Dungeon Master Forum

Using a teleporter, a series of stacked pits can be turned into a bottomless pit simulator. RTC behaves strangely if anything falls in the pit, however.

If an item falls in, the game crashes from an invalid page fault without a chance to produce diagnostics. (A wall underneath the bottommost pit causes it to lock up instead, taking Windows with it.)

If the party falls in, the game stops responding to the mouse or keyboard (but Windows survives, and can close the game).

Would it be possible for the party to be given some time to take action while falling?

R.K. wrote:Would it be possible for the party to be given some time to take action while falling?

No, this would break lots of dungeons, including CSB, and would go against the way the DM mechanics have always worked.

I would recommend simulating the pit mechanics with teleporters over fake pits.

Yes, the current behaviour is correct (although, as Sophia suggests, you can achieve the behaviour you want using teleporters with delays coupled with holder objects - you could even then do clever things with the light level so it gradually fades as you fall deeper and deeper...

BTW - the crash is also deliberate (see http://www.dungeon-master.com/forum/vie ... hp?t=24135 ) as a way of pointing out to you that the mechanics used are invalid.

Well, to avoid breaking countless existing puzzles the party should never be allowed to take a step before falling another level. However, I think allowing the party to turn and to cast spells might allow for a couple of interesting ideas - if that can be separated from actual movement steps at all.

Like a vertical shooting gallery?

Lunever wrote:I think allowing the party to turn and to cast spells might allow for a couple of interesting ideas - if that can be separated from actual movement steps at all.

That can be done already using existing mechanics...(fake-pit / teleporter / damager to do the "falling" and a holder - much the same way as the mud works in DM-II - to allow time for the party to do something other than moving before the next fake-pit / teleporter / damager drops them down another level).

"...you could even then do clever things with the light level so it gradually fades as you fall deeper and deeper."
In one of the dungeons I was making (albeit this was rather a long time ago now...early-mid last year or something), it started with a lengthy pit fall at the bottom, and though I'd set the light level to be max at the top, and of the levels below it to gradually get darker, it didn't show this and instead remained at full brightness till you landed at the bottom, where it then changed to that level's brightness.

Lunever wrote:Well, to avoid breaking countless existing puzzles the party should never be allowed to take a step before falling another level. However, I think allowing the party to turn and to cast spells might allow for a couple of interesting ideas - if that can be separated from actual movement steps at all.

That's basically what I had in mind.

The block the pit with escpaes each level wity teleporters so the party can't move off, and have a fake looking pit floor object open into a real pit...thus you will have a step falling down, and the party could use the seconds in between each fall do do somethign liek cast a levitate spell or throw a grapnel without beng able to just walk away out of the fall...assuming it isn't jsut a shaft they are fallign down

George Gilbert wrote:BTW - the crash is also deliberate (see http://www.dungeon-master.com/forum/vie ... hp?t=24135 ) as a way of pointing out to you that the mechanics used are invalid.

Ah, I see in that thread you say:

George Gilbert wrote:The reason for doing it this way is that by falling over, you get a stack dump showing the repetitive action and this gives the dungeon designer a good crack of guessing what the issue was. In any case, it's much better (IMHO) than just freezing.

The game does freeze in two of the scenarios, though. In the third, the stack dump comes from the Windows crash dialog, not from RTC.