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<Tom 7> I did actually like the layout of this level (and the title cracks me up). If you figure out how to put some puzzles in the rooms, this series could be a winner... |
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<wowei> (SPOILER) Added speedrun: 41 moves (old: 44). darn bombs :-/ <Doom> (SPOILER) Added speedrun: 44 moves (old: 54). Cooked, it seems. |
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<wowei> (SPOILER) Added speedrun: 111 moves (old: 113). a good cooking, Alois |
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<Doom> Sorry. Pointless just like all of the previous ones. <mjn> indeed! |
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<mm> Superbe level (-: |
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<mm> I gave this level credit 9 for difficulty - it's really, really hard in my opinion - but just great! Chapeau! |
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<wowei> a pity, that it's cooked. I already liked the original one a lot. Totally underrated in difficulty and in style. I still have no idea, how to solve the "quartered arena" though. |
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<mm> (SPOILER) That's why I've called it "small cookie" (-; That one bomb did NOT help to get rid of a red block. <Alois> (SPOILER) Added speedrun: 198 moves (old: 202). I do not think is a cook, mm. Just a more efficient way of moving bombs around... :) <mm> (SPOILER) Added speedrun: 202 moves (old: 206). Cool. I'm surprised to get a speedrun, but watching the solutions I realized that I seem to have discovered a very small cookie, sorry Henri. |
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<Tom 7> (SPOILER) I'm impressed that you guys are daring enough to compose such long messages in the comment box, which has no cut/paste and can easily lose your comment for good! <bpotetz> (SPOILER) Thanks for posting your perl script, bje. I'm happy that you were interested enough in the level to write a brute force solver. To encourage more analysis & thinking, I will post some basic deductions about the game that I used in selecting the start-state & other parameters. ANOTHER EXTREME SPOILER: First, John is right - pressing a button & its 4 nearest neighbors will toggle the central button. That is enough to completely solve the simpler level (1080). Similar theorems exist for all lights-out puzzles played on a regular closed surface (torus, klein bottle, of any size). On the other hand, if the game has hard boundaries, you can solve it easily using a technique that I recently discovered already has a name: "light chasing" (google for more info). Maybe if the game was played on a less regular graph, harder techniques would be needed. Anyway, this means that you can determine the set of buttons that must be pressed by just summing up all the red panels & their 4 nearest neighbors in mod 2 arithmetic. For this level, that set should contain 9 buttons (I won't list them here - that is *too* spoiling). Unfortunately, because the transports also toggle on & off, there is no way to press those buttons & only those buttons, which we can prove. Note that pressing a button toggles the same set of red/green lights as it does the transports. I considered using a different pattern for the transports, but I did not like how most other simple patterns lie on a checkerboard - that makes it too easy to construct parity arguments to solve the puzzle. Anyway, using the same pattern for lights & transports means that at any given time, the state of the lights & the state of the transports only differs by a constant set. In this case, that is just 4 squares: the three that are already out (green) in the start state, plus the one that has a transport in the start state. Since the game is finished when all the lights are green, the end game must have all but those 4 transports "open". Note that in your final move, you must walk into an open transporter, which will turn that transporter off. So the final move must be made at one of those 4 squares that has no transporter in the final state. Only one of those 4 squares is in the set of buttons that MUST get pressed. And that is the one that MUST be pressed in your first move (it is like a joke at your expense). So at least one of those 4 differing squares must be pressed twice. Knowing all this makes solving the puzzle by hand much easier. |
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<mjn> Very cool one. (I was wondering when we were gonna see the rest of these...) |
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<bje> (SPOILER) EXTREME SPOILER! For those interested, the perl script I used to do all the thinking for me can be downloaded from: http://users.bigpond.net.au/dhask/lightsout.pl.txt I numbered the teleporters from left to right, top to bottom, 1 to 16. The final output is the state (0 = all green), a bitmask for which teleporters are visible, and then a list of teleporters to walk through in order. It's not a fastest solution finder, though the final output is in the set of "fewest teleports" solutions. |
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<mjn> Man, I am so grateful for the D key... <Tom 7> I agree; guessing, wall breaking, and heart framer collection don't make a puzzle. The colored rooms and epic quest aspect could make for a good level, if only there was something interesting to do *in* the level... <Doom> (SPOILER) Added speedrun: 285 moves (old: 311). Come on. This was practically nothing but guessing puzzles. Which are trivial with the features of this game already. |
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<bpotetz> (SPOILER) Added speedrun: 90 moves (old: 146). Fun & interesting - very nice. |
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<John Lewis> (SPOILER) mm/Kirima: It's perfectly fine! To be honest, I didn't really know what to expect in terms of ratings when I created this level. I think this would probably qualify as the most confusing level I've ever made thus far. I was even having trouble keeping up with it while putting it together! So when I was finally able to solve it (and there were about seven times when I ran into either a possible cook or a barrier that made the level impossible) - I had no idea how hard it would be. In terms of style...I wasn't really expecting a high rating. I guess to me, the entire level looked like a huge mess that didn't seem to have any rhyme or reason whatsoever. (Of course, there is...but you gotta find it first. ;)) But now, after seeing the style ratings it has received so far, I was reminded that style wasn't all about how the level looks... Now that I think about it, this level really reminds me of old school Escape...hehe, before the days of transponders and bombs. :) Throw a few heart framers and sleeping doors into the mix, and you got a recipe for an interesting level. :) I also wanted to make a "rearranging steel blocks" puzzle similar to Flynn's "Puzzlettes" level (and others we've seen). I considered putting traps around the passages between "rooms," but this really messed the level up. I'm thinking of making yet another mod of this - possibly taking some stuff out and adding more interesting challenges. I guess this level wasn't so bad after all. :) Right now, I'm getting ready to leave on a trip that will last until Sunday, so I won't be able to leave comments (or set new records...hehe ;)) 'till then. So...I guess I will see y'all later! |
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<Tom 7> I don't mind some lighthearted teasing, but please keep it clean. |
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<John Lewis> Ctrl-0 = very, very useful :) Thanks for the changes, mm!! |
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<mjn> (SPOILER) Awesome. I love how there are so many tempting opportunities to get rid of three blocks at once... <Tom 7> Nice idea. The Escape bombs were totally inspired by Bomberman, naturally. |
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