Puzzles!

[Vasha]

Hey, guys! I've gotten the urge to work on my game some more (haven't actually done so, but I want to!), but before I do I wanna get some ideas from you guys about ideas swimming around in my head:

First of all, is there a script that easily lets me make spells/skills that affect the map? Something like what Golden Sun did? I want to make part of my game be puzzle-based, and that would be really helpful!

Speaking of puzzle-based, let's talk about puzzles! Any fun and cool little puzzle ideas any of you guys have floating about out there? Either ones that are cool that you know how to make or that you think would be cool but aren't sure how to event it? Let's brainstorm, not just for my project, but to give ideas to anyone!

I'll start: I played a game a while ago where the player had to go through a maze, but instead of having walls, it was that if the player took a wrong step, they were teleported back to the beginning. But they couldn't see where they had to go! They had to memorize the path by trial and error! It was pretty fun!

[Unimaginative Username]

I played a game where it was also in a maze. Except this one was completely black so you could not see, the way you had to navigate around was to fire lasers which would then bounce off the walls for about three bounces telling you which direction the maze was going up ahead for about 10ft. There were also aliens with glowing blue eyes trying to kill you.

[Vasha]

Hmm. Iiiiinteresting...

[Unimaginative Username]

What type of interesting?

[Vasha]

Well, interesting interesting! I'm just brainstorming here!

I made a puzzle in the last version of my game that I was kind of proud of. It wasn't hard, but it was fun to make! It was a maze, but there were two different kinds of obstacles that could be moved, and you had to switch between parties to toggle the obstacles on and off.

Come to think of it, didn't Quintessence have something like that?

[Ancurio]

Hi Vasha.

I'm not sure what you mean by "skills affecting the map",
but if you want I could try to code something up for you.
I've been working a lot with RGSS lately ^^

[Vasha]

Like... I'm not even sure exactly how it would work. What I'm kind of thinking about is this:

-You go to your skills section, and let's say there's a skill called "move." If you use and you're right next to a movable object (like a pillar or a rock or something), then you can press a directional key and the object will move that direction one square.
-There's a skill named "grow." If you use it in front of a plant or a vine, then the sprite changes to a larger plant/vine.
-Or you could freeze water, or burn flammable things.
-That's pretty much what I'm thinking of, at least so far. Well, some other ideas I've had are a script that changes it from day to night and vice versa (which is pretty easy with just a switch), and a spell that lets you temporarily see hidden things, but that's not too hard, either.

I know there's a way to do all of these things with eventing, but the only way I can think of doing it would be kind of pain depending on how often I want the player to have to use them. Is it even worth it, though, to make a script for something like this? I have no scripting experience with RPG Maker, so I don't really know at all.

[Merlandese]

Not sure how you're going to go about it, but it sounds fun.

[Vasha]

I dunno. I have a rather crude test with eventing those skills, but it's a lot easier to do one object per skill. And come to think of it, I don't think I actually think I made them skills. I think you just pressed enter on the object and it did it for you without draining MP at all

[Vasha]

I'm actually looking through the old crap on my computer right now, and I found the quick program I made to test my evented map skills (and a couple other things). It's pretty bad, but it's the kind of thing I'm thinking of if anyone wants to see it:

http://www.mediafire.com/?x90o3pihq9ppguy

A couple things:
-If someone incorporates the reveal spell, it would be nice to be able to let the character move around while things are revealed, and have the things that are revealed only be usable while they're revealed (probably will make more sense when you actually play it.) I feel like this would be easy to do with eventing, but I'm having a bit of a problem with it (not that I've put TOO much effort into it.) In the version I gave you, it's using a wait command, so it's not surprising I can't move. But if I change that to a timer command, I can move around, but nothing is revealed and the screen tone doesn't change.
-I didn't put it in this demo because I couldn't get it to work, but it would be kind of cool to have a Strengthen spell, so that the holes in the ground become, well, stronger. Again, it's easier to understand if you play the thing, but if you're too lazy to do that, I pretty much have a map with cracks on it, and every time you step on the crack it gets bigger, until it's the biggest and you fall through to a map below. It would be cool to have a spell that makes the crack smaller.

Aaaaand that's really all I can think of. Though if anyone else has any ideas, I love brainstorming with people!

[Judedeath]

A little late, but one thing to say is if you have a maze don't pull a Zork and have the maze not make logical sense, like teleports you can sort of get away with it, but yeah, just if you do put a teleport maze have it make some sense.

Spoiler: show

Also I don't know if you've played it, but Legend of Grimrock(which is awesome and part of the current Humble Bundle) had a cool puzzle where if you stepped in light or maybe dark I can't remember you were teleported back to the start so you had to mess with some things in the maze to change to lighting so you could make it through.

[Vasha]

Oh goodness, that map maze looks horrible Don't worry, my maps are generally only on one map.

And that does sound like an interesting idea for a puzzle! I would check it out, but I don't really have money to be blowing right now.

[Judedeath]

The worse thing about that map is that it was a Interactive Fiction so all text no pictures to help figure it out, I quit once I got there in the game.

Yeah, that puzzle was good, I need to jump back into that game. Maybe if I can remember where it was I'll make a quick video to demonstrate it.