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[dormir]

Hi Zugz,

I'm a little busy at the moment but I'll hopefully try out the new version in a day or two. Just a few responses though:

Pivot arm graphics: Yeah, clawing mechanic but also to make collisions between two arms more intuitive. They are so thin at the moment that it looks like they could just fit alongside each other sometimes.

Compressed/extended springs brighter: sounds good.

The editor itself: The editor is pretty good actually. The one thing I forgot to mention last time is that it would be nice to be able to compress/extend a spring in place. So far as I could work out the only way to make a compressed spring is to make a normal one and then move the pieces together. This can be a big problem if you don't have the space. Incidentally, make sure to tell players about right click dragging to move pieces. I only found out about that by reading Quicksand's post.

Blockages blocking other blockages: I think the decision you've made on the mechanics is fine. It's more a matter of communicating those mechanics, especially where they may seem unintuitive to players. Hopefully the new animations will help with that.

OK, I haven't played the version with the new animations yet but, couldn't you have animations togglable with a button at the top right (eg. next to the blocking arrows toggle)? Then they could be off by default but available as a very useful tool for the player when the mechanics start to get confusing. Anyway, I ought to reserve judgement really until I've tried them as they currently are.

[zugz]

OK, I've tried thickening the arms. I'm not quite sure about it, but maybe it will help.

I've also added on-screen mouse control help in the bottom-left, when the keyboard control buttons aren't shown (which by default they aren't).

I like the way you have to manually compress a spring and rearrange things to wedge it in to your lock-under-construction... I know it can be annoying, but it gives the process a hands-on feel I really like.

I think you'll find the animations aren't annoying. The only problem is that they might be too quick to be helpful - but given undo, I hope not. Anyway, the crucial thing is just to make players realise that there are these two phases to the physics calculations, which it should do.

Don't worry about not testing immediately, or even at all. You've been hugely helpful, and even if you never looked at it again my gratitude would be great.

[Maunomau]

I kind of wish pivot arms could be longer. Other than that the game is awesome.

[zugz]

Thanks! Good to hear.

The problem with making arms longer is that if the arm has pivots on either side of it, you need to be able to tell which pivot owns the arm.

[Maunomau]

Wouldn't it be easier to tell which they belong to if they were longer? Not that I think it's too hard to tell atm.

[zugz]

I mean, when you have this situation: "o-o", the arm ('-') belongs to one of the two pivots ('o'). If the arm is drawn too long, it looks rather like it looks in text, and it's hard (without using colour) to tell which it belongs to.

[zugz]

It's only been half a year since last I asked you wonderful TIGSers to tell me what's wrong with my game, but here I am doing so again.

Remaining obstinately and unreasonably hopeful that this game might one day get players, I've recently made another push towards making it more approachable and learnable. I'd like to know how successful that's been, and what more could be done.

So I'm particularly hoping for people who haven't looked at this game before to give it a go, and tell me if they manage to figure it out, or where they get stuck. Even more specifically, I'd like to know if you get through the tutorial cleanly, and then if you can figure out what's going on after that.

Any and all other comments or suggestions from anyone are also welcome, of course.

That download link one more time: http://mbays.freeshell.org/intricacy/

[Maunomau]

No one but you has solved my locks
I tried to solve CVZ's lock but had to stop after almost getting it.
But he'll never know that I even tried so maybe you should let people know whenever someone tries to open their lock(Not sure if necessary but having some sort of "give up for now" button might make it possible to differentiate between people just randomly opening locks and failing to solve them).
Or even better, until the game gets so insanely popular that it'd be too much to read, you could tell what every player has been doing to every one.
Something like a activity log that says stuff like "x created a new lock 3 months ago", "y tried to open x's lock a week ago" and so on. That way I could start the game just to check what other players have done since currently other than trying to open the few locks that I haven't been able to or making a new lock I don't really have a reason to start the game.

Also I think I forgot my password since it never asks for it unless I switch computers.

[zugz]

Hi NOI. You're right that it would be nice to know when people are trying your locks, and even nicer to see their failed attempts. That was one of the coolest things about The Castle Doctrine. But the problem is that the people trying your lock have no reason to give you that information, and indeed would rationally prefer not to lest it cause you to stop securing valuable notes behind that lock. So since the client is meant to be on the side of the player, the client doesn't even tell the server about failed attempts on locks (nor even undeclared successful attempts).

So I'm afraid the only solution to the lack of interesting things happening is to get more players! Somehow.

[Maunomau]

Hmm, I don't think failed attempts would make me stop securing notes behind it, opposite in fact since surely it just proves that the lock is working. Also would people really care enough about the metagame to change the lock they secure notes behind based on failed attempts? I suppose with enough players it might start to matter. Anyway surely you could add a optional fail declaration so that crazy people who for some reason do want to share it(like me) can.
Even without failed attempts I think giving the information/changes that you can currently figure out with some effort(declared solutions, placement of locks and new players) in a more easily digestible form would be good.

[zugz]

I think failure stays silent for now, sorry, if only to keep things simple. You can always post on the oh-so-active forum (http://intricacy.thegonz.net/forum) about the locks which are frustrating you.

Announcing real activity makes sense, though. How about an RSS feed?

[Maunomau]

Hmm RSS sounds good as long as you can see it ingame too.

[zugz]

Hmm... having in-game notification of changes could be interesting, yes.
Perhaps you could "set your spies" on players of your choosing, and then get
reports on activity involving those players since your last visit. So e.g. if
there's a player whose lock you really can't solve, you can spy on that player
to see when new notes appear on the lock for you to collect. All this would be
controlled from a single new screen, rather than further cluttering the main
interface.

