Phitt wrote:Again, thanks for the comments. Here are a few answers:
The 'Serve the dinner' puzzle was already solved by the people who asked, but the idea is that you need to put four food items on the table since there are four chairs around the table. That's all there is to it. The secret room you can find when pushing the button in the room with the herder has a good amount of food and a respawning snail, so if for some reason you should have no food you can get as much as you want there (though the snail respawns every 30 seconds only and only if you are not close to the room). Note that everything you can eat counts as food, that means you can use Grimcaps as well.
went back and found that button I missed, found room, and would definitely have noticed the snail respawning, so that would have solved it for me. Perhaps that button could be a large one, since it might be essential for player progress? Or better yet, maybe have the snail moving around, as a clue that there is a secret room somewhere nearby? Also, I was wondering if it's possible to have the dinner table have four custom alcoves around it so you actually set food in each place? That would really be satisfying!
Phitt wrote:Like already explained by someone else the puzzle on level 3 is some kind of 'sun dial'. If you look closely you will see that the rocks on the floor are ordered like a clock face and the torch shadows work like a watch hand. If you put a torch into the southern torch holder the clock will be at 12 o'clock (or 'midnight'). Move the torch around clockwise (to 3, 6, 9 and again 12 - noon) and the door will open.
Yeah, that is reasonable enough, tricky but not too crazy. I can't remember, is that puzzle optional?
Phitt wrote:Food was a problem for beta testers as well btw, but I added a good amount of additional food to the dungeon before release. Wouldn't have thought you would still run out of food that easily! On my last playthrough I ended up with around 20 food items left when I entered the boss room, already wondered whether it was too much now! Of course that was a speed run (where I killed all monsters and opened all secret areas though), but still...
Players like me go back a lot. We explore and re-explore, we swing at walls and tables and mine carts and crap, which takes food energy. And especially in this amazing dungeon, we march around and gawk! So I found myself spawning in a few snail slices. If I had found the snail room on lv 1 before, I would be satisfied that I can load up a little bit (but not too much, for weight), and always go back if need be, so that would solve it enough for me.
Phitt wrote:And I wonder whether anyone actually played the ogre encounter like I intended it to work. You are not supposed to fight him in the room where you meet him - there is no space to avoid his blows and I assumed it was more or less impossible to kill him there. I put in the wall text and Malik's note to give you a hint. The way I intended it is that you use the frost bombs you found a few steps away in an alcove in the storage area to stop him, hack your way through the crates until you reach the door, close the door. Then kill the two scavengers and afterwards you have all the time in the world to kill the ogre, you can even use the 'hit and strafe' tactic in that room so it shouldn't be very hard to kill him there. Maybe I should make it more clear by letting Malik talk about frost bombs directly.
Yeah, if he mentioned the frost bomb that would definitely help, maybe some "clue" way such as talking about "they don't move so fast once you put the chill to them" or something. I never even considered that idea.
Phitt wrote:The reason why the ogre sometimes gets 'stuck' is Grimrock's AI. I guess you already noticed that monsters often don't find the way around obstacles, there is nothing I can do about that. I already gave the ogre seeInvisible, allAroundSight and sight = 7, I put blockers on top of the blockages, but he still gets stuck sometimes and walks back instead of following the player. That happens in the original game as well, wish I could do something about it.
Ah, didn't know that (never noticed the problem before). It just appeared to me like there was a convenient blocker there keeping him from me around the corner, so I just stepped out, hit, stepped back, until I beat him (tough!). If I couldn't have done that (minor redesign?), and there was a clue about using frost bombs, I'm sure I would have figured it out after a bit
Thank you, glad you liked it!