Re:Bypassing levels *POSSIBLE SPOILER until Friday*

HStorm

having re-watched my 1994 recording, I'm not convinced Dunstan was hit by a blade.

Yes, looking at it again on Challenge yesterday, I no longer think that he was hit by it either. It's the first time I saw the scene since '95, and it seemed a lot closer the first couple of times I saw it.

keke

I have to agree. No quests were "fixed" maybe made a bit more forgiving but definately not fixed. If they were fixed and they got the blade right through the middle of them then they couldn't carry on. i think barry misses the blade by a cm in series 7 and i dont think the quests were fixed in series 8. Im not sure though that it was fair to make some easier whil they practically killed off series8-team2 by giving them the corridor of blades. and im sure that on the fireball puzzle(is it nathan) when they say side step left he was past the hole but then they shout stop and then it just showed him falling down the hole. Sometimes i think they kill earlier teams off because they don't want a winner so early in the series.

HStorm

Well 1 or 2 early quests were kind of fixed in a way, in that deaths were reversed. Team 6 season 2 failed to get any riddles right so were given a second chance, and team 1 season 3 fell off the serpent-tongue bridge, but were allowed to refilm it because team 2 hadn't shown up.

Mystara

G'day

For those who don't know me (not unrealistic....despite my being easy to summon, it is rare that people choose to do so ) my name is Alan Boyd and I was the team captain for the series 8 winning team (the one with the red hair).

Most of what I previously said has been brought up again here. In fact, I have even been quoted

Our quest was not fixed. In fact, the production team thought we were going to fail.
Our game rules (given to each team before they played) specifically stated that a shortcut existed. This was also emphasised by Tim Child to our team. At the time of filming, we did not know what other teams had gone through (and the team ahead of us were not permitted to tell us). We therefore had no idea if anyone else had taken the shortcut, etc.
We were told that if we took the short cut ("if you can find it"), we would miss out the easy parts of level 2 and level 3 (the difficulty of the levels do overlap). If we were not particularly good, therefore, we were likely to be knocked out very quickly in level 3 (or even level 1).
If we did not take the shortcut it was likely (but not definite) that we would be 'running for fun' (playing, even though you don't have time to complete the quest).
At the end of the quest, I asked TC if he thought we could have made it through level 2. I was told that our pace through the rooms we did was FAST and that it was likely we would have had time. But of course, we could have fallen along the way.
The point raised earlier about quietly shrinking the size of levels is entirely valid. Nobody would have been any the wiser (and actually, having counted the rooms we went through, I think you'll find another winning team actually had fewer than us).
From what I saw it looked like the plan was to make the shortcut a standard feature of a possible future series.

The shortcut would stretch from half way through level 1 to half way through level 2. There would then be a shorter level 3 and a new level 4. I think they were trying to get away from the concept of "level 1 is a warmup, bad teams get to level 2, good teams get to level 3".

This is a lot of speculation based on what I saw. The only thing I know for sure is that it was implied the shortcut would be around and that the dungeon design was going to be different in the next series (if there was one, they weren't sure)

Dunstan was not hit by the blade. It was close. But he wasn't hit (look at it in slow motion). They put blue masking tape on the floor to mark where the blades stretch to, so they can tell if he should have been hit by the blade. Of course, that doesn't mean that everything is aligned properly, graphically (which is why the blades can something seem too close to have not hit)

In any case, quite simply, we ended up with harder rooms than some other teams. But got 4 or 5 fewer than the average winning team were given. It all balances in the end, since you can always make a silly mistake (we've all seen great, sure winning teams do something odd like walk off a cliff).

Hope that clears some stuff up

Thanatos

Furthermore, having re-watched my 1994 recording, I'm not convinced Dunstan was hit by a blade.

Having watched it again yesterday, I am now positively convinced that he wasn't.

Erm Barry did effectively die 3 times: Moving Blocks room (stepping over on a gap), PYCR (touched the joker), Lie Force starved with no helmet on skeleton (dripping tap), Corridor of Blades (blade went through him practically).

I don't recall the block room situation (and I think I'd have noticed), Sumaya's death in Series 6 indicated that a bare skeleton is not the sign of death, merely that of critical ill health (there is one last stage: the skeleton's collapsing and turning green), and, in any case, the life force/food thing wasn't actually for 'real' and all the sequences were added in afterwards, and, again, I'm sure you wrong when it comes to the blade. Perhaps it's an optical illusion - since the blades are round (or semi-circular, effectively, since half is in the wall), if the dungeoneer marginally dodges one the eye 'think' that the blade was rectangular and that its corner passed through the dungeoneer.

