Tom 7 Radar:
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Hi Tom,
I really like the idea of a collaborative "offical" collection of best levels which I suppose would be the Escape equivalent of a CCLP and therefore the default directory / filter setting for the level browser. The danger is that the collection could get overloaded with levels of difficulty 8 and 9 which would be an instant turn-off for new players and thus be self-defeating. I would love to know how you quantify "a trusted player" though. I suppose you could qualify by having completed a certain percentage of triage, but what? 90%, 95%, 99%? It is a way of filtering out all but the active regular players but could also unfairly exclude some too. Or, should I send you a resume? :-)
... this harks back to John Lewis' request for some kind of scoreboard.
As a matter of pure curiosity, do you have any idea how many active players there are? Would any of the silent ones come out of the woodwork if there was a forum system? I suspect not that many, unless you could link into it directly from the game. However, even if the actual format remains unchanged, a link called Forum or Discussion Board seems more likely to attract traffic than the word Feedback because the current moniker could be seen to imply that it is primarily a place for bug reporting rather than open discussion. N7DOT's idea of just two separate threads seems a pretty good quick fix.
As for the ratings problem, I don't have a perfect solution. I was thinking more along the lines of having filter categories in the rating dialog. So, aside from the Difficulty and Style (and Rigidity?) sliders, you select one or more categories you think the level should be classified as using checkboxes. I know this is a tad fuzzy and would require a bit of a cumbersome formula to assess the voting outcome, that is assuming that in the proposed browser a level can have multiple filter flags. There would then be set criteria for how long a level stays flagged as triage. Existing Minor Leagues levels could be reincluded in the main collection but with a Very Easy (or in some cases, Well Cooked!) flag set and not be visible in default mode. The Very Funny classification should definitely stay and actually become active again (Modern Art Gallery has to have somewhere to live). Most importantly the system is dynamic so that a level's categorisation can change as more ratings come in.
The main problems I see are:
1. What should those categories be? Suggestions welcome...
2. How do you go about classifying all the old levels that have already been rated? Volunteers welcome... ;-)
PS. As for my bug: don't worry about it, the fix continues to work fine, so, unless anybody else complains about it, it can safely gather dust at the bottom of the 'stuff to do' pile. |
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Hi N7,
If there are still residual bits of that old user account left on the machine you should be able to find the .esp file in:
c:\users\(defunct user name)\AppData\Local\VirtualStore\ProgramFiles\Escape\ |
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10363. Anonymous (24.154.114.150) –
04 Jul 2011 17:55:18
[ BAD SAT SCORES ]
I got a 2020 (740 reading, 670 writing, and 610 in math) the first time, and a 1940 (670 reading, 670 again in writing, and 600 in math) the second time. I was EXTREMELY disappointed that my score dropped 80 points, since I hadn't taken the SAT too seriously the first time, but I had studied the second time.
I have a 4.1 weighted, 3.9 unweighted, and as of my junior year I have taken two AP Euro, APUSH, Adv. geometry, and 3 Adv. English classes, the rest of my classes being standard, though I think our school's regular bio, chem, and physics are the equivalent of honors science classes at other school in my area. I am just barely in the top 10%.
If I try to take the SAT one more time (aiming to get over a 2100), and take the English, World History, and Chemistry subject tests, do you think I would have a chance to get into Columbia?
The only reason I still want to get accepted at Columbia is because I sent them my National Merit Scholarship finalist paper-thingy back before I got the results of my second SAT. I was SO SURE I would get higher. . . D,:
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Nice! I find both the original and cover quite enjoyable. |
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Don't you find it ironic that so many have this problem and there STILL has been no solution identified. But someone wants to criticize a landlord for not knowing what to do, when those of us who actually own and live in our houses have no clue how to fix it! "Stop the moisture" is easier said than done sometimes.
Basements are damp because they are below ground level. Period. There doesn't have to be an obvious leak.
I just found the little effers downstairs in my basement. I'm upset because both of my daughters have stayed down there with my grandchildren. I feel awful just thinking about them sleeping down there.
We're tearing up our carpet now to see what we can find. |
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I think I recall at one point stumbling over some of my old level and old player files I had lost when I tried to update on Vista, but I don't recall where. Funny thing is, it would have made more sense if it had been my second player file and that set of levels was what I had found, as I lost those files due to the following story:
In a Time-crunch, somebody I knew wanted to log-on to check something, but the computer decided that it was going to be unable to load the user account (windows; This seems to happen only when the computer has been sleeping and only one user is logged in, and so when you open the user that isn't logged in, it does this. It hasn't happened in a while though) and so said 'Preparing your desktop', which on the vista computer can be translated as it setting up a temporary account. Not having enough time for this, they restarted the computer while it was 'preparing the desktop', and doing this corrupted the account. Actually, It could have been that player file... I'm not sure. |
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That was me, i DID type my name however...
I got that uncaught exception bug again. Tom, please look into it. |
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The game may have many tiles to use, the number of New levels to be uploaded has gone down.
