Tricone Lab is single-player but also has a community server called Tricone Lab Online.
Statistics
Tricone Lab Online tracks various statistics:
- install statistics
- Play statistics for levels in standard maps
- Play statistics for levels in custom maps
Custom maps database
Tricone Lab Online also has a database via which players can share their custom puzzles with each other. It works like this:
- Create a Tricone Lab Online user account linked to your email address.
- This account allows you to download or upload any custom maps.
- You can see how many people have played your map’s levels, and whether it was too hard or too easy.
- Any map can be uploaded but initially each map is “unapproved”.
- You can submit your map to the admins to get it approved.
- Approved maps appear on the web site and are more likely to be downloaded.
Approval process
A few notes on the approval process:
- Getting your custom map approved is optional — you can just leave your maps unapproved if you wish.
- However we do reserve the right to delete any map with content we think is inappropriate.
- Submitting your map for approval means you will get some feedback on the design, even if it is not approved.
- Getting a map approved means more players should play it.
- Approved maps and their play statistics will be made public on the website, with the author’s user ID.
- After a map has been approved, you can no longer update or delete it, except with our agreement.
- Exceptionally good maps will get a “recommended” tag in addition to being approved.
Approval criteria
We are looking for the following basic criteria to approve a map:
- The map must contain at least 3 levels.
- The map and its levels should have names consistent with the Tricone Lab style.
- At least one level must be unlocked initially, but you can also have more than one unlocked level.
- All levels must have a solution!
- You can be inspired by other levels but please don’t just copy them!
- An approximate difficulty score should be set on each level.
Recommendation criteria
We will occasionally add the “recommended” tag to custom maps:
- To be recommended, the map’s levels should require an unusual or challenging solution.
- It’s also generally better if a map is focused on a small set of element types, rather than a broad mixture of elements.