In starcraft, there have been standalone puzzle maps with no interesting qualities at all...
No pizazz one could say...

Recently I had the idea that one could do, say for instance, a map such as this:

There is a man named Joe who is completely incapable of performing any task or almost any normal bodily function.
Whenever the need arises for effort, time stops and 3 Spirits (Lings) jump out of (Unburrow) Joe.
These spirits then go ahead and complete whatever task needs to be done... Whether it being completing a thought by helping Joe remember a name, or doing something like fixing a toaster so that he can eat breakfast (in puzzle fashion ofc).
There would be a story attached so that after each puzzle is completed, there is a piece of the map's movie unlocked and played, sorta like a treat for beating the puzzle. It could all be a big series with titles like "Joe Gets a New Job!" "Joe Goes on a Date".

This idea was after I had the idea to do a public-style puzzle map.. where rooms (or puzzle ideas) for the map are submitted by anyone in SEN willing to help, rather than one person trying to conjure up 50 (random number) highly unique and fun puzzles.

What makes a good puzzle (in progress):
I have started to put some thought into this, but I am having trouble exactly categorizing the different styles of good puzzles, mostly because good ones are completely different than any other puzzle.

What makes a bad puzzle (in progress):
Truly this is opinion based but...
1. A puzzle that has no figuring or un-riddling, such as one where u are given a complicated series of buttons that u have no idea what they do, and have to guess at each ones function until you figure out wtf your supposed to be doing. These are the most common puzzles made.
2. Though fun in moderation, puzzles that are "Hidden Meaning" puzzles, where there is a series of text or imagery that displays a common action, but has a hidden meaning. The flash game called The Impossible Quiz has a lot of these. A good example (that's in The Impossible Quiz) is a level where there is four keys and a keyhole and it says "Hit the Right Key" and you have to hit the Right Arrow Key on your keyboard to move on.

Discuss.

...Whenever I post topics I get threatened with bans. No idea why that always happens. Please don't.

EDIT: So the main questions are this:
1. Would you be willing to participate in a puzzle compilation?
2. Should one submit ideas or physical maps for the puzzle compilation?
3. Should there be a small story?
4. Would anyone like to help with the story as well? (as I am not a good storyteller)
5. Will someone please read this topic =) ?

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Jan 18 2010, 2:27 pm by TiKels.

Lol Tenebrous.

XDDD. THAT made me laugh, it is EXACTLY describing tenebrous' puzzle.
But that puzzle serves more of a purpose then that, it allows the really high level player to do that, while a lower level one can grind and catch up. At least, so Vrael says. Also the puzzle* wasn't made through scmdraft, but through an algorithm. Vrael wasn't even sure i was solvable till i solved it ;D. (If i remember correctly... Like seriously, dont ban me)
Btw I beat that puzzle so ez.
Edit: Asterix

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Jan 18 2010, 2:07 pm by TiKels.

Imo, your ideas are great. The movie topic and story would be extremely debatable, though.

I'm more excited about a large puzzle map where lots of people contribute sections. If you test it enough to determine the best difficulty slope, so that you can start with the easiest and end with the hardest, then it should be a good idea. Having more than one person play it to weed out bad puzzles, as you put them, would help with balancing. I wouldn't be averse to making a race-type map where the first person to finish all the puzzles wins. That'd limit the number of 'rooms' though.

Nothin like a good compliment to make you feel good about yourself.
Thanks!

It's pretty easy to spot a bad puzzle though, after the first hour you start to get a little feeling that you might be playing a bad puzzle. Lol the puzzling 2.

Tbh you should just port The Impossible quiz into starcraft. I don't think you can get any better then trick questions.

I think that we can do better. The problem with emulating the impossible quiz is that, first of all, there is no way it can be emulated on SC with the sort of detail required for it to be functional, and second, the Quiz itself lacks variety in its puzzles.

I put some thought into it:

Sometimes a good puzzle will have multiple layers of figuring. Not just having one riddle, but a riddle within a riddle, which can make it even more fun.

Well yea you cant port a game into another game but i thought the idea that impossible quiz used like questions like "What is the capital of London?" and the answer would be "L". Like i said personally I think that trick questions are the best kind of puzzles. Maybe make it part micro

Lol part micro... that is like the exact opposite of a puzzle.

