I am not officially a maintainer, and I'm not sure if you guys need this level of feedback yet,
or even if this is the right place for reporting this info..
But in case it's helpful to you, I'll give you some of my experience trying it out.
It's intended to be constructive.. please disregard if it's all obvious or silly.
First of all - I think that the overall plan for AP is fabulous idea, having the many shells with many contributors,
and you've made stunning progress on the city so far. I LOVED playing shell 111, and touring the city is pretty cool.
It has such a different feel. The city framework itself doesn't seem like it really has that far to go, apart from
not really having a lot of shells populated yet.
I like the idea of having a whole bunch of smaller, more manageable puzzles/games in the different shells, all with completely
unique approaches. Some that work together would be cool too.
- I spent a lot of time trying to climb out of the canals after falling in the water... but the walls are all quite steep and I usually could not get out.
I imagine even when swimming is working, that you may not be able to climb them?
Ladders or steps that are climbable every once in a while in the canals may be helpful.
- it is really cool when you fall through some bottomless water, and you see the framework of the entire city rising above you as you plummet into the void.. I realize that right now, things are incomplete and this is unintended. But when they are done, I hope you leave a "known artifact" somewhere in the city, where people can go to get that experience..
Think: a wishing well feature somewhere in a park, that is known to (and even advertised to) provide you with this ride into the void..
"Please be sure to have your Relto book before entering the Well of Wireframes"
- I started to get frustrated that I couldn't figure out where there were populated shells to try out (obviously, this is a short term problem). What I did to find the existing ones was actually to look at the file sizes for all the shells under "\dat"... then it was easy to tell.
BUT - It is a BIG place to just wander around in, and I found it easy to get lost with the hexagonal layout. (but I don't mean it needs to change! keep it!)
To help with this, in the long term when it is chock full of stuff, you may want some kind of city "yellow pages" thingy, where you could search for shells based on search words... or categories.
i.e. where was that shell with the Oompah band I found last week? Which shells are meant to have "solvable puzzles", which are more for artwork, which were modifed in the last 30 days, are any in French, etc.
It would make sense to make it part of the map/link room. Each shell owner would need to provide a description that can be searched.
Maybe you could then have a big Holy Grail image appear over that section of the map and hover. Or a Holy-Grail-image equivalent.
hope this helps.
thank you for all your creative and laborious effort on this! Cheers!
GastroMan