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UPD: Escape Beta 3
(12 Oct 2005 at 19:33) |
By popular request, I have added bombs to Escape. These are pretty cool, but you might as well play the tutorial in order to see how they work. Since I also added a bunch of new features (like bookmarks) and did some graphical cleanup, I'm calling this a "beta 3". There's been a recent slowdown in Escape activity since everyone is going back to school (etc.), so I'm hoping that this will help pick things up.
Also, since the old feedback thread has gotten way too long, I've started this post as the new one.
Enjoy! |
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Unrelated suggestion:
I would recommend that you rename "Crap Art" to "Draft Art" thus eliminating the tone of anti-elitism and allowing a connection for those who want to take next steps in their artistic exploration. There certainly should be nothing wrong with wanting to refine and elevate original ideas that are found in the original process.
Also, please edit item #4 in your description of crap art.
Otherwise, this seems to be a noble pursuit.
|
Whoa, so much new stuff! Them bombs are pretty cool, I reckon. Haven't tried the bookmarks yet, but I'll bet they come in real handy on the insanely difficult puzzles (which are unfortunately all I've got left!)
One minor question about the C (checkpoint) key: does it just do the same thing as S?
(Hmm, and as I type this, it occurs to me that perhaps the answer is in escape.txt. Oh, well, please ignore the question if so; I'll go check that next...)
P.S. I heartily approve of both the anti-elitist tone and rule #4. |
| mjn: Yes, 'c' is the same as 's', I just wanted to use a different name in the menu (I thought 'save', which is why it was 's' in the first place, would be confusing). |
| Am I missing a way to delete bookmarks? |
For now you gotta do it from the "solution manager" (press ctrl-m on a level), but you can only get to the solution manager if you've solved the level. Also, solving the level will delete all your bookmarks.
Yes, I realize how ridiculous this is. |
Is there any equivalent file to "escape.txt" (mjn is talking about) for Mac OS X? Downloading escape-beta-osx.zip once more did not help. I've just no clue at all what I might be missing... -> maybe explanations for shortcuts?
Nice work, "cute" bombs - even so they can't be cute by definition ;-)
|
| Ok, well, I hope you fix this known ridiculous situation some time soon. Nonetheless it is a great feature. |
| vote bush |
Kirima: escape.txt is the same for all of the platforms. It comes inside the Escape "app" on mac osx (browse inside the icon to find it), or you can just read it online:
http://escape.spacebar.org/win32/escape.txt
.. but it doesn't explain everything yet. =( |
More munitions musing: Daleks can go through teleports, but bombs can't?
Also, puzzles are made harder from the fact that you don't know how long a bomb's fuse is until you actually move it. (Might be nice if the countdown was initially indicated on the bomb.) |
| Should teleporting onto a heart framer pick it up? |
Heart framers: It's not obvious what the answer should be. Generally, things are activated by stepping onto them. It's true that panels are an exception to this, but they are an exception to almost everything. ;) But, the point is sorta moot since they've been around for so long... I don't change old behavior unless there's an incontrovertible bug!
Nothing can be pushed into a teleport, even Daleks. Since bombs don't move on their own, there's no way for them to go through teleports.
As for seeing bomb fuses, it's a kind of hidden information like bot numbers and panel destinations. A plan for the future is to have a key that shows these things, since I don't believe in hidden information. But, showing the timer numbers all the time just makes bombs too ugly (like showing dests or bot numbers would). |
Idea:
Could effects of rating own levels be neutralized? I've rated a few of mine accidentally and I really don't think that you're the best person to say how good your own levels are. Also, it's possible to give 10's to all of your own levels to boost the score, which is kind of unfair. |
I could do it, but since it's really easy to game the system in other ways, I'd rather just foster a sense of community where dishonest ratings are frowned upon. If you notice any instances of abuse, let me know and I can fix it.
|
Rouge-like turned to rouge-hate!
;-)
Mais en fait, j'adore la couleur rouge. |
Rouge-like turned to rouge-hate!
;-)
Mais en fait, j'adore la couleur rouge. |
| Je m'excuse, mais c'est vrai, twice -> really two times red hate-like as if, I just have no clue. |
| Man that is confusing. ;) I guess you're saying you don't like my new level? |
| It is very sneaky. |
Yes. But I DO like your new level, 'cause it seems to be intelligent and just cool, but I do not have ANY clue and this just makes me feel REALLY stupid and BLUE.
Rouge-like equals Bleu-sans.
Je sais, il y en a une solution, je trust you.
|
Je do!
En fait, il faut comprendre la langue universelle de n'importe quoi, personne ne s'intéresse à la langue "JUSTE".
Mon INPUT, c'est DIE Idee de s'entretenir en N'importe quelle LANGUAGE.
We do speek Sprache.
We do speek.
You and I.
We do verstehen us.
J'aimerai de begin to start quelquechose.
Tu est VERY begabt.
Grab-Speach
I'll do it.
And you, too. |
Well, I guess I kind of understand! But it's pretty hard.
Don't worry if some levels are tough. There are still 70 levels that I haven't beaten! (And some that make me feel quite stupid...)
Rouge-like tries to trick you. It "leads you down the garden path.." |
| You got it, when I speak like this, it's hard to understand and it's confusing - just the way rouge-like does confuse and leads to nowhere - it's really tricky, but I like the level a lot, I guess I do because it's so confusing. |
| Hah, okay, you got me. ;) |
;-)
I finally got "it", too! |
| I think bombs beg the introduction of "mines", just like bombs except they have no fuse so you can move them around wherever without them exploding. These will allow for more exciting chain reactions... |
| That's a good idea, max. I'll have to think about whether they should be bots or not. (Note to self: "Bomberman" style mines might be neat, too.) |
Geraldine seems to be a cute and very clever little girl.
What do you think about a folder called "Children's Corner"?
Her levels are just innocent - I think this should be honnored and kids would need to have their own homepage and stuff and so on.
I love the way Geraldine tries to connect to who- or whatever.
She seems to be a smart girl!
Hey guys, will you be capable to handle this kind of not expected variation of the game?
?
|
Kirima: I want everyone to be able to feel comfortable playing this game, and part of that is making levels. I hope that others can make it a welcome environment for new players, too, even if their levels are pretty unsophisticated.
As for making a "children's corner", I think it is a good idea, except for the fact that it will be pretty hard to determine who is actually a child. It could be quite insulting to have one's levels sent to the children's corner if not actually a child!
I tried this kind of level segregation already with the "Sophomoric" category. But it's too hard, and too mean, to put levels in there unless they were made by people who have clearly stopped playing the game.
I welcome suggestions, or comments about whether this is even really a problem. It can be mildly fun to speedrun these "beginner" levels, anyway... |
| And look on the bright side, at least they're not *teleporter levels*. |
| Hah. I have thought of trying to automatically detect certain kinds of common lame levels and warn the user upon uploading... but fortunately there hasn't been much trouble with that recently. |
| Man that would be awesome: WARNING: THE LEVEL YOU ARE UPLOADING IS PROBABLY LAME |
| Or done by Kirima |
| On the contrary, I'm looking forward to more levels from you, K! |
| I adore this game! One thing though...is there anyway to get a hint on a level? I am obviously having a blonde moment and am terribly stuck. :/ |
| Jenna: Some of the levels are really hard! I think there are only one or two people who have beaten every level. (And definitely not me...) You might be able to get a hint by looking at the comments for the level on the site and turning on spoilers. But that's only if someone has gone to the trouble of spoiling it, which we tend not to do. Also, you could ask for a hint here or there. If the level's rated at a difficulty of about 7 or above, then I assure you it's not a blonde moment... |
| About "mines", just thought of this: should they be able to be walked over, as if they were rough? Or should they be able to be pushed like bombs? Or should there be two kinds? I know you would rather not have two kinds, so pushable is probably preferable, but it would be cool to have immobile mines that you can walk on to increase the danger potential of chain reactions... |
| If they're bots, they definitely can't be walked on. I think there may be botlimit issues if they are bots, though. Hmm, so many choices... |
| I don't know if you can remedy this, but it's starting to take an awfully long time to recover solutions with ctrl-0. Could you at least put in a progress bar so I don't think I've crashed? |
It works best if you move the target level to its own folder first, since it tries to solve every level in the current folder when you ctrl-0, which means number_of_solutions * number_of_levels.
I'll add the progres meter to the wishlist; it shouldn't be too hard. |
| And how about a "cancel" option while you're at it... |
I love coming home after a long day at work to play Escape! I try to solve one level each day.
Thank you all.
Questions:
1) My son loves playing the levels that have robots in them. I can't stand it. Could you add a robot sorting level to your sort options? This would help me to escape the robots completely.
2) Are there clues for these levels somewhere? I need help (the tutorials aren't enough for my thick head) in solving a few levels are like so much: square peg, upon further reflection, scuba diving III.
Thanks again |
| Never mind my post, I just read Jenna's blonde question. But if you still want to give me a hint, I would certainly appreciated it. |
| OLBTS: if you sort by date, which is the default, then the levels towards the end of the list will not have robots, since they were only introduced recently. But you'll be missing some good levels made since then... |
Hey,
I have a problem. I have had escape for awile and it is the latest version, but for some unknown reason I cannot download any new levels. When I try I get this message " This version cannot accept any collections. You should try upgrading, though a new version might not be available yet for your platform."
My os is xp home edition. My firewall is setup to allow escape to get new levels and it used to do just that. Nothing has changed that should make this happen. Please help me.
Thanks |
| The only reason this should happen is if you don't have the newest version--if you press 3 from the main menu, does it upgrade? Or does it say that you have the newest version already? If the latter, then there must be some bug, which we should try to figure out. |
"You're Fucked", "Piss-Taker"...
I'm NOT amused!
The great game and concept "Escape" does not deserve this!!! |
| Tom, I guess it's time to pass to a more "serious" version of the game -> to SELL it officially! BEFORE these kinds of abusions will take over and destroy your work and intentions. I feel very sorry about these "piss-fucking" titles and comments, you do NOT deserve this kind of judging - it's just not fair at all. |
Don't worry, I'll take care of it. =)
But I don't think selling would help much... |
Ok, you're definatly right and selling might not be the solution - but WHAT could solve these problems? The game has started to loose itself, it has become more and more obsolete, it just seems to turn out pretty shitty and pissed off... That's NOT what you wanted, isn't it?
As you know: I adore your game, and what's happening just makes me feel kind of sad. And I'm certainly not the only one who does not at all agree with what's going on, am I?
You'll take care of it. I'm positive that you will! You'll just have to. xxx
|
Well, dealing with the swears is not a big problem, I just need to put some controls into the game to not accept levels with inappropriate titles, and have a policy of deleting levels that are inappropriate. I was sort of hoping that this would never be something I'd need to worry about, but that's just a consequence of attracting a wider audience.
I think the main reason escape seems stagnant right now is just that I've been busy with other projects (like my thesis proposal) so I haven't been able to give it the love it deserves since the summer. |
Hey,
On another subject, I just posted A level called "Choose" and forgot to fix the dimensions of it. So it looks kind of stupid, but I can't fix it now. In other words, please don't make remarks about it's useless space, OK!
P.S I think swears in titles should be stopped somehow, it's just not funny! |
| Zell, you just have to click on the 'resize' button in the editor (or press 'z'). |
| Is there any chance of having some solutions? I have spent hours on some of the levels and eventially given up. Perhaps there could be an option to view a solution after youv'e had twenty attempts or something. |
| Mary: Well, I understand the desire (I have often been tempted to look at solutions by pouring hours into levels..) but I don't want to allow people to see solutions, because it just spoils the game too much. (And there are plenty of others to try...) Why not ask for hints on the specific levels you're troubled by? |
One part of the concept of Escape is it's wide audience, isn't it? And it should survive, with or without you giving it the love it deserves. We, the audience, would not appreciate these "some controls" - and I really hope they won't ever be necessary.
|
Well, I am open to suggestions!
All I mean by controls is just preventing certain obviously bad taste titles and comments from being posted and reminding the user that people of all ages play this game. |
Swear-word filtering seems a pretty harmless addition, though it becomes a slippery slope; are you going to filter non-english swear words to? Swear words with spaces, or spelled oddly? Alternatively you could have a client-side filter, on by default, that users can disable should they choose.
Also, at the same time, length limiting of titles could be put in place, if it's not there already; I recall seeing some examples of this abuse in the past.
On a completely different note, should there be some sort of check at the end of a move to see if the the player has reached a stale-mate? It's possible in the midst of a level to have the player get stuck with no legal moves left, even if there's a ticking bomb adjacent to the player! (Players would probably use undo or restart at that point, so perhaps this isn't really needed.) |
Stephan, I agree. That's why the focus is on detection and polite warning, rather than on setting "rules." In particular, I don't want to give the impression that if something passes the filter, it is necessarily acceptable to the community. Still, deep in my heart I believe that most people are reasonable.
The length limiting should not be a problem now.. there was once an issue with it screwing up the web page, but now it should truncate long titles when displaying them. If you notice issues with this, please let me know.
As for detecting stalemate: It would be pretty easy to do, but I don't think it's necessary. It's pretty easy for the player to detect that none of the four moves are possible, and restart in that situation. (The idea of 'zugzwang', where one doesn't really want to move but is forced to, is VERY much a part of the game.) There should be a "restart" button in the menu, though, for those who didn't guess that enter does this. I don't know why I didn't think of that. |
Hey this new inappropriate guard is messed up. Every title I enter is inappropriate apparently. Why is this!
The titles I tried to use would not be considered inappropriate in the least, please fix it. |
Hey this new inappropriate guard is messed up. Every title I enter is inappropriate apparently. Why is this!