Micro encompasses minor adjustments to unit positioning and other tedium to make best use of all the units you have available, puzzles are thinkers, where you are placed in a position where you have to carefully and artfully divulge the secrets of a puzzle. If anyone wants an example map containing two puzzles, id be glad to supply it... it's on my shelves just needs a small little fix.

But yeah, I couldn't make a puzzle without using at least a few "Hidden Meaning"... So your comment was helpful, thanks!

I recall one portion of The Impossible Quiz where you had to press a button without touching any blue. The secret was to move your mouse outside of the flash box and back around to the button that was inside it.

That kind of thing can only be ported imperfectly into SC, and if it is, it'll be glaringly obvious.

A real puzzle is like the ones in Myst, Riven, and Exile, the Myst Series. You had to record things, figure out what went where, learn secret codes, and explore a large island/realm that had serious problems associated with it. In Riven, there was even a gigantic fish that you could mess with. I got him to slam my glass bubble once or twice out of frustration.

Another good puzzle game was Obsidian. A lot of the puzzles in Obsidian had to do with timing, as well as memorization, how well you can keep track of shifts in a pattern, and logic.

That's the kind of puzzle that I'd like to see in a StarCraft game - the thinking kind. The kind that you can be happy about when you've finished it.

To help prevent walkthroughs, elements of randomness can be introduced. A storyline, characters, a few nicely thought out battles, monsters spread through some puzzles, and you can even have a Puzzling RPG.

These are great ideas, but the main thing I'm looking at right now are pretty much:

These are the things that this Topic was made for... and the things that I need to have answered. Without significant backing from the SEN community I know I won't be able to make a half-decent puzzle map simply because one person only has so much ingenuity.

Once again, I have a demo with two (in my opinion) pretty good puzzles. If anyone needs, just post for it.

Do one of those fun ice puzzles, where you slide around until you hit a rock, and you have to do the right combination of sliding from rock to rock to reach the end.

Haha... like in that one pokemon game?
Yeah those are fun, thanks for the contribution falk, I wouldn't have remembered that!

Tell your friends about me! (Quote)

But no really tell some people to get their asses in here... this must grow!

Oooh, have you ever played that game where you have the different truck, all stuck in different directions, and you have cars on one area that are supposed to get to the other side, or somewhere else and park, and you have to figure out how to clear spaces for that car to get through, by moving the other trucks and such. It's sorta like one of those sliding puzzles. Here's and example: http://www.lilgames.com/highway.shtml

Level 6 is probably the best representation of a good puzzle.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Jan 24 2010, 2:37 am by Falkoner.

I got this game at home, it's called Rush Hour. There is so much of those. One cool one was with a spiderman. But this is a little off topic so I won't explain it.

the game "crack the code". There are X (gonna use 5) colors OR units. The player has 10 guesses to crack the code.
ie: the code is less than 5 units long (im gonna use numbers 1-6, and the code will be 3 long) 2 4 1
so the player would start with some numbers: they enter 1 2 3 the computer checks the input, and responds with "2 numbers inputted are correct, 0 numbers inputted are in the correct place."
so next they would try: they enter 2 3 4 the computer checks the input, and responds with "2 numbers inputted are correct, 1 numbers inputted are in the correct place."
the player now suspects the numbers 2 and 3 are correct, and that one of them is in the correct place; however, he will not be 100% sure
next...: they enter 2 5 3 the computer checks the input, and responds with "1 numbers inputted are correct, 1 numbers inputted are in the correct place."
the player realizes that "1" and "4" are numbers used, and that either 2 or 3 is the remaining number.
they enter: 1 3 4 the computer checks the input, and responds with "2 numbers inputted are correct, 0 numbers inputted are in the correct place."
they know that 3 is not the number, so 2 must be the correct number in slot 1. since 4 is not correct in slot #3, it must be in slot #2. It would follow that the code is 2 4 1
they enter: 2 1 4 the computer checks the input, and responds with "3 numbers inputted are correct, 3 numbers inputted are in the correct place."
stage complete

I've actually got a good idea for you. You were talking about "Joe goes on a date" and it imediately got me thinking of two things when you said afterwards that it could be a series.

