Watermelon Daiquiri posted:

The minimap zooming out as you zoom out sounds normal to me

TheOneAndOnlyT posted:

Since having a key makes me an unofficial beta tester, I should probably report that I've found a couple bugs:

• The components in the minimap sometimes get flickery when tests are running using the play button. Not sure exactly what scenario causes it but I see it happen pretty often.
  
• When you zoom out, the components on the minimap also "zoom out", which I'm pretty sure shouldn't actually happen. Here's an image of what I mean:
  
  The components should stay where they are in the minimap and only the blue rectangle should change size.

TheOneAndOnlyT posted:

On top of that I have a couple of suggestions for UI stuff. It's all really minor nitpicky poo poo but I figure I may as well say something.

• The four component category buttons should probably have a visible "1", "2" etc on them, just like how the components have a visible "q", "w", and so on. I know you can see the shortcuts by mousing over each category, but it's a consistency thing.
  
• There are a couple cases where a new component shows up and the puzzle description doesn't mention it at all, such as with the input selector in Zeroes. It's not a huge deal because the category button still flashes to say "HEY LOOK NEW THING HERE", but I feel like it's a bit odd to have the puzzle description not say anything about it.
  
• This is a personal preference, but the screen shake that you get whenever you drop a component seems a little too strong to me. It might be better with a sound attached, but I dunno. Maybe you should add an option to enable or disable it?
  
• I dunno how you feel about this, but it might also make sense to add an option for edge scrolling, where you can scroll the field by putting your mouse on the edge of the screen. That might only work in fullscreen mode though.

Overall though, this game looks great and you should be proud of what you've got here. I don't want to delve too far into the game until you've put all the finishing touches on it, but I'll definitely be playing the poo poo out of it when it's officially released.

Dark_Swordmaster posted:

For edge scrolling you may have it kick in after having your cursor at the edge for a second or two. No accidental nudges, but you keep one of the most widely used scrolling methods. Also, you can make it a toggle in the options.

Control Volume posted:

Oh drat dude I didnt know you made manufactoria. That game owned

Elswyyr posted:

I'm hella looking forward to this. Are there any other recent (2017) releases in the "really hard optimization puzzle game" genre? I need my fix.

Saoshyant posted:

I think I'll hop on this, I loved TIS. What's the price gonna be on Steam?

PleasingFungus posted:

[*]Reasonable - I'll tweak the Zeroes description.

Doom Goon posted:

I still had a bit of a pause here. For whatever reason I didn't get how the Input Selector worked Maybe the tool-tip should say "Input Select: Which input #'s value should be routed to output?" Or would that give it away too quickly?

Doom Goon posted:

I actually am really impressed with the in-game UI although I'm hoping I'll get a way to "pin" wires to make custom paths to clean things up a bit and to change their color when you highlight them (I wouldn't mind an option menu to just make it red. The bolder/darker thing just isn't doing it for my eyes probably because the wire colors are pretty desaturated anyway!). Oh, and I keep expecting back (to the editor) to be on the bottom left instead of main menu for some reason after finishing a test.

Daedalus1134 posted:

Sweet, I am always up for more programming games, even more so if I get to move blocks around.

Looking forward to throwing money at you and getting frustrated.

Doom Goon posted:

Are there any plans for post-release content? I'd love a sort of hint system (right now I'm stuck on optimizing an early one and should probably move on. I guess I could look it up to see if it's a common electronics puzzle or wait for solutions but that feels both cheaty and like I wouldn't learn anything) and leaderboards would be alright, too.

PleasingFungus posted:

A hint system for the puzzle 'ideals' isn't something I've seen suggested before. I'll have to think about it... it's possible that an in-game system of some kind would make sense, but it feels like the sort of thing I'd rather have handled by the community?

Can you post your current solution for the level in question? I'm very curious, at least, and perhaps other players would be too.

Doom Goon posted:

I think it'd be neat if a hint system did it in steps (you have such and such modules, instead you can do it with such and such) instead of just telling you the solution straight up. A lot of solutions guides are just that and don't talk you through it. I'd imagine it'd get pretty complicated with multiple solutions or just bigger programs, but it's something I thought about since banging my head against TIS-100.

Doom Goon posted:

Flip


Basically the first 4 modules together top-left is a Counter connected to a memory reader so you can read the value of each slot of memory (one per tick starting from 0). Each Output Selector takes the value of memory, and if it's 0 (the top one) or 1 (the bottom one) it uses either memory writer to write the input (1 or 0, respectively) into the memory slot it is reading. If the value is neither of those it of course does nothing.

