Hooray. Edit finally works again. It wasn't working for more than a year

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Korean, Last edited in 2013-02-15
English, Last edited in 2013-02-15

(Both are the newest versions. Azrael helped me update this map.)

I also posted it on SEN DLDB. Link to DLDB

All previous versions had some serious problems.
Playing this version of the map is heavily recommended. And even this version has a lot of bugs

Also note that playing this map in B.Net is not recommended. Many solutions to puzzles require a fast reaction speed, and some of them might be impossible to perform in a reduced reaction speed.



Gna is a great kingdom which lasted for more than 2000 years. Throughout this long time, its great fame gradually faded, and everything that once made Gna a mighty kingdom - such as culture, millitary system, sociey - got too old. Not it's undergoing a war that can possibly end its long history. During the war, Nefed, a soldier, got captured by the enemy and was sent to a mysterious place.
Be him and reveal the secrets of this place - and what happened to Nefed before his capture.

(Part of this storyline is included in the intro.)




Tower of Dream is a single-player RPG map that has a very unique style. In fact, it's closer to an arcade game rather than an RPG.




This is Nefed, the protagonist. You will be playing as him, and the game involves destroying enemy units and solving puzzles as the screenshots show.



There is no complicated interface. You just have to move nefed and order him to attack enemy units. As you play this game, you will encounter some special objects, but they are mainly simple and will have explanations if necessary.




Despite (or maybe due to?) the simplicity of the gameplay, this map has many differences and unique characteristics, compared to ordinary RPGs.


Hallucinations




The biggest feature of this map's gameplay is that most enemy units are hallucinations, which will be shown blue as if they were your units. This emphasizes the fact that this whole place is like a dream. However, obviously they aren't yours, and Nefed will take damage from these hallucinations. Also, in most cases it is required to destroy all enemy units if you attempt to go through a door. The fact that these are hallucinations will help you later.






Stages, Save&Load


The map is divided into stages. You'll start in stage 1 (or intro, if you choose to), and if you reach the end of the stage, you will be sent to the next stage.



Most stages are composed of puzzles and battles, but occasionally there will be bosses. There are 4 bosses in total, but the last one is incomplete at this moment and will be automatically skipped if you reach there.




Whenever you die during a stage, you get back to the latest checkpoint and get a chance to retry. There are infinite chances, so don't be afraid of dying.
You'll frequently meet checkpoints. You won't need SC's own save/load system in many cases.



The map has its own save/load system. It's simple - if you have a code, just put it into the starport, and the game will be automatically loaded.
This will be very convenient when there is a patch.

When you clear a stage, you'll get a code. Each code has its own stage and gem numbers, and the starport loads that.



This is what you'll see when you press ` key.






Modified RPG-ish Elements


In ordinary RPGs, elements such as level-up, skills, items, NPCs and quests are a crucial factor. Tower of Dream, however, features a very different style. There is no level-up, item, or even a skill. There are only two actions Nefed can perform without any assistance: walking and attacking. There will be some other objects that will allow Nefed to perform something other than those (such as 'Bringer Totem's), but the majority of the game really relies on those two. Also, there is no level-up, so Nefed's HP as well as his attack is always fixed. Nevertheless, and perhaps surprisingly, you will have enough fun with just those elements.

There are a limited amount of NPCs, but they don't have much importance throughout the game. Likewise, there are some quests but they can't really be called quests since doing them is mostly mandatory to go on to remaining stages.

Likewise, terrains are done in a whole different manner. Almost everywhere is covered with rectangular tiles, which makes the place a lot artificial. This makes the overall gameplay space much narrower, heavily implying you that there is only one way to move on.




Difficulty


Although the map has simple interface, its difficulty is totally nightmarish. Even stage 1 can feel difficult for some players, and the sad news is that other stages are much more difficult compared to stage 1. Almost everything in this map is either a puzzle or something that requires good agility, and even battles are partially puzzles. Stage 5 will make you feel what this means.
Most puzzles are difficult. After stage 8, things will be ridiculously difficult. Later stages(15+) are totally nightmares. Stage 15 is the most difficult stage of the map, so congratulate yourself if you reached stage 16.

*VERY IMPORTANT: Many of the puzzles require very fast response speed. Playing in B.Net can be a serious penalty. DON'T play this in B.Net.




Gems




You will find some 'hidden' gems while playing. This doesn't affect the gameplay much. Having many gems doesn't grant you something like a hidden skill or an HP potion. Storylines or endings might change.

