itch.io

Yeah, negative dust is funny like that. Usually a detriment, unless you're using negative stones yourself, in which case it's very powerful.

Since dust and marble are terrain things, I feel like having a prime that lets you place them would be too strong. I could see a prime that specifically lets you place its own dust or marble (and then said marble effect would reflect this). Given that dust and marble work for any number, something that lets you manipulate them as a whole should be "above" the system of primes, so I feel that something like "choose a stone of yours on the board, it's crushed into dust or marble" would need to be a lab item, not a prime effect.

Yeah, surrounding with opponent stones felt too strong of a downside for 1/11 (but not for 1/79 and 1/83).

Good point on 1/71 allowing you to bypass these downsides, maybe it should be changed so it still applies all the denominator effects but only lets you choose one numerator effect? That doesn't solve the 29/71 issue, though... but I'm of the opinion that 29 needs a nerf anyway (i.e. make it only usable once per turn, or make it only usable a few times total before it's discarded).

1/31 probably adds a copy of the same stone that you just played (albeit one that does not trigger its effects on play).

I felt that 41 marble would be more interesting if you could play immune stones there and have them still count as yours.

These are two properties of a tile, not a stone.

Dust is the simpler one. A tile has dust of some number, and whatever the number is, any stone played on there has its effect multiplied by that dust number. For example, if you play an 11 stone on a tile with 3 dust, it still only costs 11 energy, but you get to use the 33 effect when you play it there. 1 dust, which does nothing, is invisible (like how in Factor Crafter 1 is a nothing stone), and thus is what any tile that supposedly doesn't have dust actually has.

Marble is what a tile on the grid is made of, and it also comes in numbers, with 1-marble being the default type of marble that normal tiles are made of. Here's what the primes up to 100 cause a tile to do when made of that marble:

2. When a stone is placed on this tile, any other tiles of the same marble in this tile's row or in this tile's column are burned. The fires last for two turns (same length as normal fire). (4-marble makes the fire last for four turns, 8-marble makes the fire last for six turns, 16-marble makes the fire last for eight turns, and so on)

3. In a given match, there's a global "cycle card" off to the side of the board; this is a 7 by default (but might be different in puzzle levels). Whenever you play a stone on a 3-marble tile, whatever card you just used is exchanged with the current cycle card, so the card you just played becomes the new cycle card and the former cycle card is added to your deck (in your discard pile at this time). (There's actually arbitrarily many such cycle cards, all of which are a 7 to start (but might be different in puzzle levels). 3-marble always swaps your card with the first one, but 9-marble lets you choose which of the first two to swap your card with, 27-marble lets you choose which of the first three to swap your card with, and so on)

5. The ice makes terrain expansion harder. To play a stone on a 5-marble tile, you must have at least two valid stones to play off to get there instead of one - i.e. for normal stones you must have at least two stones adjacent to that 5-marble tile. 17s and 23s are easier to get onto 5-marble tiles than other stones are, since they each have eight possible spaces to be played off instead of four. (25 marble requires three valid adjacencies, 125 requires four, etc )

7. These tiles, and stones on them, are immune to fire, freezing, destruction, and so on. (49-marble also makes it so you can't use any of those effects if the stone was played on a 49-marble tile. 343-marble additionally enforces "immune behavior" that turn: you cannot play a stone on a 343-marble tile if you've used any effects this turn that Immune stones are immune to, and if you've played any stones on 343-marble this turn then those effects won't trigger for the remainder of the turn. Successive powers of 7 make the "behavior check" last for extra turns before and after the play)

11. When a tile adjacent to an 11-marble tile becomes occupied with any stone, a frozen copy of that stone is immediately created on that 11-marble tile. Note that the frozen copies from this can trigger successive 11-marble tiles, so any contiguous region of 11-marble will become filled with frozen copies the moment it's disturbed. (121-marble is triggered to copy if any stone is played within a two-orthogonal diamond of it, and so on)

13. All stones cost 13 less energy to play on these tiles. (As with 13 itself, this is multiplied by the other factors of the number, so a 26-marble tile makes stones 26 energy cheaper to play. 169-marble makes it so both the stone played there and the next stone played afterwards are 169 energy cheaper, even if said next stone isn't played on 169-marble)

17. Diagonal placement is allowed when placing a stone onto a 17-marble tile. (This is basically a weaker 17-dust, since it lets you place diagonally but doesn't make effects diagonal like multiplying by 17 does. If we want this to be more distinct from 17-dust, 17-marble could be "Stones can be placed diagonally from a stone on 17-marble")

19. When you play a stone on 19-marble, all other stones in that contigous region of 19-marble are destroyed. (Unless immune, of course)

23. Placing two spaces away is allowed when placing a stone onto a 23-marble tile (same notes apply as the notes on 17-marble)

29. When you play a stone onto 29-marble, that card is not discarded. (Yes, this is the same as 29-dust, but it was too obvious of an effect...)

