Hi, as the title says I'm looking for a puzzle. Not as part of a mod, more like finding a template or example which I'd be able to duplicate for a new mod. Ofcourse not the actual puzzle, just the structure and solution etc.

The kind of puzzle I'd like if where you have 5 switches, and each time you toggle a switch, it will also toggle 1 or 2 other switches. The goal being ofcourse to get all 5 switches on at the same time. At first I just made it so each switch also changed the ones that were next to it but I kinda feel like that is too simple. So I thought about introducing a somewhat random linking of the switches but without a template or example to follow I'm afraid I'll never get it done.

Now I'm positive there are games out there with such puzzles and I'm certain I've played a few (probably more than a few), I just can't seem to recall their names. If I had names I can check about any walkthrough for the solution and setup of the puzzle, if I had names......


P.S. Oh and no questions about what I'm planning, it's (yet-another) secret.

-kyoma

I don't believe I've played a PC game with that, so this probably won't help you, but...

Gauntlet: Dark Legacy

God of War I and II

Let's see... the most recent one I can think of would be Dragon Age (standing on blocks in sequence activated stepping stones to get across a chasm). But there have been a bunch of others, too. I want to say that NWN2 had one also (?) ... I know Kotor had water locks (had to drain areas to get through) ... and I think Final Fantasy 10 had some stepping stone puzzles as well. In Oblivion itself, you might find one of that sort in Heart of the Dead.

Makes me think of the switches/gates puzzle in the ayleid ruin of Nornal (EdID CS: Nornal03), where you have to press blocks in a certain order to open all of the gates. Probably somewhat simpler than what you're thinking of, but with clever parent linking you could make things pretty confusing. ... BTW, what are you planning?

One game I know that has exactly this sort of puzzle is Zork Grand Inquisitor (the Dam puzzle... and even the ultimate solution is theoretically possible in the Oblivion universe). Another that has a similar sort of puzzle is Myst 4: Revelation (I'm thinking of the fireplace puzzle, but the 'reroute-the-power-switches' puzzle might well also apply), but you could probably grab any of the Myst series and find a puzzle of that type somewhere, tbh.

Now, in neither of these games is the toggle 'random' in the sense that you won't know which of the other additional 1 or 2 switches will be toggled when you choose any one of them, but that's not strictly speaking necessary (and would make the puzzle impossible to solve except for luck anyway). My impression, as a person trying to solve such puzzles, is that they're a sort of maze, and solving them requires a sort of mapping skill (which you of course as the author can essentially work backwards to create).

The main thing I would say (for what it's worth), is don't be afraid to be a bit non-linear; the way to make these puzzles difficult relies on a sort of "one step forward, two steps back, then a step to the left, then three steps forward, one step back" kind of maneuver (for example, in the Zork Dam puzzle, one switch opens let's say sluice 4 and 5, another opens sluice 3, but closes sluice 5). Make the user double back and go around to solve the puzzle (but not too much; this is after all an 'action-RPG', not so much a puzzle game ).