Challenges in Blockland range from poorly built to amazing, and from simple to insanely difficult to complete. Most are actually fun to play.
However, what has always annoyed me are two things:
- Linearity: Level 1 is followed by level 2, level 3, level 4, level 5, ... you get the point. There's probably some that have shortcuts, or weird teleporty thingies all over the place, or just accidental cheats which are taken advantage of.
- Players complaining: "I was on level n! Put me back!": This get irritating, especially if the checkpoint thing decides to pack up and stop saving variables.
So yeah, I built this...thing...
Okay, the interior and exterior are not up to much, and even without the actual challenges added it's up to 17k bricks. However, I can always work on the appearance and brickcount lowered later on.
So, what does it do?When a player spawns, they arrive in the roofed building, which explains what dangers they are likely to face in each difficulty level (more on that a little further on). This is achieved by a building-length noticeboard of prints, most of which is displayed here:
For example, on "DIFFICULT", the player will encounter many falling platforms and some projectile traps, whereas on "BEGINNER", these will be limited or not included.
The "POINTS" column displays the number of points a player would win if they complete the challenge level they attempt. These points accumulate and grant access to reward areas (currently that black plate outside).
In each level there will be the option to skip the challenge, so if a certain obstacle is proving far too tricky, then a player can just miss it altogether and forfeit the point reward to be returned to the spawn. However, depending on the difficulty level involved, this will cost the player points they have earned: 20%, 50%, 75% and 100% respectively, so if you try out "NIGHTMARE" difficulty, you'd better be prepared to keep at it for as long as it takes.
Once the player has read the colour-coded board of brickcount, they can move on through a portal at the end of the room. This will take randomly transfer them to one of the fourteen different levels of the tower, each with 2 levels. The level difficulties are displayed in the same colours as on the noticeboard on a board on each floor:
Oh look, more buttons!
Similarly to the skipping within a level, a player can opt to change floor within the tower. If they don't feel up to the high difficulty of floor 7, they can take it easy and transfer to floor 5. This too costs points, 100 to be precise.
The "R" button is a randomiser. Clicking this takes you to any (challenge) floor of the tower at the cost of 50 points. It's like the individual selection buttons, but slightly cheaper but slightly more risky.
The "1" and "2" buttons are the reward buttons, costing 1000 and 10000 points respectively.
(TL;DR: Choose what level you want to do using magical teleportation buttons)
Looks okay, but where are the challenges?They...er...don't exist yet. Because of this, the level skipping system isn't evented, but changing between floors is finished. The problem now is where to put the things. Do they hang off the side on anti-gravity platforms? Do they float majestically in the sky on floating islands? Or do they just exist a long distance away, reducing the graphical lag from looking at the lower on a useless computer? Admittedly whilst the first makes sense given that the thing is indeed a tower, obeying the laws of physics should be kept slightly in mind.
Besides, I'll need to host a server and get people to help if 28 challenge levels are ever going to be completed.
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Feel free to rate the idea (and to a certain extent the building) x/10, and offer up any flaming, or otherwise constructive criticism and helpful hints.
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