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Phssthpok posted:Yes, I love the puzzles but I can't replay old ones, and the touchscreen support was not very good. I want to make a mobile DnD app with a UI like Cell Tower and copy-paste-able levels like this: I've put together an initial version of a web app with shareable, editable dungeons and diagrams: Daily Dungeons and Diagrams it supports linking to the state of a partially solved puzzle: example Phssthpok fucked around with this message at 22:44 on Sep 2, 2022 |
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Aug 5, 2022 07:59
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Phssthpok posted:I've put together an initial version of a web app with shareable, editable dungeons and diagrams: Feedback: - I can't see the whole grid without scrolling - If I zoom out to try and see the whole grid, it scales up so that I still can't see the whole grid - Is there a way to mark cells as empty?
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Aug 5, 2022 08:21
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Yeah, as you can see it needs a lot of work. In the current version you have to make your browser window narrower to scale the whole grid into view. I'm having trouble thinking of a good way to mark a tile as empty with touchscreen controls. I guess it could cycle floor -> wall -> marked floor 🤔
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Aug 5, 2022 08:34
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Cycling works. Also if you're eyeing up touch controls, make sure people can just drag across the screen to paint in whole boxes of filled or empty cells rather than having to tap one-by-one. Look at how various picture cross/nonogram apps do it for UX ideas.
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Aug 5, 2022 08:40
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I don't have any trouble with the puzzlink mobile controls for similar puzzles, which cycles from filled - > marked emtpy - > empty. Also, you can drag to paint a region with whatever mark you put in the cell you started the gesture in (rather than applying the cycle operation to each cell).
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Aug 5, 2022 12:49
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Fantastic, just what I need! I would love a confirmation for solved puzzles for more dopamine, tho
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Aug 5, 2022 13:19
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Yeah so Last Call just updated and D&D has 12000 new puzzles now
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Aug 5, 2022 19:00
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I still can’t do the penultimate line. I think I’m missing a law.
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Aug 5, 2022 21:19
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I'm implementing a solution checker and here's my current understanding of the laws: - all row/column wall counts are equal to their targets - all non-WALL tiles are connected - each MONSTER is in a dead end (adjacent to exactly one EMPTY) - each TREASURE is in a treasure room (3x3 block of 8 EMPTY and 1 TREASURE, adjacent to exactly one EMPTY and no MONSTER) - no 2x2 blocks of EMPTY tiles outside of a treasure room Phssthpok fucked around with this message at 22:11 on Aug 5, 2022 |
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Aug 5, 2022 22:09
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Phssthpok posted:I'm implementing a solution checker and here's my current understanding of the laws: Also each dead end has a monster.
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Aug 5, 2022 22:12
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I meant more the deduction laws. Ie: - if a monster has a clear square adjacent, all other adjacent squares are walls. - if a monster has 3 walls adjacent, the other square is clear. - if a non-monster clear square has 2 walls adjacent, the other two are clear. - if a space adjacent to a treasure chest is a wall, the 2 on the other side of the chest are clear. Etc.
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Aug 6, 2022 05:05
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There are a whole bunch of deductions that you can make, but most of them boil down to "if it was any other way it would make either a 2x2 open space, or a dead-end with no monster". And most of the rest become "if it did this then stuff wouldn't be connected". For example, if you have a 5x2 rectangle with only two walls in it, one of those walls must in column 2, and the other one must be in column 4. Another example, if one column is a six (meaning there are two gaps in it), and there are two different regions on the left side of it that aren't connected to each other, then one of those regions can't have both of the gaps. Are these super-specific deductions? Yeah, they are. I've used both of them in solves, along with a bunch of other super-specific steps. Good problem solving isn't about memorizing a million possible deduction steps, it's about looking at the problem as a whole and then inventing deduction steps that will let you make forward progress.
