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I am wondering if anyone else ever noticed it before. In Episode 2 (Return to Danger), Floor 14, there is a secret door puzzle that is broken. When completed, you can only get 41% secret rooms because of it.
I have figured out that it has to do with the way the push wall moves. Note the image below:
This represents the first large room you enter on Floor 14. The red arrow with the number 1 beside it points to the wall block that is a secret door. Notice that, because of the color of the wall block, and the color of a secret door, it is not obvious that this block is a secret door. The short red lines indicate the direction of travel of the block as you would push it, if it worked. The blue arrow, below the block, is the direction that the block moves. If you push the wall from that side, you get the sound that indicates a secret door being pushed from the wrong side, or a side from which it cannot move.
This has caused me to revisit a question I had years ago, but never found an answer to. In the Mac version, there are 4 secret door codes, one for each direction of travel. There is no "general" secret door that can move in any direction. In the PC version, every time I have played with the map editors, there is a single code, and the push wall will move in any direction that is not blocked by another object.
In this map, the block in question is open on the North and South sides, but if you push the block from the South side, you get that sound, and if you push it from the North side, it moves South.
Other secret doors in the game (W3D and SoD) have shown that there is a code for a general door, but there are also codes for one-way doors. None of the editors seems to address this, and I am unable to fix the puzzle.
Does anyone here know about this, and (hopefully) know of a way to address the one-way secret door codes in the map editors?
For those who don't know, the brown circle with a black + in it represents an object that the wall can pass over. In SoD-E2, it is a dead rat.
The image in this post keeps disappearing. I know the image is on my site, and it is viewable, so I don't know what is causing this problem. If you don't see the image in this post, try clicking here and see if it shows up. Apparently, the problem is with my host. I will try to find out why it is happening. Otherwise, you can find the same maps I used at http://www.belowe.com/lostep.htm
Update: I don't know why, but it is working now. What did I do?
First, I played it as usual, just to make sure the door wouldn't move North. It didn't.
Second, I made a backup copy of GAMEMAPS.SOD and MAPHEAD.SOD, then loaded the map files into ChaosEdit.
Third, I put a wall block on each of the secret door codes that had a floor code instead of a wall code, and saved the files.
When I ran the game, it worked, the door was fixed, but putting a wall block in each of those positions made the puzzle not solvable, because there were wall blocks where the push walls were supposed to stop.
Thinking, "well, it fixed the door problem, so maybe I didn't need the extra walls", I ended the game, deleted the modified gamemaps and maphead files, and started a new game while dosbox was still running.
Sure enough, the puzzle was solvable. I then quit dosbox, and restarted it to play it again and see if it was still broken, and to my surprise, even with the original files there, the puzzle works. The door moves in the right direction.
Because nothing I did was responsible for the fix, I don't know what is going on. I do know that I have seen push walls on other floors that only moved in one direction (even with multiple paths available), and it was always the desired direction that worked. This tells me there is something in the engine that either sees those doors as one-direction only (like a different object code), or the code for dealing with the maps has a bug. I'm not sure which it is. It could be something else entirely, that I have no knowledge of.
Schabbs: I have been trying to find the cause. It appears to be a problem with my provider, since it is intermittent. I will post when I have a solution for this problem.
I have figured out that it has to do with the way the push wall moves. Note the image below:
This represents the first large room you enter on Floor 14. The red arrow with the number 1 beside it points to the wall block that is a secret door. Notice that, because of the color of the wall block, and the color of a secret door, it is not obvious that this block is a secret door. The short red lines indicate the direction of travel of the block as you would push it, if it worked. The blue arrow, below the block, is the direction that the block moves. If you push the wall from that side, you get the sound that indicates a secret door being pushed from the wrong side, or a side from which it cannot move.
This has caused me to revisit a question I had years ago, but never found an answer to. In the Mac version, there are 4 secret door codes, one for each direction of travel. There is no "general" secret door that can move in any direction. In the PC version, every time I have played with the map editors, there is a single code, and the push wall will move in any direction that is not blocked by another object.
In this map, the block in question is open on the North and South sides, but if you push the block from the South side, you get that sound, and if you push it from the North side, it moves South.
Other secret doors in the game (W3D and SoD) have shown that there is a code for a general door, but there are also codes for one-way doors. None of the editors seems to address this, and I am unable to fix the puzzle.
Does anyone here know about this, and (hopefully) know of a way to address the one-way secret door codes in the map editors?
For those who don't know, the brown circle with a black + in it represents an object that the wall can pass over. In SoD-E2, it is a dead rat.
The image in this post keeps disappearing. I know the image is on my site, and it is viewable, so I don't know what is causing this problem. If you don't see the image in this post, try clicking here and see if it shows up. Apparently, the problem is with my host. I will try to find out why it is happening. Otherwise, you can find the same maps I used at http://www.belowe.com/lostep.htm
Update: I don't know why, but it is working now. What did I do?
First, I played it as usual, just to make sure the door wouldn't move North. It didn't.
Second, I made a backup copy of GAMEMAPS.SOD and MAPHEAD.SOD, then loaded the map files into ChaosEdit.
Third, I put a wall block on each of the secret door codes that had a floor code instead of a wall code, and saved the files.
When I ran the game, it worked, the door was fixed, but putting a wall block in each of those positions made the puzzle not solvable, because there were wall blocks where the push walls were supposed to stop.
Thinking, "well, it fixed the door problem, so maybe I didn't need the extra walls", I ended the game, deleted the modified gamemaps and maphead files, and started a new game while dosbox was still running.
Sure enough, the puzzle was solvable. I then quit dosbox, and restarted it to play it again and see if it was still broken, and to my surprise, even with the original files there, the puzzle works. The door moves in the right direction.
Because nothing I did was responsible for the fix, I don't know what is going on. I do know that I have seen push walls on other floors that only moved in one direction (even with multiple paths available), and it was always the desired direction that worked. This tells me there is something in the engine that either sees those doors as one-direction only (like a different object code), or the code for dealing with the maps has a bug. I'm not sure which it is. It could be something else entirely, that I have no knowledge of.
Schabbs: I have been trying to find the cause. It appears to be a problem with my provider, since it is intermittent. I will post when I have a solution for this problem.
Last edited by Asa on Wed Dec 29, 2010 7:23 pm; edited 1 time in total (Reason for editing : answer concerning the image problem)
