Level: 77
Age: 34 Joined: 26 Feb 2007 Posts: 308 Location: In layers
Posted: 2010-01-09, 19:30 Creating a Riddle
If you played, or tried to, another of the ever growing list of online riddles, you may have noticed a huge gap between quantity and quality.
This kind of thread has been done before, but then (like the incoming riddles) why can't we make another one?
The several aspects that make or not a good riddle - post your opinions.
To me:
(This follows no order of importance)
-Being original: it's hard to near impossible, but if you can't get out of the low standard, you're screwed.
-Graphics/Pictures:
They are definitely important. If you want to build an atmosphere, pictures are the rock stand of your creation. While you need decent quality pictures, either in kilobytes or pixels, over-size is a issue you must care for. Slow loading sucks and not everyone has that jetspeed connection you might be used to.
If you thought "google images", you suck. Don't take stupid photos of your garden either.
Don't hide clues in the Exif - saving a file just to open with another program and read something is boring. Using this method once in every 30 levels is a fair rate.
Image editing is fine. Fair rate of use: 1/16 levels. Obscure methods to find the info are allowed - as far as you can hint them properly AND that they work on other programs than the one you have at home.
-Sound:
Not needed, but cool - essentialy for atmosphere. Remember sound isn't very browser-friendly. The same rule for image editing apllies to sound file riddles. Keep files inside the 1 minute long mark, why? Short download.
-Programs:
Don't make people download a program to solve your riddle if you are just going to use it once (unless it is like 900Kb and it doesn't require installing). Chances are that people doesn't have the right programs, so tell them what they will need before they start the riddle (again, I'm talking about big executables).
Ah, try to avoid using java/flash the most you can.
-Server:
I don't know about you, but if I see a riddle is in "freewebs" or "lycos", I know I'll get crap.
Lots of Ads, stupid 404s, low bandwidth... well, you know.
-Forum:
I don't know, really. People don't like to register, but if they don't need to, it'll be a mess.
They won't read the rules, they'll post spoilers, write like retards...
Well, at least they are under your leash to some degree.
-Riddles:
Again, try to be creative and not repetitive. Appealing to websearch gets boring very fast. As far as you can get what you need to solve your riddle inside your riddle, you will be Ok.
As I said before, downloads also aren't very cool if frequent.
Pre-existent ciphers are fine, but if you create your own - or at least your own twist of one - it will be finer.
Riddles should be about being clever, not being wise. Learning something while you solve a riddle, great. Having to learn a lot just to solve one, not so great.
The learning curve MUST be fair. Don't put the potentially "quit the game" levels until the players are deep and stable enough.
And finally: if your first level is "click the picture with a door in it" or "change the URL to level2.html", just kill yourself.
Last edited by Strati on 2010-08-23, 00:23; edited 1 time in total
Level: 77
Joined: 07 Mar 2007 Posts: 916 Location: Poland
Posted: 2010-01-10, 00:51
agree
just checked my bookmarks and riddle notes...
i started more than 70 (!) different riddles finished maybe 20-25 of them
but if people ask me about good riddles i can name a few only...
the most of riddles you can find in the net are worthless, foreseeable, too easy, boooooring... so usually i stop playing them after ~10 levels
_________________ . ...the circle has been closed... but will never stop spinning around...
Level: 77
Joined: 07 Mar 2007 Posts: 916 Location: Poland
Posted: 2010-01-10, 15:05
no, i'm not creative enough, so i prefer to be a good riddle-solver rather than a mediocre riddle-maker
as i said somewhere in the forum: creating a really good riddle is much harder than solving it
_________________ . ...the circle has been closed... but will never stop spinning around...
Just happened to stumble upon this thread and I feel I'd say something. Your handbook's real strict Many riddles online that the riddle community considers good, particularly the "number one" Notpron, starts off with levels like, click the door (notpron), change to level2.htm (yet again, Notpron) cos they didnt have tutorials. These are the tutorials to get them on track.
