I see two possible conclusions for this:
* The spending rounds to the nearest integer (or perhaps it always rounds down instead of rounding to nearest). This is probably the approach I'd take if I was making the Return Worlds a real thing with the world list as-is.
* Fractional key counts ensue. This would be the more consistent option but would demand a world revolving around fractions, which would probably have to replace R11.
The "Focal Point moment" at the end of The Dream Labyrinth is a bit different: you find a Spirit with a curiously large elevation jumping Curse, then go to the right place and get the Curse to trigger, and the elevation jump takes you... back to the Great Beyond hub, but with your inventory preserved. This allows you to enter a door there you couldn't previously enter, and from there the game is on: rather than collecting Omega Keys, the post-T4 meta exploration involves jumping around between various rooms across the game, bringing in inventories you shouldn't have and jumping to locations you shouldn't be in, to break levels in new ways and go outside of the level's usual coordinate range to find hidden objects tucked in formerly out-of-bounds areas. Hub entrances (any of the 12 entrance types with H for its backspace type) were previously considered off-limits even in the Dream Labyrinth, but now they play a major role.
The permanent progression things to collect here are "dream sections", but the first few you get don't seem to do anything. However, once you get enough of them, you unlock The Cool Place, which is significantly different here: in IWL:TMC, The Cool Place is a single room/level, but a customizable one. Those dream sections are pieces of a level, i.e. arrangements of key pickups, doors, etc. Secret Lab is unlocked alongside The Cool Place, and from the Secret Lab you may edit which dream sections appear in The Cool Place. Through the rest of the post-T4 meta exploration, there will be some entrances to The Cool Place, so you'll often need to choose your Cool Place layout correctly so you can use it to help get past whatever obstacle is in place back in the area you entered it from. Note that the Secret Lab and the Cool Place are not immediately connected via entrances (both are places you can warp to), so usually you can't edit your Cool Place while in the midst of solving a metapuzzle that requires it.
I'm not sure what the Kina's Heart equivalent is here. That puzzle definitely involves using entrance and Spirit jumping shenanigans to smuggle things into the main hub that aren't supposed to be there, but there are no Master Keys or Brown Keys, so what exactly the puzzle is has to be different. Regardless, Return to Doorhaven exists. Like Doorhaven itself, Return to Doorhaven doesn't have a concrete theme, but I do have to stick to it introducing new non-meta mechanics.
So, what Return to Doorhaven introduces is Typed Usable Items. "Usable Items" here means Buckets, Seeds, Etches, and Gears, the items that you can use to alter the characteristics of other objects. Normally, Buckets and Etches are "door-type", Seeds are "key-type", and Gears work on any of Doors, Scanners, and Filters. Return to Doorhaven introduces variants of these items that work on other objects: Door-Type Seeds to copy or destroy copies of doors, Key-Type Buckets and Etches to alter the colors and numbers of key pickups, Scanner-Type Buckets and Etches to edit the colors and numbers of specific "locks" within a Scanner statement, Filter-Type Buckets whose colors correspond to non-Key items instead of Key colors, Dispenser-Type Gears whose negatives cause the Dispenser to deactivate on its next dispensing (and deactivated Dispensers that you have to use positive Dispenser-Type Gears on to get them to dispense their next item), "Blocker-Type" Buckets that work on any of Doors, Scanners, or Filters (Blocker type is what Gears are by default), Moonstone-Type Etches that let you alter how many phases a Moonstone increments by, Moonstone-Type Buckets that let you color a Moonstone so it only increments the Phases of things that are currently that color, Spirit-Type Seeds to make a Spirit need to trigger its leaving effect multiple times before it actually leaves, and so on. This also means that just about anything can have the Star property to protect it from the above. Finally, there are "Metabuckets", which come in types instead of colors, and are used on a pickup usable item to change its type to match the type of the Metabucket, so you can convert items of one type into items of another type. There's definitely some kinks to this idea that need to be ironed out here, but I think these item types could work as the Return to Doorhaven mechanic for Theme-Mechanic Converse.