31. When you play a stone on 31-marble, you may choose one other stone on 31-marble anywhere on the board to destroy. (It must be on the same number of marble, so if you played a stone on 62-marble the only valid targets are other stones on 62-marble, not ones on 31-marble, 93-marble, etc.)

37. The card you used to play a stone on this tile becomes a 37. (As with 37 itself this is based on the number of the marble, so it becomes a 74 card if the tile is 74-marble)

41. Stones played on 41-marble count for your opponent, unless they are Immune.

43. Stones played on 43-marble cost 0 energy as long as you have not played on any 43-marble already this turn. (Each multiple of 43 allows one free play per turn, so if you play a stone for free on a 43-marble tile you can still play a stone for free on an 86-marble tile that turn)

47. Stones on 47-marble can be played over by another stone, but the point the stone below it gave is kept even if it's played over (unless the stone being played over it is an actual multiple of 47, in which case that point is lost). The player who played the new stone still receives the point for the new stone.

53. When you play a stone on this tile, your turn ends immediately afterwards.

59. Exhaust the card you used to play on this tile.

61. When you play a stone on this tile, the card in your opponent's hand closest to the number of the stone you played is discarded. In the case of a tie for closest, the opponent chooses which of the tied cards to discard.

67. When you play a stone on this tile, choose any stone within this contiguous region of 67-marble. A Transient card of that stone number is added to your hand. (Transient cards do not count towards the hand size limit, but are Exhausted when played)

71. When you play a stone on 71-marble, that stone is factored as you play it (but after the energy is spent). You're now playing all of its prime factor stones, in an order of your choice. The first one goes where you tried to play the original stone, all the others must be played off of one of the previous ones, and must themselves be played on tiles of the same kind of marble as the first. If, in the process of doing this, you run into a situation where you cannot play one of the factors, then the game reverts to before you tried to play the original stone, as if you never played it.

73. Stones played on this tile have no effect.

79. Same as 11-marble, except the copies are not frozen.

83. Same as 79-marble, except the copying is triggered by stones diagonally adjacent, not by stones orthogonally adjacent (this means that, if a domino effect occurs, it's only going to spread across one checkerboard half of the contigous region)

89. When you play a stone on 89-marble, choose one stone that's in the same contiguous region of 89-marble that belongs to your opponent. That stone is inverted. (Unlike 41-related effects, this does not work on Immune stones. It must be on the same type of marble, so you can't use an 89-marble play to invert a stone on 178-marble)

97. If you have more stones on 97-marble on the board than your opponent, you may play off of any 97-marble tile as if you have a stone on that tile.

Also,

-1. Stones played on negative marble do not give score.

Good point. Perhaps 1/73 should only apply to positive-exponent effects.

Ah, I didn't know that (I've never used 89 myself)!

You couldn't actually make things like 2/2 or 89/89. Since this game is about prime factorization, the fractions always reduce to simplest form. In the deckbuilding, taking a 1/2 stone and multiplying it by 2 would just give you a 1.

Surely the opponent would be smart enough to never steal such a stone... you'd need to expand the effect to be something like "whenever your opponent alters your hand, this stone is moved to their hand instead", so if your opponent uses something like 37 or 61 or 89 then instead this stone gets moved to their hand.

Well, that could still be useful, since it lets a stone without any 17s in it be placed diagonally.

Prime factorization can be extended from just the positive integers to all the positive rational numbers if we allow negative exponents on the primes. For example, the prime factorization of 25/24 is 2^-3 * 3^-1 * 5^2.

So, what would negative exponent prime effects do in Strategems? Since these effects divide the energy cost of the stone, they have to be bad for you - and considering how strong dividing a card's energy cost by something like 53 is, some of the later effects need to be really detrimental to justify being able to reduce a stone with a cost in the upper four-digit range into something playable with 100 energy!

1/2. Burn a tile in this row or column. The fire lasts for three turns instead of two, i.e. it ends on your opponent's next next turn.

1/3. Your opponent gets to cycle a card

1/5. Freeze one of your stones in this row or column

1/7. Vulnerable: Cannot be placed adjacent to any fire, and if any of your stones adjacent to this one are frozen then this stone isn't valid for territory extending

1/11. Any empty tiles orthogonally adjacent to this stone are "blocked" from your color, meaning you cannot place stones on them but your opponent can.

1/13. All of the cards currently in your opponent's hand cost 13 less.

1/17. Any empty tiles diagonally adjacent to this stone are blocked from your color

1/19. Destroy adjacent stones of your color.