The titles I tried to use would not be considered inappropriate in the least, please fix it. |
| Now I've gone and clicked "post comment" twice. |
| Uhh, thanks. That was dumb! I had it backwards, so that only levels whose titles included every swear word would be accepted. ;) It's fixed now. |
| Thanks |
| No, thank YOU! ;) |
| Oh man that would have been so awesome... |
| Do you have some kind of standard swear-word dictionary or something for that purpose? |
No, but I sure know 'em! At least the FCC regulated ones from my radio days...
One complication is that I can't include things like "ass" or "pee" since they appear in so many legitimate words. |
| A bug unlikely to affect anyone: In the editor, with a level with a height or width less than 3, clicking and running 'random' will crash the program. |
Humm, yeah. Fixed!
I definitely recommend saving one's work before running 'random' of any kind, since I was not very careful about that code. Some day it needs an overhaul... |
| General size-problem: as ")" and "(" only exist like this on my (or other?) european keyboard (no "half rectangle version" available), there is no way to see what's going on while playing levels that are bigger than the window. Of course I could load a level in editor to be able to see what's going on, but that's a spoiler and it's certainly not reasonable to play levels that way. Is there any other possibility to zoom? |
The international keyboard thing is an issue I haven't really addressed yet. I guess the right thing to do would be to add an options screen where keyboard bindings can be set, since I don't have any way to anticipate the range of keys that will be available on non-US keyboards.
Do you have curly braces { and }? |
| No, unfortunately not! Of course I DO have all that stuff -> [ ] { } this is the proof! But I have to press alt-5 to find [ , and doing so while playing "Somewhat Faire" by Feanor for example would not help, nothing at all happens. But of coures I don't even know WHAT would happen if I had a "normal" [ ... ;-) |
| Humm. Well, I will think of something for the next version, and then plan on having a key remapper in the options at some point. |
Yes!
:-) |
Crash! My file has gone:
mm.esp **ERROR** (-1)
"Default" or "New Player" works normally.
Please help! I would not want to loose all the solved levels :-(
|
| Import / Recover Player: I found the file mm.esp, but I have no idea how to copy it into the escape directory! What and where is the escape directory? I guess this is a really stupid question... |
The escape directory is probably where you found the mm.esp file. This probably means that the file is corrupt. Make a copy of it, and if the thing below doesn't help, then I can probably fix the file for you manually.
Escape keeps backups of your player file automatically. There should be a bunch of files named like "mm.esp~2905" in that same directory. Copy the one with the highest number to something like "mm2.esp" and escape should find it the next time you start. |
| There are files like "mm.esp~2905", but no file like "mm2.esp". These icons don't look like folders, but like "empty pages". I can't copy any empty page into another empty page. BTW I don't get it, I don't understand, kannit verstaan, please tell me how to zugzwang, I bet there must be one simple thing to do? Is a directory just a normal folder? (MacOSX 10.3) |
| Oh, I didn't realize you're using macos. Well, the procedure is the same, and you don't need to worry about folders. Go to where those mm.esp~2905 files are. Pick the one with the highest number. Rename it to "mm2.esp," and you're done! (I was suggesting that instead of renaming, you make a copy, just in case something goes wrong. Either way should work, but you might also want to copy that new mm2.esp file somewhere just for backups.) Dig it? |
I KNEW there was this one simple thing to do! :-))) Now there is "mm.esp **ERROR** (-1)", AND "mm(550)", and "Default (28)" - the 3 of us THANK YOU!
And I'm gladbackupgot it. I han's checkt. |
| Great! Can you e-mail me the mm.esp file? I'd like to see if I can figure out how it got damaged. |
| Ok |
| Thanks! |
| And she sent me an ice fish spine! |
| That's just not true AT ALL. I've sent him some kind of a puzzle, just because I know that he loves this kind of things - it's obvious that Tom 7 likes puzzles, isn't it. |
| Tom likes puzzles! |
This is perhaps a silly question, but what does the key by a level mean, after it's been uploaded?
It's interesting to be playing Escape again after all these years. I submitted levels ages ago and completely forgot about the game. I was amazed to see they're still in the current version. |
Darren: The key means that you were the uploader, so you can (for instance) delete the level.
Thanks for finding your way back! All of the levels that I have are in the game, even the really really old ones. |
Another crash...! |
Drat! Well, maybe I will take a look at this tonight.
Can you tell me what happened the last time before it crashed? |
First i would like to apologise for the unsuitable language used in the titles of two of my levels. I created these levels with the titles to be aimed at a friend of mine, before i was aware that you can upload your own levels for public use. By that time i had simply forgot to change the offensive titles, so please do not judge my levels for that error. thanks.
P.S. No disrespect intended towards the creator of this game, Its a game I discovered while looking to download Chips Challenge...And this is much better! Good Luck with this! |
Oh and this might sound silly, but on levels i,ve seen one switch change several things at once...i did not know that was possible...HOW do you do that?
|
Hardcore raver: Why not upload versions of the levels with new titles? I can delete the old ones.
It's not possible for one switch to change several things directly. When people do this, most of the time it's by using bots. |
I'm sorry, I don't know! I bet I'd rather start to prepare family christmas eve instead of playing escape and that's why this happens to me...
I guess I'm just too unorganized and this is why the system crashes! I jump around from level to level and suddenly I feel like editing a real challenging level - which does not work at all 'cause I'm just not clever enough to figure out an interesting level - so I get kind of frustrated and leave the editor and turn the game and computer off. And boom, the system crashes...
I bet this does not really help you to find out where the problem could be... All I know is that I might have been in "editor" before I turned off the computer. It feels as if it could be some kind of a "saving" problem? Grrrrr... I can't explain what I'd want to explain, I'm just not into computer language and all this stuff! And not into english as well.
BTW: It's just wonderful that even people like I am have a little chance to find a speedrun once in a while! :-) And to edit levels! :-)
|
Well, no amount of disorganized playing should cause it to corrupt your player! So I had better fix it!
I'm going to take a look at the file you sent me now and see what's wrong with it, at least. |
| Well, I see what's wrong with the file. It is the same problem that Stephan had when his player file got corrupted. I'll try to track down how this could happen, but any more info would be appreciated! |
Don't worry, don't hurry! I'm not very organized, but it's not important and doesn't matter. |
I have no idea what might have happend to Stephan?
And I've already told you all I know about what I've done? |
| Well the important thing is that there's a bug and it broke both your and Stephan's files.. so that makes it a high priority for me! |
| Ah right i c wat u mean...Thanks 4 that Tom |
Oops, I did'n realize this! But I can't give you any further infos, so good luck for fixing the bug! |
First, thanks for saving my sanity. I get to play at work while having lunch. It's nice to escape. (pun intended)
On my home computer (Apple G4, OS 10.3.9) I am unable to properly resize the game window to see more of the game. What I get is a white box where escape should be. On my work computer (Wintel? OS XP) I do not have this problem. Have you or anyone else encountered this problem? This has happened fro OS 10.1 to present. |
I didn't even know it should be possible to resize the window! OSX 10.3.9 as well - the window stays always (game size) 24/15. I'm used to walk around more or less blind to find out what's going on ;-) |
| Actually, yeah I'm in the same boat. If I resize the window, the black border becomes larger to fill in the extra area but the actual puzzle window stays the same size... |
| Are there any hints on how to solve tutorial 21? I figured out the top line of bombs with the lazer thing, but am totally not understanding this tutorial from then on. |
I can't delete the " **ERROR** (-1) " players! I DID delete them, but now there are showing up again??? To avoid crashes, I don't got back to editor, but I'm doing backups just in case. |
I deleted the player ctrl-d, but the broken files are still there, I guess that's why players wouldn't disappear. But ctrl-d should work anyway - I think noone noticed because noone ever deletes players! ;-) |
| A zoom would be a great idea as I have to keep changing my monitor resolution to view some of the levels. If I keep it on 800 x 600 it works well but i can only see part of the game but on high resolution (1280 x 1024) I can see everything but everything slows down to an unacceptable degree. |
Resizing: Hmm. If it's something that happens on the mac but not on windows, it's probably an issue with the SDL (the graphics toolkit I'm using). That's annoying since it's hard for me to fix. I seem to remember this working once upon a time though. Is that right? I'll check next time I'm on a mac and see what I can find.
Kirima: Yeah, delete and import don't work, now that I've changed the way player files are stored. But if you just move the player files out of the directory manually (when the game isn't running) then they won't show up any more. I'll fix this soon.
Mary: Try the brackets ] and [ to zoom in and out. Also ctrl-arrows will scroll around a little. Animation is turned off when you're zoomed out, though.
Anonymous: Sure. The panel at the bottom can be pushed down by a bomb, and then the bots start walking towards you. You want them to get to the button and push it, so that it opens the blue. But the bomb that's there has a short fuse so it blows up before they get there. Soooo.... |
| I fixed delete for the next version, since that is easy. |
| The square brackets [] are great. I didn't realise that you could do that. |
| There are lots of secrets, Mary. ;) I plan to make them more obvious... |
A ctrl-arrow secret! And it even seems to work in spite of OSX... ;-) |
| I don't think resize has ever worked for me. I actually never knew you were supposed to be able to. I always just use the brackets... |
| Max, didn't you make "What's going on over there?" by stretching your window though? |
Nope, everything I've done has been with the brackets. Annoying, huh?
In fact that one was never meant to be stretched anyway. And it doesn't even have any panels. Much harder ones have been "Wave", "Collapses" etc... |
Sorry man!
Also, arrow keys in the editor now allow you to pan around, even to place panels. So it should be much easier (but still just as potentially undesirable) to have those long-distance panel effects now. |
| No worries, I've always been able to pan around, just no stretching. |
Hardcoreharrrrdcorrre is really hardcore )-: |
| Odd: the number that shows by your player file seems to be affected by levels bookmarked. That is, any level that you have placed a bookmark in, but have not completed will still be added to your level count. |
| An idea for a new gizmo: a broom to "smooth out" the rough places. You'd have to work hard to get a broom, but it could make for some interesting challenges. |
| You can just use panels for that, though... |
European keyboards:
I found out that I can switch to whatever keyboard you could imagine! (OSX) Even Japanese or Russian or Arabian.
:-)
So I swich to US-keyboard and brackets would work perfectly.
Great!
Such an easy solution...
|
| Cool! Well, I still think being able to configure keys is an important thing to have, because if I had to switch my keyboard layout to play games I'd be pretty miffed. ;) But I am glad that you can at least get by until I implement that. |
I don't care, I'm used to swich to the French keyboard, I do this very often and should have thought about this possibility much earlier already. BTW it's fun to zoom in and out! |
| The "switch-the-keyboard" method works also for me (italian keyboard switched to US). Oddly enough, it does not work if I switch to US extended (even though brackets are mapped to the same keys)... |
The "switch-method" works perfectly, I can start the escape programm "within" US-keyboard and switch again to my normal keyboard and work as usual - whenever I go back to "ESCAPE", the US-keyboard will still be working within the game.
Got it? Ugh. My English is shitty, please forgive me! |
I don't know how to download the "speedruns". I'm looking for the solution to "Blue Moon (v2)". Anyone?
Thanks |
| You can't see the speedruns until you've solved the level. But then, you can press ctrl-m with the level selected, and then ctrl-d to download the solutions on the server. |
people help me please???? how can i solve level TUTORIAL 21 -BOMBS !!!???
Tom 7 please help me!!!!your game is cool, man. |
| boss: I made a comment on this page on December 5th that should give a hint. |
| What does "cook" mean? |
| It comes from chess puzzle lingo. A puzzle is "cooked" if it has more solutions than intended. One who finds such an unintended solution "cooks" the level in doing so. Does that make sense? |
| HELP I need some kind of hint for block shortage. I've been working on it forever and I'm just not getting it. Any help would be appreciated. |
| I haven't tried it yet, so I don't have any advice... |
Thanks for keeping this wonderfull game working and improving!
I don't know if is a bug, but although I have "ask for rate" checked on my preferences, when I bookmark a level and then I find the solution, Escape doesn't ask for the rate.
If the level doesn't have a bookmark it works ok!
Thanks again |
| OCTweak: Yes, that's a bug--it's high on my list, along with a bunch of other weird things about bookmarks. Unfortunately I haven't had much time to hack on Escape recently, but I will get to it! =) |
| can someone help me with hugbot2 |
| will there be a version update. It difficult to play some of the puzzles because the window can't be resized. |
Yup, yenko, I am going to look into that problem on OSX (actually I have easier access to OSX now, so that may speed things along) when I get a chance. Unfortunately, it is probably an SDL problem, which I can only fix by upgrading to newer versions of the SDL and hoping that they have fixed it.
In the meantime, you should be able to play most levels by zooming out (using the square brackets ] and [) or scrolling using ctrl-arrows. |
Please consider altering the sort by unsolved first (ctrl-v) to also sort the solved levels by the date it was solve. Example, yesterday I solved a level and I don't remember it's name. To find it, I will have to go through all solved levels, 720 in my case. Thanks
|
| Well, it's currently sorted by solution length, which could be a useful thing. I think the right thing would be to have another sort by recent activity, so that recently played (which would include solved, obviously) levels could be seen near the top. That might make a good default, in fact. |
It's nice to realize that crtl-v sorts by solution length, thank you for this hint ;-)
BTW: Thank you again for this really wonderful game, I just love it! |
| By the way, I fixed the problem on OSX with resizing the window! Unfortunately, the sourceforge compile farm servers are down for OSX, and they have been for like a month. As soon as they are fixed I will release a version with the fix (and a bunch of small stuff I have been working on over the last few months). |
I'm looking forward to be able to resize the window, thank you Tom :-)
Did you notice that only a few new levels "use" bombs? |
Yeah Tom!
|
K: Yeah, though the majority of the new levels have been sort of neophyte stuff. Most of the old standbys have been silent for a while. Speaking of which.. can we expect any levels from you anytime soon? =)
Y: Thanks for the encouragement, but don't hold your breath; sourceforge may take a while. The sad thing is that I can totally compile Escape on OS X machines that I have access to, but they are newer versions, so if I do, then the version of Escape that I build won't work on early versions of OS X. Urgh. |
>>the majority of the new levels have been sort of neophyte stuff<<
Yeah, like Changing Positions.
|
Neophyte! What a sophisticated word...