On the forum subject - Yes, but help q's and item ideas need separate places to be posted. Many of my item ideas die so fast, some seem to be entirely ignored, like gel and rough blocks, NESW and NWSE, negative, smoke bots, and cliffs. |
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:)
The level browser rewrite is not intended to be monumental, just:
- Use filters and tags instead of "directories"
- Read comments as well as post them
- Make everything fast with indexing and threads
- Don't require levels to reside in individual files, since that has a lot of overhead when you have 3000 of them
- Make it possible for trusted users to curate collections of the best levels
I did already start but man, one sad thing about life is that there just isn't time to do everything you wanna do. I still love escape though. If you guys have ideas about concrete improvements to the level browser, or specifically ideas about how to improve the first-play experience, I'd love to hear them. I agree it's a higher priority than new tiles; those are fun but there are plenty of those to play with already.
Dave: I actually agonized over the name "minor leagues" for a while because I didn't want it to sound like those levels were unwelcome, and I wanted to give the sense that there was a "major leagues" to aspire to. It might sound mean to people that don't understand the provenance. Do you have a suggestion?
It seems to me that with the current message volume, a level-specific thread and a single global thread are plenty? I'd be happy to fire up a message board (it's trivial to add them) but it seems to only make sense if there's a larger community. I think doing simple-ish things like making it possible to read comments in-game would probably help more.
There are actually known MD5 collisions (as of about 2005?) and I think it's not even that expensive to generate them any more. Both will be nonsense data, but I think the escape file format actually would allow for a contrived collision. Please don't do this. :)
Dave: I can't quite follow the specifics of your "bug", but for sure Escape reads every file in directories where it thinks it might find levels, and does so in a way that makes you wait. That's fixed in the level browser rewrite, but having fewer files in those directories is another way to make sure it stays fast. |
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Tom has mentioned a rewrite of the level browser, which presumably would cut back on scrolling time by offering more ways to find the level you want. Asking for a Tom 7 mockup sounds like a silly idea because they can span anywhere on the usefulness spectrum and you never know which one you're going to get, but has he presented a concrete idea of how it's going to be different than what we have?
Of course MD5 collisions are possible in theory, but the point of MD5 and other such algorithms is to offer a large enough hash space that each file has plenty of room to scamper without running into the others. Other algorithms like SHA-* offer an even larger space, but they're all slower to compute, and the MD5 code was already there for the taking. A bigger, but still laughably remote worry (forging malware to have a hash collision with a level file? No one would go to those lengths since there's no money in it) is that a level has the same MD5sum as another _level_, which would render the second such level inaccessible since the game would just think it's a copy of the first level. Fortunately, even such a minor change as adding a space to the end of the level name will change its MD5 and get it off the collision, so that's not really a problem.
If the Radar thread format is workable, but you'd like a way around the inability for anyone except Tom to start new threads, there's already a solution to that: snoot.org and the boards there. We could either co-opt the general board (4), or ask for an Escape-specific board to be created in slot 13 or something.
As for why CC came to have a bigger player base than Escape, simple. CC was included on Windows installations at the height of Microsoft's power, while Escape is included by default on...a lot fewer systems, to say the least, and on many of those systems the users don't even suspect it's there, let alone give it a fair shake. |
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10303. Anonymous (69.121.173.92) –
23 Jun 2011 13:38:24
[ BAD SAT SCORES ]
got a freaking 998 how bad is that? -.- |
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Just Remembered an idea I had for the escape site: Forums.
Basically they don't need to be all that complicated. Maybe just like a 'Help' category for troubleshooting and problem solving difficulties, and a 'Prototyping Ideas' category for coming up with Ideas for new or improving escape features before they become serious suggestions. I figure this might help make it easier for players to get the word of what they need and would like for escape, as things suggested in the feedback thread here die fast, unless they are posted at the right time, with some solid pluses without too many problems. I think that the thread format for your 'Tom 7 Radar' is perfect for my forum idea, but we would need to have it that the forums still are like normal forums.
I Hope this won't be too hard, considering you already have a thread layout.
I think that as far as simplistic bots go, Nervous bots and Lazy bots are good ideas, and I would like to know what anyone thinks about my gel block & rough block ideas. The rough blocks are 'rough' since they have sandpaper-like sides that scape against the 'rough' floor tile, basically sanding it down enough to make the "rough' floor tile become a normal floor. The gel blocks basically are large chunks of gel that are very good at filling in gaps and holes, and also push easily, allowing it to fill in rough and holes.
Simple Idea: Cliffs. Cliffs are basically like floor, but suddenly drops off halfway between one side and another, so you can stand on it, lasers and transponders can beam over it, but anything pushed onto a cliff falls off, disappearing.
Sorry for how long my posts are and how there are 3. I keep thinking of things. |
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Sorry, that last post was me. I did type in my name, but i think the adjusting thing at the bottom of the comment box messed it up? I'm not sure.
My current level that I am making is going to be an implementation of something not implemented in this game so far. I hope you will enjoy it. |
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Dave, I do agree. Another thing is that much older levels take a lot longer to get to than new ones, and scrolling down the levels is nowhere near as fast as if there were [levels 1-999], [levels 1000-1999], [levels 2000-2999], & [levels 3000+] folders.