1/23. Any empty tiles exactly two orthogonal tiles in one direction away from this stone are blocked from your color

1/29. Exhaust this card.

1/31. Add a stone of the opponent's color in this row or column

1/37. Adds a 1/37 to your opponent's hand. Exhaust.

1/41. Invert all adjacent stones that are yours

1/43. The next card you play costs double energy

1/47. Cannot be played adjacent to an opponent's stone

1/53. Lose your next turn after this current turn (this stacks, so if you play two of these effects you lose your next two turns)

1/59. Adds one "stoneless card" to your deck (a stoneless card cannot be played, it's just deadweight in your hand)

1/61. Discard your highest card. If this is your highest card when you play it, it discards itself instead of letting you add it to the board.

1/67. Discard 2 cards. You cannot play this stone if you have less than two other cards in your hand when you play it.

1/71. When you play this card, you may only choose one of its prime factors to use the effect of (if it has any), not counting the 1/71 itself. (Both primes like 2 and reciprocals of primes like 1/2 count as one prime factor, so if you had 30/77 then you could choose 2, 3, 5, 1/7, or 1/11. The energy cost is not altered by this choice, only the effect).

1/73. Your opponent gets the effect of the next stone you play instead of you

1/79. Surround with stones in the opponent's color

1/83. Surround diagonal spots with stones in the opponent's color

1/89. Give a card to your opponent

1/97. May be played in any empty space. Your opponent gets to choose where this stone goes when you play it.

Alright, thanks!

When I clicked the difficulty button to switch difficulty from casual to challenge, an asterisk was put on it. 

What are the conditions for that asterisk showing up? Is it "the asterisk appears if you've ever won a match in Casual"? Is it "the asterisk appears if there's any match you've won in Casual but not in Challenge"? Or is it something else?

A community of a few folks interested in this game has popped up on a Discord server I'm on, and I figured it might make sense to start a Discord server for this game. Playcebo, would it be okay if I did that, or would you rather I not? I do understand if you'd rather keep this itch.io community relevant.

EDIT: Now that I've received permission, the Discord server is at https://discord.gg/cxTts38j48.

What use would "cannot be placed" even have?

My favorites out of these are the last two, those are both clever

Here's a list of my ideas thus far:

• This stone gives 1 extra score (i.e. it gives 2 score instead of 1, this is increased to 3 for the square of the prime, 4 for the cube of the prime, etc.)
• When this stone is played, all adjacent stones become neutral (i.e. they don't give score and cannot be played on by either side. Background of a neutral stone is grey)
• When this stone is played, all adjacent stones become communal (they give 1 score to both sides and can be played on by both sides. Background of a communal stone is probably a greyscale gradient)
• Fires adjacent to this stone do not expire
• This stone disappears after three of your turns. On the turn where it disappears, it gives you back the energy used to play it (so you get extra energy for that turn)
• Add a copy of this stone to your deck
• Swap two adjacent tiles anywhere on the board
• Stones can be placed diagonal to this stone
• Stones can be placed two tiles away from this stone
• Place three neutral stones anywhere on the board
• Any empty spaces within a 13-tile diamond (the same shape that a 121 fills with frozen copies) of this stone count as score for you (they only count if they're still empty)
• The number of the next stone played is increased by 1 (that 1 is replaced based on the extra factors added to this stone (like how 13's cost addition works), so if this prime is "p", then a 6p stone adds 6 to the next stone)
• The number of the next stone played is multiplied by 2 after it's played (this 2 is actually 1 + number/this prime, so if this prime is p, then a 2p stone would multiply the next stone by 3, a 3p stone would multiply the next stone by 4, a 4p stone would multiply the next stone by 5, and so on)
• The number of the next stone played is squared after it's played ("after it's played" means that this doesn't affect the energy cost, just the effect)
• Your energy cap is increased by 10 while this stone is on the board

Got ideas for prime effects beyond the ones featured in game? Post them here!

I have an idea on how this could be generalized.

The first prime after 97, 101, has the effect of "play two 1 stones off of this stone": the first 1 must be played adjacent to the 101, the second must be adjacent to either the 101 or the first 1. (Or, if that's too complicated, 101's effect can just be "add two 1 stones to your hand"). 103 plays/adds two 2 stones, 107 plays/adds two 3 stones, 109 plays/adds two 4 stones, and so on.