These gems are usually hidden. It's usually
1. hidden in places where you're not going to look carefully at
2. given when you solve some specific puzzles with extra conditions met.

The number of gems you got can be used as a record or an achievement. There are 13, and there will be 2 more in later versions.
*Note: This version doesn't tell you how many gems you got as you finish the game. Use the code from stage 19.







As I wrote above, this map is QUITE difficult. Having good skills really help. (Or, not having good enough skills can cause you frustration or ragequit. I will be really sorry if this really happens . If you're playing this for the first time, it will take at least 8 hours. (I think it'll be 10~14 hrs in average, if you are an ordinary person with enough tenacity.)
If you're stuck at somewhere, contact me via [email=jhwon_00@naver.com]this[/email]. I'll check if that's a bug or part of a puzzle, and give you a solution or a patch if necessary. (I don't check PMs or replies frequently, so an e-mail would be faster.)







Heartbrea.kr, Portal 2 and Silent Hill, for music.
AR, for sword sound.

All testers, helpers and advisors. Especailly AceRPG, A-Bound, R.N_53, Elemental, Fare and Jack.

And you. Especially if you finish the map. Or if you give some practical advices/reviews about this map, or report a bug.





v1:
Fixed a bug that made stage 18 impossible.
Transferred to Mediafire. Thank you so much FBI.
v2:
Fixed a bug that made stage 20 impossible.
v3:
Fixed some serious bugs in stage 9. But I'm afraid there are some more undetected. Sorry
v4:
Fixed so many bugs and translation errors.
v5:
Fixed so many bugs, mostly in stage 4 and 9. I'm pretty sure that the bug Leeroy saw won't happen again.
v6:
Removed some unintended solutions in stages 17 and 18. In other words, they got even more difficult
Fixed a bug that can happen while playing in single player mode.
v7:
Fixed stage 15 cutscene Dide part. Now it'll make more sense in most cases.
Fixed a stage 4 glitch.
Fixed a stage 9 glitch.
Changed the condition of 'hidden action' to 19+ HP. Now it'll be impossible to get this unless you use the hidden solution.
Changed the terrain of stage 14 so that it'll be impossible to meet the hidden condition in any unintended ways.
Some other unintended solutions were just left, as I didn't find big problems with those.
Made some changes in Korean version.
C key no longer works if the player is typing something in textbox.
Stage 7 became a little more difficult.
v8(Current Version):
Fixed some errors in the Korean version of the map.
Fixed some minor errors in stage 9.


The post itself was edited so that it could look a little better

• The game often fails to create some hallucinations. I know why it happens, but I really don't have any solution to this and gave up fixing it. Well, sorry
  
• During dialogues, you'll see some minor awkward things. I did some efforts to save strings (65535 is too small ), and that caused such strange things. It's not a big matter, so I'm sure you won't have much problem with it.
  

Look at the posts below.

Good luck!

Post has been edited 26 time(s), last time on Feb 15 2013, 1:06 pm by zzt.

I haz trouble retrieving the first gem w/o dying later ( the one in the stage where Nefed meets the ghost guy). After killing the first wave of enemies I only have 20-something left. After getting the gem and killing the firebat I only have like 5 HP left (I even hit and run so the fb only hit me once every time I hit it), and that's not nearly enough HP to survive the chamber where the ghoat dude is. I literally got one-hit as soon as I entered the chamber

I assume you already know this, but anyway - you can ignore that firebat part.

^Edited

<sub>Fixed some bugs that made some stages impossible

Added Screenshots</sub>

I can't even get passed the first stage where drones attack you.
Am I supposed to micro the shit out of them?

Yes, you are. When the drones make an L shape, DO NOT go into the corner of that L cuz 3 drones instead of 2 can attack you there. For the last wave, don't fight the drones in the chamber, lure them into the corridor to duke out Also at the beginning, instead of letting them come to you, actively select your zealot and immediately charge the 2 rines.
Also I have no idea how to kill that firebat without getting hit :[ I'm pretty sure you use vHP so I won't doubt that I'd take dmg the moment I get close to him :[

I'm not sure what vHP is, but as far as I know I didn't use it I used some EUD condition triggers. Nefed will take 5 damage whenever that firebat attacks him. Whether both flames actually reached him or not doesn't matter.

vHP is a virtual health system in which you add/reduce a unit's health without actually modifying their hp. An example of this would be have units burrowed underneath a unit, and instead of attacking that unit, you attack the burrowed units, and when those die, the unit above ground dies. Another example, as seen in Tux's Rush, is just changing the player color each time a unit is hit, and once it cycles through a certain amount of players, it dies (ie it cycles through players 4, 5, 6, and then dies once it gets to player 7).