I guess I owe you much more than one level!
BTW, I did solve my 666th level today, hy Doom! :-)))
I'd love to edit levels, but you know about my Mac-crash. I do backups once a week, but I kind of don't want to "use" the editor? Would it be safe?
Changing Positions is, in my opinion, a "non-neophyte" level, Lukas did a good work, it's nicely done and I did enjoy it a lot.
|
And noname, thank you for you're re-introduction of bombs, even if I'm not really into bombs ;-) |
Yeah, I thought changing positions was an easy but stylish level. I'm thinking of some others, though I'm not trying to put anyone down, because lots of players start out that way.
I think the editor should be safe. If you make a copy of your "mm.esp" file then you can always restore that. But lots of people edit on the mac, this slippery bug notwithstanding. Another thing you could do is just make a separate installation of Escape that you only use for editing. I think you can do this by just making a copy of the Escape "icon." |
Ok |
| I really like escape, thanks for making it. For addition features you may want to consider switch pannles. They would act similar to the buttons, but the state of the target pannle would remain the same until the switch was triggered again, or another switch/button triggered the same target. For example: the player steps on a switch causing a floor pannle to become a block, the player steps off of the switch and the block remains. If the switch were triggered again the block would once again become a floor tile. Similar to a flip-flop toggle gate in electroncis. I also think that it would be very interesting to be able to setup buttons like AND and OR gates. |
| It's possible to make such one-way panels already by putting two panels next to one another: one that targets the adjacent panel, which itself targets the intended destination. (They only work when walking over the pair of panels in one direction, however.) You can also do it with gold blocks or spheres. Because panels are so complicated and very tricky to implement, I want to avoid adding new things like them. One thing that I have been planning for some time, however, are flip-flop panels that are activated by pulses from buttons/wires. This would be pretty easy to implement and would probably more or less achieve what you want. |
| New feature sugestion - a kind of bomb that could be pushed into a transport! |
you should buttons that can have more than 1 target
|
| Unfortunately it's not possible for me to make tiles with more than one destination, and I don't foresee that changing basically ever. But, when I get around to making wire-activated panels, you will be able to achieve this effect (and you can kind of already do it with bots). |
you should buttons that can have more than 1 target
|
| i beat 2 of the impossible levels so there not impossible anymore i guess lol |
| Hey Erik, would you please stop posting nonsense here? I keep deleting it, so there's really no point in doing it. But thanks for playing Escape and thanks for your suggestions... |
| ??? |
| i was just saying i beat sme levels??? |
| ooooh you mean the farty thing my freind was screwin around with the computer |
sorry about that
|
| It's okay. =) |
| A while back there was some noise about a couple of levels having names that were not, ah, G-rated. I'd like to share this game with some kids I know, but I don't want to go through their amazement/giggles/etc. at the level names. Any way to change those few? |
| I actually just renamed them yesterday. Just stay out of (like don't subscribe to) the "deleted levels" collection and you won't see them. Also, I have rudimentary controls in place to keep swear words out of the names of newly uploaded levels now. |
why dont you just totaly delete the levels?
|
| I don't like to totally delete levels because then we lose the comments and speedruns, etc. |
Hi Tom. Today after editing a new level and saving it, I closed Escape. Now I open escape and get ERROR (-1) next to the name of my esp file.
I saved the corrupted file and replace it with the last automatic backup I found. Do you want the corrupted file to take a look ? (My OS is windows XP) |
| I think this is the same problem that Kirima and Stephan had, but I'd love to take a look at the corrupted file to reassure myself. (you can e-mail it to [tom7 at cs cmu edu].) It sounds like this is definitely a problem with the editor. It's high on my list to figure it out and fix it, because nobody likes to have his savegame corrupted!! Thanks and sorry for the bug... |
| Corrupted file sent. |
Funny story:
A while back I was Googling for clip art of rockets and robots, and some very funny cute robots turned up on about.com which I saved and used for a few of my desktop icons and stuff. Several weeks later, I was browsing around fontface, and found a really cool font I downloaded. I linked to the creator's page, and lo and behold, the same person with the bots! Which is a long way to say I love your stuff, man.
And now this game! I've finished nearly all the tutorials, but the bombs level is kicking my ass. I read your previous hint, but no dice. Maybe I'll just have to sleep on it like I did for the level just before...
Anyway, thanks for the awesome game! |
tee hee, thanks! I'm glad you like the robots and the rockets.
The bomb tutorial seems to be one of the trickier ones, for whatever reason...
[spoiler!] Clearer hint: The fuse on the bomb at the bottom right is too short for the bots to make it all the way over and push the button. So you need to find a way to get a bomb with a longer fuse in there. |
> Tom: Most of the old standbys have been silent for a while. Speaking of which.. can we expect any levels from you anytime soon? =)
I've been making rooms in another puzzle game lately. However, I've gotten that project almost finished, so I had some time for Escape editing today. However, I got this message when trying to upload a level:
"upload failed: fail (bug) bad lev"
Any ideas what might be causing this? The level has a valid solution and I've got the latest version of the game. |
| This is caused by my computer running out of disk space. (Urgh..) I'm cleaning up log files now and you should be able to upload in 30 minutes or so. |
Congretulations :-)
Well done! :-) |
In Windows, while playing a "big" game in Escape, if I press CTRL-left or CTRL-right I can roll the screen, but CTRL-up or CTRL-down does nothing.
|
| Hmmm, this is surprising because they all work the same way. You can move the player up and down, right? One possibility is that you can't scroll because the player is too near to the edge of the screen... |
| You are wright. It does work if the player is at least 4 spaces from the edge. I thought CTRL-arrow would work idependent of the player's position.8( |
| It does in the editor, but not when playing the game. This was deliberate, though, to keep the player from getting 'lost' outside the scroll window. Probably the best thing is to just zoom out with ] and [. |
Tom, I found a way where you can reproduce the ERROR (-1) next to the name of the player
1) Backup your player.esp file
2) Open Escape
3) Open your player (I did not test with default.esp)
4) Edit a level (You can edit something or not doesn't make any diference)
5) If you did edit, save the new level
5) press "P" (play)
6) press "B" (bookmark)
7) bookmark current state
8) exit from editor
9) exit from escape
10) Open Escape and the error appears
I hope this help you find the bug.
|
| Awesome! If this works each time I can definitely fix it. Thanks a lot. |
| I fixed it. I'll put out a release tonight for Windows and Linux (but sourceforge's OSX compile farm is still down, sigh...) |
Is there a way to delete bookmarks, before finishing the level?
|
| No, but that's high on my list. What I plan to do is to integrate the solution playback mode with the playing mode, so that the bookmark menu basically becomes the solution manager. This will let you do things like playback someone else's speedrun part way, then start changing it halfway through. |
How hard is it to compile on OSX. The box I have has the default compiler that comes with OSX, and maybe we can download the needed files to compile it ourselves.
Are there instructions available? |
Great game. Even my three year old son loves to play it. I have a question and possibly a suggestion.
First I cannot get it to work through my proxy server (wingate pro running on NT4). I tried the alt connect and added port 8888 to my proxy server. Any tricks I should know??
Second Perhaps the levels could be grouped into seperate directories to decrease load times. Like putting solved levels into a seperate directory or mayby by difficulty.
I am going to see if I can do it manually.
|
| uenko: it's not hard to compile yourself on OSX. Actually, it should be a matter of checking the source code out via CVS and then just typing 'make framelinks' and then 'make zip'. But, I'd rather not have to resort to that... it's unfortunately just an unforseen shame that sourceforge's OSX machines have been down for months. If it continues I'll try to find access to another mac with an early version of OSX on it. |
RC: Escape doesn't currently support web proxies. I should get around to adding support, I guess, but I haven't yet since I thought most people just use NAT these days.
Yes, "triage" is getting huge (and kinda slow) so the plan is to separate levels into directories. This won't actually speed things up right now, because the game searches through all subdirectories. But that information could probably be loaded 'on demand'. |
| Is there documentation on how to download the files directly from sourceforge? |
You can do it like this:
cvs -d:pserver:anonymous@cvs.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/tom7misc login
(empty password)
cvs -d:pserver:anonymous@cvs.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/tom7misc co escapex
Then read the file HACKING for instructions on how to compile.
After you compile, you probably want to run "make zip" which will put an Escape.app in your /tmp directory, and also make a zip of that (just like what you get from the webpage) in the source directory.
Good luck! |
Hey, it worked.
It's nice to have the updates, especially that resize windows thing. |
| I'm glad! Whenever you want to synchronize with the current source code, just do "cvs up -d" in the escapex dir. I can't guarantee that the code will always be in good shape, though, since I'm basically the only developer so I just check in my changes whenever I move between computers. |
| Tom, why some levels has "solved 0/0" in the level browser, but there is already speedrun for it, like in level 1037? |
| The solved number, like the ratings, only updates along with the entire collection (like when someone uploads a new level). |
Escape does not auto-detect a speedrun after a level is solved!
It's necessary to ctrl-m and than upload.
|
| It should detect when you rate. But if I recall correctly, it won't prompt you to rate if you have bookmarks for the level. I really need to clean up bookmarks, urgh... |
| umm uhh are you supposed to be able to switch layers while playing someone elses level? cause you can |
| Yeah, several of the developer keys work while you're playing, too. That's intentional. |
I moved the sub directories of triage up to the root as well as half of the triage levels to another dir in the root. Initial load time was the about the same (of course) but once you are into each of the "halves" load time improved considerably.
Is there anyway to find the already solved levels or is that encrypted in the "player".esp file.
Also can solutions for all solved levels be downloaded as a batch?
|
RC: That's what I'd expect. Well, soon I want to split them up. Does anybody have any suggestions for a good way to organize it? By year?
The player file isn't encrypted.. the solutions section consists of a series of level hashes followed by the solutions. You can get the hash for a level by looking at the filename of the level image on the website, or by running md5sum (or a similar utility) on the level file, or a few other ways. It would be a pain to decode the solutions though, which are compressed to save space (look at the source code if you're really interested...). Of course, the game shows you the levels that are solved by putting check marks next to them. What is it you're trying to do?
There's no way to download all solutions as a batch. Maybe I can add that in a future version, as a sort of "full synchronization." |
| Is there a hint board or forum for Escape? I started one on www.the-geek.net, but it doesn't have any traction. |
| Well, the escape website allows people to exchange comments on levels, and there is this feedback thread--that's pretty much it. I doubt there are enough players to support a hint board right now, but you're welcome to try. =) |
Thanks for the info. I wanted to easily put solved levels into a seperate dir. I think sorting by finished levels would be good. Although it would probably be tricky to do after levels are loaded - but could you sort out finished levels each time the game starts?
Do your levels get cooked too?
|
You can press ctrl-v to show the unsolved levels first, since it sorts by the length of the solution.
Yeah, everybody's levels get cooked. It's part of the fun of making and playing puzzles, I think! |
Sorry to keep bothering you. Yes, I said it wrong. I meant to suggest that solved levels could be automatically put into the root directory upon game start or exit as a way to split up the levels. As far as other ways to split them. I like date, size and author.
Also does that old dos version still work?
|
It's no problem!
What is it about sorting that doesn't work well? I'm thinking about redesigning the level browser stuff (probably to base it on tags and filters rather than directories), so comments are welcome...
The DOS version works as it did in 1998 or so. It has bugs, and isn't compatible with the new version. There's pretty much no reason to play it, unless you want to chuckle at its primitive graphics and interface. ;) |
I think it'd be cool if sorting automatically created (or pretended to create) sub-directories. Like, you'd press Ctrl-D and there'd be directories for 0-1, 1-2, 2-3, etc.
BTW, I withdraw my suggestion from a long long time ago about making the sort stable. I downloaded the source and did it myself a while back, and it wasn't nearly as useful as I thought it'd be.
P.S. thanks for the D button! |
| That's kind of what I have in mind--doing ad hoc filtering/sorting instead of trying to organize into directories. But the filters would be browsable like the directories are. This won't help much with the performance issue, though. |
| Silly question: once I've cooked a level, is it "better" to comunicate the cook, or would you prefere a modification? The mod would not give the clues away, but the author could feel a little bad about it. How do you would want us to handle this? |
In my opinion a mod is almost always better. When I make a level I love to see it cooked in a clever way, and I love being forced to figure it out. I'd say to make a mod unless:
1. your mod gives away the solution to the original
2. the level or the mod is not really that good
3. you don't feel like it
|
Ok!
But: without knowing the original solution, how could we know if it's a cook or the intended way to solve the level... I know, this question is even more silly... I guess I've got it, I know what you've been trying to tell me.
I'm looking forward to "d" (-; |
| And: only AFTER rating we can see the original solution. I did not know that I had been cooking some levels before uploading the speedrun... And I think once I've solved a level, I should rate it right away, and not wait and wait until others would do the first ratings. Even if my first rating could and would not be appropriate at all. |
Well, before you assume you've cooked it, you should download the original solution from the solution manager (ctrl-m, ctrl-d) and compare!