Plus, Although there are way more than (due to different factorings of areas and panels, remotes, & teleports) t nPr a (what my calc says is # of permutations of items t (tiles) taken a (area) possible levels, which is gigantic at the moment), many are basically duplicates or not solvable. Many of these solvable ones are really bad or too similar to another level to upload, and a few are essentially impossible for the human mind to solve, like pieguy's "block cipher", which most of those are probably too similar to block cipher. Many good level possibilities have been exhausted, but adding one more tile or bot will increase the amount of possible levels.
One off note thing that still relates to escape: This probably won't happen, but it would be bad if a piece of malware ended up having the same MD5 string (or close enough) as an escape level, or if an antivirus's MD5 list contained one which corresponded to an escape level, as then an antivirus might say that the level would be dangerous. Just a thought. |
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Sorry about the typo (undeleted unrequired sentence fragment) in the middle of that. |
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As I finally got my triage solved count up to 2000 today (I very much doubt that I am alone or first to acheive that), I think I've earned myself a soapbox moment:-
The level rating system:
At the moment, most levels get rated immediately by a small group of experienced regulars who, me included, are pretty harsh scorers. This means that many levels, especially ones by new players, are ignominiously dumped into 'minor leagues'. This is not exactly an encouragement for these people to stay, build more levels, experiment and learn the game. This is particularly apparent when you look at the quality of some levels created, say, 5 years ago (2 years before I started playing) which are still in triage but wouldn't stand a chance now.
Next, I understand where the term 'minor leagues' come from but, from a non-US perspective, it's sounds incredibly derogatory. The other thing I remember from when I started playing, which was in the midst of a pretty mediocre series of levels, was my utter disappointment with a game that promised so much... why? ... because the first levels you play are always the most recent, whatever they happen to be at the time. I stuck with it, how many left? You're not going to test a game for potential by obeying the rules and working through the tutuorial, you only do that after you've had a bit of poke around first.
This is a brilliant and unique game but sadly under-appreciated. Maybe a restructure of the level browsing system will help. Certainly the old plan of an official series of levels, presumably over a cross-section of difficulty raings, which will become the default level directory may help. Or, how about a multi-division system which allows for demotion and promotion (minor leagues is currently a life sentence for a level). Whatever, this is probably something of higher priority than all the discussion about new blocks.
Just food for thought.
We seem to be very small community, and the game deserves better than that. Why is the CC community so much bigger? I seem to recall John Lewis' comments about competitive play. |
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The website urbanmushrooms.com
you can identify your mushrooms here. I too had the curly one. My landlord is being a d*** about getting it seen to. Landlords are the scum of the fungus infested inside of the toiletbowl of life.
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Well I'm glad you like it! If you have any good Ideas for the game, feel free to post them. |
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Just testing comments are working after N7DOT's problems.
While I am here... just a minor bug.
On one computer I had about 10 deleted levels permanently stuck in triage. No major mystery... they were in the Program Files/Escape/Triage but all level updates were being applied to Users/...Blah Blah.../AppData/.... Consequently, any file in the original triage dir at the time I installed it but which was later deleted was never being detected as stray and therefore not being moved to the attic.
Anyway, I finally decided to do something about it and deleted all the esx files from the former directory. And the effect: The recurring 'program not responding' problem during level load between the main menu and level select menu has completely disappeared. In fact, I reckon overall that start-up is about 10 times quicker than it was even when the program didn't hang up.
Has anyone else noticed anything similar? It only seems to be a problem in Vista.
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the mushroom is just the fruiting body of a fungus. They are produced when the fungus (which would be covering any amount of timber out of sight) goes to reproduce. like the tip of an iceberg
so could bleach/salt/peroxide/any chemical really be anything but a short term solution?
i suppose anyone seriously considering salt as a cure is too cheap to have a bathroom inspected, ripped out and a new one installed, ventilated and heated properly with proper materials by a skilled installer... |
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nevermind i got it ^thanks man
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my bad i could have been more specific. i move the on transponder to block the laser and get to the heart to wake uo the door but then i'm stuck. if you dont want to put a spoiler here you can send it to my e-mail. bcjam101@yahoo.com i love this game btw. i d/loaded it back in 1999 or so. had forgotten about it and found it again. yay!! |
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New Tile idea: Gel Blocks & Rough blocks
The idea is that gel blocks act like greys normally and rough blocks act like maroon blocks normally, but both share one key feature which makes them special: They can be pushed onto rough, causing the block to disappear, but also turning the rough into floor, allowing other blocks to be pushed through.
Instead, they could stick around, but that would give to much power to the blocks.
Also, I thought that if you Replaced the hugbot in 'Hugbot Framer' with a timer x Nervous bot, or just added a nervous bot, it would likely be an interesting level, and at the same time you would be able to push the door even farther to the right. |
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Oh yes, transponders... that's a tricky one. If this hint doesn't help, then feel free to say what your having trouble with. One thing that trips people up is that they don't realize they can move transponders, which are the wire type that can send signals across empty areas. however, you'll have have to figure out how to make use of this fact. So, as my hint, you'll need to move the transponders. |
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