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Aug 6, 2022 05:26
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Some simple ones that might not be immediately obvious are the edge rows/columns, eg: a 1 on the edge has 4 guaranteed empties, 2 has 2, 1+monster has five (sometimes), etc
Llamadeus fucked around with this message at 05:43 on Aug 6, 2022 |
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Aug 6, 2022 05:41
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This is a pretty powerful rule, though it honestly doesn't come up that often in the pregenerated puzzles
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Aug 6, 2022 05:48
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Thanks for the podcast link btw. Interesting to hear that D&Di was just designed as a podcast bonus after Zach played AD&D live. Just how talented is this man? That does seem to have skewed his views on education, mind you.
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Aug 6, 2022 14:40
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I must admit i did laugh at the idea of him handing out nightmare homework with incomplete instructions for a greater challenge. I'm envious of the confidence and mental resources he seems to have at his disposal, impostor syndrome would have stopped me well before even one of his achievements.
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Aug 6, 2022 14:55
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Daily Dungeons and Diagrams is basically playable now. I'm still working on designing the puzzle editing interface. For a touchscreen-oriented editor, I was thinking of cycling each cell between floor, wall, treasure, monster, and boss monster, with a field outside the grid to set the default display of each type. Phssthpok fucked around with this message at 23:22 on Aug 31, 2022 |
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Aug 11, 2022 21:59
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Aug 16, 2022 19:00
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https://twitter.com/zachtronics/status/1564730936725749760 I guess it's good teaching didn't work out...
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Aug 31, 2022 10:48
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Last Call BBS had an update today. From the changelog:Zachtronics posted:Today's update includes the following changes: Perhaps we players are predictable.
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Sep 6, 2022 05:19
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Humble's got a programming game bundle going on. $10 for three Zachtronics games and four other titles.
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Sep 6, 2022 06:40
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Sway Grunt posted:Humble's got a programming game bundle going on. $10 for three Zachtronics games and four other titles. Learning Factory's the only one I don't have. Anyone with any opinions on that one?
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Sep 6, 2022 06:57
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Picked up the solitaire game, so now I just have to boot up one game any time I’m looking to waste 10 minutes, rather than pick from the list! I never picked up Möbius Front so I’m glad to finally add cribbage solitaire to my list, too. The new Tarot game is haaaaaard, too. I can’t quite get the hang of it and unlike some of the variants you can easily lose the game if you get careless towards the end. The rule that you can only move one card at a time means you are functionally obliged to keep at least one free column always, and if you accidentally mess that up and fill them you’re probably hosed. Still, it’s really, really pretty and a joy to play.
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Sep 8, 2022 04:02
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More puzzles are good but I just want them to keep adding Steed Force models.
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Sep 8, 2022 04:23
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The tarot game is indeed haaard. The undo feature should really include inverting a stack, which is only one logical operation but lots of clicks. With some effort I was able to force a specific reading: 
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Sep 8, 2022 23:45
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Sway Grunt posted:Humble's got a programming game bundle going on. $10 for three Zachtronics games and four other titles. I picked this bundle up and played through Human Resource Machine over the past couple of days. It was fun but I definitely got the sense that the programming elements are much more explicit in it than in Zach's games. Granted I haven't yet played Shenzhen I/O or TIS-100 which I think are the ones based on assembly language? But the abstraction in SpaceChem or Opus Magnum makes those a lot more compelling and I think it's easier to work through or visualize the problem in a puzzle if you don't have a programming background (and the UI is much better). They also feel a lot more open-ended, or at least the open-endedness is expressed better visually. In HRM I was doing fine up until the last few levels where I hit a brick wall, and I straight up copied a solution for the final level off a Steam guide just to get the credits to roll, which I feel a little guilty about (but I 100%'ed SpaceChem without ever looking up a hint so I paid my dues dammit). Even looking it over step by step I fundamentally do not understand what's happening or why. Apparently it's just building a sorting algorithm which I guess any actual programmer would ace in a few minutes. I'm hoping the Zachtronics titles that are based on assembly are more creative and open and less "course assignments" but I actually think I'll save those for later and go straight into 7 Billion Humans next. Sway Grunt fucked around with this message at 20:24 on Sep 10, 2022 |
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Sep 10, 2022 19:56
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Shenzon is straight up coding, yeah. It takes the concepts of assembly and wraps them in "physical" objects. Speaking of which an icon for that game keeps popping up on Xbox game pass on the series s but it leads to an error page. Surely they didn't pick THAT as their next console port, right? That's masochistic.
