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<Dave> (SPOILER) Anybody want to start a new series???
<Dave> (SPOILER) It would be great to see Tom back, but what about Max, the master of deception!
Numbots was one of my later solves, if I had to solve it before bot numbers were viewable then I would have gone through a few sheets of paper in doing so! The first '9' level I cracked was rouge-like-like (which in retrospect makes me wonder about the rating), I remember it sitting there in isolation with its little tick when I pressed ctrl-d.
As far as stupidly simple levels that took way to long to solve go, the winner for me is A Remote Level. A couple of days after I first played it I walked past a shop window, saw a chess board, and thought 'you idiot the solution is there in black and white', how I missed it is still a mystery to me.
I do struggle with radiant's levels: the All Together, Assembly Line, and Cut to the Chase Levels took me longer than I am prepared to admit to. I guess multi-bot levels are not really my thing.
<Jim> (SPOILER) I've been playing this game for about 7 years I think. I remember when I first DL'D it, there were 1200 levels and I was hoping just to be able to solve 90% of them. I had just gotten past the 1000 mark when my computer crashed and I had to start all over again. It took me about 6 months to get back to the same point. To answer your question Mark, there were lots of levels I felt I would never solve, but gradually I would go back and get most of them. Some of them were years later, those were the most satisfying when I finally got them. MM, I agree those revenge of the computer ones were tough, each one took me seemingly forever. All the other levels everyone mentioned took me a long time to solve also. Once I got most of the 1200, I got new levels and by that time it was up to 1800. I never really got current until the levels were to about 2000, and that's when I registered my name finally.
There are plenty of great levels, but I think one of my favorites is Henri's Numbots. If you haven't solved that one yet I won't spoil it, but what happens to the Dalek when you grabbed the heart took me my such surprise, it stopped me dead in my tracks! I just started at the screen and said "That's fantastic!" Loved it. Newark's Liberty Airport by Tom was another one I spent an eternity on, I sure hope Tom gets re-invigorated some day and makes new levels.
Congrats MM on solving 19 and Mark on solving 20. I really thought we were going to have a difficult time making these hard enough without using bombs or free-running bots, boy was I wrong!
<Dave> PPetcS. Thinking about good players, we haven't heard anything from wowei or radiant for a while and I am really beginning to miss their input.
<Dave> (SPOILER) Putting computers aside, some of my favourite levels are the ones that force you to plan your solution with old-fashioned pen and paper. I loved Dimensional Trap in this respect.
Hint 2: The key to Nice is realising why one teleport lands a bot directly on the switch. You have to see that first, only then will it become clear that there is only one possible way to use the bomb! The rest is routine. Enough said...
<mm> (SPOILER) PS: It's so very true, R5 is the most evil of those series. But all of them, R1 - R5, are some of my most favorite levels ever, because they are small size and they do look so simple.
<mm> (SPOILER) Thank you Dave for your tipps! I guess I will have to read those comments again. I've always been astonished by the fact that people use their computer or mathematical skills to play this game, either way, to create levels or to solve them! I just can't imagine how this can be done? It certainly sounds faszinating to me, but I can't do it. So I'm just playing the game "the old fashioned way" and this feels comfortable to me.
Mark, I love watching those downloadable solutions and I always hope to catch them all! It is great to watch how other brains work, and I think that I can learn a lot by just watching different ways to solve a problem.
<Dave> (SPOILER) Hi Kirima, did you ever figure out what the 'sneaky central trick' that Tom refers to in the comments on Nice Cote D'Azur might be? They all have the same core solution, if you can solve one, you can solve them all. Bots and teleports...
Knight's Tour is a well know problem and you can find solutions all over the net. Knights and Rotations is an original Potetz creation, very very clever, and horribly tricky. Have tried many times to implement the Rook's Tour problem but just can't get the mechanism to work.
The next level I want to work on is Mod 14. I suspect you have done this one. How long did it take you?
PS. Nice one Mark, didn't think you'd be far behind.
PPS. Revenge 3 is by far the easist but Revenge 2 is also straightforward, the other 3 are evil! Couldn't crack 5 so I wrote software to discover the, only known to pieguy, speedrun. That was quite an undertaking, because the problem space is massive and the shortest solution is not the same as the 'optimal by pushes' solution, it was as much of a challenge as solving it by hand. Got me back into high-level programming after years of only working at machine level. Only resorted to this approach on 4 levels that I can recall, in two cases I now regret doing so, in the other two, R5 included, I don't. Did speedrun Assembly Square with computer assistance but only after solving by hand and finding out how stupifying simple noname's computer solution was and how many thousands (probably millions), of solutions there are! Even so, it can only be solved in the editor unless you are some kind of mega-genius.
<mm> (SPOILER) 1/2 arena, or 3/4 arena or whatever: those levels seem impossible to me, for example, and I wish I had a clue or at least a hint! I would love to solve those. I've solved one of those "knight and rotations" levels and that's o.k. for me, I don't need to solve it's sequal. Disappear here? I'm disappearing and that's it! Keep off the grass? Ok, I will do so! No clue. The only ones that are bothering my mind are the Cote d'Azur levels by Tom7, I wish I could finally solve them, but I've been unable to find any clues, for years.
<mm> (SPOILER) Don't get me wrong, there certainly are levels that are seem to make me feel "rrrgggghkwwckckrwrrr"! |
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