Guild of Writers

We all love Uru because of the rich story lines, beautiful graphics, and intense complicated puzzles. But as Andy Legate in a recent issue of the Guild of Messengers Newsletter pointed out, there are many fan ages with beautiful graphics but no puzzles. I know creating puzzles can be a complex feat involving python code, Alscript, logic variables, and sdl. But I have noticed that there are some puzzles that recur in the ages. Could we at least to get some writers started create a template where all you have to do is input your objects, age name, and a desired response? Here are some of the puzzles I have noticed that writers have created. I know this involves spoilers, so I will use spoiler tags for the examples.

Single click puzzles. Look at a picture and try to find a hot spot that triggers an event.
Example:

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Wind River Age

It works by putting two clickable objects in one region. A smaller object for the correct response, and a larger object that covers the whole picture. This way the user sees a dot in the circle for the whole picture.
I have put the blender file for this type of puzzle at:
http://www.mediafire.com/?gyzjninjodg

Sequential clickables Objects have to be clicked in a sequence.
Example:

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Takla Makan and Oolbahnnea ages

I do not know how the python code for this works, but I hope one of you can tell us how it is done.

Conditional clickables One object must be clicked which makes other clickables active.
Example:

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Sonavio

Drag objects to a 3d hotspot.
Example:

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See the new continent puzzle in Dragon's tooth

mechanical puzzles.
Do you have other puzzle types? Please share them with us please. That is the only way we will get better. Are there puzzles cyan can create that we cannot because of limitations of pyprp and blender?
Metabasalt

I'm not at all familiar with coding puzzles for Uru, but for game puzzles in general, maybe puzzles found in Room Escape Games could be of some inspiration?

I dunno much about coding puzzles, but I know that coding them turned me off several times.

The other problem was interfacing a puzzle with a GUI which I think is still unexplored territory, and unfortunately all my puzzle ideas, require a GUI implementation

Speaking of puzzles, one thing that does creep up is how to do a combination lock, for example, The Frog Puzzle was implemented in a form in another video game - Journey to the center of the Earth (I think that was what it was called), so while this puzzle can be done without a GUI, I think that we need like a template to have this sort of puzzle as part of a GUI.

The puzzle I had, which was really good, involved looking through a telescope and flipping between several filters

RivenWanderer: Thank you for your post. I was just telling my wife a week ago, that I wanted to know what happened to all the cool preschool elementary school educational software that my son and I enjoyed playing when he was growing up. I just do not see math blasters, Where in the world is carmen santiago, reader rabbit, etc. on computer retailers shelves. But, I could see how young children would enjoy the escape from ... series that you mentioned in the post. I was especially interested in the escape from the museum program. Although I thought it made the puzzles very easy.
To those of you struggling to make your first puzzle, do not give up! Last Summer when I first saw python, alcscript, and sdl, I said what the heck is this? I had never seen programming like this before. I think the secret is to decompyle a pak file and look at the python files inside. I am also trying to post more blender files of just the puzzle. For some reason, the objects are not showing up in blender, but I hope I can get that fixed. Urupython is easy to use once you get it set up. And ask for help. The uru wizards on this forum are so helpful. I am so grateful to D'Lanor, Bob Lishman, Dustin Bernard just to mention a few that helped me get over the challenge of the first age. The thrill when the puzzle does work is worth it.
Metabasalt