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2023-04-24 21:03 dustin  
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THIS ONE WAS VERY INTERESTING TO CREATE! FOR EXAMPLE, I SKIPPED THE RANDOM SEED 14 BECAUSE I FACED UNPREDICTABLE DIFFICULTIES THERE, AND ALSO FOR LEVEL 5 I SEARCHED A GOOD SEED FOR QUITE SOME TIME UNTIL I CAME UP WITH SEED 0 IN THE END. WITH THIS SEED, 25\\\ ARE CHALLENGING BUT POSSIBLE TO ME, I COULD HAVE INCREASED TO 30\\\ OR SOMETHING, BUT IN THE END I LIKED THE PATTERN 5, 10, 15, 20, 25.  
  
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CAVE DATA:  
RANDOM SEED: (11 12 13 15) 0  
\\\ REQUIRED: (5 10 15 20) 25  
CAVE TIME: (240 230 220 210) 200  
  
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WHAT MAKES IT HARDER THAN L4:  
| 5 MORE DIAMONDS REQUIRED - EVERY SINGLE \ CAN BE A HUGE RISK HERE!  
| QUICKER SPEED IS ALSO A TANGIBLE FACTOR HERE WITH SO MANY ΖΖΖ EVERYWHERE!  
  
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SUMMARY CAVE J:  
| BASIC IDEAS:  
\ CONTRAST BETWEEN ORDER (AT THE START) AND UTTER CHAOS (DURING GAMEPLAY)  
\ DEALING WITH A LOT OF ΖΖΖ WHILE TRYING TO SAVE \\\ FROM EXPLOSIONS  
| 5-LEVEL IDEAS:  
\ INCREASING REQUIREMENTS   
\ SPEED IS A FACTOR  
  
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CAVE DIFFICULTY: 5/10  
BONUS CHALLENGE: GET 41\\\! (this is more than half of the available 81, and i think this is a fair challenge after watching the top demos of the previous levels. tbh i haven't seriously tried to get so many \\\ myself yet!) :d  
challenge difficulty (estimated): 9/10

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2023-04-25 16:35 altermaven  
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I found that keeping a certain factor of cadence was necessary in the caves I've devised. There is one measure where the \s required is five less than the total amount of accessable diamonds, whereas in some others it is usually a flat increase while still keeping the task possible (see ad2 c2 "seaweed"). factors nearing higher limits as well as possibility of cramping are usually reserved for l5's anyway!

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2023-04-25 16:37 altermaven  
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that being said, I've also found that there's a tricky balance between making l5 challenging yet compelling, and making l5 "that's it I'm out" difficult. I found, a few times, I neared the latter in some cases. but I'm constantly improving!

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2023-04-25 23:20 dustin  
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very interesting  altermaven !  
  
i also like 5-level designing a lot (obviously, after all almost all  dustin 's bd games are based on 5 levels), and i often kind of copied the patterns from bd1+2. my main patterns for the value "diamonds required" are:  
  
| maximum on all levels if the cave idea makes it necessary  
example: dbd21 cave d, where the problem is how to get 9\\\ from each Η.  
\ example from bd1+2: bd1-c, where the idea is to clear a maze completely.  
  
| constant increase in caves with unclear maximum, or where the maximum is just too insane.  
\ example: this very cave here.  
\ bd1+2 example: bd1-i  
  
| constant decrease of bonus \\\ if there is a clear max and if this max is variable (for example, random \\\)  
\ example: none in dbd21, but in previous caves  
\ bd1+2 example: bd2-k  
  
| if the random seed is the main factor for difficulty, i sometimes just "somehow" adapt the requirements to the seed.  
\ example: dbd21-b  
\ bd1+2 example: bd1-b. here, l1+2 have 1 bonus \, level 3 has 0 bonus \, but l4 with a clearly harder seed has 1 bonus \ again, and l5 with an even harder seed has even 2 bonus \\. similar bd2-g.  
  
the "l5 problem" you mention is very familiar to me too. in some cases, i had fun testing a cave for hours until i was satisfied with my \\\ count, and then i required as many \\\ for l5. this often leads to such a "that's it i'm out" difficulty except for super-ambitious players. but if i tried so hard to get so many \\\, it's often hard for me to "let go" from that requirement!   
  
in the next cave, k/5, which i consider the hardest cave of the game, it was a slightly different story: here it was the nice pattern (100, 200, 300, 400, 500) which i didn't want to let go, although 500\\\ are really really tough and frustrated me often enough during my tests. however, all in all i think one or two really super-hard l5 caves per game are quite a good balance. my motto is: "if i can beat l5 from a to p without a game over, then it can't be too hard!" :d (although i also released a few games in the past where this criteria wasn't fulfilled...but as you say, constant improvement is a good thing!) :d

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2023-04-25 23:32 dustin  
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one more note:  
i don't think that making l5 "that's it i'm out" difficult is necessarily a bad thing. after all, less ambitious players still have four levels to explore, and the l5 interpretation "explore the limits" is also quite interesting to me! still, i tried to go back to the more "classical" design where l5 is tough but still doable with limited life counter (to me).

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2023-04-25 23:44 altermaven  
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designing a good l5 to keep people engaged in that "just one more try" feeling especially if they get there from l1-4, is always a challenge. and you're right  dustin  -- a lot of it is buildup to what you expect. L5 is supposed to be high challenge.  
  
but the issue at hand is more or less boiling it down to "is the death the player's fault" or "is the death the cave's fault"? finding the right balance for players who have gotten through the prior four loops is always a delicate dance. you don't want to make it easy, for sure, but you don't want to make it a literal brick wall either.

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2023-04-25 23:45 altermaven  
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that being said I like how you plan out your l5's and it truly shows how you can do so with the knowledge that the players will have had forehand knowledge going into the last level. I'm saying I could learn a few things :D

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2023-04-27 12:12 dustin  
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THX  altermaven , I'M HAPPY TO READ THAT :)  
  
during the design of my games, another l5 question often arises to me: beside "how to make l5 doable within a limited number of tries" and "how to keep the player motivated to do another try", which i think we have more or less discussed, the other question is "in what extent do i want to show the limits to the player?".  that's especially the case for me because i often like to test the limits for myself.  
  
for example, if i designed cave x with an unclear \\\ maximum (like this one), it often happens that after the 20th playtesting or so, i discover an idea how i might get more \\\ than before. i always got around 20\\\ (for example), but then, with my new strategy, it's quite not so hard to get 30\\\. ok, so after 10 more plays, i've kind of perfectionized that strategy so i can always get 35\\\. after more playing around, i finally get 40\\\.  
  
so what now? what should my l5 requirement be? should i require 40\\\? then i would "show" the player how far i got during my tests, but this might also well shy him away - if the player is roughly as skilled as i, then he would also get around 20\\\ after 20 attempts, see that he needs double as many \\\, and at that point he might well be frustrated and think "that's it i'm out". on the other hand, requiring less \\\ can make a player think that he's seen ans discovered everything when in fact he hasn't. and also for myself, if i play such a cave years later again with 40\\\ required, i have memories such as "ah yes, taht one where i got 40\\\ after half a day. how did i do that in the end again?", while such memories tend not to come if there are only 20\\\ required.  
  
during the last years, i feel i found a kind of balance between both extremes :) in caves like this one, of course, there adds a kind of "random factor" to these considerations. although this cave is strictly deterministic, it must feel random to a player because there's no way to calculate if this or that \ survives if the start is done in this or that way. that's why i was extra careful here and required "only" 25\\\. although i think that if i had found such a nice strategy like the one in  nicol 's run, which is reasonable and effective, i might have required a bit more :d