Garden of Dreams's first half introduces the final collectable item, Dream Clouds. Dream Clouds are basically collectable entrances: like a regular entrance they have some number they change your elevation by (or set it to if Blueprint) and are one of the 48 types, but rather than being enterable, a Dream Cloud is collected and added to a special inventory when touched, and you can then access that inventory and choose to use the Dream Cloud whenever and wherever you wish (it's removed from your inventory when used). Your Dream Cloud inventory is reset upon inventory loss. Garden of Dreams's second half, which you need to have beaten Return to Doorhaven to access, throws in Cloud-type versions of the usable items, allowing you to edit what elevation entrances and Dream Clouds go to with Cloud-type Etches (and use Cloud-type Seeds to copy O entrances, etc. I'm not sure what a colored entrance does... maybe Cloud-type buckets change one of an entrance's four properties instead of color?). These mechanics combined make it so that, whereas The Dream Labyrinth was about navigating the maze to find your way between levels, Garden of Dreams is about choosing what levels/elevations/rooms to go to in the right ways using the right entrances and Dream Clouds.
Bridge to New Memories takes place in the sky on clouds, so here it's a final puzzle about Dream Clouds and other entrances, having you use Dream Clouds and Cloud-Type Etches to go back to various points across the game to collect the right keys, items, etc. to meet the requirements at the end.
Lockpick Horizon is still a postgame world so it doesn't technically introduce anything new, but in practice it does: here, you stare into the endless horizon of elevation and leap deep into it, courtesy of Operator Entrances and Operator Dream Clouds, which can do general Operator Key things to your elevation - so there becomes complicated math about getting to the right elevation to get to the next puzzle. I don't understand Kina's Masterpiece well enough to comment on how it works in Theme-Mechanic Converse. Perhaps the postgame ends with an Operator Entrance that divides your elevation by 0, causing an error that takes Lily back to the surface, thus truly ending the experience?
OK, was this all realistic? Definitely not, I stuffed too many mechanics into some of these worlds. If I had to cut back on some of this, I'd remove Messes, somehow move Seeds into a separate world from Negative Garden (perhaps necessitating a rebrand - maybe they could be "copiers" introduced in Lockpick Library?), remove Operator Keys (as sad as it would be to see the more math-y things go… and I guess Lockpick Horizon would just go back to being a standard postgame world without elevation shenanigans), remove "multiple elevation objects"/Shadows, remove Spirit Summonings (or remove Blessings and Curses but keep Summonings), probably remove Gears, and maybe even remove Phases (which would probably necessitate breaking the cloud pair symmetry in Mooncloud Lake so it's actually introducing something meaningful instead of waiting until Etchstone Cliff to do so, and then collapsing clouds are the only part of elevation mechanics that Etchstone Cliff adds). With Part 1 I definitely prioritized "one mechanic per piece of the theme, or two mechanics per world" over keeping the worlds at a realistic size - but that's kind of the point, isn't it?
Part 2 is about metapuzzles, and I'm sticking to that. But what the metapuzzles are is changing, because Salvage Points don't really make sense - Doors (and Filters) aren't important enough in this progression, and Scanners have been more important but there'd be no use in Salvaging them. The connections between the themes and what's being introduced is unfortunately a little looser here, but hopefully I've towed the line between theme adherence and Part 2 meta progression well enough.
Autumn Woods introduces two new objects.
Clearing Clouds, clouds that take you to a "clearing" in the forest, are sort of a mix between a Cloud and a level entrance: they take you to another elevation while retaining your coordinates like a Cloud does, but they reset your inventory and reset any changes to the level's doors, pickups, etc. (hereafter I'll refer to that collective as the "architecture" of the level) like a level entrance does. They don't take you to a separate level, though - backspacing or reaching the goal will still take you back to whatever level you were in before this level, not just to the previous elevation. Although they're not really separate levels, this still kinda acts like you're transitioning between separate levels but with your location intact.
Alcove Entrances (which, as the name implies, are entrances into forest alcoves) are level entrances that do not reset your inventory or reset the architecture, meaning the level outside and the level inside sort of act as parts of the same level. You can still backspace out of the alcove level to return to the outside level, but since the entrance didn't reset your inventory or reset architecture, neither does exiting, so changes you made to both levels are retained when you switch between the two (but if you go through a regular level entrance at some point then both are reset). This is a level entrance, not a cloud, so when you enter an alcove you go to the start of that level, position is not retained.