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Sep 12, 2022 18:55
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To be fair I am an Actual Programmer and things like sorting a list using only a FIFO stack is such bullshit, and my online circles of other Actual Programmers tend to agree. Much harder than the job lol
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Sep 12, 2022 18:59
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I think the presentation and the little bits of story / atmosphere of Zachtronics titles definitely help so I'm hopeful for Shenzhen and the others. At the very least they're visually interesting to look at. I'm sure one could map a lot of the design ideas and mechanics of SpaceChem to actual programming or math terms (like I guess a sensor is just a simple "if else" clause. And a flip-flop's probably some kind of well-known mathematical function?). But it just helps that in-game it looks and feels different and you're doing wild alien poo poo with it. I finished 7 Billion Humans today and it was much more fun than HRM I thought, the mechanics were more to my liking (less math, basically). But it's still just a lot of numbers and flow charts. Still had to brute force a few puzzles (by, uh, lemme look at some programming terminology... loop unrolling? aka doing everything manually) and am thankful they give you five level skips for the campaign otherwise I'd still be in there. edit: man I just really love SpaceChem. Maybe cause it was my first Zachtronics title, but it just rules. In my top 10 of all time probably. Sway Grunt fucked around with this message at 20:15 on Sep 12, 2022 |
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Sep 12, 2022 20:09
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exapunks has the coolest presentation of the Actual Programming ones imo, followed by shenzen which is no joke slightly traumatic in terms of dealing with bad bosses and foreign datashets for parts, and then tis-100 has the least interesting presentation imo but it's not bad still
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Sep 12, 2022 20:16
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Yeah, Shenzhen is a little bit too on the nose in being a 'working engineer' simulator. "We have ten thousand of these chips. We're not even sure what they do. Figure out a product we can build with them to recoup our losses." Or eventually finding some of the undocumented commands that, in retrospect, make half the game trivial.
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Sep 12, 2022 20:24
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As a non-programmer the actual-programming ones didn't hold any immediate appeal for me, but once I started one I realised it wasn't too different from the spatial games. And I even managed to get a couple of solutions on to the global leaderboard.
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Sep 12, 2022 20:32
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Llamadeus posted:As a non-programmer the actual-programming ones didn't hold any immediate appeal for me, but once I started one I realised it wasn't too different from the spatial games. And I even managed to get a couple of solutions on to the global leaderboard. the same relation holds true in real life btw between excel and Real Programming
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Sep 12, 2022 20:40
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TheCenturion posted:Yeah, Shenzhen is a little bit too on the nose in being a 'working engineer' simulator. "We have ten thousand of these chips. We're not even sure what they do. Figure out a product we can build with them to recoup our losses." Or eventually finding some of the undocumented commands that, in retrospect, make half the game trivial.
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Sep 12, 2022 23:15
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Phssthpok posted:The tarot game is indeed haaard. The undo feature should really include inverting a stack, which is only one logical operation but lots of clicks. Same, but different: 
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Sep 13, 2022 16:23
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playing through opus magnum again. felt like purifying gold with only eight instructions imgur.com/zpBdvPb
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Sep 13, 2022 16:58
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Reveilled posted:Same, but different: From this position I think I can force any reading: 
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Sep 13, 2022 22:48
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I'm super new and really bad at Zachtronics games but I picked some up in the recent humble bundle and am having a lot of fun. Starting out with TIS-100 and have been banging my head on the Multiplexer for a good few hours due to not having enough space, only to discover that you can put labels and commands on the same line. Really should have read the manual more carefully 
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Sep 14, 2022 23:04
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Tirranek posted:Really should have read the manual more carefully Congratulations, you are now a programmer.
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Sep 15, 2022 14:52
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Tirranek posted:the Multiplexer Once you're happy with your Signal Multiplexer, check out this advanced labeling technique:  And add me to your steam friends for shared leaderboards: https://steamcommunity.com/id/myhf/ Now I want to return to TIS-100. I was never able to complete the Sequence Sorter within the instruction limits.
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Sep 15, 2022 18:22
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