I don't think the fault is on itch.io for their initial reaction to the payment processors' demands. It sounds like the processors basically said "Comply or your whole business dies in the ditch" and there's no way to fight that right away. So their initial response of compliance is the only thing they could have done - if they refused, the whole site dies. But now that we're here, itch.io needs to change course. Surely it's become obvious that, whereas Steam can and will survive this debacle even in compliance, itch.io won't if they stay in compliance with the censorship. There has to be some alternate solution, because both refusing to comply and fully complying would kill the website. If itch.io decides that they just can't afford to cut off support for Visa and Mastercard purchases on their main website, perhaps they need to start a second version of the website specifically for the content they don't allow, add alternate payment options to both, and then don't allow Visa or Mastercard to be used on the second one? And if that wouldn't work, there's gotta be other solutions that'll save this site, right?

itch.io, I understand that fully denying the processors' demands isn't an option, and I hope others do too. But fully complying isn't an option either - I think it's clear that your community will abandon you if you don't change course. There has to be another way, and it's your job now to find it - or fade into irrelevance if you don't.

...perhaps we can help, though. I've given my suggestion, does anyone else here have their own suggestions for third ways of handling this?

Good question, I hadn't thought of this one. Yes, if the glitch color is plain Glitch, Stained Glass Keys can curse doors that color, and I think it'd be interesting for puzzles if a Glitch-cursed door remains plain Glitch rather than changing color

Yes, Stained Glass Keys can curse a door that's already cursed with another color.

Not sure about cursing an already fully colored door, but probably not.

Good question! I'd say Pure is still immune to Ice/Mud/Ink Keys.

Has it been fixed now?

I've previously attempted this myself:

This is a (frozen) Exact 3 Orange Door, which should work correctly with positive Master Keys, Brown Keys, and whether or not Orange is Starred (though it probably doesn't work if any of the other colors involved are Starred), and that Lockless door at the front is for frozen/eroded/painted purposes. If it wasn't obvious, you start at the left end of the image.

Here's a simpler version that doesn't work with Master Keys but still supports Brown, Star, and Auras:

I imagine trying to implement door copies would require a whole restructuring into a sigificantly more complex design... and all this complexity is just for Exact Doors, which are one of my simpler ideas! Imagine how hard it would get to implement my actually complex ideas (Partial Blast Doors, Starry/Forceful, Laggy Glitch, etc.) via these kinds of mechanisms...

There's no rule that says that Red Doors can't start frozen, just that once they've been unfrozen, the Maroon Aura can't re-freeze them.

I don't think that's an option right now - what I did was just tuck the goal away in a wall so it couldn't be reached.

That may seem true at first glance, but with door types, what happens once other mechanics get involved? Sure, you can recreate an Exact Door with a pretty simple contraption… until you want to make puzzles that involve using Master Keys to bypass Exact Doors, or cursing Exact Doors, or making copies of Exact Doors… you get the idea. A simple one-time check to make sure you have exactly a specific Key count isn’t hard, but when you actually want it to behave like a door - with everything that entails - suddenly it’s not so easy. (Refresh Keys don’t have this problem since they’re not doors, though, so they’re easily recreate-able)

There’s already a tool to make new levels in, L4Vo5’s Lockpick Editor, which includes all of the non-Salvage mechanics from the original (and I believe Salvages are planned for an update). L4Vo5 doesn’t seem to intend on adding fanmade mechanics, but he’s also made the project open-source, so I imagine that someday someone (perhaps myself; I do intend to try my hand at this at some point) will make a version of it with additional mechanics added in.

Okay, but what if we keep going? What about Part 2?

The Vast Depths
The Great Beyond's counterpart. In the entrance area, the ground is more red and pink than the original orange and yellow, the sky is darker, the trees are black and leafless, and red streaks fly up instead of down. You're headed very deep into this world...

Salvage Points variation:
Preservation Points
Preservation Points look similar to Salvage Points, but with an icon of a key inside them instead of arrows. Instead of an ID number, Preservation Points have a color. When you touch a Preservation Point, the next time you enter a level or win a level, whatever your Key count of that color was, that count carries over into the level you just entered/returned to. (The Preservation Point deactivates after being used). For example, if you have 28 Pink Keys, touch a Pink Preservation Point, spend 6 Pink Keys, and enter a level, you'll start that level with 22 Pink Keys, because that's how many you had when you entered it. Likewise, if you have 3 Purple Keys, touch a Purple Preservation Point, and then win the level, you'll have 3 Purple Keys on the world map you returned to. Preservation Points are automatically deactivated if you exit a level, though - if you want to preserve a Key count from a level onto the world map it came from, you have to win that level! Unlike Salvage Points, touching a Preservation Point when you already have one active does not deactivate the first one, so it's possible to carry over multiple Key counts into a single level. Warping with the Warp Rod deactivates all currently active Preservation Points, so you can't preserve Key counts through a warp - you need to rely on the entrances that are actually available.
Yes, Glitch Preservation Points change color like other Glitch objects do, so the color they preserve is dependent on what the most recent Spend Color was when a level change occurs. You definitely can't use Master Keys on Preservation Points, though, and you can't curse a Preservation Point - just because these things have color doesn't mean they act like doors. As for Stone Keys, when they're Preserved, the earned count is added to the Preserved count: for example, if you've currently earned 14 Stone Keys and then preserve 30 Stone Keys, you'll have 44 Stone Keys upon the level transition.