Frozen Palace ups the ante with more cloud and level entrance variants. Some candidates I think could work here (though I don't think all of them are included) include:
Fog Clouds, clouds that are too foggy from the snowy air to see through, are like regular clouds, except you get lost when crossing through them and thus they put you at the start of the room they take you to instead of retaining location. Each elevation room has its own start location, and the start locations aren't necessarily in the same position as the other elevations. Fog Clouds, like regular clouds, may be repeatable or collapsing.
Windy Clouds show visions of another place, but the icy wind is strong and can push you out before you get to be there for long. These are like regular clouds, except they update your backspace chain as if they're a level entrance, so when you backspace or reach the goal, you'll be sent to the elevation you were on before going through the Windy Cloud rather than going all the way back to the previous level (you could then backspace again from there to go back to the previous level, of course - it's only hubs that outright can't be backspaced out of). Since entering the Windy Cloud did not reset your inventory or the architecture, neither does backspacing out of it. These may also be either repeatable or collapsing.
Landslide Entrances are level entrances that you're "stuck" in once you enter, and they're sort of the opposite of Windy Clouds: they're standard level entrances (reset your inventory and the architecture, and do not retain location), but they do not update your backspace chain, so they can't be exited back to the level you came from, backspacing out of them will return you to the level before that.
Collapsing Alcoves are like Alcove entrances, except they're one-time use, so when you exit the alcove the entrance is gone. They do reappear if you then enter another entrance that does reset architecture, though.
Tunnel Entrances, level entrances that in this world are themed as tunnels through caves, are like regular level entrances, except position is retained. These can also be thought of as "Clearing Clouds that enter a separate level, meaning they update your backspace chain".
Sunshade Castle is where the truth of the objects introduced in the first two Chapters is revealed: elevation and levels are the same thing. Every room in the game is actually part of one giant elevation stack, and all of these cloud and level entrance variants are different instances of the same general object - from this point on, the term "entrance" refers to this archetype as a whole. Entrances come in many different types, with the following possible attributes:
That's a total of 48 possibilities for entrance types. The ones that may have appeared so far are CLET (standard level entrances), CLHT (standard world/hub entrances, and this is the kind of entrance that the Warp Rod causes), RKNJ (regular clouds), OKNJ (collapsing clouds), CLNJ (clearing clouds), RKFT (alcove entrances), RKNT (fog clouds), OKNT (collapsing fog clouds), RKFJ (windy clouds), OKFJ (collapsing windy clouds), CLNT (landslide entrances), OKFT (collapsing alcoves), and CLEJ (tunnel entrances). These have all had special sprites, but from this point on there's probably a more standard sprite used for entrances in general that looks like a mix between a cloud and a level entrance, with colored quadrants to indicate what its four attributes are. The most basic ones like standard clouds and level entrances probably still use their special sprites, but from Sunshade Castle on, the ones introduced in the first two Chapters probably just use the standard entrance sprite, to help with the shift in thinking about how they work, not as special objects but as part of a greater archetype.
In addition to any of the entrances on the Frozen Palace candidate list that didn't make it in there, entrance types that might first show up in Sunshade Castle may include the following:
Those last four bullet point examples can have their Ts replaced with Ls to make location matter. Those last two bullet point examples probably don't show up until The Dream Labyrinth but I figured I'd mention them in my list of notable ones anyway.
If elevation and levels are the same thing, then what's going on with doors and other objects that take up multiple elevations? The other thing Sunshade Castle reveals is Shadows: the same object can exist in multiple locations at once (these are called "shadows" of that object), and collecting/destroying it anywhere will remove all of its shadows. Objects that take up multiple elevations are actually objects with multiple shadows in the same position at different elevations, but now shadows don't have to be in the same position or on consecutive elevations, they can be scattered around different places and rooms. Shadows, like everything else in a level, are restored when the architecture clears. There's no "primary object" that the rest are shadows of, all shadows of an object are on equal footing.