The problem I'm having is I can't figure out how to optimize it to reduce a module. I can replace the top Output Selector but that still needs 0 and an Adder (or something similar, two modules at least). And I can't remove a Writer without changing the input significantly. I'm sure it's something simple but it's not coming to me!

PleasingFungus posted:

Sure, I love that kind of hint system. When, I was a kid, my father had the Official Riven Strategy Guide, which had a really splendid system of increasingly-direct hints for various puzzles. Doesn't seem to available anywhere online, sadly...

For Silicon Zeroes, again this would be ideally handled by the community. But, who can say.

I did write up some hints in that 'staged style' a few weeks ago to help one of my testers through Threes, Divide, and Greater. I can post them here if anyone is interested.

quote:

Fully optimizing this one requires a bit of a trick.

• There's an implicit assumption you're making...
  
• About which components connect to which ports.
  

quote:

• Look carefully at what your output selectors are connected to.
  

quote:

• What happens when a writer has '-' in its memory slot input?
  

quote:

• Is there some way to use only one output selector?
  

Peaceful Anarchy posted:

Watermelon Daiquiri posted:

Is there any way to get this before release? I've been looking at it more ever since I got bored with shenzhen

Peaceful Anarchy posted:

So I was replaying some levels today and redoing Multiplex from scratch it seemed really easy, which was confusing since I had trouble with it the first time so I went back to see what I did wrong before and I see that I didn't realize at the time you could expand the number of inputs in the input selector (I don't think the game tells you this is possible), so I had made this weird thing:

Doom Goon posted:

Oh, damnit.

PleasingFungus posted:

I'd keep an eye on the thread, if I were you - I'm planning a big release in a couple of days, after PAX ends, and I'll probably drop a few more keys here then.

Daedalus1134 posted:

Are you exhibiting at PAX?

Watermelon Daiquiri posted:

Will you be putting this on something like itch.io as well? (especially before the middle of september! :P)

Michaellaneous posted:

I don't know, this game looks a lot like TIS-100 to me.

I think I need a copy to make sure it's actually not.

PleasingFungus posted:

Nope, but my feeling is that the gaming community is pretty focused on the show right now. Waiting until that calms down to put out anything new.


It was up on itch before it was on Steam! (And I thoroughly appreciate anyone who gets the game on itch instead of Steam, once it's out.)


:P

NickPancakes posted:

Grabbed Key #10, thanks PleasingFungus! I'll be checking it out as soon as I have some free time this week. Very excited

PleasingFungus posted:

[*]New puzzle: “Slowstall”, in the “High Speed” board.

ShoulderDaemon posted:

I tried grabbing a key, but it seems like the remaining two must have already been taken as well? itch.io does not seem to give useful error messages; it's just redirecting to the generic Silicon Zeroes page with "This game is currently unavailable".

Peaceful Anarchy posted:

Can you make edge scrolling an option, it's a bit annoying in a window? Personally I'd like arrow key scrolling.

Edit:
Swap can use one less module than your optimal solution

PleasingFungus posted:

That's very odd. They aren't marked as claimed internally, and I get a 'log in to claim' screen when I look at the page without being logged in...

Well, I've revoked and replaced those keys, so let me if the new ones work.

PleasingFungus posted:

The problem with arrow key scrolling is that the arrows are already used for various other shortcuts. There are something like five other ways to scroll already, so I'd rather conserve the arrow keys for other things.

Can you post your full swap solution? That looks like an oversight on my part (and well found, if so!)

Peaceful Anarchy posted:

Sent you an email with the solution. You probably overlooked it because it's kind of dumb trick I used, but it's one that makes sense in the context of that puzzle.
No problem about the arrow keys, it's not a big deal, I just keep hitting them to scroll.

Daedalus1134 posted:

Grabbed Key 12. I'll write up my thoughts and any problems I have.

~5 hours later:
Good game. I found the difficulty slope significantly more reasonable than TIS or Shenzhen, which is usually my issue with these kind of games. Finished "Stages" on board 3 before deciding to stop for the night, with roughly half of what's completed ideal. "Alternator" and "Multiply" are still incomplete. Alternator seems like I just need to sleep on it, it feels like it should be easier than the (not quite) solutions I am coming up with. I was worried that once mTicks got introduced I was going to dead end, but it didn't cause as many problems as I thought it would.

Running the Mac version, didn't encounter any bugs thus far.

Soundtrack fits right in with Shenzhen, Uplink, and the like. It feels like a Zachtronics game, which is intended as a HUGE compliment.