Like The Great Beyond, The Vast Depths is split into chapters, each of which explores Preservation Points in increasing complexity. The Great Beyond's chapters are apparently based on the four seasons, so I'll base the Vast Depths chapters on the four classical elements.
Chapter V1 is Flaming Forest: a forest fire has spread into the Autumn Woods, setting the trees alight in blazing red flame. Sparks and ashes float up into the wind created by the fire. This chapter, as the first Preservation Points chapter, sticks to having Preservation Points within the levels, so you have to win the levels with the right Key counts so you can take those Keys onto the world map and open the doors there.
Chapter V2 is Subterranean Palace: the Frozen Palace has sunken deep underground. Its ice has turned to dirt and stone, and boulders, chunks of ore, and ant tunnels are scattered throughout the walls. This chapter introduces Preservation Points on the world map, so now you have to solve parts of the world map puzzle to bring in the right amount of Keys of the right colors into the levels.
Chapter V3 is Clouded Castle: the Sunshade Castle has risen into the clouds, taking on a more white and blue color scheme, with the ground being made of clouds and wind rushing by in the background. Now entrances to levels start showing up within levels themselves, so you can preserve Key counts from one level into another level, or even into itself!
Chapter V4 is Labyrinth of the Lake: the Dream Labyrinth has been altered to have an "aquatic palace" feel, with waterfalls flowing along the walls, and an underwater background with coral reefs. As with T4, this chapter throws together all of the ways to use Preservation Points from the previous chapters into an advanced, winding, multi-layered (and, given entries within levels themselves, perhaps even recursive) puzzle process.
There's also a Chapter V5: Essential Cosmos, which is based on the fifth element, "quintessence". The background here is black, with twinkling points like stars in the night sky, wisps of various shades of blue, purple, and pink passing through the background, pentagons of various greys (with perhaps some slight color to them) rotating in the background, and a big dodecahedron spinning in the background similar to the rotating cube in Focal Point - the aesthetic of this world is sort of a mix between outer space and Focal Point (with a hint of The Cool Place), but with pentagons instead of squares. Salvages, which have been absent throughout the return worlds, show up here again, and after a few levels that just use Salvages with the new mechanics from the Return Worlds, you reach levels that have both Salvages and Preservation in the mix! The Salvage IDs here are 100 and higher, too high for the Omega Terminal to access, so you're not recoloring these ones.

There's a single color that every Vast Depths chapter has had a Preservation Point of, and only at the end of Essential Cosmos can you get a tessarine amount (i.e. an amount including h) of that Key color. The beginning of the Vast Depths has a Door of that color with h in its cost tucked away, and so you have to get there by retracing back through the Vast Depths, activating the Preservation Point of that color in each chapter in backwards order until you reach the beginning of the Depths to open that door. What's behind that door? World R0, of course!

World 0 doesn't introduce any new mechanics, but I still have an idea for World R0: The Cool Museum, a mix of World 0 and the Lockpick Museum. The ground tiles are the dark blue of the Lockpick Museum background, but the background is a light blue, and the rectangles of World 0 are still passing by in the background (or maybe they're some other shape instead, like pentagons or hexagons). This world's levels each use some complicated contraption to simulate a mechanic that, whether from the Lockpick Museum or from fanmade suggestions, is not in the game, and create a puzzle using that mechanic's emulation.

There are several places things could go from here. If we just want to do Omega Keys again, then there's two ways it could go: the most obvious way is to have the reward for beating R0 be an extension to the Omega Terminal that lets it access the Salvage IDs used in the Vast Depths, and have more Omega Key puzzles to obtain the Checkerboard (and/or Transparent, depending on which one(s) is/are included in R2), Ice, Mud, Ink, Crimson, Forest, Navy, Rainbow, Stained Glass, and Alarm Omega Keys (plus Omega Keys for each level of Laggy Glitch), but it could also go by a different progression: you gain access to all of those Omega Key colors upon beating R0, but now you have to go collect "Numbered Omega Keys", which, instead of unlocking new colors for the Terminal, unlock new Salvage IDs for the Terminal.