As in canon IWL, the Dream Labyrinth is where the meta mechanics stop pulling any remaining punches. Here that process already started in Sunshade Castle, but the Dream Labyrinth certainly ups the ante, with even more entrance types being thrown around and used in more complicated ways, making navigating the entrances itself a major puzzle on each step of the way - which entrances do you use and when? Spirits that change elevation have been absent for the past three Chapters, but there's at least one of those that shows up here, with all the implications that changing elevation now has; these elevation jumps, which in The Miracle Tower were always considered RKNJ jumps, can now be of any of the 48 types (although Once and Repeatable are indistinguishable in the context of a Spirit effect, and if the jump is a Clear jump then once it occurs you lose your Spirits after the jump). This is also where Blueprint Entrances, which set your elevation to a specific value instead of incrementing or decrementing it relative to its current value, start showing up; Blueprint Entrances weren't needed before since each cloud/entrance was on just one layer of elevation, but now with Shadows around, non-Blueprint entrance shadows would take you to different elevations depending on what elevation you were on before. More importantly, Blueprint Clouds couldn't have been shown before now, because the "every room is part of the same elevation stack" means that the exact elevations are weird numbers in the hundreds or thousands (depending on how much protection from shenanigans is needed), so showing them before now would have given away that something weird was going on with elevation.
Mooncloud Lake is a thematically rich world, so it's getting three mechanics instead of two. Its main mechanic goes with the "moon" part: Phases. A door can have multiple "phases", and there are collectible items called Moonstones that, when collected, cause all doors that have phases to move to their next phase. For example, if a door's phases are Red 3, Blue 5, and Purple -1, then it starts as a Red 3 Door, becomes a Blue 5 Door when a Moonstone is collected, becomes a Purple -1 Door when another Moonstone is collected, returns to being a Red 3 Door when a third Moonstone is collected, and repeat. Keys and Scanners may also have phases as such, but Keys, Doors, and Scanners cannot transform into each other in Phases - an object with Phases will still always consistently be one of those three. Moonstones don't go in your inventory when collected, they just cause their phase change and disappear. Moonstones may have a number (to increment Phases by multiple, or go backwards if negative), and if Blueprint then they set all Doors to whatever Phase they'd be in if that many Moonstones had been collected so far. Star and Unstar Moonstones exist, so while Moonstones are Starred, Phases cannot change.
Its secondary mechanic, going with the "lake" part, is Filters. These are like doors, but their costs are not in Keys. The primary type are Water Filters, which cost Buckets of certain colors. There can also be Seed Filters, Spirit Filters that cost specific Spirits, or Spirit Filters that just have a number of Spirits to spend (in this case you may choose which of your Spirits to lose). Filters, of course, are themselves immune to Buckets. Scanners were already able to scan for non-key items as their requirements (and already have been doing so for Spirits), though perhaps they haven't started doing so for Buckets and Seeds until now. (Yes, Filters can be Mechanical)
The last mechanic in Mooncloud Lake is more of a side mechanic: Clouds, to go with (of course) the "cloud" part. A level can now consist of multiple "elevations", where each elevation is basically a separate room. When you're touching a cloud, you can choose to use it, but you don't have to. White clouds take you up in elevation when used, and dark clouds take you down in elevation when used (clouds have numbers next to them that tell you how far up or down they go. Clouds do not disappear when used, so they can be reused if you return to their elevation. Objects only take up one elevation, though it's possible (but rare) for an object to take up the same position on multiple elevations at once. Since this is meant to be a side mechanic for now, in this world clouds always come in white-dark pairs, so the mechanic doesn't do anything yet other than essentially add a third spacial dimension to levels (with specific "ladder" points, the cloud pairs, to travel up and down the Z-axis in discrete steps).
Etchstone Cliff's first mechanic is Etches, stone-etching tools that are another collectable item. If you have a nonzero amount of Etches, you can spend all of them at once to etch their number into a door or filter, changing that door's lock number to match the amount of Etches you had. There can be multiple colors of Etches - these colors have nothing to do with the colors of doors, and they all act identically (sprite-wise it's probably just their handles that change), it's just that Etches of different colors are stored separately in your inventory, thus they're used up separately, so you can be carrying multiple potential numbers. Filters may cost Etches. Starred Doors are immune to Etches.
For the "cliff" part of the world, the elevation mechanics that were introduced in Mooncloud Lake are fully realized here: now the clouds don't always come in pairs, so your way down isn't always the same as your way up. There are also Collapsing Clouds, which are like regular Clouds but they disappear after being used once.
Lockpick Library's first mechanic is Logical Scanners, which means Scanners' conditions can now include multiple "locks" with AND, OR, and NOT statements. (In the "themes inspire mechanics" context, this comes from the fact that in a library you read whole books instead of single statements). Blueprint applies to individual "locks" rather than the Scanner as a whole. Spirits have Scanner-like conditions, so their conditions can also be these logical statements now.
