Part 2: Puzzles
The puzzles, I must admit, are the bit I’m proudest of. Take the notorious cupboard puzzle, for example. Hated by all those who try it, but still got some cool things attached to it. The Fjords puzzle. The Morpher Ship. These abstract ideas didn’t actually take much time to develop. I have had, from an early age, a love for the physical puzzles (cast iron stuff) and for ideas that don’t work. Take for example the Interview Room. Probably took the longest time to code (except Magrathea because it was my way of understanding ZIL). And I doubt any of you have passed it using the original method, the only method until two months or so before the comp began. In that method, which you will be able to find the solution to in the hints system, there is no need for the painting. Just a lot of YES/NO, and like the other, distractions through conversation.
The three most difficult puzzles to make were the mechanics-based ones, of course. But they’re quite complex mechanics, all to do with turns and time.
They are:
- the Interview Room full mechanics (all of the conversations and stuff plonked one on top of the other, so many you can cause a stack overflow with them),
- the evil cupboard puzzle (it’s not even that difficult, just really annoying to fully implement with no bugs),
- and most of all, the Morpher Ship.
(Actually, technically the register and blaster/dinner puzzle, but those don’t count sinde it’s not specifically about the puzzle - see part 3.)
Guess which puzzles were the most difficult to come up with in the first place?
- the safe/Clyde puzzle (the bottle opener? Really?),
- getting the bottle opener (originally there was a parcel but an unrelated bug was crashing the game by accessing it at the wrong time, and I couldn’t come up with a solution, even though it was so obvious in the end),
- and last but most, the Endgame teleportation code sequence. I spent ages figuring that one out, because if I followed the book it would be way too easy! So I had to link the start back to the end, without directly making it unwinnable. It’s my second favourite puzzle in the whole game. It’s not even that good.