Intersect Tutorial - Simple path puzzle

[Mcadams]

This tutorial is the first in a three part series I'll be doing for my puzzle contest entry. If you want to see these puzzles in practice checkout my post below.

 

This first puzzle is the simplest of the three, only involving two small events, one of which is copy-pasted several times. The goal of this puzzle is to create a path (or paths) that your players must discover using guess-and-check in order to reach the other side of the obstacle. 

 

Step 1 — Creating the failure event

Spoiler

By "failure event", I mean the incorrect tiles that you want players to avoid in order for them to complete the the path. You can make the penalty for stepping on the tiles whatever you want. In my puzzle, the flavor was that the patch of sand was actually riddled with explosive mines, and stepping on one would cause the player to explode (playing an animation) and sending them back to the start of the path (warp). Here's how to do it.

 

1. Make an event and name it something to let you know it's the incorrect tile. I called mine WrongTile.

2. Hide the name of the event, make it passable, check off interaction freeze, and make the trigger "Player Touch". 

3. Under commands, it will depend on what you want happen to your player when they step on the wrong tile. For the sake of my tutorial, I will be recreating what I did on my minefield puzzle.

4. Create an animation that's an explosion, and add "Play Animation" as your first command — the animation being the explosion.

5. Add the command "Hold Player", this stops the player from moving after touching the wrong tile so that they can't progress further or step on another incorrect tile.

6. Add the command "Wait..." and set it to the length of your animation. Mine was around 600ms. This will make it so that the explosion animation completes before the player is teleported back. It just makes it look nice.

7. Add the command "Warp Player" and make them warp back to the start of the puzzle.

8. Add the command "Release Player" so that the player may begin moving again.

9. Finally, add the command "Show Chatbox Text" and leave the player a message letting them know they stepped on the wrong tile. 

 

Your failure event should look something like this. 

 

Step 2 — Creating the completion event

Spoiler

Likely, you'll want to make some sort of check to make sure that the player has completed the event. In my puzzle, it didn't make it so that the player was impervious to failing the puzzle, but instead it unlocked a door in front of them so that they may advance after completing the puzzle. All this requires is a player switch and a player-touch event at the end of the correct path.

 

1. Create a "Player Switch" that signifies if the player has completed the puzzle or not. I named mine "Puzzle1Complete."

2. Create an event and name it so that you know it's the completion event. Mine is named "P1Comp"

3. Make the event passable and hide the name. Make the trigger for it "Player Touch."

4. Under commands, add the command "Conditional Branch" with the condition that Player Switch "Puzzle1Complete" is false. This just makes sure that the player hasn't already completed the puzzle, to avoid the completion message from being spammed.

5. Under the conditional branch, add the command "Set Switch", and set the Player Switch "Puzzle1Complete" to true.

6. Under that, add the command "Show Chatbox Text" and have it display a message telling the player they completed the puzzle.

 

That's all there is to it! Your completion event should look something like this.

 

Step 3 — Laying out the puzzle events

Spoiler

Now that the puzzle events are complete, it's time to lay out the puzzle events.

 

1. Map out the puzzle. Be sure to specify the location on which the correct and incorrect tiles can be, but don't differentiate them. The stone tiles in the room of my puzzle transitioned to sand, so it was obvious where the puzzle began and ended.

 

2. Fill the area with your failure event, so that each tile will cause the player to fail. 

 

3. Carve out the correct path by deleting the events on the tiles you don't want the player to fail on. This will make it so that every tile that isn't the correct path will cause the player to fail, but those that aren't will let them advance.

 

 

4. Place the completion event at the end of the path, so that stepping off the puzzle onto the other side will complete the puzzle.

If you did everything correctly, you should wind up with the puzzle displayed at 0:23 in my video. I omitted the attempt tracker because that was specific to part of the fun for the contest and likely wouldn't be wanted for traditional rpg dungeon puzzles that weren't the central focus of the game.

 

Be on the look out for more advanced puzzle tutorials from my submission coming soon. If you have questions or comments about the tutorial, feel free to leave a comment below or shoot me a PM on here or Discord.

[Beefy Kasplant]

Love it! Very nice work Mac

[Capivarinha]

That just simple and works perfectly nice, thanks for contribuition