Two points to make in favor of mapping:
Mapping these small mazes does NOT take hours. It takes maybe 15-30 minutes depending on how quickly you work (which is a tradeoff with little mistakes like accidentally repeating scenes - but you can usually detect those easily because you'll get paths A->B but don't have a path that goes B->A, like there should be). People who are saying stuff like "it only took me an hour with random clicking!" are making me go *headdesk* - it is much faster with mapping!
Also, don't forget that
for a while, nobody knew how to proceed in the Deep Woods (meepits part). You should take that time to map out the woods. For the Deep Woods, mapping let me go round up those meepits very quickly.
Here's my examples on mapping:
Scans of my map
How to make the map
showstopper wrote:
for those people who did the mapping thingy...
please confirm my research results:
1. the SWAMP map has 5 unique screens (including the stick and hissi screen)
2. the HIGH WOODS map has 22 unique screens (including the stone door)
3. the DEEP WOODS map has 30 unique screens (including the light meepit door)
Theory: THE MAPS ARE NOT UNIQUE FOR EACH USER
I think that there are only a limited number of these maps that are assignd for each user. At some point there maybe identical maps for some users.
Why, because using the ActionScript in Flash, it is quite hard to make "linked lists/binary trees" and considering that they have a limited time because (maybe... just maybe) the mosters are about to explode on Halloween... they will opt for a simpler programming.
This is just my humble opinion.
Good luck to all...
We differ on the high woods (I got exactly 20), and I think someone got a different number on the deep woods.
Note that the next scene loads every single time you click, so actually every click appears to be a database query (or, more realisticly, retrieved from memcache or some similar mechanism). They probably generate the entire maze the first time you load the flash, then store it server-side.
They stored HUGE mazes for every single participant in the LDP plot, so they certainly have the resources.
[edit] fix link