I'll think about it. But I'm more worried for now about getting players for us
to spy on!

[Maunomau]

Yay my slightly improved locks were solved by another person! Although not in the way I was really expecting so had to make them better again.

Watching people's solutions is fun but since it doesn't show undoed moves it looks so easy, a good excuse to make a even better lock I suppose.

[dormir]

Hi Zugz,
I've like the new version but I've had a couple of program crashes with it. The application just seems to close instantly and there's no other information to tell of. Windows (Win7 64bit) doesn't say it has crashed and there's no stdout.txt or anything like that left behind. Both crashes happened while I was attempting to solve locks (different ones) using the mouse. The second time, the last input I made was definitely the mouse wheel to rotate the tool but I don't know about the first crash.

Incidentally, where is this text file that allows the 50ms animation time to be changed? I can't see any kind of config file.
EDIT: Nevermind, I found the config stuff in AppData/Roaming/intricacy to my surprise.

[zugz]

Hi DOR, NOI; great to have you both playing! I've been enjoying (the various versions of) NOI:B and NOI:C, which I indeed found much harder than my undo-pruned solutions indicate!

The crashes are worrying. I don't know what could be causing it. Please tell me, DOR, if you find a consistent way to crash the game.

The config file is called "SDLUI.conf", and it should be whereever windows stores user config files, which I think is somewhere like "...\Application Data\intricacy\".

Meanwhile, any thoughts on this proposal:
http://intricacy.thegonz.net/forum/viewtopic.php?pid=3
?

I was also wondering if I should try allowing slightly bigger locks on the server, to make it easier to construct more difficult locks. I feel the balance may be too far towards the solvers currently. But really more data is needed!

[Maunomau]

Bigger locks could be nice but the current size is good too. Maybe have a 4th bigger lock slot that requires opening all of the smaller locks or if even more locks would be fine something like a lock pyramid where you need to open 2 locks below a larger lock to access it(ie. 3 small 2 medium and 1 large locks)

Also the forums don't like me logging in, it redirects me to http://localhost/~intricacy/forum/index.php
I still appear logged in after going back to the correct place but trying to post got me

Info
Bad HTTP_REFERER. You were referred to this page from an unauthorized source. If the problem persists please make sure that 'Base URL' is correctly set in Admin/Options and that you are visiting the forum by navigating to that URL. More information regarding the referrer check can be found in the FluxBB documentation.

Anyway here's the reply I tried to post

Hmm sounds good I guess. As for being hard to grasp as long as you add some more explanation to the part showing your relative esteem against someone it should be fine. Just adding text saying something like "esteem/score breakdown" above the part showing it would make it pretty clear.

I'm not sure how I feel about all notes on retired locks becoming public though.
I kind of wish I could keep some of the notes somehow.
Just selecting a single note to keep was the first thought I had.
But thinking more about it how about if the owner of the note hasn't read your note on his lock you can keep it.
Or something like that not sure if I'm missing something...
Right, that'd make it so that it's better not to solve a lock since then the note on it won't become public.
Hmm maybe the reverse could work, solve a lock with your note on it to prevent it becoming public on retiring but hmm, well I don't see any obvious problems with that and can't think of anything better for now so it could be good I guess.

Also damn, you still managed to open NOI:B in a way I tried to prevent

[zugz]

Oops! Thanks, I should have fixed the forum now.

I've replied to your attempted reply there.

Re multiple lock sizes: I think players would end up basically ignoring all slots except the largest, at least when considering where to store their notes, since it's going to be the hardest. I think having one max lock size per server is best.

[Maunomau]

Hmm, right, what if you could only put notes behind the locks of the same (and possibly smaller if you haven't made a bigger one or something) size?

I think I finally made NOI:B require doing it the way I meant it to be solved!
And I can't believe that on NOI:C I left that empty space on the right thinking yeah it's totally fine to leave it since I already prevented anyone from using it for anything but no, it can obviously be still used, argh.

[dormir]

I find the current lock size to be plenty big enough. Both in terms of providing enough difficulty in trying to solve them (I spent a long time trying to crack ZED:C to no avail) and also in how long it takes to create a lock. I already find creating a lock quite a daunting and time consuming process and larger locks would just exacerbate that.
Having said that, I do like Endymion's idea for having a hierarchy of (different sized) locks though. Choosing between the three locks at the moment feels arbitrary and when the game prompts me with "store note behind which lock? A,B or C?" or something, I can't remember (or see, or care) what my locks are like. Three locks in an access hierarchy and of increasing size would be better IMO. The choice of which lock to store notes behind could then be automatic as per Endymion's idea of matching size lock (or smaller where necessary).

I also think that the approach to the metagame is a bit inverse to the way I'd expect players to initially approach the game. The first thing I tried to do to learn more about the mechanics was to try to solve a lot of different locks. I used the metagame really just to keep track of which locks I'd managed to solve. I didn't seriously try to create a lock for quite some time since I didn't feel I understood the mechanics enough. It's a bit of a shame then that the "correct" chronology (make lock -> stash notes) is the oppostite of how a new player learns the game (solve locks -> make lock).

I also find it a bit difficult to shake the mindset of trying to solve locks just "because they are there". I enjoyed Endymion's 3 locks but felt a bit cheaped to find that two of the ones I had just solved had been modified and restored to "Privy: No-one" within about 5 minutes. I understand that replacing a lock is balanced by making public all the notes secured behind it. My problem is probably that I disregarded the way the metagame works and just tried to solve all the locks I could.

By the way, I've not tried the new NOI:B yet but NOI:C was a nice lock and took some solving.