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Jan 27 2012, 1:54 am by Dem0nS1ayer.

Then I certainly didn't use it. At least, Nefed's HP in this map is not virtual. Some boss stages used a similar system - Give like 70 ores to the player, and whenever the boss gets a hit, 1 ore is reduced, and when there is 0 ore, the boss dies.

Edited:

For some reason the edit button for the topic itself doesn't work now, so I'm going to edit this one.

Edit 2:

And that reason finally ceased to exist. So I edited the main topic.

Post has been edited 5 time(s), last time on Jan 17 2013, 4:33 pm by zzt.

Hi guys! Sorry for double posting.. and possibly bringing back an old, old topic?

I leave a walkthrough of this map here. It's for Oh_Man's 2012 RPG Contest - in case he's stuck at somewhere while judging, he can look at this walkthrough, and go on to further stages so he can look at more details of this map.
(I had sone PMs about this with him)

However, I believe this walkthrough would be very useful for all people who have given up this map because of a certain puzzle or overall difficulty. Some stages are still difficult even with this walkthrough, but anyway it's going to help you somehow. If you haven't played this map before.. well, give it a try!

I put each solution of puzzles in different collapse boxes, so you don't have to worry about getting spoilers about something you don't want to know. Just take a look at this walkthrough when you are definitely stuck at somewhere and you can't figure out how to solve it.


















And this is part one of the walkthrough. I'll write part two later.


It's already been a pretty long post and there is a chance that I accidently lose all of this walkthrough, so I post this part of the walkthrough now.

So, Oh_Man, I wrote a part of the walkthrough. Is this fine with you? If you're OK with this, I'll keep writing this walkthrough.
Anybody else, what do you think of a walkthrough like this?

Post has been edited 7 time(s), last time on Jan 28 2013, 4:47 pm by zzt.

Such an in-depth video tutorial is good, I wanted to make a full playthrough video for my map too since most people think difficult maps are impossible.
I'll try to play this and get further than the very beginning; how did you make hallucinations do damage anyway?

This is awesome and you are an amazing map maker.

Hell yes!

It's a series of EUD condition triggers. The game detects every attack performed by hallucination enemy units and adds death of Terran Marker accordingly. (For example, each drone attack adds 5, marine 15, broodling 3, firebat 50, and so on.) Every 10 Terran Marker deaths will be converted to Nefed's loss of 1 HP. This HP reduction is also done by EUD triggers - If Nefed should be dealt 1 damage and his HP is 100, his HP becomes 99% (which would be 99 since his total HP is 100). If his HP is 99, then it's set to 98%, and so on, likewise. If his HP is 1, he dies and you fail the stage. It's kinda complicated, but I think it's the best way for this hallucination damage system without using EUD action triggers.

So, I'm glad you liked it, Oh_Man. I'll keep writing like this. The post above have been edited so that it could include all puzzles in part one of the map.

Maybe it's too impatient for me to ask you even before the judging, but what do you think of this map's difficulty?
Everyone else, what do you think? Is it really that difficult as I said?

I can't even get past the first section it seems like you are priotising insane micro as opposed to puzzles, based off the first section.

It is insane in later stages, but I really don't think that stage 1 is that difficult. Look at the Video guide - maybe you've been missing something?

I have to agree; it only took me a few tries (okay, maybe a dozen or so...my micro skills aren't great) to get past stage one...

Of course, you have to follow directions, or just common sense with the knowledge that Korean maps, unlike Western maps, are often designed with LAN latency in mind:



Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Jan 23 2013, 12:35 am by FoxWolf1.

This is a very fun map but it's glitched twice on me and I've had to replay the map. Good thing there is a code system, however!

Glad you liked it. Could you tell me what exactly happened? I think I can't fix the bug(because I don't have SC installed right now), but maybe I can figure out its cause and notice people about that and how to avoid such situation.

I'm currently writing the walkthrough for later stages. If any of you have questions about any solution that's not written yet, feel free to ask me!

So, here goes part 2 of the walkthrough. I hope you enjoy the game with this!











So, that was part two of the walkthrough. Part 3 will feature the rest of the map (Stages 13-19).

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Jan 28 2013, 4:52 pm by zzt.