IH's ruling in many areas. Sound, use of flash, graphics, level types. For once I see a riddle that doesnt really use google images (or none at all). I wholeheartedly agree with Strati; Im creating one myself. It's natural I've been hunting across the Net for more riddles similar to IH or Zest, my personal favorites.
Maybe we should all create one or something. host a competition. Besides IH, riddles are sorta dying out in some places. Just posting this post. Getting some ideas.
Just curious though, you mentioned "Ah, try to avoid using java/flash the most you can.
" So, you disapprove of IH?
_________________ "...For all we see or seem is nothing but a dream within a dream."
Many riddles online that the riddle community considers good, particularly the "number one" Notpron, starts off with levels like, click the door (notpron), change to level2.htm (yet again, Notpron) cos they didnt have tutorials.
Well, notpron was first popular riddle so in those times it was original. But those brainless "i can make a riddle too" muppets just copied all notpron ideas ["if not pron is so cool when I do my riddle exactly the same it will be cool too"]. It's amazing when you start 80% of riddles and they are all the same.
_________________ Heaven does not exist. There are two Hells instead.
80%? I thought it was higher
Orio's Riddle, Notpron, blahblah... the first few levels are all either clickthis!, change one to two! or something along that line. The justification they gave was that the first few levels MUST be uber easy to hook people. Apparently not.
Level: 77
Age: 34 Joined: 26 Feb 2007 Posts: 308 Location: In layers
Posted: 2010-01-30, 19:30
GyRIdashai wrote:
Strati, do you have a riddle we can try?
If you mean one of my own, no. I once had a project with 30-40 riddles done, but archived and probably lost/deleted it.
Quote:
Just happened to stumble upon this thread and I feel I'd say something. Your handbook's real strict Many riddles online that the riddle community considers good, particularly the "number one" Notpron, starts off with levels like, click the door (notpron), change to level2.htm (yet again, Notpron) cos they didnt have tutorials. These are the tutorials to get them on track.
These aren't much of "requirements for riddles I might play" but rather a list to what should be learned from the mistakes of these same riddles. just the fact that people treat Notpron as the "number one" is a great cause of bad riddles.
Just look at their main page, you feel like inside of those cheap TV ads.
If you can defeat this riddle then I'm sure you'll do well when playing online poker. If you don't know how to play poker and like to play more blackjack like games, then you can also play at an online casino.
"You don't have to be a computer nerd to get through the levels. [...]"
Then this:
"I find it challenging and I finally have put my random computer-geek skills to use. I was previously only using them to lose money playing online poker!"
Way to counter-advertise, genius!
Ahem...going back
Quote:
IH's ruling in many areas. Sound, use of flash, graphics, level types. For once I see a riddle that doesnt really use google images (or none at all). I wholeheartedly agree with Strati; Im creating one myself. It's natural I've been hunting across the Net for more riddles similar to IH or Zest, my personal favorites.
Maybe we should all create one or something. host a competition. Besides IH, riddles are sorta dying out in some places. Just posting this post. Getting some ideas.
Agreed.
A "creative group" is not a bad idea either.
Quote:
Just curious though, you mentioned "Ah, try to avoid using java/flash the most you can.
" So, you disapprove of IH?
I like the chapter intermissions, but not much about the idea of a main menu in flash.
About using it to play music, I can't really tell, I'm rarely patient enough to wait the music load with my hella slow internet.
IH's ruling in many areas. Sound, use of flash, graphics, level types. For once I see a riddle that doesnt really use google images (or none at all). I wholeheartedly agree with Strati; Im creating one myself. It's natural I've been hunting across the Net for more riddles similar to IH or Zest, my personal favorites.
Maybe we should all create one or something. host a competition. Besides IH, riddles are sorta dying out in some places. Just posting this post. Getting some ideas.
Agreed.
A "creative group" is not a bad idea either.
