The Clotted Island

[Ian Snyder]

SPOILERS:

the pyramid+cube puzzle is so confusing. I have no idea what I did. Judging by the glowing after-image, is it supposed to be putting the pyramid on top of the cube? Because I spent about an hour doing that (as the O-shape) and it didn't do anything. I changed to the upside-down dreidel, bumped it around a bit, it fell over, I bumped it around some more, and suddenly it solved itself.

For one thing, I don't think it makes sense to let shapes that aren't relevant to the cube+pyramid move them around. For a while, I thought that to solve the pyramid shape I had to jump onto the larger pyramid between the three smaller pyramids (which still solved, although I came to it by an incorrect method). Additionally, it could help to use a four sided pyramid for the for the large one rather than a three sided pyramid. It calls more association to the other four sided objects like the cubes and the dreidel than it does the irrelevant three sided pyramids.

[Stephen L]

Ian, thanks for your comments.

For one thing, I don't think it makes sense to let shapes that aren't relevant to the cube+pyramid move them around.

It makes sense to me in a very particular way, so I'm going to leave it in.

Additionally, it could help to use a four sided pyramid for the for the large one rather than a three sided pyramid.

This I will definitely do.

[Stephen L]

So, I'm calling this done

[Jasper Byrne]

This is really beautiful.  It's great navigating 3D spaces without separate look and turn - so much less stressful.

[Alan Hazelden]

I enjoyed this, although I was also frustrated by it.

Very minor annoyance with the movement: the turning is very floaty.

I got stuck in the walls twice: pushing the cube or pyramid close to a wall and then getting on. Had to reload when this happened.

I've done all of them but the torus: can't work out what to do with it. The only relevant part of the level seems to be the sphere room, but there's nowhere obvious to stand. They don't seem to be arranged in any pattern where an extra ring would fit. There's also an extra sphere on the top platform that I've tried jumping on top of, but I can't see what I'm doing too well because I've already solved the sphere puzzle and it's covered in light.

[Stephen L]

I've done all of them but the torus: can't work out what to do with it. The only relevant part of the level seems to be the sphere room, but there's nowhere obvious to stand.

The sphere room arrangements are accidental.  They are not at all related to the torus.  Perrin just pointed it out to me before I read this, to my mortification >_<  I'll fix that tonight right now.

I rearranged the spheres in random-looking clusters, and removed the single sphere on the platform at the end.   I think this makes the room less interesting, and the sphere puzzle more confused. : (

Edit: your comment about the wall collisions being bad when it comes to cube pushing seem to be spot-on as well.  I think I know what's going on here, but I'm not sure how much I can do to fix it (that won't screw up other things).  Will try to fix it, though.  (edit: have fixed that as well - thanks for mentioning).

[Greg]

Really enjoyed what I played of it; couldn't figure out the Torus/Arrow puzzles, but I may go back and try them again later.  I'm sure they're quite reasonable, as all the other puzzles made perfect sense as soon as I figured them out. :)

[Stephen L]

Cheers, Greg.

I've been trying to find my feet more with 3d spaces and architecture as I do 3d stuff, but I'm still held back by my imagination and modelling abilities.

[Greg]

Well, I went back and figured those two puzzles out right away; they did in fact make perfect sense.  Quite like how you handled the ending as well.

I think the 3d stuff will definitely get easier the more you do.  I'd recommend checking out Architecture: Form, Space, and Order by Francis Ching for some inspiration; it's a nice overview of 3d spatial design, shown through sketches and drawings of hundreds of case studies.  It has pretty sparse text, which is really nice because the topic lends itself much more to visual/diagrammatic explanation than long passages of text.

[Stephen L]

Oh, thanks man!  That's just the sort of book I've been looking for.

edit: noticed and fixed a bug I had introduced into object pushing.

[Ed]

I was just about to play this again (after getting stuck after a few puzzles on an earlier version), but the music and effects seemed to have disappeared, which made me sad. An accidental side effect of one of the updates?

Nevermind. Apparently in the intervening time my soundcard stopped working :[


Some feedback: I love the glowing style and the colours, although I get white flashing polygons over the screen when there's a wall directly behind the camera. The music/sound was excellent too, the way the "success" sound blended with the soundtrack.
The puzzles seem neat so far, but I only solved two last time... I'll comment again.
The shaft-of-light "cutscenes" are classy :)

Greg - That book looks good, I'm off to Amazon!

[allen]

Just finished it. The torus puzzle still makes little sense to me. More so when I compare it to the others, which seem rather straightforward. Just like the torus, I solved the pyramid puzzle by accident as well but it seemed pretty obvious once I did. The most enjoyable one for me was probably the arrow puzzle.

With the music and atmosphere so interesting I was kind of expecting something interesting to happen at the end. Nothing happened, so it was kind of a tease. Also felt like it wasted a bit of my time.  But I did enjoy it, my expectations let me down more than your game I'd say so I would be at fault.

[Greg]

Glad to hear you're interested in that book Stephen! [and Ed]  Do let me know what you think of it.

[Stephen L]

So I've only looked at the swfs on the cover disk - in general I think it has changed how I percieve constructed spaces, especially viewing spaces/buildings as (potentially overlapping) composites of objects.  Mention of subtractive construction was useful.  Some of the organisational stuff was very interesting (arranging things along lines, or using these axes as organisational indicators for otherwise hard-to-understand configurations). Generally I feel my vocabulary has increased a lot, which is neat.

If you have any other books to recommend, please do!

[Greg]

I think vocabulary really is a good way of putting it; once you start to get a loose understanding of these things, the rest of the language just starts making sense (well, as much sense as it ever does).  Ironically I've never actually watched those swfs...I should really go do that...

I can't think of any other books off the top of my head right now, but if I do I'll definitely let you know.  I think architecture is in a really messy and not-at-all nice place right now, and it's taken me years to find a little hazy patch of ground that I'm comfortable standing on.  Ironically, I think you really touched upon some of the things in architecture that have been tearing me up the most in Queue, so thanks for that little experience, because it did help me along in finding some peace with the current state of my profession.