Combo Doors fit with Lockpick Library's theme perfectly, so if I was going to add them at all I'd keep them here, but they're not really needed - Doors aren't as important in this game as they are in canon IWL, generally Keys and Scanners are more important here. But without Bicolor/Combo Blast Sacrifice Doors, how will Theme-Mechanic Converse pull off the more math-y things that canon IWL does? Well, this library has some math textbooks in it too, which means Operator Keys are introduced this world. For those who don't remember Operator Keys from the museum, they allow Keys to do math things other than adding or subtracting constants (or setting Key counts to a particular value), such as multiplying your Orange Key count by 3, or adding your Cyan count to your Purple count.
Mechanical Nexus's primary mechanic, based on the "Nexus" part of being where all the doors are made, is Dispensers. Dispensers have an ordered list of objects within them (these may be any object - Keys, Doors, Buckets, Scanners, Messes, Spirits, Seeds, Moonstones, Filters, Clouds, Etches, Shelves, other Dispensers, etc., and they need not all be the same type). When the level starts, each Dispenser dispenses its first object into the level. The Dispenser then remains inactive until the object it dispensed is collected, destroyed, etc. (the object needs to no longer be present), then it waits until Lily is no longer in its range nearby it (different Dispensers can have different ranges), at which point it dispenses its next object, and repeat. Normally a Dispenser disappears once its object list is exhausted, but some Dispensers then have a second cycle of objects that repeats infinitely after its first list is exhausted.
Mechanical Nexus's side mechanic, based on the "Mechanical" part, is Gears, a collectable item used to mess with Mechanical Doors/Scanners/Filters. A positive Gear. A positive Gear may be spent on a non-Mechanical, openable object like a Door, Scanner, or Filter when you open it to cause that object to close back up after you cross it, as if it was Mechanical. It doesn't actually become Mechanical, though, it just re-closes the one time. A negative Gear may be spent on any Mechanical object to interfere with the gears in its mechanisms, grinding it to a halt and thus making it no longer Mechanical. You have to be able to open the object in question to use a Gear on it, so using a Gear on a Mechanical object therefore opens it permanently (for Doors and Filters it still spends its spending that one time, it just doesn't reform afterwards). Filters may cost Gears, but this does not make them immune to Gears (but Starred objects are immune to Gears).
The Miracle Tower's first mechanic, to go with the "miracle" part, is Spiritual Blessings and Curses, an expansion of the Spirits mechanic: Spirits can now have a "blessing" (an effect they cause when you collect them) and a "curse" (an effect they cause when they leave). Usually these effects are just giving you some amount of keys or other item (positive or negative), though there might be other effects they could cause, such as incrementing Phases or applying the effect of an Operator Key. Also, the condition for a Spirit being collectable can now be different from the condition that you have to meet for it to stick around once you have it. If you meet its collection requirement when you collect it but not its staying requirement, it immediately leaves when you collect it, giving you both its Blessing and its Curse immediately. A Spirit can also have a third effect, a "Summoning" (these can do the same things that Blessings and Curses can), and there's a new pickup type called Spirit Boards (like an Ouija Board), which when collected cause all Spirits currently haunting Lily to trigger their Summoning effect.
The "tower" part warrants a further expansion of the elevation mechanics: it's now possible for objects to stretch across multiple elevations at once (so a door could take up the same position across multiple elevations, and if you destroy it on one elevation it's destroyed on all of them), and "your elevation changes by a particular amount" is a possible Spiritual Blessing/Curse/Summoning.
With Buckets and Etches in play, Chromatic Monolith probably has a good bit of door editing involved, making it somewhat of a mix of the canon Chromatic Monolith and the canon Bridge to New Memories: Scanners are probably the things you need to get past to make progress, and you edit and recolor doors to make the right setups to let you get past them.
Remember back when I came up with the "Return Worlds", a list of ideas for spinoffs of each world's mechanics? Well, I'm doing something like that again, but more esoteric this time.
In I Wanna Lockpick, the mechanics came first and the world themes were derived based on those, or at least I'd assume that's how it works. But what if I went the other way around? This is a re-mapping of IWL, changing up what the mechanics are so that the mechanics in each world are based directly on the name and background of that world.