However, I have an idea for something different. Omega Keys serve two roles in Lockpick: they're responsible for meta puzzle craziness, and then later on they're used for Chapter EX puzzles. I've thought of a different idea to replace them for each of these two roles, and here's the first one.
Omega Keys, as meta-puzzle goals, variation:
Diamond Keys
Diamond is a Key color with a special trait: changes to Diamond objects are forever. When you collect a Diamond Key, you keep it, even when switching between levels. Likewise, any door with Diamond on it remains destroyed even when switching between levels - if a door changes your Diamond Key count, that Diamond Key count change is also retained, but changes to other Key counts reset as usual (unless Preserved, of course). In other words, your Diamond Key count is always preserved, and Diamond Key pickups and Diamond doors are destroyed permanently... but you can still undo, of course. If you re-enter a level, where all the rest of the actions you did that level are undone but the Diamond actions remain, you can still use Undo to undo the Diamond Key count changes and Diamond door destructions that level caused. For ease of implementation, you can only undo individual actions while they're part of the normal undo chain - once you've left and re-entered a level, if you want to undo its Diamond actions from previous visits, you have to undo all of that level's Diamond actions at once. World R0 would have an entrance to the "Crystal Lab", which has a terminal in it that lets you view all changes to your Diamond Key count, where they came from, and what Diamond doors have been destroyed, and lets you Diamond-undo individual levels from the terminal.
The Diamond terminal would, similar to the Omega Terminal, let you unlock new worlds with enough Diamond Keys - doing so simply requires you have enough, it doesn't actually spend them. The first thing it unlocks, the equivalent to the revealing of hidden Salvage Points, is revealing hidden entrances (such as an entrance from the Chapter V1 map to, say, Page 3 of Chapter V2), letting you jump around between world maps and levels to pull off some crazy Preservation shenanigans, which you'll need in order to get the rest of the Diamond Keys.

So what do those new worlds do?

World R12 / RR1: Return to Return to Doorhaven
It's time to feel nostalgic for feeling nostalgic for World 1

Infinite Keys variation:
Recurrent Keys and Doors
Similarly to Infinite Keys, any Key type can be Recurrent, signified by a looping arrow next to the Key (in the same location as Infinite Keys' infinity symbol). When you collect a Recurrent 1 Red Key, that Key pickup becomes transparent and no longer solid, so you can pass through it freely, but in addition to gaining the 1 Red Key from picking it up initially, every time you open a door (or a copy of a door), the Recurrent Key triggers again, giving you another 1 Red Key. While a Recurrent Key is active, its looping arrow symbol is glowing. Multiple Recurrent Keys can be active at once. Once a Recurrent Key has been activated, it cannot be de-activated.
There can also be Recurrent Doors (which use the same symbol on the corner of the door): a Recurrent Door also goes transparent and non-solid when opened, and every time another door is opened, its spending cost is re-applied (though, with Blast/All/Glitch locks, that cost may be a different number and/or color than it was last time!). If a Recurrent Door's locks are no longer satisfied when it tries to trigger, it fails to apply its spend cost again and it disappears. If a Recurrent Door has multiple copies, it does not become non-solid while it has any copies remaining (I imagine that its exterior remains opaque but its locks become transparent to indicate you can't open them at the moment, and of course the looping arrow is glowing), but it's still activated and performs Recurrent triggers until its locks fail, at which point it reforms and you can open another of its copies. While a Recurrent Door is active, you can't interact with it: you can't open it again, you can't use a Master Key on it, you can't curse it, and so on. If it still had copies left, then it essentially acts like a plain wall until the recurrence ends and it can be opened again.
When order matters (such as when Recurrent Keys of non-regular types, like Signflip or Star Keys, get involved, or when Recurrent Doors are involved... like at all), keep in mind that Recurrent Keys and Doors trigger in the order they were activated. The Glitch color(s) change before Recurrent Keys and Doors trigger, and they do change again after each Recurrent Door opening. Using a Master Key on a Recurrent Door does not activate its recurrence, and using a Master Key does not count as "opening a door" for the purposes of triggering Recurring objects. For the purpose of Salvaging, a Recurrent Door only counts as destroyed when it's fully destroyed, i.e. when a failure to meet its requirements causes its recurrence to stop and makes it disappear. A Key cannot be both Recurrent and Infinite.