I'll be able to post a new OSX version immediately once SF.net gets its act together... |
Ok, I guess I'll be able to handle it - but still, cooking speedruns will cook the level, with or without indicating the cool manually.
It's just a pity that RC moved his level to the graveyard after I had cooked it! 'cause the level was really nice! |
| I did upload a mod of John's level - and his original level just disappeard from my triage folder... I guess I had done something wrong... I didn't edit and upload it from my escape-editing-copy-folder, but from my original escape-game-playing-folder. Ugh. John, I did not want to loose your level, but it has gone! |
| Sorry, false alarm, I've found the level, it's still there, somehow it reappeard. |
| Not RC, but daedalus moved his level to the graveyard. Sorry. Time to get some sleep... |
| Well, you can always change your rating, or cancel rating and then rate after you've looked at the original solution. But you're right, maybe it makes sense to default to showing people the original solution before rating. |
| I do have a copyright-problem! |
| What copyright problem? =) |
| The game crashes whenever I try to get new levels on triage/graveyard. What should I do? |
| Well, I'd like to fix the bug. How does it crash? What operating system are you running on? Does it also happen if you install a fresh copy of the game? (If not, I might ask you to send me a zipped up version of your installation.) |
| It crashes when I click the screen on get new levels. I use windows XP home edition. I don't know if it will do that. |
Can you do two things for me? If so I can probably fix the bug.
1. make a zip of your entire Escape directory and send it to me? My e-mail address is (twm at andrew.cmu.edu).
2. install a new copy of Escape in a different directory and see if it still crashes when you update? Does it crash if you use the keyboard (press 4) to get levels? |
| How do I do that? |
Well, to install a new version, just download the installer from the website and install like you did the first time, just picking a different folder.
To zip up the escape directory, you can right click on the directory in explorer, choose "Send to.." and then say "compressed folder" (I think that works). Or you can use a third party zipping tool like winzip or 7zip. You can then attach that ZIP file to an e-mail message, though that depends on your e-mail application.
Has anybody else ever had this problem? |
Tom, re-rating certain levels let me realize that I have no idea when I had solved them. Sorting levels by the date of the first solution could be interesting!?
The copyright-problem... (-; - original uploaded by X mod by Y via Z versus K... And most of us use at least 2 names? Doom's original mod by Kirima via Henri via mm? I found a level that indicates "pretty much everybody" as author, which is just funny.Is it possible to change the player's name? I guess it should be within the folder, but I think changing the author's name of a level would inplique another moving to the graveyard.When I started the game for the very first time, I just tiped "mm" as usual, all my people know who this is. But this is just a very "private" little indication of a name. We have to decide the name before having any idea that this name will or could appear as an official name. As you can easily guess: all my "name"-problems are secundary, not really important.
|
| It might be interesting if bombs toggled 1/0 panels in the vicinity of the explosion. (Either that, or another type of time-delay 'logic bomb') Or perhaps bombs could be made to toggle up/down left/right blocks? |
kirima: Yeah, I agree, that would be another good way to sort levels. I think redoing the level selector will be the next major overhaul in the game.
It's nice to credit everyone involved in a level, and the space isn't really limited. I think the current system that people have worked out is pretty good.
I can change your name on the server if you want, but I have to do it manually. It's pretty easy. Let me know if you want me to!
stephan: True, but it is a bit late to change the semantics of bombs now! Brian has been asking for a tile that sends a "push" out in all four directions; maybe some kind of air bomb would be feasible. The next tile I have planned is wire-activated panels, and I don't want to even add that until I feel like bombs are pretty much worn out... |
This afternoon, on opening Escape I see:
daedelus.esp **ERROR** (-1)
and on clicking:
Couldn't read played daedelus.esp
These are the potentially disasterous things I have done recently:
I updated the deleted level file last week. I guess you're not supposed to...?
This morning I started playing with changing the text color of my levels.
I've never backed up my player; am I really screwed? |
Daedalus: Are you on OSX? If so, you unfortunately don't have the fix for this bug yet. The good news is that your data isn't lost. Search this page for "backup" and read those instructions; you can also edit the file yourself to fix it (you might want to make a copy somewhere first). To fix it, open daedalus.esp, find the line after "-- solutions" (it should start with an asterisk *. Delete that line and the ! line that comes after it. Then escape should start up just fine.
The thing that causes this is making bookmarks while playing a level from the editor. Just don't do that until I can release another version for OSX (sorry, the delay isn't my fault, urgh..). |
Ah yes, I am using OSX, and I did just make bookmarks in the level I was editing.
I followed the above instructions, and now things are back to normal. Thanks much. |
| I'm glad it worked, and sorry about the bug. It seems it has bit almost everyone by now! |
I tried to upload a speedrun to lev850 and got "Upload failed: fail (bug) bad solution". It seemed good to me. I have uploaded before. I could try another board or make a test board and try that. Any ideas. Escape200602240 WinNT4(old School)
In regards to the level browser, logical directories are the way to go I think as well as physically moving solved (or something) levels that would satisify both performance and functionality issues. It would also be nice if the level browser saved it's state. Which I am sure you already considered. Oh what the heck, while your at it, you might as well write a complete file manager that can sort files create new directories and "move" levels however one wants. That would make everybody happy. For me escape is already the best puzzle game I have ever played so the rest is just icing. |
| sorry about the duplicates. |
I got rid of the duplicates.
This happens when my computer runs out of disk space. I fixed it, so you should be able to upload now.
Thanks for the suggestions, and thanks for the compliment!! |
I'm sure this has already been thought of. But what about a Crumbling block or something that takes two (or more) touches or explosions to remove.
|
Dumb questions. If I upload a solution not as a speedrun is it considered a cook? If not Who or What determines a cook.
|
| RC: It's subjective whether your alternate solution constitutes a cook. Generally one can tell from the original solution whether you did it in a substantially similar way, or whether you avoided important parts of the puzzles; if the latter, then it's a cook. It's definitely possible for there to be interesting alternate solutions that are not cooks; some really loose puzzles (like the gold and sphere-shoving puzzles) have many interesting solutions. If you mean the "cooked 3/12" kind of thing rating, that is determined when players rate levels after solving them, and check the 'cooked' box. |
| This has got to be the sweetest puzzle game EVER! |
| Thanks! =) |
Just some of my ramblings.
Perhaps another sorting option.
Sorting by number of moves (original)?
And perhaps another rating category.
the level of frustration created trying to solve it.
Just kidding.
Has anyone solved them all?
I finally got under 100 left.
|
You can already sort by the number of moves it took you to solve (ctrl-v) but I don't want to give away the original solution length for levels that haven't been solved yet, because that spoils some levels.
There have definitely been times in the past where somebody has had all of the levels in triage solved. I did for a while, as did Max and bpotetz who outlasted me. Maybe pieguy and Joshua Bone as well? Anyway, the task has become much harder since those days... good luck! |
Yeah, i have trouble updating, and getting new levels, it always locks up. Anyone have the same problem?
|
| It might appear to be locked up because your internet connection is slow or there are a lot of levels to download. I should add a progress indicator... |
| This is a great game my wife may not get a lot done for the next week, month ok maybe a year. |
| This is a great game my wife may not get a lot done for the next week, month ok maybe a year. |
this is the best classic game ever !
it reminds me the time i was playing chip's challenge :)
i have managed to cross compile for the Motorola Linux Phone (E680i/A780) althought the menu isn't showing correctly
since the phone is only running maximum of 320x240.....
but so far playable :) |
Great addicting game!
I'd like to know more about the meaning of ratings and the percentages (93% solved for instance)... |
I just discovered something very interesting. Escape performs much differently under different color depth settings. But not what one might expect. By performance I mean playing a level (with animations on). The perfromance difference is considerable. It is literally 3 times faster between 32 bit vs 16bit. Here are the settings in the order of performance.
1. 32bit("True Color" or 4294967296 colors)
2. 8 bit (256 colors)
3. 24bit("True Color" or 16777216 colors)
4. 16bit("High Color" or 65536 colors)
Very odd??
This might just be a pc specific issue (like video card/drivers os ect...). I will test this other machines as well and let you know what I find, if you are interested.
|
| It might be counterintuitive, but it's not really that unusual. Programs usually perform better in 32-bit color mode, the reason being that 32-bit computers are most efficient at manipulating 32-bit values. In fact, despite what the number of colors says, 32 bit graphics is usually the same as 24-bit with an extra eight bits tucked in and wasted, just to make each pixel the same as the word size of the machine. And actually, there's pretty much no reason for a modern computer to use anything other than 32-bit color, so I don't even really know why it's an option any more. |
| My mistake 32bit color is not more colors in RGB. And yes I see what you mean. I guess I did not this this all the way through. |
| Sorry, if that message sounded dismissive it wasn't at all intentional. =) I appreciate all bug reports! Thanks! |
Hey Tom!
I suck at Linux, so I was maybe wondering if you could tell me why I can't get Escpe to work on my box. Here is the message I get:
bash-3.00$ ./escape.exe: /usr/local/libexec/gcc-3.2.3/lib/libgcc_s.so.1: version `GCC_3.3' not found (required by /usr/lib/libstdc++.so.5)
I tried finding out what version of GCC I had, but it said I had a newer version than 3.3. (3.4.2) I'm on a facilitized machine though so maybe I cannot be helped. :( |
| Bummer. This is with the binary distribution, or are you trying to compile it yourself? Adam and I worked this out in a way so it is "supposed" to work on all systems. Urgh. I suck at linux too. Why is it so hard to make binary distributions of software for linux? |
hi tom,
i found this board for the first time (blush), I always thought this feedback-thingy would pop up a mailto-link.
I read here, you are working on the prob with different keyboard-mappings. I think, that only a minor change is needed for that, because SDL comes with all the translation-stuff within. For my german-keymap I successfully changed the keyboard-event-handler stuff in edit.cpp and play.cpp like this:
split the event.key.keysym switch into two parts, where you can look at the keysym.unicode in one part and the keysym.sym in the other:
switch(event.key.keysym.unicode) {
/* here goes everything that is identical for unicode and sym */
case SDLK_ESCAPE:
...
/* and the only important part for a _german_ keymapping is this */
case SDLK_LEFTBRACKET:
...
}
switch(event.key.keysym.sym) {
/* here goes everything else that isnt handled properly by unicode
that should be only cursor-keys, f-keys or */
case SDLK_DOWN:
...
}
it's working fine here with a small drwaback: the <d>-key-"cheat" isnt included in the sources of 2005-10-13 yet, and so i have to decide, if i want to zoom or wanna see destinations while playing. ;) (switching the keymapping is the alternative and is fast to do in linux, but its annoying anyway)
greetz, and thanks for a really great game
|
Thanks wowei and welcome! This sounds like a good solution. How can I tell what SDLK_ constants work for both unicode and sym? Is that documented somewhere? I'd love to fix this since Escape players are quite geographically diverse.
BTW, I just uploaded a new source archive yesterday, so the [d] key should be there now. |
I guess, all ASCIIs 1-127 should be properly handled with unicode. Equality of sym and uni depends on the keyboard-layout and the mapping of course.
F.e. the parentheses on QWERTZ-keyboards (or only on german?) are <shift>-<8> and <shift>-<9>, brackets are <r-alt>-<8> and <r-alt>-<9> and the sym will be 8 or 9 for each. But unicode is set to the correct ASCII value. Sorry, i said that wrong before.
unicode even handles the numbers right with AZERTY-mappings (french), where they are reached with <shift>. |
Ah, I see. That makes sense since unicode embeds ASCII; I was just surprised that ESCAPE would be a unicode character, for instance, but I wasn't thinking carefully.
I guess I'll try it and you guys can tell me how it works! |
You guys?
(-; |
| Aww, when I say "you guys" I of course mean "you guys and gals!" Unfortunately there isn't a good plural 'you' in English! |
| Hows' bout yaw'll?? |
| How about yaw'lls's? |
Hi Tom.
I would like to ask two things about Escape:
1. How come I can only put 15 bots on a level? (what's more, a bomb isn't a bot, is it?)
2. How is it possible to change color of text on level titles?
-Aprial
P.S. This has got to be the greatest puzzle game I've ever played! |
Aprial:
1. The bot limit exists for the same reason as the limit on the size of levels. It's first a technological limitation, because each bot makes moving slower. I also believe levels with lots of bots can be somewhat annoying (like levels that are very large) and are tempting for new level creators. By imposing limitations I'm hoping that level creators discover subtlety earlier on. Bombs are bots, yes, so they count towards the total.
2. You can change the color of text by writing ^0 or ^1 or ^2 (up to 5). To go back to the previous color, use ^<. You can also fade out the text by writing ^$ or ^%. Like with bombs and bots, subtlety is appreciated. =)
PS. I'm glad you like it! And thanks for participating... |
I rated my own level but I am not sure if that is proper etiquette or if one can accurately judge one's own levels. I figured if the pros have not spedrun or cooked it or maybe not even solved it yet it must be at least a 7 difficulty?
On another note. I got escape working through my proxy server.
It also runs across the network (which I am sure you were aware of)that way I don't have multiple instances to deal with.
Well written program!!. |
It's fine to rate your own levels. I do it. Just don't try to stack the vote; vote as you would if someone else had made the level. Difficulty is probably the hardest thing to rate when you know the solution beforehand. So if you notice that the average rating is much lower or higher than what you thought (usually it turns out to be lower), you might want to adjust your rating.