Doorhaven is staying the same - its theme, so much as it has one, is doors. Also, we need a good base point to iterate on, and if I changed Doorhaven it'd be a completely different game!
Rainy Vista's first mechanic is Buckets, made from the rain pouring outside. Buckets are filled with a colored water, and are collected like Keys are (Orange Buckets, Purple Buckets, White Buckets, etc.). You may use up one Bucket on a door to recolor the door that color. There's also a new color, "Rusted"; a Rusted door's requirements are simply ignored, as the door is too rusted to block you. This makes Rusted Buckets the TMC equivalent of Master Keys.
I think of Rainy Vista as either a hotel or a vacation home, so Rainy Vista's second mechanic is Scanners, like the digital card locks on hotel doors these days. A Scanner is like a door, but it doesn't spend anything when you open it. Buckets do not work on Scanners.
The Infrastructure's first mechanic is Blueprint, an effect that can be applied to Keys, Doors, or Scanners. In order to open a Blueprint Door or Scanner, you need to match its specifications exactly, i.e. if it's a 3 Purple Door then you need to have exactly 3 Purple Keys, not just at least 3. Of course, 0 is a valid number here, so Blank Doors from canon IWL are rolled into this mechanic in IWL:TMC. Blueprint Keys are the same as Canon IWL's Exact Keys.
The Infrastructure's second mechanic is Mechanical Doors, doors that open and re-close via gears inside them. When you open a Mechanical Door, it becomes intangible and can be passed through, but once you're no longer touching it, it re-closes. There are also Mechanical Scanners, which are Scanners that re-close once you're no longer touching them (which is basically the same as a Gate from canon IWL...)
Starlit Temple's first mechanic, of course, is the Star effect, for both Keys and Doors. For Keys, this means introducing Star Keys and Unstar Keys three worlds earlier than canon. For Doors, a Starred Door is immune to Buckets, as the Star protects it from being changed.
Starlit Temple's second mechanic is Sacrifice Doors, which make you sacrifice all of your keys of that color to the gods (...or to whatever this temple worships) - they're the same thing as the canon Blast Doors, just rebranded for this theming context.
Haunted Attic's first mechanic is Messes that were never cleaned up because the attic is where you stuff all that stuff. A Mess has multiple key pickups within it, but you only get to choose one to take, after which the mess collapses and disappears.
Haunted Attic's second mechanic is the Spirits that haunt it. Spirits are collectible items like Keys, but they have a requirement like Doors/Scanners do, and you'll pass through them without collecting them if you don't meet their requirement. When you do collect a Spirit, it will then haunt Lily, and continue to do so as long as you continue to meet its requirement. Once you no longer meet the requirement, the spirit leaves. For the time being, the only use being haunted by a spirit has is that scanners can check for Spirits - they can check your total number of Spirits, or they can check for whether a specific Spirit is haunting you (perhaps each Spirit in a level has an ID number or something). Doors cannot spend Spirits, though
Negative Garden's first mechanic is still negative numbers, since Negative is in the name and theme.
Negative Garden's second mechanic is Seeds. Seeds are, like Buckets, a usable item, but they're used on Key pickups instead of Doors. When you use a Seed on a Key pickup, it now has 1 seed attached to it - you may attach more seeds to it if you want to. When a Key pickup is collected, if it has any seeds attached to it, one of those seeds is planted and blossoms into a new copy of the key pickup - in other words, Seeds are like Negative Master Keys but for Key pickups instead of doors. Negative seeds, then, are like positive Master Keys, removing attatched seeds if a key pickup has any, and making the key pickup rot away and disappear if it does not. (I'm not sure if negative copies are a thing here...). Seeds may also be used on Messes, in which case the mess only collapses after its seeds have been used up, but Keys taken from the Mess do not replenish, so you have to choose from what remains, meaning Seeds essentially let you choose multiple Keys from one Mess. If a Mess runs out of Keys entirely but still has remaining Seeds, it collapses early. A Key pickup can have the Star property to make it immune to Seeds (this is not the same as it being a Star Key, those are different things!)
The Labyrinth is probably similar in concept to what it is in canon IWL, just a really big puzzle using the mechanics up to this point.
See the replies for the continuation.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
Here's a list of my ideas thus far:
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?
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...
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?
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.
