Annotation of 43BSDReno/old/games.vax/ddl/sample/sample.ideas, revision 1.1

1.1     ! root        1: Things to add to sample DDL dungeon:
        !             2: 
        !             3:        A point to the whole thing.
        !             4: 
        !             5:        A redressing of the Temple to Elbereth.  The Tolkien reference
        !             6:        is pointless.  There should be more motifs of paganism
        !             7:        throughout the area (which is why the locals burned the place).
        !             8: 
        !             9:        In fact, depending on your philosophical/political bent, we
        !            10:        could have the original owner of the house being held prisoner
        !            11:        by the local Calvinists in the church up the road.  Your
        !            12:        mission is to rescue him.  Your "score" can be used to
        !            13:        purchase some useful item rather than being an end in itself.
        !            14: 
        !            15:        The forest and cornfields are pointless.  Something should
        !            16:        be done about that.
        !            17:        If the Rescue scenario suggested in the last paragraph is
        !            18:        what's being used, the local church maybe is on the
        !            19:        other side of the forest rather than N units up Highway 8.
        !            20: 
        !            21:        The sandy beach should lead to some caverns which ultimately
        !            22:        get you to a large lake.  Somehow, the ship should be
        !            23:        removed from the Bottle for transit on this lake. (I'd hate
        !            24:        to Shrink again, tho).  For example, maybe the innocent-looking
        !            25:        (but odd-smelling?  A clue should be provided...)
        !            26:        lake is really filled with deadly acid, which even burns
        !            27:        through the Bottle.  So you toss the bottle into the lake
        !            28:        and suddenly freed, the magic ship grows, extends a gangplank...
        !            29:        Of course, there may be something else aboard, too.
        !            30: 
        !            31:        Getting the Globe into those caves should be problematical.
        !            32: 
        !            33:        The Glowing crystal shouldn't be the only one that only works
        !            34:        a limited number of times.
        !            35: 
        !            36:        Speaking of general tools, what's the knife for?
        !            37: 
        !            38:        Beyond the icy lake lives a cavebear.  When you leave
        !            39:        your junk lying around for too long on the lake, he comes
        !            40:        by and swipes stuff (driven by a fuse).  He leaves footprints,
        !            41:        but finding him and subduing him should be another problem.  
        !            42:        Some fillip should be added for him to be more than just 
        !            43:        a recostuming of the Pirate.
        !            44: 
        !            45:        The riverbed should go somewhere.  There's that deadly lake,
        !            46:        of course.
        !            47: 
        !            48:        The caverns above the really DARK caverns probably adjoin
        !            49:        the Sandy Beach system somehow.
        !            50: 
        !            51:        The Dark Caves should have some point.
        !            52:        It may be a bug that you can take things that you can't see.
        !            53: 
        !            54:        The mural really leads to a desert (under some circumstances).
        !            55:        In the desert, the "hwy8" trick can be extended for 2-d movement.
        !            56:        Crossing before thirst sets in should be the problem.  A
        !            57:        water-detector (you're getting warmer...colder...right here!)
        !            58:        should be available in the basement.  Crossing the desert
        !            59:        should lead to a ruined city, with some stuff, then a road,
        !            60:        back to ... highway 8 ( a *long* way down the road).
        !            61: 
        !            62:        More treasure!  More treasure!  Greed!!!
        !            63: 
        !            64:        The wizardly tricks like BEAM should be revealed within the
        !            65:        context of the game to cognescenti.  
        !            66:        If, for example, he manages to get through some particularly
        !            67:        difficult stunt (maybe, for example, the preshrunk object
        !            68:        is in turn a key item for some other subtle stunt), he finds
        !            69:        a grimoire that allows him to do a WHERE and BEAM.  Maybe
        !            70:        a different magic word only allows him to do this once, and
        !            71:        that's all he gets.  Or maybe further stunts take place
        !            72:        in special areas where (1) this doesn't help or (2) there's
        !            73:        no Mana available and his tricks just don't work! Now that identifiers
        !            74:        can be longer, the room names probably want to have better
        !            75:        mnemonic value than the stuff you get from "WHERE".  
        !            76:        
        !            77: 
        !            78:        While each crystal is worth $25, there should be some stunt
        !            79:        that involves using the explosive power of destroying a crystal.
        !            80:        Say, an indestructible chamber in which one of the crystals
        !            81:        is placed.  Push a button, and the contents are normally reduced
        !            82:        to powder.  Put a crystal in, and the power of the explosion drives
        !            83:        some kind of mechanism/magic that provides more treasure.  Or,
        !            84:        now that the crystal can be broken harmlessly, maybe a small
        !            85:        fragment remaining can be placed into some small aperture
        !            86:        that obviously requires a crystal, thus triggering some mechanism.
        !            87:        Some harmless stone or something should be made available to
        !            88:        the player to demonstrate the crusher's use.  It's a crock in
        !            89:        even Zork that you sometimes have to die or destroy treasure
        !            90:        to test things out.

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