Did you have to do anything special to get the proxy server to work? |
| All I had to do was use the client side app for my proxy server software and give permission specifically to escape.exe. Otherwise default server side settings worked (standard web port 80). My proxy software is old. I would think by now that can be done server side? I suspect it worked because the client side software is a kind of a redirect otherwise the proxy server was rejecting a port 80 request that did not come from iexplore or one of its registered components? |
| it won't let me upgrade. what can i do??? |
| I know this has been asked before, any idea when bookmarks will be delete-able before solving a level? |
RC: Yeah, I'd imagine that the proxy server itself can't tell escape's HTTP requests from a regular web browser's. Anyway, good to know you got it to work. =)
anon: Not sure. Are you using a web proxy, or are you connected directly to the internet? If you're using a proxy, escape's internet features might not work. You could try on the options menu using the "alternate connect" option, which might help.
yenko: I haven't implemented it yet, and I don't have any particular schedule (grad school stuff has been taking over my free time recently) but fixing the bookmark system is near the top of the list. |
| Rating our own levels does not seem to be reasonable to me. Why should we??? I always thought it's part of some hidden rules to not do so. |
| Do you think it's not possible to fairly rate one's own levels, then?` |
| Yes, I think it is possible to rate fairly, but I just don't think it's fun to do so. It's like voting for me - would I really want to vote for me? Would Mr. President REALLY want to vote for himself? ;-) |
Dear Tom (again):
I liked your letter series, but i noticed some letters were missing. Would you mind if I (or others) can continue the series?
Dear John Lewis:
This applies to you, too, for the number series. Nice levels, by the way. |
| Aprial: I'd like to finish the series, so please don't. =) I'd also like to claim the airport codes as level names. But I welcome you to create your own different series! |
I have been thinking on a zodiac series. Where solving the first (signs) puzzels gives the solution for the final. Making the final impossible to solve without clues. As impossible as possible. The question is how to make a leval that gives the clues only when solved? Also is the global rating calculated using standard average? Will only one number per player be used to calculate?
Kirima:
I apologize for rating my own level. I was just excited to have finally made a good one. I tried to be a fair as I could but of course I am bias. |
I think the best technique for making a level unsolvable is to make the solution from a previous level be required, basically by making it a mini-puzzle within the bigger puzzle. But it's not fun to repeat yourself, really. If you can figure out how to leave "clues", go for it! Anyway, I think that a series based on the zodiac is a great idea. Start small...
The global rating is the mean of all votes. It only updates in-game when someone uploads a new level, because I haven't yet written the code that updates it every evening. But the ratings on the web page are always current. When you re-rate a level, it just replaces your old rating; each player only gets one vote per level.
BTW, I still think it's okay to rate one's own level. I'd say, if you feel comfortable giving a fair rating, do so. But many people also choose not to rate their own levels, which is also just fine. |
I didn't rate my levels yet and I guess I won't. I think I would give them the more ore less average rating that appears by now, so why should I rate them? It would indicate that one more player had solved the levels - what in fact wouldn't be very true.
Very recently I solved one of those very simple levels, but before rating, I discovered that only one player had already solved the level, but had rated it 10-10-10. So I had to give the level a 0-0-0... That was before I knew we could rate our own levels, and I thought that someone must have made a fried give him a wonderful rating for a really boring level.
BTW: there are those 66 ngrhhhh... levels left that I'm absolutely totally unable to solve. I can't! And I just kind of feel like giving up 'cause even leaving those levels for weeks or months would not help, I'm turning around in circles and there seems to be no way out. So my question is: will we get the solutions one day? Or some clues? Or shall we have to live for the rest of our days with all those ngrhhhh... levels unsolved????? (-;
(I'm aware of the fact that this is part of the game and even part of the fun, but still - imaging all those people in heaven, still thinking about those ngrhhhh... puzzles!)
|
You should probably rate based on what you think the actual rating is, not based on whether you think the level is under- or over-rated as it is. Especially the crummy levels will get lots of ratings since they're so easy to solve, and that means that bad ratings will be lost among all the accurate ratings. But that's just my advice; ratings will always be an approximate thing so there's not much use obsessing over their accuracy.
If you want hints on some levels, how about leaving a comment asking for a hint? I can speak from experience that once you peek at solutions it pretty much ruins the game--so I intend to keep them under wraps as best as possible. |
Ok, I'll try to get hints by leaving comments.
I only did rate that way once, I'm sorry that I did so, but I just couldn't believe that there was a rating 10-10-10 for such a "crummy" level.
I'll keep on asking for hints! (-; |
| On an earlier post by an anonymous person, he or she said they couldn't update Escape. I've heard of an "older" version on a downloads site (tucows.com) and the version there has no animation, unable to get new levels, or even upgrade Escape! Maybe that's the problem... |
| Really? Self-upgrade has been around since almost the first version of Escape. Animation is comparatively new... |
| Here I am, talking to myself and leaving comments just for fun - or just for me. |
| We're listening, Kirima! |
I have a problem: I can't load any levels up anymore! I've already the newest version of Escape! But when I try to load something up, I get an error message, telling me "Upload failed: Fail (bug) bad level"! I thought the name maybe was used before, but there's no level called "Another Nameless Silly Bomb Puzzle"!!! ;S
Other levels also dont work!!! :( |
| I can't upload, either. Must have made someone mad. Okay, daddy, I'm sorry. Can I get out of my time-out, now??? |
| Nobody is banned or blocked, I just ran out of disk space as I often do. It's fixed now. |
Ok, that's great, I'm glad that you're all listening!
I had to complain. Just because it was necessary that SOMEONE - whoever - would complain.
I really hope that things will turn out fine.
Tom, thanks again for this superbe game! |
Bug reports on Windows:
Bug:
Escape not in Start Menu or Desktop for normal (non-Administrator) user.
Steps to reproduce:
1. Install escapesetup.exe as Administrator
2. Logoff Administrator, sign on as normal user
3. Escape icon not present in Start Menu or Desktop
Bug:
Escape does not work for normal (non-Administrator) user.
Steps to reproduce:
1. Install escapesetup.exe as Administrator
2. Logoff Administrator, sign on as normal user
3. Find escape.exe in installed location
4. User is prompted to create first time new Player
5. Select "New Player", type name (using "Adam")
6. Clicking on new player "Adam" results in "Couldn't read player Adam.esp"
7. Escape quits upon selecting OK |
| Yes, Escape can only be installed and run by the same user. It's in the "known issues" of the TODO file, but perhaps should be part of the documentation as well. Since escape self-updates and upgrades, and has a small footprint, I don't think this should be a problem, but... |
| Okay, thank you. You're a sweetheart |
| I think we should start a fundraiser to get Tom 7 a new server or at least a bigger hard drive so he doesnt have to keep freeing up space just so we all can keep upload and playing this great game for free. By the way thanks Tom 7. Just trying to give something back!! |
I'd love to give something back, too! I'm keeping on trying to create interesting levels, I'm working on it, but I'm not satisfied of what I'm doing and I'd only upload levels that would make a certain sense - to at least myself. It's so easy to create silly levels, but so really hard to figure out a real escape-challenge! I guess you all know what I'm talking about.
One of my problems is: those silly levels are not an inspiration at all, on the contrary, playing too many of those make me feel as if the game itself would be kind of silly as well... It's just not motivating at all. Whereas great levels always indicate more great ideas! Great levels make me feel as if I'd work in a just superbe team of level-creators and I'd love to participate and to contribute something so that the game itself could continue to grow-up.
I wonder how others feel? I noticed that the "pros" haven't created any new levels for at least a few weeks or months. And I'm wondering what could be the reason for it? John Lewis? Max?
I didn't edit any levels recently, because of this kind of "anti-motivation". I've kept on playing, so today there are 51 not solved levels left for me. Levels that I just can't solve... And I feel kind of like quitting. I won't, but for the moment, it just feels like I'd want to stop being one of those escape-freaks.
I always thought that this game is incredibly growing and interacting and worth while continuing to play and to be part of the crew! But right now, I feel kind of lost and not too interested in the game any more.
I would not want to quit! And I'd miss it. But I'm really, surely, honestly not motivated any more.
No, in fact, I'm already missing something.
|
I feel the same way. Here I sit with 935 of 1009 solved and just keep solving puzzels so I can stay caught up. There are some levels I think I will save until I grow old and retire and still probably never solve.
Levels with a million buttons/bots ect in an effort to make it difficult are not as rewarding to solve because they are solved more by brute force rather than logic. I like levels where you can basically see what has to be done but have to figure out how to do it. If that makes any sense. There are alot of great levels out there already and it is hard to come up with something unique. However some of the new group of level makers are making some good levels too. I am guessing the pro's did not start out with their best stuff either. Originally I thought I should not upload a level until it was polished, but as it were most of mine were not anyway. Now however, I think it is probably better to get new ideas out there and see what others can do with them. |
Ultimately I think it's going to be impossible for players to keep up with every level. I think there are a few who have solved every level (or nearly every one), but it's hard to keep that up without constant attention. I used to be a completist, but now I've slipped to 874/1010, and there are some levels I haven't even tried yet.
I want the game to be fun without having to have goals like "solve every level." Part of the plan here is a redesign of the level browser to take into account the fact that there are over a thousand levels out there... I want to make it faster to browse, have it provide smaller challenges of varying difficulty, and most of all, make it easy to identify the best levels and reward more those who upload great levels. This is high on my list, right after fixing the bookmark system (and perhaps adding sound, which is almost done). Suggestions? |
Hey Kirima, hey RC, first thing to point out I am very fascinated by the little bugger, Tom created. :) And I bet you wouldn't quit for a long time also. I'm down to 58 unsolved levels, and of course my goal is to solve them all =-O
... in the next twenty years or so ;) And one thing has to be made clear, we all are learners - well, I am.
It's nice to see new people "joining the club" and creating their own new levels and making more and more progress in the next few attempts. It indicates the spreading of the game and its fascination.
At the moment, when there is some time, I replay older levels to rerate them from my actual point of view. I assume I underrated some really nice ideas in former solved levels only cause the presentation didn't match my taste. For instance it took me some long time to discover the zooming options and the <d> and <y> keys. So every piece of art that I didnt like because of big size or because of too much magic panels and teleporters, hadn't a chance to gain higher ratings here at my place.
I think almost every level is nice and only a very few are really stupid levels that didnt make at least a bit of fun to play. And as Tom said before, having fun and giving fun should be the only aim of this game. I enjoyed so many almost genius ideas, a lot of nice and lovely designs and of course there were and still are some hard challenges. I too want to create one of those "ultimate crushers" :) but ... ;)
We all should spread the information much more widely, that there is a wonderful game out there that entertains intellect, esthetic senses and creativity.
keep on keeping on!
greets |
Thanks wowei! I'm going to make the 'cheat' keys more obvious because they are not really cheats and most of the advanced players know about them and design for them.
Especially zooming and scrolling... |
Tom 7 said (way back):
>>Aww, when I say "you guys" I of course mean "you guys and gals!"
So why not say, "you gals"?
terpy
/////
-OO-
o
|
Tom:
These are just suggestions and do not imply the game needs improvement.
Sorting by type (block pushing, sphere pushing, bots, artistic, standard, combo, ect). I would be tough if not impossible.
Predefined categories that required certian components. Like a category for speed runs. Where levels are made loose on purpose and the author's solution doesn't count.
Player stats (levels made, speedruns, cooks)
Just throwing out ideas.
|
Small feature request: could there be a key to recenter the view on the player?
As far as level browser suggestions, how about letting players assign predefined tags to levels? (Like the categories RC mentioned above.) Judging by flickr and Amazon, I actually don't have much confidence in tagging systems, but with a predefined set of tags, maybe it might work.
Of course, the same folks who "cook" obviously uncookable levels would probably screw up the tags as well. And they're probably greater in number than the rest of us. So I guess I don't have any idea how to prevent that kind of damage, short of a player reputation system or something. |
RC: I've been deliberately avoiding player stats on the server because it's so easy to cheat. It does lead to a certain good kind of encouragement, though... I'll think about how we might do this.
RC/mjn: yes, tags are the idea. Really not so much "tags" as "ad hoc filtering", so that levels can be a part of a collection ("bot pushing"; "simple"; "adventure") without being in a separate directory. At the same time I'll need to improve performance of the level browser, but that won't be too hard in a complete rewrite.
mjn: You can currently center the level manually by pressing ctrl-arrows while playing. I can add a centering key too, if you like... maybe "Home."
I don't think a player reputation system is a bad one; maybe just a division between "trusted" and "new." There aren't that many players that I couldn't manually upgrade people to "trusted" status after they've uploaded a nice level. I think it would also be easy to work the other way; discounting accounts that say "cooked" on obviously uncookable levels, etc. (I've already planned to do this for the rating system, but haven't got to it yet...) |
| Tom, Any progress on compiling a fixed OS X version? You fixed a problem back in February, but could not compile the program then. |
I am unfortunately at the whim of the sourceforge compile farm, which has been down for a while:
sourceforge.net/docs/A05/en/ |
| Remind me, Tom, sourceforge's compile farm can compile to code for all the OS X versions, right? In the meantime, can Mac users download the source code and compile it themselves (using the Developer tools)? |
| The deal is that, apparently, if I compile on an OSX 10.1 machine, then the binary will work on any later version of the OS... so I need access to an old 10.1 machine, or to figure out how to compile on newer versions so that it still works on older ones. If you have gcc installed (I guess it comes in the "developer tools") then you can compile yourself from CVS, yes. (The instructions are above on this page.) |
| After saying that I googled around for a way to compile for older OSXes. I think that what I did should work, but I have no way to test it. Would the mac users try it out? (You should BACK UP your current installation (just make a copy of the Escape icon) before you upgrade.) Let me know if it works, and what version of OSX you're using. (I'm confident it will work on 10.4 at least, but wouldn't mind reassurances!) |
Wow, so many new comments! :-) I just had a "bad" moment recently and felt like sharing it with you "gals" - and I'm really glad that my last comment did "move" something or as we say in German: bring new wind in here!