So when does it start
_________________ "...For all we see or seem is nothing but a dream within a dream."
I and a friend are working on something, we're working on completion of the first chapter and if it's ok with the admins we would like you guys to test it out and give us some comments.
Level: 77
Age: 30 Joined: 13 Oct 2007 Posts: 211 Location: not yet in heaven
Posted: 2010-06-03, 08:20
Beezqp wrote:
Quote:
Many riddles online that the riddle community considers good, particularly the "number one" Notpron, starts off with levels like, click the door (notpron), change to level2.htm (yet again, Notpron) cos they didnt have tutorials.
Well, notpron was first popular riddle so in those times it was original. But those brainless "i can make a riddle too" muppets just copied all notpron ideas ["if not pron is so cool when I do my riddle exactly the same it will be cool too"]. It's amazing when you start 80% of riddles and they are all the same.
Absolutely.
What makes matter worse is some riddle-makers only play some riddle with no quality at all and build another riddle of no quality.
There are tons of example but I ain't going to show many of them.
For me, a good riddle should involve:
a) Good riddle element
Good riddle element accounts to high quality of riddle and it is its main attraction.
You cannot use a silly maths question for a level since it lacks "riddling".
A very bad example:
http://www.arthurluk.net/.../wingdings.html
Ignore any foreign characters since this riddle is in purely Chinese.
A good riddle should involve:
1. Cryptography
Without this a riddle is not a riddle. Bad to intermediate riddles usually only involves the use of commonly-known ciphers, e.g. Morse code, ASCII.
Only few riddles can cover them to depth and even fewer can establish new cipher system.
(However, establishing new cipher system may put your riddle at risk if it's too hard)
IH surely has its cipher system I guess. (CIRCLES? )
2. Multimedia understanding/editing skills
With good use of this one can surely add theme to his riddle(s).
Poor ones can only involve extension changing like .JPG to .GIF (not even knowing .PNG) and image/audio editing is nearly none.
Surely IH shows an excellent use in multimedia: flash, image, sound... everything is quite perfect
3. Information searching skills
A phenomenon is that poor riddle usually involves a lot of Googling or wiki-ing since the makers aren't very creative so external elements have to be introduced.
For the better riddles, I dunno if they're too keen on cryptography.
The use of search engine is few but this does not matter too much if the cipher is always different and creative.
4. Fairness
For some googling stuffs, there exists a range of unfairness, e.g. reference to a game or a book .etc. If the riddle isn't VERY unfair, it's okay in my opinion.
What's kind of sad is how popular some of the worse riddles are. Frvade (when it was up), timtangtest, jaor for instances. There needs to be a learning curve as the riddle goes on...and it would be nice if the puzzles were original and refreshing instead of just the standard:
Yet these riddles are so popular...why? It's not even about atmosphere and design and coding; it's about the puzzle standards themselves. It's okay if a riddle is simplistically created and plain vanilla in design...but damn, at least show class were it counts...the riddles. IH and ze?t are head and shoulders above them. To ze?t's credit I think it has way more views than any of those except maybe JAOR but not sure about IH sadly.
I'd take 60 of IH or 72 of ze?t over any of those riddles combined.
Those riddles you mention are for masses. People don't like challenges and creativity, they prefer feeling that they outsmart everyone else and yet don't have to use their brain much. It is too strange for them to have to THINK and be on their own. That's why they avoid riddles like IH, where I tried my best not to copy standards but to push them onto a new level [and how modest was that]
_________________ Heaven does not exist. There are two Hells instead.
Level: 77
Age: 34 Joined: 26 Feb 2007 Posts: 308 Location: In layers
Posted: 2010-08-21, 21:04
maniac wrote:
1. Riddles are only waste of time.
2. Knowledge from riddles are useless to life, and the riddling universe isn't related to life.
Not valid, we would have to get philosophical, but absolutely everything could be accounted as waste of time. All in all, is still brain exercise.
The majority of knowledge from riddles were taken from knowledge useful enough to be spread world wide. You might not use it in your day tasks, or maybe you do.