Gates variation:
Solidside Gates
What if each side of a Gate could operate separately? This is an idea for expanding Gates' functionality: now, each of the four edges of the Gate can be one of four types: "always closed", "always open", "normal behavior" (closed if you don't meet the requirements, open if you do), or "inverse behavior" (open if you don't meet the requirements, closed if you do). This means, for example, you can have a Gate where only the bottom edge is open if you don't satisfy the Gates' locks, the left and right edges are open if you do satisfy the Gates' locks (but the bottom edge is now closed), and the top edge is always closed. A closed edge of a Gate is solid from the outside, but while you're inside a Gate, the whole thing is non-solid, so the edge rules only restrict what side(s) you can enter the Gate from, not the sides you can exit it from.
To represent this, if a Gate has any non-normal edges, thin lines are drawn on the edges of the Gate: a red line for an always closed edge, a green line for an always open edge, a blue line for an inverse behavior edge, and a black line for a normal behavior edge. These lines are opaque if the edge is closed, semi-transparent if the edge is open. The Gate itself, i.e. the part other than the edge, is always opaque when you don't meet its requirements, semi-transparent if you do meet its requirements. If you're inside the Gate, the Gate and all its edges become semi-transparent.

Chapter VE: Sunset Garden
As your time in the Vast Depths is setting, so too is the sun on the Garden of Dreams. The grass is more yellow-y than before, and instead of a rainbow in the background, there's a sunset with a brilliant gradient of color.

Omega Keys, as Salvage Recoloring, variation:
Epsilon Keys
Epsilon is a key "color" (I imagine them as a dark chartreuse or dark sea green color; perhaps a gradient of greens between the two) with a special property that lets Epsilon Keys behave like Omega Keys, but instead of changing the colors of locks, they change the numbers of locks. Each level in Sunset Garden has an "Epsilon Terminal", which can access some of the doors within that level (perhaps all of them in some levels, but in some levels there are doors and/or individual locks you can't access from the Epsilon Terminal). At an Epsilon Terminal, you can spend 1 Epsilon Key to increase the number on any lock accessible at that Terminal by 1. Likewise, -1 Epsilon Keys can be spent to decrease a lock's number by 1, and same goes for i, -i, j, -j, h, and -h. Once you spend an Epsilon Key at an Epsilon Terminal, you can't retrieve it without undo/restart, but Epsilon Keys are not permanent like Omega Keys are, they and their changes reset after the level like other key colors do. Epsilon is a perfectly valid color for doors and locks.
The Epsilon Terminal will not change whether a lock is Regular or Exact, but it can change the numbers on both types. Locks made to have a count of exactly 0 by the Epsilon Terminal become neither positive nor negative, so they can be opened regardless of your Key count of that color. The Epsilon Terminal still doesn't allow single locks with multiple dimensions of cost, so to turn a 4 Green lock into something involving i, you'll need to get rid of that 4 first. The Epsilon Terminal cannot affect Blank, Blast, or All locks.

The alternative to Bridge to New Memories is "Crystal Culmination", a set of a few levels interconnected with entrances, where Diamond Keys are used to their fullest extent, so despite being multiple levels, it's one big puzzle where some changes carry over across the entire process of solving it. Only the level you start in has a goal in it, but in order to reach it, you need enough Diamond Keys, which you can only get by going through the whole process. Your reward for clearing this puzzle (in addition to, y'know, beating the return worlds as a whole), is the Diamond Omega Key, so once you clear this puzzle you can easily get as many Diamond Keys as you want. (If Omega Keys weren't involved at all in the Vast Depths, then if you didn't get them already, you'd also get the rest of the Omega Keys of the Return World colors here, so you can go mess around with them in the Great Beyond levels)

As for World Omega... World RΩ would probably just be more of the same kinds of puzzles as World Ω itself, but now including the mechanics from the return worlds as well. The name I've thought of for this one is "Further Horizons", and it would be a color-inverted version of the original World Ω, i.e. dark grey with magenta tint.

The idea of “have one version of the editor that just includes the base game’s mechanics, and another where a bunch of fan-made mechanics are thrown in too” sounds like a good one to me - though if that’s the route I end up going down, I’ll probably wait on that until the base editor is pretty much feature-complete, because I’m not sure I trust myself to add the usability stuff - I’m more interested in the mechanics than anything else.

I have a couple ideas for new mechanics I'd like to contribute to the project myself, but I don't want to cause merge conflict shenanigans while the big Salvage Point update is still being worked on. Is that update currently being worked on? If so, how is it coming along? Is there an estimated date for its release yet?

I guess I'm also making this post to ask if you're okay with other people contributing to your project. As I said, once you release this next update, I want to start working on adding new mechanics to the editor myself, since back over in the Lockpick itch.io community I've had a bunch of ideas - obviously I'm not planning on adding all of my ideas, but I think some of them have potential to make good puzzles here (the first two I want to add are the Exact Doors and Partial Blast Doors from "World R3" of this post). Would having somebody else working on adding things hold you up from fixing bugs and adding things yourself, or are you okay with others contributing?

Seconded on the copy/move a whole selection at once and the camera mode. Copy/move would have been real useful for making the levelpack I just finished, and camera mode would be useful for playing it.

