MouseAdventure

[Cadaverous Pallor]

Originally Posted by NirvanaMan

So does anyone know...what happened if you lost the Buzz battle?

You had to play again and again until you beat someone, as RStar said above. GD felt bad because the guy he beat was trying for the third time. Now I'm really glad he always plays Buzz with a game face.

Originally Posted by Nirvanaman

4 people staring at it for an hour...not one of us saw "luggage".

Did any of you look at the original sheets with the pieces? If there was one thing I knew about that damn puzzle it was that they were luggage pieces....but I'm guessing that once they were transposed you just kept looking at the full stack.

Originally Posted by iSm

but Compasses was an unmitigated disaster (imo) that I hope never to see repeated. (I am reminded of the infamous sextant quest that was thrown out, with everyone getting full credit, after we'd spent almost an hour on it!)

I know it's "imo" but but it can't be "unmitigated" if others did well on it...which we did. There was no reason to throw it out because it was totally doable.

ACK my break is over more later

[NirvanaMan]

Originally Posted by Cadaverous Pallor

You had to play again and again until you beat someone

Ouch. Glad we sent Isaac to do it. That was a pretty easy decision.

Did any of you look at the original sheets with the pieces? If there was one thing I knew about that damn puzzle it was that they were luggage pieces....but I'm guessing that once they were transposed you just kept looking at the full stack.

Sure did. I remember saying at one point that we needed to go back to the originals to see if they made any more sense. They didn't. We then thought about cutting out the originals to place on the grids, as perhaps our drawing skills were to blame...they weren't. We saw plenty of buildings, tables, chairs and benches...but certainly no luggage. For whatever reason, I believe our minds were locked on the fact that this was an overhead 2d view of something big, as in a land in DL. Though we did consider the fact that perhaps this was a representation of a mosaic of some sort, even hoping that the mosaics in Inoventions would provide the answer, we never saw luggage. I think its like one of those eye teaser puzzles. Now, had we been able to leave it and come back to it later in the competition, maybe one of the four of us would have seen something else there. But, who knows.

[Alex]

You all played the version of that Adrienne was responsible for so I don't want speak as the official voice or anything.

That said, some comments.

Surprisingly, I agree with Steve at a personal level. If I were a player (and I've remarked on the irony before that I have never actually played MouseAdventure, its predecessor, or any of the similar events) I don't think I would care for the Enchanted Race format. I think my contributions would lie in multitasking well and overall strategy. So, I would likely be iffy on the game no matter how well done.

That said, it is the fundamental nature of a road rally type event that tasks come at you one at a time and you don't advance until you've completed it. That's why we originally came up with the Mad Scramble format. It perverts the pure time/race nature and allows for more multitasking (combining single tasks that must be completed before moving on but also having quite a few "event wide" events).

Where might you have placed MouseAdventure Central such that the problem described wouldn't have happened. If it had been inside Disneyland, then teams in DCA (where about half the game took place) would have resisted using it even more.

Lisa and Chris, so far as I know the umbrellas were in place until 4:00 p.m. Is it possible you just didn't see them?

I don't remember who came up with the idea of compasses but the way in which they were used was completely my idea, so I get the blame for that. That said, the first use of the compass was intended to be relatively easy to give you a chance to figure out the use before getting to the complex stuff later. Also, by orienting Main Street, it allows you to orient and align the two park maps which means you could sit at a table and approximately locate each spot before moving. Sorry you didn't like it, Steve, and I did have my worries after the map orienting puzzle last fall.

I hold no illusions that every idea we have will be gold, but let me tell you that after 13 of these things sometimes I'm just happy that we can still come up with ideas at all. Particularly for something like the Invitational where we know that all of the teams will be well familiar with our standard elements, unlike in this open where half of the teams qualified as new.

[BarTopDancer]

Originally Posted by Alex Stroup

Lisa and Chris, so far as I know the umbrellas were in place until 4:00 p.m. Is it possible you just didn't see them?

We did not see them either. And with the distractableness of our team by bright objects and ability to spot things that do not belong I am not sure they were there when we rode the Sun Wheel (about 2:45ish). We may not have seen them as *blooms* but we sure would have said why do those umbrellas have numbers on them?!

I really want to post a full review - just no time yet.

[Alex]

Afraid I can't, CP. I don't know the answers. In fact, I don't think I ever even saw the whole quest. I did the advent part of that sequence but the rest was Steve and Adrienne.

[katiesue]

Originally Posted by Alex Stroup

Lisa and Chris, so far as I know the umbrellas were in place until 4:00 p.m. Is it possible you just didn't see them?

Actually one of the staff umbrella holders came by us where we were busily working on the puzzle at about 3:50 and told us to head over to mouse central so they did come down a little before 4. Although I'm not sure how quickly you could have gotten the puzzle done by then anyhow.

[Stan4dSteph]

Originally Posted by katiesue

Actually one of the staff umbrella holders came by us where we were busily working on the puzzle at about 3:50 and told us to head over to mouse central so they did come down a little before 4. Although I'm not sure how quickly you could have gotten the puzzle done by then anyhow.

Yes, the umbrellas came down at 3:50. I was under the Umbrella of the Beast (666) over by the CA Screamin' launch point, trading off places with another staffer. The other blooms were by the ampitheater and in the seating area of Cove Bar.

It was decided that they would come down a bit before 4 PM, since there was no way that teams still doing the Sun Wheel puzzle at that point would be able to finish by the 4 PM deadline. Before that time, the umbrellas were always up and we made every effort to keep ours aimed so that it would be visible from the Sun Wheel.

Next time I'm assigned to a task in DCA, I'm going to request an air-conditioned suit. DCA is like the surface of the Sun in sunny weather.