I don't think people come to riddles while looking for a pedagogic experience.
Life: Just because you are using a computer, doesn't mean your life took a break.
All you know IS about life. About death, we can only guess.
By the way, your signature should say "their creator", not "there".
Level: 77
Age: 30 Joined: 13 Oct 2007 Posts: 211 Location: not yet in heaven
Posted: 2010-08-22, 07:08
Strati wrote:
maniac wrote:
1. Riddles are only waste of time.
2. Knowledge from riddles are useless to life, and the riddling universe isn't related to life.
Not valid, we would have to get philosophical, but absolutely everything could be accounted as waste of time. All in all, is still brain exercise.
The majority of knowledge from riddles were taken from knowledge useful enough to be spread world wide. You might not use it in your day tasks, or maybe you do.
I don't think people come to riddles while looking for a pedagogic experience.
Life: Just because you are using a computer, doesn't mean your life took a break.
All you know IS about life. About death, we can only guess.
By the way, your signature should say "their creator", not "there".
of course I know such idea (1st especially) is invalid!
probably it's a mere excuse for their reluctancy to use their brain.
for 2nd idea, it's just very difficult to be original and... "useful" in life.
the problem goes to how one DEFINES "useful": (the following few lines is at non-players' perspective, it's not about me)
Quote:
cookery, academics, knowledge about using computer... they are "useful" because they can be reused.
Ciphers (for example, playfair, bacon), Latin, Elian Script are not useful to life because they cannot be reused (or the chance is rare).
What we think as useful maybe not useful in your point of view, all that is about what kind of person we want to be.
I don't think that, for examlpe, playing Dragon Age will give me something useful in my life. Yet people are playing That phenomenon is called "entertainment"
_________________ Heaven does not exist. There are two Hells instead.
Level: 77
Age: 34 Joined: 26 Feb 2007 Posts: 308 Location: In layers
Posted: 2010-08-23, 00:47
Quote:
Ciphers (for example, playfair, bacon), Latin, Elian Script are not useful to life because they cannot be reused (or the chance is rare).
Exactly, but so are half of things we learn in school. It never was about utility.
Now, about solving the problem: no real chance.
This thread was a mere effort to make people think before doing that.
What I have seen is together with this "sweet riddle'o mine" is the "all your riddles are belong to us (and my forum signature will confirm that)"
After a while, some people tend to tackle all the riddles they can and try to show somewhere their progress - like someone cared. (actually I know people care, but they probably are also part of this subtle ego competition).I guess these are the people who play the bad riddles.
There is also the matter of "halls of fame", who are the clever dirty trick aimed to draw these people to your riddle.
I won't say I didn't do the HoS run before, but now when I have the chance, I just sign in to put crazy rankers a place down. (Yeah, it's stupid).
Level: 49
Joined: 30 Aug 2010 Posts: 27 Location: England/UK
Posted: 2010-09-01, 00:19
maniac wrote:
1. Riddles are only waste of time.
2. Knowledge from riddles are useless to life, and the riddling universe isn't related to life.
I don't believe that riddles are a waste of time, I enjoy using my time to solve riddles. I also enjoy the fact that my random knowledge of ciphers, html, photoshop, etc... are actually being put to use for a change, as I wouldn't have an opportunity to use those skills in real life. Well, not for anything vitally important anyways.
Level: 77
Age: 30 Joined: 13 Oct 2007 Posts: 211 Location: not yet in heaven
Posted: 2010-09-01, 15:22
Stray wrote:
maniac wrote:
1. Riddles are only waste of time.
2. Knowledge from riddles are useless to life, and the riddling universe isn't related to life.
I don't believe that riddles are a waste of time, I enjoy using my time to solve riddles. I also enjoy the fact that my random knowledge of ciphers, html, photoshop, etc... are actually being put to use for a change, as I wouldn't have an opportunity to use those skills in real life. Well, not for anything vitally important anyways.
indeed that's your idea is true...
the sad thing is not everyone think so...
perhaps I should clarify again: the 2 viewpoints aren't from me...
btw, Biskup said that people tend not to think... then are they supposed to prefer brute-force more?