I also think I'll still be playing this game when I'm 64. (Tom, I guess you must know that I just love this game, don't you.)
It's wonderful that whoever wants to create a level is allowed to do so! I totally agree with this, I certainly know that only because of the fact that we all can contribute to the game, it had become what it is right now. I would not want to change the basics of the game because in my opinion, the way Tom7 made it is incredibly clever.
BTW: It had never been my aim to solve all available levels - I just did solve more and more of them and now those 50 levels left are just incredibly not at all possible and WTH why, I don't get it and even if that is a fact that could make me nervous, it doesn't, I rather think it's ridiculous that I just can't solve them, and/but it's just grrrh...!
But: I guess we all feel the urge of an intelligent sorting system?!
Tom, what would we have to do to test the OSX versions? Just download a new version of escape?
(PS: Wowei, merci, Du hast mir aus der Seele gesprochen und mich sozusagen ein bisschen getröstet. |
| I did download the new OSX upgrade, I didn't play yet, but the "d" seems to work perfectly (yellow lines do indicate where panels or transporters go). Thanks Tom! :-) I'll let you know how it works. (OSX 10.3.) Anyway, that's really a kick of motivation! |
I downloaded the new OS X version and like Kirma said, the "d" key works just fine. But the screen still will not resize in 10.4.6. Everything else seems fine.
What is the "i" key supposed to do? |
| I'm glad to hear it works on 10.3, Kirima! I guess that means that the new build strategy works, so I can update at about the same pace as the windows/linux releases. (I just need to stop by the lab or use Cort's laptop..) |
Ken: huh, really? Does it resize but then not properly redraw? I tested it out on the machine I built on, and it worked fine. Does a freshly downloaded zip work? It's an upgrade to the SDL library, not to the game itself, so it's not inconceivable that there's some issue upgrading the library...
'i' imports the default solution from a level named by giving its md5... there should be a much more straightforward way to do this in the future, perhaps via cut'n'paste. I wouldn't pay much attention to it right now. |
| Cooks could be verified or contested by the author but then we are back to the honesty issue. To design a open system that keeps out the cheaters is no easy task. I say why spend so much time on how to stop cheaters. No matter what you can come up with someone else can find a way around. Give them their own category that way they can compete on who is the best cheater. Just kidding. |
Ken is right, the screen would not resize... Escape stays as it is, always the same old size, the rest of the window would just stay white. And it takes a lot of time to redraw the small version.
BUT: a freshly downloaded zip works fine, I could discover a huge Escape-window, that looks amazing and must be such a relief whenever levels depass certain limits!
Are there any other items we should test? |
| RC: Well, I'm not talking about something complicated. What I'm planning to do is to manually designate a few levels as obviously uncookable (like "Wire Maze" or "Tutorial 1"), and then if anybody votes these cooked, silently discount their ratings and cooks across the board. I am in complete agreement that an arms race against organized and distributed cheaters is always a losing battle. |
| mm: Thanks! Interesting. I will look into this. |
| mm: If you want, you could check the changelog and test anything that sounds new! But that stuff should mostly be the same on every platform... |
I guess we OSX-people would be fine with the "d" and "resize" options 'cause that impliques such a great progress to us! I can't think about any ather options that I've been missing?
But that "center"-option mjn proposed would be superbe!
I don't think that the cooking-thing is such a great deal - I've discovered many obviously NOT cooked levels. If there is only one or two out of about 30 people who have cooked it, it's just obvious that that must be a false alarm, doesn't it? They MIGHT have cooked it - but without uploading their solution or at least having discribed it in words, I would not care about it at all.
|
Nice. Maybe even throw in an impossible one?
|
| Okay, Tom. I downloaded a new copy and everything now works in OS X 10.4.6 with the latest security patch. |
| Good to hear! |
With the new Windows version, I'm getting a console window along with the main program window. The first time I saw it, it was complaining about not having redlight.wav, but it seems to always show up, whether there's any text to report or not. (I created the required files to make the sound warnings go away, and it still appears.) Closing it crashes the program.
Unfortunately Sourceforge isn't behaving right now, or I would've checked this, but are you possibly compiling with MinGW and not using -mwindows? MinGW creates a win32 executable if you have a WinMain(), obviously, but if you don't explicitly specify -mwindows, you'll also get a console window.
P.S. thanks for the N key! Maybe I can finally solve that Minnesota-shaped one now... |
| Oops, that was dumb.. I always leave that on when I'm developing so I didn't even notice it. I'll turn it off and release a new version. |
hi kirima, freut mich, wenn die Streicheleinheiten ankamen. :)
hi tom, I just updated and I like the del-bookmark option, though I yet didnt understand the <ins>-option with bookmarks.
I suspect deletion to be buggy, but I couldnt reconstruct the conditions yet. when i deleted some elder bookmarks on a level, where there had been more than twenty of them, the dates of the bookmarks rotated in some random way.
still the key-event-handler only looks at the keysym.sym part and so the zooming isnt working for german keyboard-mapping. I changed the sources play.cpp and edit.cpp accordingly again, and it works fine here. shall i mail a diff-file to you? |
| oops, i didnt want to stay anonymous in previous msg. |
| ah yes, i forgot to mention: a sorting option by date of playing a level would be nice. |
| Yeah, if you mail the diff I can incorporate it easily; it's on my list... |
| I've been away from Escape for awhile but I might start getting back into the swing a bit. One annoying side effect is the huge amount of, uh, "simple" levels that have been uploaded since I left. Is there a way to automatically move a level into the "Sophomoric" directory if after, say, 5 votes, it has an average of below 30.0 or so for both style and difficulty? |
| There's no way currently, but something like that will definitely be in the rewrite of the level browser. |
| Actually, it's pretty easy for me to do that right now, so I did it. (Only I used a cutoff of 25.5 and 5 days and 5 votes.) |
| Eh, Tom? Those levels seem to have been removed entirely, not moved to the sophomoric directory. They're not even in the graveyard. |
| They're not in the sophomoric directory; I made a whole new collection ("minor leagues") for anything that's automatically filtered out. You have to subscribe to it from the update screen. |
| Oh, OK. |
| Cool, thanks! |
| i wanna help, with creation of new level's, have you a Editor??? |
| That seems to be very reasonable, thanks Tom (: |
| egonpin: Yup! The editor is built into the game and you can access it from the main menu. Have fun! |
| How about adding a "Controls" option on the main menu that explains what all the keys do? I don't think it's reasonable to expect people to learn these solely by studying comments and the feedback forum. Actually I probably don't know all of them myself! |
A "Controls" option would be wonderful.
Did you "gals" knew that there is this exhibition in Vienna:
www.goedelexhibition.at/start/start.html
|
| Yeah, there are many secret keys right now. They should be documented in escape.txt, and some kind of in-game documentation should be available. Some day... |
| Apropos sudoku: what do you think about introducing more steel colours? |
I think more colors/colored panels would be welcome--I often find myself thinking "I could do something soooo cool if there were more colors" when designing levels--but not a high priority. Probably just as often I enjoy the simplicity and limitations that the 3-color scheme enforces.
On another note: how about bookmark support in the level editor? Making my recent two looooong levels, it was annoying while designing to have to keep resolving every time I opened it if I wanted to see what the circumstances were at certain points with X number of panels activated, etc. |
I don't think there'll ever be more colors of panels. I think the R-G-B scheme is elegant, and just enough colors to do interesting things. One of the things that makes level design fun is the paucity of building blocks--too many pieces and it becomes to straightforward. I also don't want there to be too many colors, because I want the game to be accessible to color blind folks too. So, we'll probably have to do with 2-digit su doku for now! ;) (No doubt there are fancier embeddings..)
Yeah, bookmarks should persist across edits to a level. There's a comment in the code to this effect in the spot where I'd do it, which I should get around to with the overhaul of the bookmarks system. |
| Minor editor bug: if you're in the bizzaro world, place a panel or teleport then press 'escape' to cancel, the editor populates the square with the tile from the real world. |
| Thanks. I fixed it for the next version. |
| When I uploaded my most recent level, "Contact" I got an error message that said "upload failed, Error 404", but it actually did upload successfully. |
R-G-B is definately an elegant solution.
I do understand the arguments contra more colours. |
| Tom, I've got a new (Intel) MacBook OSX 10.4.6 (the smallest one available) - Escape works normally when I unable animation in the preferences menue what doesn't bother me. I thought you might know this as a "no bug"-report (; |
mm: Does it work with animation on? What happens?
When I can get access to an Intel mac I'll try to see if I can build ppc/intel binaries. |
| No, unfortunately it slows down a lot and does not run smoothly. I guess Escape is too complex ;) |
| Well, the Intel powerbooks run PPC code in emulation, so everything will be slower until I can recompile for Intel. I'm glad it's playable with animation off in the meantime! |
| Sometimes I find the rating system difficult because it depends on what criteria you use for 'style'. A year ago I used to rate 'style' as meaning graphically stylish or mathematically elegant. But now I am getting bored with those sort of levels and just rate levels highly if I find them enjoyable. Some levels are just plain fun and I do them repeatedly as I like to keep trying to find better solutions. |
| I would give high ratings for style once the level is really fun and interesting to solve, even if it might look kind of "ugly" ;) |
| Style is totally subjective... I'd agree with "just plain fun" as a good indicator of style. |
Hi! I have played escape for a while and just now opened its "package contents" (I have a Mac) and while looking at the file "tiles.png" I noticed you had all the regular tiles there but also 5 green triangle arrow boxes along with them. One's background is all white while the other four have regular floor background pointing the triangles in 4 different directions. Yet you don't use them. Has somebody else pointed this out? Are their actions that when you step on the tile, you automatically move in the direction the arrow is pointing?
Also, have you ever thought about adding ice tiles in Escape? Or did I miss reading that one too? |
Hey Koopa! Those tiles were going to be one-way tiles; you could not walk or push bricks over them "against the arrow." They are essentially the same (and even look similar) to the arrows in Adventures of Lolo. I will probably never add them because they are a bit tricky to do, and it is possible to pretty much replicate their functionality with panels. People who have been playing for a while will remember that I've long had tiles in the graphic that weren't used! Max's "Modern Art" and "A House is Not A Home" both used some dead-space tiles that eventually became TRAP1 and TRAP2. (Now I've learned the lesson that if I want people to not use something, disable it!) Escape is still under development, but maybe not as dramatically as in those days.
I have considered ice tiles in the past, like in Chip's Challenge. I'm not sure how well it would work in Escape, but maybe some day it will come. One of the main obstacles is that because of an old and uncorrectable design decision (mistake), it's very difficult to add new kinds of floor that one can push regular blocks onto.
If you want to see my real to-do list, you can look here:
tom7misc.cvs.sourceforge.net/*checkout*/tom7misc/escapex/TODO
but as always my dreams grow faster than my fingers can type... ;) |
| I found a bug on Escape: after beating the level "Study in Blue" by Stephan a long time ago, I went back to that level again today. I opened up "bookmarks" and found one there. When I selected it, it showed the guy already at the exit! After leaving the exit and going back to it, it said I solved the level and then a notice that said there was a bug. Then Escape instantly quitted. I didn't check the other levels yet, though. |
| I can't really think of a situation where the effects of "ice" tiles or "one-way" tiles couldn't be adequately replicated with tiles. And I enjoy the simplicity of blocks only being able to be pushed on floor. I feel like if you're going to put in the time to introduce a new tile, it had better add something completely new that can't already be done. Part of the fun of level design is finding ways to exploit the tiles at hand for as many uses as possible. I would like to see a new kind of bot eventually, though ;). |
| Thanks Aprial.. I do know about this bug and it's high on my list (the bookmarks system is getting a complete overhaul, which is why I didn't yet fix it in the downloadable version). I'm actually surprised it hasn't been reported yet! Solutions also count as bookmarks, so everything makes sense except for the part where it lets you move when you're on the exit and then crashes. ;) |
| Max: I totally agree. New bots are coming in the pipe, the next time I think that participation is getting stale... I have some ideas, but I'm open to new ones too! (I think the "doppelganger" and "anti-player" will be really interesting!) The next new tile will probably be a wire with a panel-like swap effect when triggered, which should cut down on the bot arrays currently used to do tile swapping. |
New tile suggestion: how about a "splitter" wire which, when it receives a signal on one side, sends out a signal on its three other sides? This would make it easier to replace bot arrays with the swap light, since right now a button press can only trigger a maximum of three lights.
I think there'd have to be four of them, though, with distinct "in" sides, because otherwise there'd need to be an extra rule to describe what happens when two of them target each other in a loop. (Although I guess you could just say that buttons don't work if they would produce a loop.) |
| mjn: I was going to make swap lights "pass through" like the crossover wires in addition to their effect. This should suffice, right? |
| Oh, cool, didn't even think of that. Yeah, I guess that's a lot simpler! |
| Here's another tile suggestion. I don't know how feasible this would be (my hunch is that it would involve agonizingly difficult changes to the code), but what about a "spring" tile that you can push around like a normal block, except it "bounces" you back as far as possible--as if you were a gold block--once you try to push it up against rough or another block etc. This could be a handy way of getting past lasers, quickly escaping exploding bombs, or a trap to shove you in the way of danger. It could also work on bots to blast 'em into electricity or each other. Disregard of course if you think it would be too difficult to code, or a trivial addition. |
| I like that idea, actually. I don't think it's hard at all to shoot the player like a gold block; it's just like teleportation. I'll add it to the list and, maybe some day .... |
Hey Tom,
Great Game, I"m officially addicted already. I've had it for a couple of months, I've got just over 600 of the levels solved. Is there any way to see solutions for levels you haven't solved a couple of them are just driving me batty...perhaps that's the fun of it. I'm still lost on the dimentional ones too. I'm a programmer myself, Great work. |
| Josh: I'm glad you like it so much! I'm deliberately making it impossible to see solutions for levels one hasn't solved, because in my experience it pretty much ruins the game. Keep trying! |
RE:"Anonymous (cache-dtc-ad01.proxy.aol.com) – 01.16.06 21:17:06
HELP I need some kind of hint for block shortage. I've been working on it forever and I'm just not getting it. Any help would be appreciated."
