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[Draknek]

New failure and success screens are good stuff.

Hydras .. what a monstrosity

I concur with this sentiment. So much time spent squashing the middle-finder machine into as small a space as possible, and then needing it to be smaller still.

[Zaratustra]

oh god can't stop playing

suggestion: on levels where the colors equal digits, have them display on the tape, as well as the current number the tape stands for

[PleasingFungus]

Progress update: busy getting SECRET FEATURE #174 working. It's taking longer than expected; should still be done within, oh, four days, worst case. I will of course post here (and update the main post) then.

suggestion: on levels where the colors equal digits, have them display on the tape, as well as the current number the tape stands for

Excellent idea! (Excellent enough to have been suggested before, but it's a six-page thread, so hey.) There are technical issues that make it difficult (summary: the tape is a scandalous hack), but I'll see if I can add it in a release or two.

[PleasingFungus]

Level editor... complete!

It's probably quite buggy, putting in special characters for the description or the name will do saddening things, the UI is frankly hideous... but hey! It's a level editor! And you can make levels with it, and send them to each-other. (Bonus points for (solvable!) levels that stump the game's creator!)

Screenshots:

[Indievelopper]

Could someone PLEASE post a walkthrough  

I love those kind of game(i finished almost every "games for engineers" from Zachtronics Industries. But with this one... gawd  

I can't even do the robotic RC cars...

[Xecutor]

Now I can't do anything else, but marry play it again from the start
And make some levels.

Btw it's not my blog. (Don't think it's blog at all).

[Indievelopper]

anyone can give me a screenshot for the RC cards one? I'm further in levels, but i want to make this one >_<

[Noyb]

More bugs... The second tests for both gynoids and children should be rejected, but rejecting them gives an failure screen (showing blank output tape for output robot and valid output). (Gynoid's is BBBRR, which isn't of the form [B^n][R^n]. Children is BR, which doesn't have twice as many blues as reds.)

Not a bug, but you broke my solution to politicians when you shrunk the level.  

Just noticed the descriptions for each level when you keep hovering the mouse over the icons.  

Indievelopper: Hint: Remember that the branch pieces both test and delete from the beginning of the tape, and that the writer pieces always write at the end of the tape. Solution: Feed the input robot into a red/blue branch piece. If the robot goes through the red branch, we know it began with a red. So on the red branch, the robot's tape will be its original tape without the initial red. To satisfy the accept condition, on the red branch write a red at the end of the tape, then feed it into the exit. Similarly, on the blue branch write a blue at the end of the tape, then feed it into the exit. On the gray branch, feed it into the exit.

Edit: And sailors somehow wants a single *gray* dot as the preferred output for input of R...

Edit2: And pilots seems to want me to accept both 15 and 1 as being greater than 15. (Although the problem of greater than or equal to 15 is interesting in its own right.

[PleasingFungus]

Now I can't do anything else, but marry play it again from the start
And make some levels.

I approve of both these plans!

Btw it's not my blog. (Don't think it's blog at all).

Ach! That's what I get for assuming.

Still super happy I got posted there, though. Thanks to whoever did!

it's probably a blog



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anyone can give me a screenshot for the RC cards one? I'm further in levels, but i want to make this one >_<

Have you figured out how the 'writers' work? (The new tools in that level.) Try experimenting with them! (Or you could follow Noyb's more thorough explanation / spoiler...)


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More bugs... The second tests for both gynoids and children should be rejected, but rejecting them gives an failure screen (showing blank output tape for output robot and valid output). (Gynoid's is BBBRR, which isn't of the form [B^n][R^n]. Children is BR, which doesn't have twice as many blues as reds.)

Haha, there were no fewer than 17 tests broken in that way! (And four more, broken similarly.) Issues with find-replace!

It should be fixed now.

Just noticed the descriptions for each level when you keep hovering the mouse over the icons. 

They're kinda weird! I should probably find a less stealthy place for those. (Though keeping them as a STEALTH BONUS is pretty funny too.)

Edit: And sailors somehow wants a single *gray* dot as the preferred output for input of R...

Edit2: And pilots seems to want me to accept both 15 and 1 as being greater than 15. (Although the problem of greater than or equal to 15 is interesting in its own right.

Same bug! Should also be fixed.

[Xecutor]

I still want copy&paste tool
Hydras can reuse a little compactified polar bear.
It's a somewhat tedious to replicate polar bear again...
Idea: numbers 2 and 3 are unused now.
Make 2 - enable/disable selection mode and 3 copy/paste.
When you press 2 you can select, move around and copy rectangular area.
When you press 2 again - you exit selection mode.
When you press 3, if selection mode is enabled and there is selection - it is copied
into internal clipboard. If there is no selection and there is something in
internal clipboard - whole thing should be displayed instead of
mouse cursor, and placed into grid on click. Pressing 3 again
while it isn't placed into grid should cancel it.

