Eder Ahno, a multiplayer puzzle age

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Eder Ahno, a multiplayer puzzle age

Postby ian1 » Mon Mar 01, 2010 2:14 am

I've had this idea developing in my head for quite some time, and would like to share it. I've been thinking of possible ways to do multiplayer puzzles, and an interesting idea has come to me. Though this age has Eder in the title, it was actually used as a field-testing age for the guild of engineers. The reason for this will be explained later in the post.

When you link into the age, you will be in the middle of a dense, gray fog on a flat rocky plane. You will only be able to see a few feet in front of you. If you start running in a straight line and don't stop, you will eventually fall off a cliff and panic link. This is true for almost any direction. Fortunately, if you walk in the direction you are facing upon linking in, and remain observant, you will see a bunch of circles on the ground arranged in a straight line (these circles are actually lights which will light up once the age is powered, making them even easier to spot.) If you change directions here and follow the line, you will soon reach a tower with an open door. Upon entering this tower, which you can't see the top of, you will see an elevator and a ladder leading into a hole in the ground. The elevator has no power, so the ladder is the only option.

The ladder will lead you down a long shaft. As you climb down it, you will find the fog getting thinner until you come out in a cave where you can see clearly. Here, you will find some kind of power plant. I'm still not sure whether it will be a geothermal plant or hydroelectric plant on a subterranean river. I've also not decided on what kind of puzzle could be used in powering the age. But anyway, once you've powered the age, you will be able to call the elevator down to the cave, where you'll be able to easily access any floor of the tower.

The are four floors, as it turns out. The power plant is on the lowermost floor, and the ground level floor you started on is the third floor. So it seems that the ladder skipped a floor. The second floor is also below ground, but only by a few feet this time. There is an absence of fog here as well. There will be two hallways on this floor. One is behind a locked door, but the other can be accessed. This corridor will take you to a sort of garage, containing a large tank-like vehicle. You can climb into the vehicle here. There will be a button and some steering controls. Pressing this button will cause a raised platform in front of the vehicle to lower, then for the vehicle to automatically roll onto the platform. The platform will raise again with the vehicle on it and take it outside onto the foggy plateau where you started. Now you will be able to control the vehicle with the mouse or arrow keys, and even exit the vehicle while on the plateu. Even if you exit it and can't find it again, there is a call button within the garage which will cause the vehicle to navigate itself back to the platform where it will be lowered to the garage. Pressing the button in the vehicle again also activates this autopilot.

Now, before I continue to explain the vehicle, I need to explain the top floor of the elevator: the control tower. Here, you will be high above the top of the cloud layer within which is the main plateu. You will be able to see the age's true sky, which is a deep blue. The tower consists of one room with a table and a console. On the table is a book and a sheet of paper. The book is written by the explorer who restored the age, and describes its history:
Eder Ahno was originally intended to be a public garden age. The whole plateu area wasn't even intended to be explored by the age's visitors. However, shortly after it was released to the public, a member of the guild of engineers, while exploring, found a way to the top of the plateau, and realizing this would be an ideal location for testing a new variety of vehicle-mounted radar for low visibility environments, alerted the guild. The guild master in charge of the project purchased the age and closed it off to the public, then halted the writing of the age the guild had originally intended to be the testing grounds. While the radar technology was the main focus of the age, a bunch of smaller projects were centered here too. These projects were carried out in original garden portion of the age, which doubled as a place for relaxation for off-duty guildsmen. Eventually, however, the radar technology proved too problematic. It was supposed to project imagery onto the windshield of the vehicle, combining it with what actually could be seen through it to provide a more complete image of the surrounding environment. While it did sometimes work, it broke often, which was a problem the engineers couldn't seem to fix. Eventually, the project was deemed a failure and all other projects in that age were moved to other ages. The guild began dismantling the construction within the age, starting with the barriers erected on the plateau meant to be obstacles for the vehicles. Unfortunately, that was one of the only things they managed to take down, for the fall occurred right around that time.
The book then goes on to explain some aspects of the age. Of course, the radar within the vehicle no longer works, but the tower's radar can still give an accurate depiction of where the vehicle currently is. It also explains that there is a second elevator platform for the vehicle somewhere on the plateu, however this one is designed to blend into the rock, so the driver has to rely more heavily on the vehicle's radar. Of course, since that radar's shot, it will prove to be more of a difficulty than anticipated. It mentions "emergency beacons," little radio transmitters embedded in the rock, which were used for navigation in the case of a failure of both radar and autobacktrack. Autobacktrack, of course, won't be broken when explorers go there, but the beacons can be used to help reach the door. On the paper on the table, there is an image of a seemingly random assortment of dots on a page, and a large circle near them. These dots represent the beacons, and the circle represents the other platform.
The console in the radar tower is a radar screen. It only shows the relative location of the vehicle, and nothing else.

Now, on the vehicle's dashboard is a small device that looks sort of like a compass. When the vehicle passes near a beacon, the compass will begin blinking and the needle will point in the direction of the beacon. The light will blink faster the closer the vehicle is to the beacon, until the light is shining steadily, signifying the vehicle is directly atop the beacon.
Now here's where the multiplayer comes in: one person will sit in the tower and watch the radar. When the person in the vehicle drives directly over a beacon, they will notify the person in the tower, who will note down the location the vehicle is at on the radar. This will continue until the person in the tower sees the formation on the paper on the desk start to emerge. He will then verbally guide the vehicle driver to that precise spot. The vehicle driver, once in position, can press the button that normally makes the vehicle backtrack, but since it's in the right spot, it will descend to the new garage.

Once here, you will enter the other corridor, where you can unlock the locked door you initially saw from the other side. Going the other way, you will find stairs which lead below the cloud layer and out of the plateau, into the garden portion of the age. This is lake with many islands, some of which are linked by bridges. The islands are rich in greenery, and there are some plants growing out of the water too. The islands that do not have bridges to them you can swim to. There are some other puzzles in this part as well, mostly consisting of other mechanisms left over from the guild. I haven't yet thought of any more puzzles in this age. Still a work in progress. I'm thinking of having the age end with a cloud forest in the upper cloud layer, on a mountain across the lake from the plateau.

So that's the age. Tell me what you think.
ian1
 
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Re: Eder Ahno, a multiplayer puzzle age

Postby J'Kla » Mon Mar 01, 2010 4:29 am

Good descriptive start.
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Re: Eder Ahno, a multiplayer puzzle age

Postby Chacal » Wed Mar 03, 2010 1:29 pm

This is interesting because we haven't seen a lot of suggestions for multi-player puzzles.

- I hope you like programming in Python! This will be quite complex.
You could first try with a simpler version where the player is on foot.

- The main interest is the radar puzzle.
I think you should keep your Age centered around that and dispense with the other parts (lake, islands, forest) because they add complexity with no added value.

- Make the ultimate goal a linking book to a different Age which becomes a reward, much as K'veer was the reward for completing Ahnonay in MOUL.

- Also, there is no need to make the generator room too far down. Long ladders are a pain in Uru.

Good luck.
Chacal


"The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is an attribute of the strong."
-- Mahatma Gandhi
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