Any help would be great, Love the game but this level is driving me nuts! Lots of them I'm not getting but htis one is just haunting me.
Any hints? Pleeeeease |
| Hy Mom, you'd better leave a comment on the level itself, someone might give you a hint over there - just a tiny little hint, but still. Good luck! |
Tom 7
If you don't mind me asking what do you use the + computer for. Design or solution?
So if a computer is used to create a level is using one to solve it "legal".
|
I sometimes use computer programs (that I wrote) to generate puzzles (which means generating the solution, too) and then design a level around them.
I think it's fine to use whatever means you have at your disposal to solve puzzles... I've also written programs to solve levels. It's all about having fun! |
From the HACKING file:
> I am interested in ports to other architectures and
> operating systems, so let me know if you can assist.
To get the latest source release to compile on a normal Linux system,
something like the patch below is needed. Some issues:
- System header files should be included with <foo.h> not by using '""'
- main.cpp is missing #include <SDL_net.h>
- The game doesn't run on other bitdepths than 32 as that's hardcoded
into the source code. Almost all (other) SDL games convert the
graphics to the display format (there's an SDL function for that)
on loading because that way they work much faster
- This is especially important for mobile devices as most of them
have still 16-bit screen and they are fairly slow (although still
much faster than 8-bit SNES (with 4-bit graphics?) :-))
- It's not very nice to link stuff as statically by default
(as the SDL libraries are normally in the system as dynamic ones)
- SDL libs have dependencies to other libraries they require,
there's no need to add -lpng (and libraries SDL doesn't
need) to to the linker line
--- draw.h.orig 2006-09-05 21:35:21.870912936 +0300
+++ draw.h 2006-09-05 21:35:45.401335768 +0300
@@ -3,8 +3,8 @@
#define __DRAW_H
-#include "SDL.h"
-#include "SDL_image.h"
+#include <SDL.h>
+#include <SDL_image.h>
#include "level.h"
#include "font.h"
#include <math.h>
--- escapex.h.orig 2006-09-05 21:35:27.395073136 +0300
+++ escapex.h 2006-09-05 21:36:42.224697304 +0300
@@ -2,9 +2,9 @@
#ifndef __ESCAPEX_H
#define __ESCAPEX_H
-#include "SDL.h"
-#include "SDL_image.h"
-#include "SDL_net.h"
+#include <SDL.h>
+#include <SDL_image.h>
+#include <SDL_net.h>
#include <math.h>
#include <string>
--- http.h.orig 2006-09-05 21:32:18.580777272 +0300
+++ http.h 2006-09-05 21:32:34.955287968 +0300
@@ -5,9 +5,9 @@
#ifndef __HTTP_H
#define __HTTP_H
-#include "SDL.h"
-#include "SDL_image.h"
-#include "SDL_net.h"
+#include <SDL.h>
+#include <SDL_image.h>
+#include <SDL_net.h>
#include <math.h>
#include <string>
--- main.cpp.orig 2006-09-05 21:29:56.802330872 +0300
+++ main.cpp 2006-09-05 21:31:29.537233024 +0300
@@ -26,6 +26,7 @@
#include "handhold.h"
#include "animation.h"
#include "sound.h"
+#include <SDL_net.h>
#define DEFAULT_DIR "."
#define SPLASH_FILE "splash.png"
--- sdlutil.cpp.orig 2006-09-05 22:09:36.613544576 +0300
+++ sdlutil.cpp 2006-09-05 22:09:39.256142840 +0300
@@ -387,7 +387,7 @@
/* SDL_DOUBLEBUF only valid with SDL_HWSURFACE! */
- SDL_Surface * ret = SDL_SetVideoMode(w, h, 32,
+ SDL_Surface * ret = SDL_SetVideoMode(w, h, 16,
SDL_SWSURFACE |
SDL_RESIZABLE);
return ret;
|
The static linking (actually it is dynamic but the libraries are included) is deliberate so that people don't need to download and resolve dependencies to play the game.. that's the way it works on Windows and OSX and I think it's a lot nicer. Is there something that goes wrong with it the way it's set up?
I don't understand what you mean about main.cpp missing an SDL_net include; it includes escapex.h which then includes all of the SDL headers.
I'll look into the 16 bit thing, but I seem to recall that some of the things I'm doing (direct pixel manipulation) only work with 32-bit color.
BTW, what compiler/distro are you using? It compiles fine (out of the box) on all of my linux machines... |
"Traffic Jam" by KWM: Tom, I was so glad to finally get that one, and really interested in observing the original solution and the speedrun - but no way, I just could not "see" anything 'cause it's impossible to zoom in and out while watching solutions. Could it be possible to introduce zooming there?
(I know, the resize-window-thing now works for OSX as well, but unfortunately, I did solve that level using the old version of the game. So I copied my player file into the new version - but doing so I lost a few solutions. I certainly know I just have to wait for some days and copy the player file again and that would solve my little problem, but still, "zooming solutions" would be a good thing.) |
| The solution manager is being merged with the bookmark system, so this will come naturally when that happens. Expect more changes to escape starting in october... |
| ??? I'm sorry, but I don't understand A SINGLE WORD??? |
| I'm just saying that the changes I'm working on now should take care of what you want. But they won't be ready until october at the earliest. |
Ok. I've read all the wiki-articles about sliding blocks, thanks for the links.
Tom, you're doing a wonderful job. Thank you!
I'm looking forward to whatever will be there in october.
I didn't want to insist or to offend you. |
| Don't worry! |
| I don't. (: |
| Hi - sorry I'm noob. Have Escape running fine, playing and liking it. Now frustrated and stuck (D'oh!) on Tutorial 17. Any links for walkthroughs or other play guides? Sorry if I missed seeing some and thanks. |
Hi JG--you should try asking your question by commenting on the level (by selecting the level and then ctrl+c I think?) and then checking the comments page on the Escape web site.
This does raise a good question about tutorials, though. Maybe in the special case of tutorials, solutions should be viewable without having to solve them, just in the spirit of helping people learn how to play as easily as possible--especially since a number of people have been experiencing problems with some of them. |
I'm not quite sure if that's true - I guess the tutorials are created to teach us the behaviour of each item - and that's certainly obvious even without knowing the final solution, isn't it?
Assuming that this is not true: I'd propose not make the solutions viewable, but maybe something like hints or bookmarks? |
| Happy Birthday! |
| Kirima, it isn't obvious if there is a specific aspect of the behavior you don't understand that is necessary for solving the level! |
I've tried hard to make the tutorials such that you are forced to figure out the behavior without too many choices to distract you. Maybe I haven't always done the best job of that, but I'd prefer to improve the tutorials than to give the solution.
Hint: for #17, push the button several times after going through the teleporter to get you started. |
With Linux Mandriva 2007.1 all I get from escape is an immediate crash. I think it's somewhere in the sound drivrer. This worked on Mandriva 2006.
If a backtrace would be useful let me know and I will post it.
|
| There's probably nothing I can do about this, because SDL handles all the sound stuff. But you could definitely get the source package and recompile with -DNOSOUND, especially since sound is not yet enabled in the release versions! |
"Expect more changes to escape starting in october..."
That was your statment in the beginning of september.
I'm curious! I guess we all are waiting for it? |
| I've been working on it! I made some progress, but I'm not ready yet... |
| The first project is to make the bookmarks menu able to work like the VCR in the solution manager, so that you can do all of the normal playing things when watching a solution (like zooming). |
| We're all waiting for IT! |
| Two weeks later - but no comment? It's still me waiting for IT? |
| Still working on stuff, but lots of projects makes me slow... =/ |
| I'd wish you some speed! |
| Okay, well there's a minor update! |
| where? the current compilation 4 linux is dated 060825 still. |
| Sorry, I hadn't released on linux, but it's there now. |
| hey great, thanks a lot. |
dunno why, but this is a stupid question,
how do you put an object underneath an object (having it come up when flipped with a switch)?
thanks,
O_O |
| O_O: In the editor, you can modify the "alternate layer" (aka "bizarro world") by pressing 'y'. When you flip a switch ("panel") the destination of the panel will swap with whatever's in the bizarro world at that same position. |
| Hey, Tom, I 've been playing with the new update, and the animation is significantly slower than it was before. If it makes any difference, I'm running it on Windows 98. |
ok thanks a ton, I wondered what that part was for.
O_O |
| Eric: Can you tell me a little more about your system? What color depth is the desktop set to? I did upgrade the version of SDL with this (which is probably what is causing the issue) but didn't really touch anything with animation. |
| What the hell is going on there??? I don't get it. Linux is available???? What about the rest? |
| All of the platforms are available; Linux was the last one to go up. |
Okay, here is some information:
Microsoft Windows 98 Second Edition 4.10.2222 A
GenuineIntel Pentium II
256.0 MB of RAM
I have the screen resolution set at 1024 by 768 and am in 32-bit color mode. |
| I am brand new to this...just discovered it today. Is there any place to see how the levels are beaten most efficeintly? |
Anon: Yes, but only after you've solved the level. When you do, you can go to the solution manager (press ctrl-m from the load screen) then download the solutions from the server (ctrl-d) and watch them. Usually there are only two: the original solution uploaded with the level, and the best speed record. But sometimes people will upload other interesting solutions.
Also, I am about to release a new version that will make it a bit easier to do this, by using the bookmarks menu. |
| Eric: Huh. Well, my only guess was the color depth, but I can try it out on my win98 laptop. Is anyone else seeing this on any platform? Does it seem like it's struggling or just paced slowly? |
I'm fairly new here ... I've made a couple of puzzles so far -- maybe one of them will be able to stay in Triage :-)
A couple of things:
1. It looks like puzzles that get low ratings don't make the cut. But on the Rigidity scale, a puzzle can be good anywhere on the scale. And different people find different things lame ... I really, really don't like puzzles with unpredictable laser death, so I give those a 0.
2. I've read here about sub-grouping the Triage list ... please do! My preference would be for a group of good beginner puzzles, plus groups by type: Logic only -- no guessing required, lasers, robots, bombs, etc.
3. If possible, it would be nice for puzzle creators to include a hint with their puzzle, that players could choose to see -- or not. This would help us beginners who are lost, but not spoil the game for experts who don't want help.
Tom, thanks for making Escape, and continuing to support it. May I give you some publicity by mentioning Escape on some lists I belong to? |
LizPf: Thanks! Rigidity isn't taken into account at all for the minor leagues filter. That's because, as you say, levels that aren't rigid or are rigid can still be good. (The same is true for difficulty, actually..)
For 2, I'm definitely working on that. It'll be good!
I've been thinking about ways for developers to include hints, but I do also like the idea of levels having no words in them at all, so, I'm not sure...
And, please do spread the word if you like the game! Thanks! =) |
the new bookmark-manager is a nice add-on and I like the optimization-option. but can you please add a dialogue there, when you hit "download solutions", that says "do you really wanna ..." instead of trying to download immediately. perhaps such a dialogue could also be suppressed with a new preferences-setting.
by the way, Tom, your machine ran out of diskspace again :-/ |
| wowei: Is the issue that you accidentally hit it? And then that it hangs because you don't have an internet connection? Because there's never any harm in downloading solutions (you can just delete them) and it shouldn't take that long... |
| No no, it doesnt hang, and I think it behaves cleanly and good, when I'm not online. It just annoys a bit, when I accidantily hit the button, and then - I'm so easily seduced to cheat on the speedruns. ;) |
| Well, in my opinion once you've solved the level, go ahead and look at anyone else's speed runs to try to improve them! I think of the speedrunning as more of a collaborative effort, so peeking is not cheating there. =) |
Just an update here re slow animation. Tom mentioned that this probably was due to the SDL update. Today I went to the SDL web site to see if there were any older versions available, but there didn't seem to be. Then I realized that I actually had an older version of SDL.dll (which came with the Chip's Challenge "Tile World" emulator). This version was dated August 28, 2005 and is version 1.2.9. So anwway I swapped it in for the SDL.dll that was in the Escape directory and now the animation is faster again!
So it seems that the SDL upgrade was indeed the cause of the change. |
Thanks for checking! You should safely be able to use your choice of SDL.dll for the game; they are supposed to be totally binary compatible. (Note that the auto-update will overwrite it.) But I shouldn't downgrade the distribution because there have been a lot of other bug fixes.