[PleasingFungus]

I still want copy&paste tool
Hydras can reuse a little compactified polar bear.
It's a somewhat tedious to replicate polar bear again...
Idea: numbers 2 and 3 are unused now.
Make 2 - enable/disable selection mode and 3 copy/paste.
When you press 2 you can select, move around and copy rectangular area.
When you press 2 again - you exit selection mode.
When you press 3, if selection mode is enabled and there is selection - it is copied
into internal clipboard. If there is no selection and there is something in
internal clipboard - whole thing should be displayed instead of
mouse cursor, and placed into grid on click. Pressing 3 again
while it isn't placed into grid should cancel it.

Don't worry, copy-paste is still on my list - the biggest thing on my list, now that the level editor is done.

Mjau suggested something very similar to your idea a page back. At the time, it was the best idea I'd heard; since then, I've done a bit more thinking about it. And - well - I think we've all been overlooking the obvious.

How do you select something? In a word-processing program, a browser, whatever...?

You click and drag!

I complained earlier that you couldn't just use click-and-drag to select things, because 'it was already taken' by the delete function. But there's no real reason that delete couldn't be moved to a tool (and/or a modifier, like shift or ctrl), and select/copy/move be moved to the 'neutral' mouse click/drag!

The main thing that's stopping me from doing this is that it's kinda boring. But it should be boring. Your approach, or mjau's, practically requires a tutorial to understand. (Or a fair bit of tinkering.) A tutorial! For copy and paste! Copy-and-paste is a function so basic, so simple, that it should be boring - completely unnoticable to the player.

Q: "How do you copy and paste in Manufactoria?"
A1: "You select things, you hit ctrl-c, you hit ctrl-v. What do you mean?"
A2: "When you press 2 you can select, move around and copy rectangular area.
When you press 2 again - you exit selection mode.
When you press 3, if selection mode is enabled and there is selection - it is copied
into internal clipboard. If there is no selection and there is something in
internal clipboard - whole thing should be displayed instead of
mouse cursor, and placed into grid on click. Pressing 3 again
while it isn't placed into grid should cancel it."


I'm being a bit unfair there, but I think the point is sound...

(Don't take offense - your idea is perfectly reasonable, it's something I was thinking about earlier. I'm just using this as an excuse to air my current ideas about it, see if there are any gaping holes.)


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Also, I've been updating Manufactoria subtly and stealthily, as usual. Fixed a few bugs in the level-editor (I'm pretty disappointed that no-one reported them, actually), and added a new tutorial-thing to explain branches in a bit more detail. (Bonus: A solution to a level that doesn't exist!)

[Draknek]

I'm going to make the comparison to an image editor instead. There, clicking and dragging is dependent on the tool you have selected, and one of the tools is the selection box. I think Manufactoria is closer to an image editor than a word processor.

It really boils down to what you want the default tool to be, and I don't think select is the most suited for that. Most of the time, especially early on, you're not going to need to move anything about. Deleting on the other hand, you need to do all the time.

So I would go with one extra tool for select, which is not the unselected default. If that tool is active, click and drag selects a rectangle. Clicking and dragging inside a rectangle moves that rectangle; clicking outside the active rectangle starts a new one.

[Indievelopper]

More bugs... The second tests for both gynoids and children should be rejected, but rejecting them gives an failure screen (showing blank output tape for output robot and valid output). (Gynoid's is BBBRR, which isn't of the form [B^n][R^n]. Children is BR, which doesn't have twice as many blues as reds.)

Not a bug, but you broke my solution to politicians when you shrunk the level.  

Just noticed the descriptions for each level when you keep hovering the mouse over the icons.  

Indievelopper: Hint: Remember that the branch pieces both test and delete from the beginning of the tape, and that the writer pieces always write at the end of the tape. Solution: Feed the input robot into a red/blue branch piece. If the robot goes through the red branch, we know it began with a red. So on the red branch, the robot's tape will be its original tape without the initial red. To satisfy the accept condition, on the red branch write a red at the end of the tape, then feed it into the exit. Similarly, on the blue branch write a blue at the end of the tape, then feed it into the exit. On the gray branch, feed it into the exit.

Edit: And sailors somehow wants a single *gray* dot as the preferred output for input of R...

Edit2: And pilots seems to want me to accept both 15 and 1 as being greater than 15. (Although the problem of greater than or equal to 15 is interesting in its own right.

I was trying to rewrite the whole sequence. Man you do not imagine, i'm serious, you do NOT imagine how i feel like a fucking idiot  . Just read the first and output to the end. I was trying to make something complicated as hell when in fact in was hecking simple. 