Level: 49
Joined: 30 Aug 2010 Posts: 27 Location: England/UK
Posted: 2010-09-03, 12:05
Hell, I just try whatever comes into my head if I get stuck, the worst that's gonna happen is a 404 so I have nothing to lose if I run out of ideas. Besides, sometimes it may lead to eggs or HS anyway, I think some levels rely on this? I know ZEST does this sometimes but he just uses it to taunt people. (So evil.) :p
Quote:
Don't hide clues in the Exif - saving a file just to open with another program and read something is boring. Using this method once in every 30 levels is a fair rate.
Image editing is fine. Fair rate of use: 1/16 levels. Obscure methods to find the info are allowed - as far as you can hint them properly AND that they work on other programs than the one you have at home.
Oh this really annoys me, P4X riddle did this a lot, I feel like riddles should be designed for people of all ability levels concerning internet usage, photoshop skills etc, but I had to use methods to find the answer that most casual computer users wouldn't know about like having to find the answer in the properties of a picture. That is NOT where most people would think to look for an answer, and it seems kinda unnecessary. Having to play around with gamma levels just to find a word in a picture isn't something that can be done just like that on photoshop if a person is unfamiliar with the software. I mean, zooming in, adjusting contrast, simpler things like that are okay but if I have to do two thousand things to a picture to get an answer, then it's gonna get real tedious real fast.
on a positive side-note, I don't know if anyone else has ever gone on this flash site but it shows what can be done with photographs to create a story, it's a point and click game (? if it can be called that). You're inside an abandoned hospital and you can go from room to room using the map, clicking on objects may have strange repercussions...
Level: 77
Age: 30 Joined: 13 Oct 2007 Posts: 211 Location: not yet in heaven
Posted: 2010-09-04, 12:06
Stray wrote:
Hell, I just try whatever comes into my head if I get stuck, the worst that's gonna happen is a 404 so I have nothing to lose if I run out of ideas. Besides, sometimes it may lead to eggs or HS anyway, I think some levels rely on this? I know ZEST does this sometimes but he just uses it to taunt people. (So evil.) :p
Are you sure? HSes are an integral part of Zest levels, IH has much less "necessary" HSes.
Stray wrote:
Oh this really annoys me, P4X riddle did this a lot, I feel like riddles should be designed for people of all ability levels concerning internet usage, photoshop skills etc, but I had to use methods to find the answer that most casual computer users wouldn't know about like having to find the answer in the properties of a picture.
Most ordinary riddles like Neutral riddles sure uses this a lot and this can become annoying but I disagree with you on the affair...
People play riddle to learn and levels with photoshop/internet usage is a must (e.g. you must be able to know what a source code is, this is the responsibility of a riddler or one day an idiot screams out "I dunno wth source code is!!!! helllllP!!!!", should all riddles remove source code hints immdeiately?)
Of course the skill should start off easy (like channels, brightness+contrast, layers) but it has to get hard later or everything is screwed.
The real problem with image editing is that aside from the obvious (layer enabling/disabling, zooming in, contrast, brightness, stuff like that) it's completely trial and error. There are literally THOUSANDS of ways you can visually "hide" an info inside an image and (unless there is a hint in the riddle) you're forced to try everything -- and GOD help you if your program does not contain the needed functions.
I liked level 14's use of image editing. There was a clear hint on what to do.
I did NOT like level 25's use of image editing. After you do what the riddle tells you to do, you do get an answer... but the result is almost impossible to read, so you're forced to use trial and error to make it readable, which is not fair.
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Many riddles online that the riddle community considers good, particularly the "number one" Notpron, starts off with levels like, click the door (notpron), change to level2.htm (yet again, Notpron) cos they didnt have tutorials. These are the tutorials to get them on track.
Just posting this post. Getting some ideas.