Unfortunately the SDL changelog is not very thorough so it's hard to figure out what it might be and whether there might be a workaround... |
| I can`t save the Sourse Code. What I must do? |
| You should be able to get the source code from the download page (just click the icon or the link). It's compressed with bzip2, which you could get via cygwin on windows (it might be standard on OSX, and it is standard on linux). After that, check out the file 'HACKING' for instructions on how to compile. |
| Can someone help me on tutorial 21? The hints arent helping me that are already up!! |
| Tutorial 21: You need to put something on that panel so that the bots will come over and push the button, but the bomb that's there blows up before the bots can get there! But some bombs have longer fuses than others... |
| But how do I get the original bot out of the way without blowing up the button? |
| What kind of devices could be used to "get rid" of unwanted objects? |
| Good to see a new level from you. It is nice to see that you get to play your game too. |
| Is there a way to merge my various player files so that all my machines have all the same puzzels solved. If it is documented somewhere just point me to that. |
It's not documented, but it is not hard to do by hand. You can open up the player files in a text editor. There are two sections you'd want to merge: the one that says "solutions" and the one that says "ratings." If you just paste the data from the one file to the other, everything should work okay (but make backups first). You don't need to worry about the order or duplicates, I think.
I use CVS to merge changes to my player file across several machines; you could also do something like that (or subversion, or unison)... |
| RC: Actually, don't do that, there is a better way. In the game, navigate to the triage directory and press ctrl-0 (zero). Then type the name of the player file whose solutions you'd like to import. It will take care of the rest. This doesn't merge bookmarks, however, and might solve some levels automatically that you never actually really solved (these are usually the really trivial levels though, so no real harm done..). |
Tom, I'm glad to know you're still around! :-)
|
| Yes! I hated mouse-warp! I always figured it was some unavoidable SDL bug. |
Thanks.
|
I downloaded your game and its really fun, it reminds me of a game on my moms old computer called Chips Challange... but I am having a hard time with some of the levels... I cant seem to beat them, I was wondering if you have any cheats? lol the ones that have those bounce ball things, the red, blue, green and gray ones> idk how they work!
thanks! |
There aren't any cheats that allow you to bypass solving the levels, but there are a few things that can help you with hidden information:
the 'y' key shows the alternate layer (what's "behind" the tiles you see)
the 'd' key shows the destination of panels and teleporters and remotes
the 'n' key shows the order of bots
Also don't forget to make liberal use of undo and the bookmarks system!!
You can also read escape.txt for descriptions of the various tiles and bots. That might help a bit. Or, ask here for spoilers on specific levels! |
| Also, some levels are really really hard even if they look simple (there's a lot I've spent hours on and haven't been able to solve yet). So, start with easy ones... those are the ones with narrow red blocks on the right. The more red, the harder it is. |
| So I have done everything in Tutorial 21-- exceot move that block in front of the door. Any hints? Thankss |
| You're almost done, you just need to destroy that block with a bomb. There's one right nearby... |
Hey, very nice game you have there.
The Linux version is in dire need of a ~/.escape-game directory (or file) for user data. Without this the game simply will not function if installed for multiple users which is the case for binary packages for most (all?) Linux distro's. The game also needs to know where the data directory can be found and should be set at compile time. Now "make LINUX=true DYNAMIC=true" is good, but another DATADIR=/usr/share/escape-game (or whatever) option is needed.
The file structure is terrible and we need 1 data folder. Clarity could easily achieved by having a src/ for your code, data/ for the game data and perhaps other directories under that if you wish and junk/ for the junk. The binary can go in src/ or ./ it's not as important since it's only 1 file.
An install option for make would be handy but if at least the first two paragraphs are satisfied it should be easy enough for binary package maintainers to release your game in major Linux distros reaching a large audience.
Thanks for the game,
fxt.
|
fxt: I'd like it to be included in linux distros so I'm working on the ability to do multi-user builds. This will have the facility to store the player file and downloaded levels in ~/.escape; etc. It won't support auto upgrade though, so single-user install will probably be recommended on most platforms. I will make the multi-user install only a single executable not requiring any "data dir".
I don't understand your rationale for calling the file structure terrible. |
| I downloaded a speedrun by another person, and watched it through the bookmark system. When the playback ended, I pressed Esc, and found that my old, slower solution was replaced by the speedrun. Is this a bug? |
Yeah, that sounds like a bug/misdesign. If you re-solve a level with a shorter solution, it automatically replaces yours. Unfortunately there's not really anything to distinguish re-solving a level from playing back a bookmark. I'll probably change it so it never overwrites your solution, now that the game can support multiple solutions for the same level, and they're small anyway.
If you're interested in recovering your old solution it may be in one of the backup player files. I can help if you want. |
| I know about backup player files, and I've already recovered my old solution. Thanks anyway. |
| Good, I'm glad nothing was lost.. |
Hi, this is your newest level creator here. I'm always a little frustrated with trying to find unsolved levels I haven't tried yet but it often takes a while to find one. Would it be possible to put scroll bars in Triage, Minor Leagues ect. because that would make things so much more convienent.
Also I had an idea for the wires: you could have a wire block that takes incoming signals from the top and turns them to the right and vice versa and it would do the same for bottom and left signals. Kind of like the top-right and bottom left wire blocks combined.
These are just ideas but i hope they are good ones. |
| I'm making a new version of the level browser that I hope will be more mouse-friendly. For now I recommend using the keyboard for almost everything. If you like you can use ctrl-v to see unsolved levels first. |
| And, thanks for joining us! |
| Tom, what do you think about opening a new file? This one is going to be really really big... |
| You mean a new feedback thread? Yeah, good idea... I'll do it with the next release. |
| yer kool!!! |
| Tom, I just solved level 1474 "moving the rockies" - I was faszinated by the blue lines that appeared once the bot turned on electricity. But there I discovered some weird behaviour: the current (the blue line) starts in the upper left corner of the level, I wonder if that's how it's supposed to be? |
| I haven't solved that level yet, but a few weeks ago I did rewrite the way that transponder beams work so that it displays in a more logical order. I think that will fix the problem, and it'll be in the next version. |
| Ok, I'm sorry, I didn't want to bother you guys. |
| Don't worry, it's no bother! |
Hi, Tom 7. Been a fan since forever. Sorry to be starting with a complaint.
The "static" Linux binary has an unresolved dependency on libgdk-1.2.so.0 . I understand you need to make a tradeoff regarding what libs you include versus which ones can reasonably be expected to be found on a Linux system capable of playing this game in the first place -- however, gtk+ 1.2 was replaced long ago, and the chance is increasing of it _not_ being installed, especially if the computer is primarily a KDE system.
On my Gentoo box, it takes rather a long time to install gtk+. :)
|
| Thanks, I didn't realize that. I'd rather include as much as possible so that the binary works out of the box. It looks like GTK2 is only a few hundred kilobytes; do you think I should include it? |
Well, no, because it doesn't use GTK2. ;)
The only libraries I see in the ldd output, that look like they came from gtk, are libgdk-1.2.so.0, libgmodule-1.2.so.0, and libglib-1.2.so.0. I'm a little puzzled as to why it's using libgdk, but not libgtk.
I can't see any harm, myself, in including the libraries. They're pretty small.
Another option you might want to consider, tho: it's libSDL-1.2.so.0 that's pulling in libgdk etc. as dependencies. I actually got Escape to start fine just by moving that file out of the way and letting it use the one from my system. You may want to look into recompiling SDL without the dependency. |
Oops, I don't know why I said GTK2. =)
If you have SDL on your system then it's really easy to compile from source... so for the binary distribution I'd rather minimize the requirements. I'll see about including gdk, etc. |
What I meant was, you could try and recompile SDL so it doesn't use gdk. Then you could distribute that version of libSDL, and you wouldn't have to add more to the download.
Admittedly, I'm not sure what it's actually using gdk for. |
| Oh, I understand. Maybe I can give that a shot. |
| A help file would be nice for the editor; I don't know how to put a piece on the underside of a floor tile. |
| Ian: I think that the escape.txt docs explain the editor a little bit, but yeah, you're right, the editor is underdocumented. What you want to do is edit the "alternate layer", by pressing y (or clicking the 'layer') button at top. |
| Thanks. This will help me make my levels. =) |
I'd love to know more about computer assisted levels and your attitude towards the battle "kirima" versus "computer assisted" levels....
?
I'm just Kirima, and I'm certainly not computer-assisted |
Well, I think I was one of the first to use computers to make levels, so obviously I'm in support of it... I think what ultimately matters is that the level that comes out is good, not that it's made by computer or human. It would be really easy to churn out thousands of moderately difficult computer-generated levels, but they would all basically be the same and not very fun. But it's also possible to churn out loads of easy and/or annoying human-made levels, as we can witness in the Minor Leagues. ;) So for me, the computer is just one of many tools that can be used to author good levels, and like any tool used for authorship, must be used tastefully. I like the convention of noting when a computer was used to make the level, in the interests of accurate credit.
What is the nature of your "battle"? You seem to like at least some of the computer-assisted levels... |
In response to all the comments above about level rating, I must speak up regarding this, as I have received a style rating of 0 and a difficulty rating of 3 on "Just Enough," a mod of an existing level that had a style rating of 8 and a difficulty rating of 7. I honestly can't understand what the queso is so wrong with the level that would warrant such abysmal ratings.
Thoughts, anyone? |
Maybe someone just doesn't like mods, or didn't feel it was different enough. I've "taken points off" for not being different enough in the past. (And in retrospect, of course, some of my mods which I thought were interesting at the time wouldn't meet my own standards now.)
Anyway, it's just someone's opinion, it's not personal (presumably), and it's not any less valid than yours. Why worry about it? People have different tastes... |
| I guess when I saw it, my first reaction (especially considering how radically different the solution for the new level is from the original) was, "I'll bet almost anything that this person would give 'Rouge-Like-Like' and 'Bigger Waste of Time' style ratings of '1.'" But a difficulty rating of 3? Talk about overkill. |
| Style rating of 0 seems pretty extreme for any level... I don't think I've ever rated a level 0, since I could always imagine a level being worse (but on the other hand, once it gets bad enough like "EXPERTS ONLY!!!" it starts to get good again, in a way...). My guess is more like someone is rating 0 when he feels a level is overrated, not that he thinks that level specifically deserves a 0. I'd discourage this practice but I don't want ratings to be taken too seriously, since they are in a way fundamentally flawed. The tags based system that I'm working on should pretty much supersede ratings. |
Tom, I'd give you a style rating 0
000
For this never ending blog-thing!
John, don't ever worry about whatever other people could think about your levels!!!!!!!!!!
They ARE just GREAT! No matter what people would rate, I just LOVE your levels or whatever you could create, your levels are so much fun to solve and they are always a real challenge!!!!!!
And with a big hug from Switzerland
MM |
| PS: Rouge-Like-Like is my favorite forever best level ever since almost forever and so on. |
And again: Let's scroll down!
ALLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL LLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL LLLLLL the way down.................
It lasts forever!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
And again, we'll Ssssssssssssssssssscccccccccccccccrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrroooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo ooooooooooooooooooooollllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll llllllllllllllllllll down.
Down again.
And again!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
We all ADORE it!
Yeah. |
| Thanks Kirima...*gives a big hug back* You're an awesome friend, and don't you ever forget it! Now on to solving Rouge-Like-Like...*big grin* |
| Oh no, a zero?? |
| Speaking of zeros, please read the message I posted on the page for my latest level, "Not Enough Block Shortage." I'm officially sick of this. |
John, I guess it's up to Henri to "judge" what we've done to his level, isn't it?
And rouge-like-like is still my favorite one...
YES, Tom, a ZERO for never ending scrolling down, all the way down, it's just boring.
;-)
I'm looking forward to a new blog, new, just NEW, starting all up there, in the beginning, on top of a page! Is it really impossible to create a new folder? A one the starts just on top of a new page?
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| I think that's a great idea! If it were up to me, though, I still say your level is much better. :) |
| I will next time I post about it (I really want to get the next Escape release out soon, so that'll be a good time, but my research paper deadline has to come first..). Maybe in the meantime you can use the 'end' key to avoid so much scrolling? |
| Thank you, John, I'm pleased :-) |
| It would be nice to allow authors to put in links to other levels in comments, especially if it is a mod of an existing level. |
Max: Yeah, I agree... any idea on how to best to refer to other levels? A menu I guess?
One thing I've been meaning to do is have metadata for "based on" or "cook of" or "spoiler for" other levels on the server, so that you could prevent a level from being displayed if it's a spoiler for a level that you haven't beaten yet, for instance. (Like, Skirting Skirting and Rouge-like-like are pretty big spoilers for the levels they cook...) I haven't quite figured out how the best way to do that would be though. |
| Also, should be a new release tonight with some fun stuff to play with. |
| I'm still scrolling down. |
| And there'll be a new thread, don't worry! |
| Okay, I mean later today. |
New Thread:
radar.spacebar.org/f/a/weblog/comment/1/898 |
| Wow! :-) |
| I need cheats.....I'm jonsing for some ans....answers man.....I have 604/943 solved...Have gone to seek help with Tom7 in the past, but that seems to make matters worse....Need someone to divulge some secrets to me at "DanaStev924@aol.com"....All help with be appreciated |
| ok...still haven't got anyone to help yet....but I'm up to 639/943 in 6 weeks solved myself.... |
| PLEAS! wats the patern on guesswork (mod) its just stupid, dosnt need any skill, and its the last levle in the minor levles that I havnt beat. I know |
I don't remember the pattern, of course, but I solved that one by opening it up in the level editor and erasing the bots to see what's underneath.
BTW, no complaining about level quality in minor leagues! ;) |
| This game has died >.> |
hey i'm stuck on Tutorial 20. i get the heart and the door is right there, but there's a lazer that keeps killing me every time. how do i block the lazer, if i cant move any of the blocks onto the blue area, but i cant switch it back, or else i get stuck. hellppp??
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| You Dont need to switch it back just put it on the blue wire and press the orange switch on the OTHER side |
| when i go to level editor How do i make dots make blocks or lazers? |
| Hayley:Their should be block on the right u can move |
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