It is mindboggling looking at everyone's solutions. I thought I was being smart, but I'm a damn knuckle dragger looking at some of these solutions.
Here's my purified gold solution. I brute forced a pyramid.
Sure, the engine costs 1500g, but if your printing gold, money's not an object I suppose...
And then i see ContentContext get a solution that is smaller, twice as fast, and a third the cost
What would you say your ratio of "typing in the commands because I know the exact order of them" to "letting it run for the full cycle to see where I fucked up" was?
You could save 1 area by using the output tile as a storage space.
There's a 9 area one kicking around Reddit that does the whole thing with a wheel, storing atoms on the inputs and the outputs and just always keeping the inputs covered so nothing new spawns.
life's a game that you're bound to lose / like using a hammer to pound in screws
fuck up once and you break your thumb / if you're happy at all then you're god damn dumb
that's right we're on a fucked up cruise / God is dead but at least we have booze
bad things happen, no one knows why / the sun burns out and everyone dies
life's a game that you're bound to lose / like using a hammer to pound in screws
fuck up once and you break your thumb / if you're happy at all then you're god damn dumb
that's right we're on a fucked up cruise / God is dead but at least we have booze
bad things happen, no one knows why / the sun burns out and everyone dies
life's a game that you're bound to lose / like using a hammer to pound in screws
fuck up once and you break your thumb / if you're happy at all then you're god damn dumb
that's right we're on a fucked up cruise / God is dead but at least we have booze
bad things happen, no one knows why / the sun burns out and everyone dies
Hey, there's a thread for this game. Grand. I just got to the fourth chapter today (a few weeks behind everyone due to being on vacation and such). I haven't done that much optimization work yet, but it seems like I tend more towards the cost and area side of things. I've seen a few GIFs of min-cycle solutions, and I think the 'loopiness' of getting multiple arms to work in tandem is a bit too much for me right now. As it stands, I'm liking how open the game is; due to this, it feels easier than more recent Zachtronics titles. On the other hand, I've started to run into trouble at the end of Chapter Three, and I can see the potential for some fiendish designs from the Journal.
for those of you wondering about area constraints, there are some doozies in that recent patch that came out.
some of the difficulty of putting these contraptions together would offset nicely by simply having a copy/paste function and the ability to have a ghost image of the repeating instructions instead of a line that goes off for 10 or 15 steps and you don't see it until to put the steps in place.
a lot of busy work could be cut from the equation as well if we could put down instructions as the machine was working. just stop it or move it to a specific part of the cycle and place instructions down. instead of stepping the machine to get to where you need it to be to see what you need to do ok, stop it, ok where did i need to put it again? oh wait... step it forward again...
I still like this game, but there could be some huge quality of life improvements to speed the placements of solutions along if you know what you gotta do.
The ring maker I'm pretty pleased with, the other part is... well it's not exactly elegant but the way the arms are splitting time on that salt is pretty cool.
life's a game that you're bound to lose / like using a hammer to pound in screws
fuck up once and you break your thumb / if you're happy at all then you're god damn dumb
that's right we're on a fucked up cruise / God is dead but at least we have booze
bad things happen, no one knows why / the sun burns out and everyone dies
You can duplicate objects and instructions with ctrl-click and drag.
WHAT
I knew about the `Ctrl+Click+Drag` functionality for copy-paste, but I also learned in my play session this evening that the `4` key hides the parts tray and, when running your solution, `Ctrl+Click` fast-forwards the execution to the selected instruction. Very useful for solutions like the ones I tend to make, with few arms and lots of long instructions.
Also, hey, more people need to either re-run their solutions or add me as a Friend on Steam. There's a heck of a lot fewer scores to compare mine against than there were a few weeks ago when the game first released.
EDIT: Of course, the day after I post, there's a patch to the game that changes the fast-forward command to `Alt+Click` instead. So it goes.
I just beat the main story of this game. This was fun! And it made me feel a lot less like a caveman than Spacechem, the other Zachtronics game I have.
My solutions are largely nowhere near as elegant as the ones people are posting, though. That said, most of my solutions tend to be cheaper, smaller, and way slower than my friends', so I guess what this game is telling me is that I'm a miser :P.
I think the only solution I'm aesthetically pleased with, out of everything I've made, is Invisible Ink:
Posts
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
They probably didn't update when some of the costs got adjusted, so it makes sense to reset them.
Also, here's my fast and symmetrical Purified Gold.
Here's my purified gold solution. I brute forced a pyramid.
Sure, the engine costs 1500g, but if your printing gold, money's not an object I suppose...
And then i see ContentContext get a solution that is smaller, twice as fast, and a third the cost
Steam - NotoriusBEN | Uplay - notoriusben | Xbox,Windows Live - ThatBEN
fuck up once and you break your thumb / if you're happy at all then you're god damn dumb
that's right we're on a fucked up cruise / God is dead but at least we have booze
bad things happen, no one knows why / the sun burns out and everyone dies
It's all about building your machines in a limited space.
Symmetry!
fuck up once and you break your thumb / if you're happy at all then you're god damn dumb
that's right we're on a fucked up cruise / God is dead but at least we have booze
bad things happen, no one knows why / the sun burns out and everyone dies
Steam - NotoriusBEN | Uplay - notoriusben | Xbox,Windows Live - ThatBEN
fuck up once and you break your thumb / if you're happy at all then you're god damn dumb
that's right we're on a fucked up cruise / God is dead but at least we have booze
bad things happen, no one knows why / the sun burns out and everyone dies
some of the difficulty of putting these contraptions together would offset nicely by simply having a copy/paste function and the ability to have a ghost image of the repeating instructions instead of a line that goes off for 10 or 15 steps and you don't see it until to put the steps in place.
a lot of busy work could be cut from the equation as well if we could put down instructions as the machine was working. just stop it or move it to a specific part of the cycle and place instructions down. instead of stepping the machine to get to where you need it to be to see what you need to do ok, stop it, ok where did i need to put it again? oh wait... step it forward again...
I still like this game, but there could be some huge quality of life improvements to speed the placements of solutions along if you know what you gotta do.
Steam - NotoriusBEN | Uplay - notoriusben | Xbox,Windows Live - ThatBEN
Steam - NotoriusBEN | Uplay - notoriusben | Xbox,Windows Live - ThatBEN
The ring maker I'm pretty pleased with, the other part is... well it's not exactly elegant but the way the arms are splitting time on that salt is pretty cool.
fuck up once and you break your thumb / if you're happy at all then you're god damn dumb
that's right we're on a fucked up cruise / God is dead but at least we have booze
bad things happen, no one knows why / the sun burns out and everyone dies
WHAT
Also, hey, more people need to either re-run their solutions or add me as a Friend on Steam. There's a heck of a lot fewer scores to compare mine against than there were a few weeks ago when the game first released.
EDIT: Of course, the day after I post, there's a patch to the game that changes the fast-forward command to `Alt+Click` instead. So it goes.
Steam - NotoriusBEN | Uplay - notoriusben | Xbox,Windows Live - ThatBEN
My solutions are largely nowhere near as elegant as the ones people are posting, though. That said, most of my solutions tend to be cheaper, smaller, and way slower than my friends', so I guess what this game is telling me is that I'm a miser :P.
I think the only solution I'm aesthetically pleased with, out of everything I've made, is Invisible Ink:
Symmetry is pretty!