Only a Prodigy could solve this MadMaze! [2400 Baud OK]

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Let's Play! > Only a Prodigy could solve this MadMaze! [2400 Baud OK]

Zereth: Jul 9, 2003

Nakar posted:

Yeah I probably should've added gridlines or redone the maps in Grid Cartographer. I still may. If scanners were a thing that people owned anymore, I might've scanned all the pencil maps I did on graph paper. Now those were confusing messes of odd dimensions.

Please do at least once, I'm having trouble wrapping my head around it as well.

# ¿ May 30, 2018 09:39

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# ¿ May 10, 2024 10:22

Zereth: Jul 9, 2003

Ah, so the corridors between adjacent intersections aren't actually places you can stand.

# ¿ May 30, 2018 11:45

Zereth: Jul 9, 2003

I love how the protagonist has a dagger but we're all considering them unarmed anyway.

# ¿ May 31, 2018 06:51

Zereth: Jul 9, 2003

Oh I wasn't saying that we were wrong in doing so.

# ¿ May 31, 2018 07:42

Zereth: Jul 9, 2003

I do expect the dagger to turn up in a puzzle solution sometime, but as a tool.

# ¿ May 31, 2018 07:46

Zereth: Jul 9, 2003

Commander Keene posted:

I obviously don't know how this game was coded, but it's fairly simple to check if the player has an item in their inventory. I suspect the game not saving the state of PoPs is more to prevent unwinnable states rather than technical limitations.

I suspect we don't actually have an inventory. I don't think anything is saved between Places of Power. If we gain a sword and use it later, it's because we did so in a non-optional manner in a mandatory place of power.

# ¿ May 31, 2018 09:48

Zereth: Jul 9, 2003

ultrafilter posted:

He could be a wyvern that's not red.

Are wyverns vegetarians, then?

# ¿ Jun 3, 2018 17:15

Zereth: Jul 9, 2003

Black Robe posted:

Why is nobody asking this voice why he doesn't know what he is? Poor thing doesn't know what colour or species he is. And you'd think by the time he learns speech he's figured out his diet...

_{(this is why I am terrible with logic puzzles)}

A wizard did it.

The invisible thing even specified which wizard.

# ¿ Jun 3, 2018 17:59

Zereth: Jul 9, 2003

Nakar posted:

Why is it called Old Irregular when it erupts every 2 minutes on the dot?

You mean two minutes after we arrive at it, right? It could be going off every 15 minutes.

And we need to wait a specific amount of time at the first geyser, when we could've arrived at any point in the cycle.

Also we can't use the Talisman, which includes "Time" in the list of things we can do with it, to affect this timing puzzle at all...

As for the inn: Perhaps we could use Time to turn it back to before it lit on fire?

# ¿ Jun 25, 2018 15:15

Zereth: Jul 9, 2003

Nakar posted:

That's......................... an excellent point, actually. Repeatedly in later PoPs we can use the Talisman to stop time. We could easily have just stopped time and run across the geysers, but the game doesn't let us.

See, I didn't actually know what we could do with Time, but even slowing things down a little would've helped. If we can stop it entirely, well. :orks:

# ¿ Jun 25, 2018 16:08

Zereth: Jul 9, 2003

Palladium posted:

So the tailsman is just the writer trolling us when he feels like it.

Using Time can also freeze everyone but the fire while the magic also reverts you back to a time where you had never been born, and it will make just as much nonsense as the other bad choices.

I get the feeling that the player character is basically doing the magical equivalent of choosing to push a one of nine buttons labeled "EARTH" "AIR" TIME" etc.

# ¿ Jun 26, 2018 13:03

Zereth: Jul 9, 2003

Nakar posted:

I mean... that's exactly what it's doing, so it just having a bunch of buttons like some cheap electronic toy isn't far off.

This update further cements my idea that we don't know what the talisman is going to do until we choose the option, and neither does the PC.

# ¿ Jun 26, 2018 16:12

Zereth: Jul 9, 2003

Does the Talisman do nothing when you're at the holy man?

# ¿ Jun 30, 2018 19:31

Zereth: Jul 9, 2003

Qrr posted:

Also I�m wondering about Iggy. Why did the game give him to us for this area? Sure, he gives some hints, but he�s not reliable and the game hasn�t gone for it before. I guess the question is, is he a servant of the Mad One or is he the Mad One or is he Moraziel or what? I expect some twist from him or why would he follow us to the moon?

Well, he wanted out of the prison, and the only path available (other than somehow sneaking out through the insect city) lay through the Pyramid, and other than climbing back to an earlier part of the maze, which causes him to mysteriously disappear, we haven't had any chances for him to stay somewhere safe.

# ¿ Jul 17, 2018 19:10

Zereth: Jul 9, 2003

Qrr posted:

I�m not sure that the moon of madness is an improvement over that prison, but I was mainly looking at it from a Doylist perspective anyway. Why did the author have him exist and follow us, rather than why in character he would do so.

Oh yeah, from that point of view he's suspicious as hell.

But from an in-world perspective, well, once he's past the pyramid, his choices are "try to go back through the pyramid and sneak back into prison alone", or "keep following the heavily armed wizard and hope". Or, I suppose, "sit down in the maze and die of starvation/dehydration".

# ¿ Jul 17, 2018 19:28

Zereth: Jul 9, 2003

Andyzero posted:

Are we going to _pay_ Moraziel? Give the beggar your last coin. This game isn't "edgy" enough to make that be a bad decision, and really, that's the path where we're commiting a virtue, not taking an obvious trap bassed on the deadly sins.

The fact that we're suddenly down to exactly enough money to give the beggar a coin is also a bit of a giveaway. The game doesn't actually track an inventory.

# ¿ Jul 18, 2018 13:32

Zereth: Jul 9, 2003

Hm. Uh... USE TALISMAN?

# ¿ Jul 19, 2018 19:54

Zereth: Jul 9, 2003

Nakar posted:

How can a game that an alleged million people played be so non-influential?

I notice you don't say anything about people playing it very long, which I suspect may hold the answer.

Either that or that's just the number of subscribers to Progidy and they didn't actually track how many people specifically played MadMaze.

# ¿ Jul 21, 2018 22:03

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# ¿ May 10, 2024 10:22

Zereth: Jul 9, 2003

Nakar posted:

Post-Mortem: The Prodigious Question of MadMaze
The Talisman might be the worst offender in terms of not making coherent sense from one PoP to another. In one instance, using Fire on a burning building allows the player to manipulate and control the element of fire, suppressing it. In another, attempting to use Cold in a cold environment is lethal to the player because the game arbitrarily decides one was attempting to summon cold instead of controlling it, even though by the game's own admission this is something the player should be able to do with the Talisman because they had the opportunity to see that in action earlier. The very first option the player has to use Time is non-representative of how the Time power works in almost every other instance, and then that particular method returns once or twice anyway despite the player coming to expect that Time stops time. Mind gives off the impression from time to time that it can be used to control minds, except it literally never works any time it's attempted until the guard on the Moon of Madness.

Don't forget the most important inconsistency, the plot-critical one, where Earth basically just causes earthquakes the entire time, which is never actually useful, up until you need to use the Lady's Power over Earth, which was news to me that she had it, to do... something unclear to the Archpriest, thus winning the game!

# ¿ Jul 22, 2018 20:47

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Let's Play! > Only a Prodigy could solve this MadMaze! [2400 Baud OK]