Incidentally, if you think Barry's quest was rigged in order that the Bullstrode situation be played out, bear in mind the premature termination of Chris's quest in Series 6 - if Barry had died, they'd have done something similar with the next team.

HStorm

If you watch closely while he's in the sliding block room, there's no doubt at all that Barry gets away with stepping over the edge at least twice. It's not by a big distance, but he definitely "floats in mid-air" several times.

I've also studied the sequence when Barry's on the CoB a few times over in the last couple of weeks and he definitely got sliced.

As you say, the "Life Force running out" thing is entirely speculative as the Clock has no real time limit to it and is added into the show purely for effect. It has NO real bearing on gameplay at all.

Mystara

Actually, when we were filmed there was no lifeforce clock. You were told when you went in what the 'colour' of your lifeforce was (green, amber, red). You therefore knew whether you had to pick up food in the room or not (and there is never a case where you are unable to replenish your life force if you need it)

It looks like it's a real clock, and that you had a certain amount of physical time. But actually it's not true, they added it in, post production

TheBrollachan

Hmm blue masking tape, that could explain Barry's very close escape in s7 (well that and the lack of episode time).

One thing I suspect you can answer, is the spell book sequence added in post production, or could you see the spell book when spellcasting. Also in the final encouter sequence was it actually Dunston in the warrior outfit, I assume there was a few edit points.

Just so you know mystara I'm not against your winning quest, I just didn't like the way which the levels were skipped. Although your comments about it being a permenant feature for a future series is a very interesting thought. My opinions about Barry's quest are summaries in HStorm's previous post.

Mystara

Spell book was post production.

I understand from Dunstan that he was pulled backwards by someone and an actor dressed as the Paladin stepped forwards. Dunstan was then walked around the perimeter of the blue room (which presumably is covered graphically by the walls at a might higher layer) and then when the Paladin wandered off towards the camera, Dunstan walked back in.

I don't know exactly how it happened, since obviously we didn't get these sorts of questions answered, none of us saw it happening and it was quite a while ago. There were no flashes of any kind (all post production) and I don't remember seeing anything particularly odd on my monitor (like a hand

All rooms were done in a single take with 2 exceptions:

Transition rooms where nothing interesting happens, yet someone navigates himself perfectly were shot at the end (for example, when Dunstan walks off the boat in L3). These were done following instructions from TC and were usually something like "follow the blue masking tape" or "follow the actor" (or in one case..."walk on this treadmill"). I believe there were only 1 or 2 such rooms for us, and they last about 5 or 10 seconds. The rooms where Hordriss navigates Dunstan back to the castle are all examples of this, but I believe they were also practiced
The sound for the joke with Smirky was rerecorded at the end because Dunstan was (and still is) a smart arse and tried to be clever with the joke

The only 'edit point' that we knew of were:

1.) When our trophies appear at the end

2.) In the room with the combination lock. Filming stopped for about 5 seconds and a new room image was shown to us (with a zoom in of the lock itself), filming then resumed.

Thanatos

One question, Mystara: what was the purpose of Maldame's offering you her calling name?

Mystara

I've often wondered this.

Some teams sometimes are given an item/spell/calling name that they do not use. Are these red herrings? Things to add a little flavour? Maybe an encounter was removed?

No idea.

Straight after meeting Maldame, we were told by Treguard (cut) and TC that her offer of help was fairly worthless. She would not put herself in danger and would probably ask for something else in return for helping us.

That pretty much narrowed down the choice for what to do when we confronted LF himself (although all being DnD players, we knew what a Paladin was and had pretty much decided that was what it was for as soon as we picked it up)

So my answer is....I don't really know

Raven

If they don't win, they don't win, its not the programmes fault. With correct thinking the dungeon would be completely impassible. I think for the sake of the end of season players, they should just let the team get as far as they can. What about the previous end of season teams? Were they given that chance?

?

I found what alan boyd said to be very interesting.

it gave a really good insight as to the behind the scenes goings on and how individual quests were filmed and directed . It did this 2 a much greater degree than everything else i've read on this website so far- even the interviews with Hugo Myatt, D.Learner and T. Child.

Are there any more posts from any other past team members (apart from Ray Lockton and that Irish guy who never got on the show- i've read those). I would find this very interesting.