, may I suggest making the doors wavy or otherwise more unrealistic to accentuate the strange surroundings.  I love the foreground and top parallax and look forward to seeing this colored.

[GarageGothic]

I don't think I ever played that far into the original Infocom version, so I'm not sure how its maze works. The walkthrough I could find just said "walk around until you find the particle" but didn't explain what triggers its appearance. Are the room descriptions identical? Do you walk around at random or is the maze geographically consistent (i.e. can you map it by dropping items like in other text adventures)?

I think it would be cool to add some element of interaction (and test the player's understanding of his surroundings) beyond just pixel hunting - for example, if there's a finite number of rooms that all look the same, you could perhaps push the stacks of books around as a means of marking rooms you've already visited. Another option would be to have every version of the room be slightly different - e.g. in one the flower is wilted, in another there's no puddle on the floor, or the spiral symbol on the banner is flipped horizontally.

The black and white works pretty well to set it apart from the rest of the game, but considering that you're inside Arthur's brain (as dull as he might be) the location seems oddly impersonal. In the midst of the surreal antics of HGGTG ("Ford, you're turning into a penguin. Stop it!") this - I suppose - extraordinary location seems frightfully ordinary.
Of course this could be an artistic choice, but I think a lot of fun could be had adding elements that describe his personality and possibly his hidden sides. Being John Malkovich-style. I realize that this may be straying too far from the Infocom game, but I can't help think "Wait, you put me inside someone's brain, and this is it?".

What follows is barely a suggestion, more of an crazy idea that I'm throwing out there: Another way to set it apart from the not-inside-someones-brain part of the game could be to do a straight-out homage to the Infocom game. Mock up a text-adventurish yet mouse controlled interface, and design the maze as a purely text based section of the game. I'm thinking huge green text on black background (possibly inspired by Sam & Max: Reality 2.0), but maybe substituting symbols for words, or having the text start as gibberish and let words descramble as you proceed (showing that you're getting closer to your common sense). Interactions could be something like dragging the words in the room descriptions around to make new meanings, sort of like Today I Die.

[Dualnames]

Before playing the demo I felt the background might be at too steep an angle, but after seeing it in game I think it works.  The only thing I would suggest is that if proportions are at all valuable in this room to make the doorways tall enough that Arthur could walk beneath them with a foot or so clearance.  If any sort of realism is unimportant since this is in his mind, may I suggest making the doors wavy or otherwise more unrealistic to accentuate the strange surroundings.  I love the foreground and top parallax and look forward to seeing this colored.

I think indeed the doors need to either fit Arthur or not fit him at all. Valid point there, ProgZ.
It's not dead obvious whether he can actually pass them or not.

I don't think I ever played that far into the original Infocom version, so I'm not sure how its maze works. The walkthrough I could find just said "walk around until you find the particle" but didn't explain what triggers its appearance. Are the room descriptions identical? Do you walk around at random or is the maze geographically consistent (i.e. can you map it by dropping items like in other text adventures)?

The original is actually more random than Mods could presume I am. You are in the room, supposedly Arthur brains, and you go either north or south (2 directions anyway), at some point RANDOMLY it appears on the room. When you go north or south, you're in the exact same room, but it's like entering it again.

I think it would be cool to add some element of interaction (and test the player's understanding of his surroundings) beyond just pixel hunting - for example, if there's a finite number of rooms that all look the same, you could perhaps push the stacks of books around as a means of marking rooms you've already visited. Another option would be to have every version of the room be slightly different - e.g. in one the flower is wilted, in another there's no puddle on the floor, or the spiral symbol on the banner is flipped horizontally.

I'm thinking of actually playing with 'find the differences' style with the whole maze puzzle.
Haven't however really decided yet.

The black and white works pretty well to set it apart from the rest of the game, but considering that you're inside Arthur's brain (as dull as he might be) the location seems oddly impersonal. In the midst of the surreal antics of HGGTG ("Ford, you're turning into a penguin. Stop it!") this - I suppose - extraordinary location seems frightfully ordinary.
Of course this could be an artistic choice, but I think a lot of fun could be had adding elements that describe his personality and possibly his hidden sides. Being John Malkovich-style. I realize that this may be straying too far from the Infocom game, but I can't help think "Wait, you put me inside someone's brain, and this is it?".

I'm actually thinking of making this whole room, Arthur's personal paradise. I think however the only place Arthur's paradice is is his home. And I don't want to use his home. Instead I'm thinking of making this into something else. Throughout the game, Arthur is searching for the tea. If you've seen ice age (any part), you'll get the idea of how something can motivate. So I'm thinking of actually adding a tea, as a walking tea. Running actually. That will run through doors into different versions of this room. So Arthur will actually have to trap it somehow. And at that point he'll gain his common sense.

What follows is barely a suggestion, more of an crazy idea that I'm throwing out there: Another way to set it apart from the not-inside-someones-brain part of the game could be to do a straight-out homage to the Infocom game. Mock up a text-adventurish yet mouse controlled interface, and design the maze as a purely text based section of the game. I'm thinking huge green text on black background (possibly inspired by Sam & Max: Reality 2.0), but maybe substituting symbols for words, or having the text start as gibberish and let words descramble as you proceed (showing that you're getting closer to your common sense). Interactions could be something like dragging the words in the room descriptions around to make new meanings, sort of like Today I Die.

I'd love to add this element into the puzzle.

[Dualnames]

New Version of the room
Download

It's very barren, it feels most of the game is broken, but the puzzle should work alright.
Hint&Tips

Spoiler

The point is to match the descriptions and enter the door,
Then pick up the particle that has appeared on the table by the book

[close]