First of all, I started thinking about the T.V. series "Lost". I don't know much about the show and that's not what I'm interested in. What i'm interested in is the plot structure. During the show, the main characters have no idea what's going on, but as the show progresses each of the characters find out that they have some sort of connection with each other. So, by now an idea similar to mine should be sparking in your mind such as: make multiple games, possibly two for each senario, then somehow connect them to make the story interesting.

Secondly, the other idea is have technically belongs to the olympics, but I have put into use on the very first map of it's kind (its just not finished..). A relay race of small activities that arne't too hard to solve, but it's a race to the finish with your team first. The first team member must complete a certain number of tasks, then hand the reigns of the game off to the second team mate. You don't have to use this exact idea, but you could make it a multiplayer puzzle map by having a larger puzzle to solve, such as a the combinations idea in the above post, and have other players do much smaller tasks while the first player solves his/her puzzle.

Ideas for smaller puzzles:
very small arena style match (pick a character i.e. ghost, must fight reavers (lock them down))
small bound game (3/10 - 5/10 difficulties only, above that is not meant for anyone average)
questions (how many months have 28 days? most people will answer 1 immediately, but it's all 12)
problem solving (how many triangles can be made from this larger triangle with smaller ones inside?)
trick questions (if an electric train was traveling north at 60mph and the wind was blowing south at 40mph, which way would the smoke blow? It wouldn't)
guess a number (randomized switches that designate a number, choose it and you win)

Ideas for larger puzzles:
flipping of cards (kill a barrel and a character appears, match 2 characters, they disappear... AKA the game of Memory)
combinations (can be either colours, sounds, numbers, units... many many options here)
hide and go seek (computer player is running around in the bushes somewhere with a lot of other computer players with the same colour and nearly close names, tag the correct character or catch it to move on)
counting games (similar to above, same colour of 2 players, same character i.e. marine and jimmy raynor marine, count how many of whichever moved around in a specific area)
counting games (how many explosions happened?)

Ideas for multiplayer puzzles (all players play)
car racing game (all players have a vulture or something with 3 laps to complete, possible items to pick up along the way, slow down others)

I realise that most of these "puzzles" are really just minigames and not puzzles at all, but it's very difficult to figure out any without copying another idea thats already been created. Good luck with finding or creating puzzles, if i think of anything else to help out, I'll let you know.

I have played games like this, thank you for the contribution, it is an interesting idea, though it strays just a little bit from the "figuring" aspect that I was looking for, but likely I will take it into consideration or make it be a little different. It's better than average.


Like fallout 3's hacking system? Can't believe I didn't think of this beforehand, especially with... well you know.
Usually the best strategy is to "find" one that has exactly 0 digits that are correct and you end up eliminating a lot of choices (If you are given options, rather then a machine that just has numbers 1-9).

(Rather then quoting your long post...)
@Atto: The lost idea is interesting, but implementation would be difficult in that you would have to identify characteristics of each of the "units" and make the units themselves not the human who is playing them, but a different person altogether. Good idea nonetheless, if you have an idea as to what you could to do expand or generalize it (making it more applicable to my map), please say so.

Olympics: Puzzles aren't about racing, they are about thinking, but it is a thought provoking idea... perhaps a puzzle that makes u get all tense and nervous, such as a timed one. (Of course we'd have to do more then put up a timer, but it's just an example)

Most of those "puzzles" ARE minigames, which is what I'm trying to avoid. Tedious games or puzzles that require no solving aren't what I am looking for.

Thanks anyway for writing up all the ideas though, the "memory" game was interesting as it got me thinking about having to count or remember bits at a time to solve a larger puzzle, such as one where u see pieces of a "jigsaw" or something at seperate times and you have to figure out what it is. This is just a rough example.

Wow i got like four posts at once >.< That never happens.

Great idea but please no games like "Joe goes on a date" or "Joe makes an omelet" which sound incredible boring and pointless. Although I can't think of any atm, is there anything else you could think of that would work well with this system?

Another idea, although I donno how you'd easily implement it in StarCraft, it's a game where you have a 4x4 square area, with 6 colored squares on it, and you have a cube, which is white, but when it rolls over blue squares, it picks them up onto whatever side it rolls onto them with, and if it rolls onto a white square, and has blue on the side that touches the white, the blue comes off onto the white, and the object of the puzzle is to get all 6 blue squares onto the cube.