Thanks 

[Jonathan Whiting]

The part of me that loves esoteric programming languages is really enjoying this.  It kind of reminds me of Befunge http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Befunge

Only minor quibbles really..

It wasn't obvious enough that you can speed up the game by pressing the green arrow (it should probably be a double arrow, something that's more standard for fast forward) because I'd sat there for ages watching levels play out at regular speed before I realized it existed.

Some of the level definitions lacked some of the precision required to be 100% sure of the desired output in all situations.  Particularly notably some levels were vague about what should be done with a blank tape robot (throw it away? output it unchanged?).

Will certainly come back and try and finish it later.

[Krux]

you should call this game Turingoria, because this reminds me of a turing machine. I like this game, like any other Games for Engeneers.

[PleasingFungus]

...clever stuff...

I read this two days ago. I thought, "By George, he's right! I should do as he suggests!

So, I did! New version's up. The feature's pretty rudimentary at present; no copy/paste quite yet, though that's planned. Let me know how it works for you!


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It kind of reminds me of Befunge http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Befunge

Huh! I'd never heard of that before, but I can see the resemblance. Neat!

It wasn't obvious enough that you can speed up the game by pressing the green arrow (it should probably be a double arrow, something that's more standard for fast forward)...

Done!

Some of the level definitions lacked some of the precision required to be 100% sure of the desired output in all situations.  Particularly notably some levels were vague about what should be done with a blank tape robot (throw it away? output it unchanged?).

Sorry about that. I try not to test the blank robots when the output is ambiguous... but it's not really an ideal solution. (Limited space in the level-description area makes things difficult, but that's my problem, not yours.)

What levels did you think were ambiguously, specifically?


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you should call this game Turingoria, because this reminds me of a turing machine.

But then it sounds like the player is going to be rammed with some kind of industrial lathe! (Turingoria.) Who'd want to play a game like that?

[Draknek]

Selecting right to left or bottom to top should include the tile you originally clicked in.

Other than that it works well.

Is shift meant to do anything, by the way? I was just playing around and noticed that it stops some actions doing anything.

Should marshalls (subtract one) be moved to before admirals (add one) in the dependency list? I solved them several days apart so I can't really remember, but marshalls looks a lot easier just looking at the solutions.

[Indievelopper]

Cavalcadeofcats , man, you really inspired me!

I'm currently coding a game called BeFunGame, that will be a programmation game, using an actual REAL programmation language(yeah, you guessed it, befunge).

It'll be fun, currently coding it in C++ with SFML, i'll keep you in touch.

[pnx]

Issue with robotic generals, a blue followed by nine reds says it should be rejected, when it should be a natural power of 4.
I also tripped up when I thought 1 should be accepted, then I remembered that anything to the power of 0 is 1, but that's just an issue with me, not the game.

[PleasingFungus]

Selecting right to left or bottom to top should include the tile you originally clicked in.

Whoops! (Xecutor also emailed me about that.) Fixed now.

Is shift meant to do anything, by the way? I was just playing around and noticed that it stops some actions doing anything.

I found it - it was a weird line of code lying around from when shift actually did things. (You could hold shift to pick individual components up...? It was weird and clunky and no-one used it, so I removed it from the game. Simplified a lot of the internal logic immensely.)

Should marshalls (subtract one) be moved to before admirals (add one) in the dependency list? I solved them several days apart so I can't really remember, but marshalls looks a lot easier just looking at the solutions.

Aren't they just basically mirrors of each-other? You probably found a more elegant solution than the one I'm thinking of... links?


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Cavalcadeofcats , man, you really inspired me!

I'm currently coding a game called BeFunGame, that will be a programmation game, using an actual REAL programmation language(yeah, you guessed it, befunge).

It'll be fun, currently coding it in C++ with SFML, i'll keep you in touch.

Haha, that sounds great! I'll definitely take a look when you've got something you're ready to put out there. Best of luck!

Issue with robotic generals, a blue followed by nine reds says it should be rejected, when it should be a natural power of 4.

BRRRRRRRRR = 0b1000000000 = 512
4^4 = 256
4^5 = 1024
4^...? = 512
log(base 4) (512) = 4.5; 4.5 is not a natural number.

(We had this same discussion a few pages back - it seems to be something that really confuses people! So you needn't feel bad about it.)


(...also, you could interpret the statement as "any power of 4 which results in a natural number", but that's exactly the same as "any natural number", which is the same as "any sequence of symbols"... so I hope the player can realize that's not the intended meaning.)


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Development update: copy-paste is very nearly done... the hotkeys are going to be "shift-c" and "shift-v", unfortunately, because Flash helpfully gobbles up ctrl-c and ctrl-v before I can get to them, but I'll put a note in the help screen and hope it suffices.


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EDIT: Copy-paste is out! "Shift-c" and "shift-v". It even works between levels!