I found a couple more bugs:

1. Mouseover has a barrier in the y-axis that it can't go below. If you try to mouse over a door or key that's too far downwards, the info box will appear significantly further up than it should. This applies both in the editor and in gameplay. (I'm not sure whether there's also an x-axis barrier)

2. The description of the levelpack and the author/s of individual levels are not saved. The rest of the level info (levelpack name, author/s of the levelpack, names and titles of individual levels, etc.) is saved, but not those two bits for some reason.

Y'all like the first half of World Omega, those levels where there's a crazy contraption that performs some operation on your key count(s)? If you do, then you're in luck, because I've made a whole world's worth of them!

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1unWEGU_nxVpH88QgLKopEHlxGqBrDH8u/view?usp=drive_link

(EDIT: Fixed a bug that let you "trick" the machine in ωM-6 and its successors. EDIT 2: The MediaFire link stopped working, so here's a Google Drive link instead)

Omega Maths is a level pack of 17 levels, each one involving some kind of mathematical contraption. There's two steps to solving such a puzzle: first you need to figure out what the contraption does (as in World Omega, the name of the level will help with this), and then you need to solve the puzzle involving it (which is more about the math than about the Lockpick mechanics at that point)! Given that this is based on the bonus world, expect spoilers for... pretty much the whole game, so probably don't play this if you haven't beaten the game yet (for reference, at the time of making this, I've beaten everything except the last five World Omega levels).

When you open the levelpack, it'll start you on the level selection area. There are entries to each of the levels there, but Lockpick Editor tends to crash when dealing with entries at the moment, so for now I'd suggest using the level selection hub as a guide for what levels to do in what order, but to actually go to levels just use the editor's level select directly.

Some of these levels are intended to be unlocked upon beating other levels, but Lockpick Editor doesn't support that yet. If it did, here's the intended unlock order: Levels ωM-1, ωM-2, ωM-4, ωM-5, ωM-B, ωM-6, ωM-8, ωM-9, ωM-10, and ωM-0 are available from the get-go. Level ωM-3 is unlocked by beating Level ωM-2, and Level ωM-A is unlocked by beating Level ωM-3. Level ωM-7 is unlocked by beating Level ωM-6, and Level ωM-C is unlocked by beating Level ωM-7. Level ωM-D is unlocked by beating Level ωM-0. Level ωM-E is unlocked by beating Level ωM-10. As for the final level, Level ωM-ω... I'd recommend saving that one for the end, and at the very least you should beat ωM-6 and ωM-7 before doing it.

Is this big enough to deserve its own post? I'm putting it in the levels thread for now, but I think it might deserve its own post, since it's a whole levelpack instead of one level. Let me know if I should make a post for this or just leave it here.

Good luck, everyone! (And if you don't like World Omega, then rest assured, I'll probably make some more "typical" Lockpick levels some time in the future).

That's definitely the most straightforward way to implement it, but I think the difference rule has more potential for neat puzzles - for example, you could give the player 1 Navy Key at the beginning of the level to essentially make the Blue aura require 4 Blue Keys instead of 3. I updated it again - my ruling on this is "the difference must be at least 1/3/5, and the amount of whichever one you have more of must be positive" - so if you have 2 Green Keys and -3 Forest Keys then you have the Green aura, but you cannot have the Green aura at all if you don't have at least 1 Green Key.

Okay, it turns out the crashes are more prevalent than I thought. Just playing the game for long enough can eventually lead to a crash upon trying to open a door. The timing for this happening seems to be random, though I think it gets more likely the longer the program's been running for.

My favorite ideas are generally those that are simple but have lots of puzzle potential, so out of these eight, my favorite is the reverse lockholes, though I think they could use a better sprite than “pink/cyan lockholes”; perhaps the lockholes would still be their regular color, but with a little plus sign inside the circle part of the lockhole? The plus would be the opposite color of the lockhole: white for the black positive locks, black for the white negative locks.

I'm glad you like my ideas! Out of curiosity, do you have a favorite?

To be fair, by that point in the game Stone is kinda a regular key color now, so its doors don't really hold as much special weight as they used to.

I thought of a couple more:

* Descriptions for individual levels. Right now, the editor supports giving the entire levelpack a description, but I think there should be descriptions for individual levels too, since in Lockpick the levels have flavor dialogue at the bottom.

* Putting doors inside other doors. Lockpick itself only does this in the joke level 0-6, but it does do it, so clearly this is an intended feature. Jokes aside, I think that putting Doors inside Gates, in particular, could be actually useful for puzzle making (due to the "won't go solid while you're inside it, even if you don't meet its requirements" property of Gates), so even if putting solid doors inside other doors isn't added, I think putting Doors (and maybe other Gates) in places that overlap and/or are entirely within Gates should be allowed.