Puzzles

[xynth]

So I've decided to do a puzzle based rpg and got to looking around for various kinds of puzzle ideas to add in my game, and came across this video, which I'll put in quotes because I'm not sure what the rules on video links are. 

"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rDSrYiheVow"

My question is, would it be possible to implement puzzles like that in Ace? And if so, how? 

My initial thought would be to use some sort of vanishing floor to prevent the player from going backwards, but then I'm not sure how I'd go about resetting the puzzle should the player get stuck.  

 

[Shaz]

No rules against linking to youtube videos. But it's too long. Not many people are going to sit through 10 minutes of video to see something that may take only half a minute.


Just explain the puzzle and how it works.

 

[Curia Chasea]

The video is from a game made by Jonathan Blow and I'd say it was very worth the watch. And that puzzle takes the whole 10 minutes (well, 8 actually) to explain how the puzzle actually works. 

Anyway, VX Ace doesn't have any presets for these puzzles so.... I guess you will have to write a custom script for it. 

 

[xynth]

Yeah, I've tried all sorts of things and it seems a script, or a whole mess of events, is the only way to make it work without breaking it. Most switch and variable events just seem to cause issues as you get further in the difficulties due to the different directions you can take. I'm just going to try other types of puzzles. This one is going to be too much work to actually get it working properly. 

 

[hiromu656]

I watched the video, it was actually very interesting, I hadn't heard of that game before and now I'm excited for it.

About the puzzle design, I haven't really jumped into Ace to try anything out, but I can see the basic Point A to Point B puzzle layout being fairly simple (but tedious) to event. I honestly can't even fathom how you could event the Black and White dot puzzle variation.

The design for the basic puzzle scenario that I thought up would go something like this, you start at one point on the map (puzzle board) and every "step" that you can take will be an event of its own. There you use a 4 conditional branches that are based on the direction that you were facing when you entered one of the steps, they will turn into a different color on one of the 4 possible Pages (again, determined by the direction). So lets say that you take a step forward, that Step turns white but is set to Page 3 (which can state that you entered the space while facing to the right). This page can only be reverted back to white, if you return to this block in the opposite direction that you entered it. As in, if the block was entered while you faced to the right, you can only correct it if you enter from the left. This makes it so the player can redo the puzzle on his on, and can also never intersect these spaces from different directions.

Like I said, this can be tedious to set up, but if I'm thinking this through correctly, you should be able to get the entire puzzle working simply by creating a single perfect block and duplicating it in the design that you'd like the puzzle to be arranged..Then that just leaves the end goal, which shouldn't be too hard to event. Without scripts I really can't think up any way to configure the more in depth puzzle variations shown in the video.

I tried to be as clear as possible here, but I get confused sometimes. I might just go ahead and try these steps myself to make sure I'm not just throwing words around.

 

[Curia Chasea]

 I honestly can't even fathom how you could event the Black and White dot puzzle variation.

Put a Variable starting at 0. Whenever you go through the correct panel between the white/black blocks, have it add +1 to the variable. Puzzle is considered "correct" when the variable is at the correct count. 

Even so - eventing this would be a ton of work... I'd say a custom script would be easier here if you plan having more than 10 such puzzles. 

 

[hiromu656]

I guess I was thinking a bit too hard on it, that sounds like it would work fine. But, if it's that simple, I think using events would be fine. I don't know how proficient the OP is at scripting, but I usually prefer to event as much as I can before going on to scripts.