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Black Griffon
Mar 12, 2005

Now, in the quantum moment before the closure, when all become one. One moment left. One point of space and time.

I know who you are. You are destiny.




ZACHTRONICS_GAMES//QUERY:WHAT[INSERT=QMARK]
Zachtronics, a games company and a guy (Zach Barth), well known for games where you start off solving neat little programming puzzles with open solutions and end up setting fire to your desk because you have to synthesize a whale through a MIDI interface. In reality, all Zachtronics games follow a pretty similar formula; you're meant to achieve a result, and using the specific, abstracted programming language of the game, you assemble a solution. Your solution is then compared to your steam friends through various criteria, and then you get to sit there for two hours straight, staring at your screen, wondering how the gently caress [LLJK]Johnny_Videogames managed a solution that uses half the parts, takes a fourth of time and looks like loss.jpg.

Then you figure it out though, and when you've created something elegant, unique and beautiful it's a feeling beyond anything else.

GAME_CATALOGUE
(gonna flesh out these game descriptions a bit eventually, if anyone wanna help me with the ones that are a bit bare bones I'll welcome it)

Infiniminer
If this had been more of a thing we might never have gotten Minecraft, but that means we might never have gotten Notch, so I think we can all agree this should've been more of a thing. Anyway, this is history in more ways than one.



SpaceChem
The first assembly game with a proper release, SpaceChem has you assemble chemicals under the auspice of a creepy pyramid. Seems kind of sus if you ask me.



Ironclad Tactics
... Not sure. I don't think people cared for this one. Civil War mech card game, I guess?



Infinifactory
Aside from trying out infiniminer back in the day, this was my first Zachtronics game. A pretty big departure from the 2D style of Infinifactory that would come to define Zachtronics, it's currently their only 3D game (apart from Infiniminer, but yeah). Personally, I think this is a nice place to start if you want to get into Zachtronics stuff.



TIS-100
A personal favorite, TIS-100 might be the most inscrutable Zachtronics game. Where Spacechem and Infinifactory are somewhat intuitive based on the fact that you're assembling something most people have a rudimentary knowledge of (chemicals, a piece of a factory), TIS-100 is basically an assembly programming programming puzzle game. It's at times the most frustrating bullshit you can imagine, but when solutions reveal themselves and you make the little things do the thing (obviously I have no actual knowledge about programming), you feel like a loving genuis. It's critical that you print out the manual and use it as a place to put your coffee cup a couple of days, that's half the experience.



SHENZHEN I/O
Basically, you work for a cheap electronics manufacturer and are given a spec for each puzzle. You get a number of components to use, but the big one is a microcontroller that you program using the game's own very simple assembly language. You are encouraged to cut corners to save power/cost, and the specs are incomplete and let you produce products which do unexpected things or work poorly in undefined cases. As an example, you make a doll that plays music, but you never actually have to play the same song more than once. So it's totally fine if playing the song a second time will fail - the child who has to reboot their doll to hear the song again won't be happy, but your bottom line will be. It's simple enough that you can play without knowing anything about assembly language, but deep enough that you can spend a long time optimizing if you want to top the leaderboards. Beat my high scores, thanks in advance.
-Jeffrey of YOSPOS



Opus Magnum
I suspect this is a personal favorite of many goons. Way more of a visual learning experience and physics puzzle than previous games (aside from Infinifactory), it might also be the prettiest Zachtronics game, allowing the strangest, dumbest and most creative solutions. Basically an alchemy sim, it's your job to assemble alchemical compounds with little levers, gears and movers, by way of a cool little MIDI interface. Another good place to start if you want to get into the games.



EXAPUNKS
A return to the programing grognardness of TIS-100 (and SHENZEN I/O?), EXAPUNKS has you program tiny little robots that you use to hack libraries, secure archives and... bodies? In addition to having a cool setting and being stylish as hell, it has the printable manual(s) of TIS-100, but where you could probably survive not printing out the TIS-100 manual, I'd say you're missing out on too much not assembling the EXAPUNKS zines and you might as well not bother buying the game. So, there.



Eliza
Now this is something completely different, but it's something incredibly good. Eliza is a visual novel, a major departure from pretty much anything Zachtronics apart from the story intersitials between puzzles in other games, and it's better to experience it than have it explained. If you've ever struggled with mental health treatment and counseling, it's a good journey.



MOLEK-SYNTEZ
Now this is more familiar. Evoking Opus Magnum in many ways, MOLEK-SYNTEZ lets you live out your dream of making drugs in a weird 3D printer/grabby bobby in a tiny Romanian apartment. More visual and less nerdy than EXAPUNKS or TIS-100, it still promises to be hellish in all the right ways.



Möbius Front '83
https://twitter.com/zachtronics/status/1320774950857236480

quote:

The year is 1983 and the United States of America must defend itself from an enemy it could have never imagined— an America from an alternate universe that will stop at nothing to seize control of the country’s heartland!

In Möbius Front ‘83 you will fight tactical, turn-based battles with the cutting-edge military hardware of the early 1980s. Use every tool available -- powerful tanks, fast-moving attack helicopters, long-ranged artillery, tenacious infantry, and more -- to control the complex and rapidly-changing battlefield of the era.

Who are the “Americans” attacking America, and why? Find out in the game’s extensive single-player campaign and its fully voiced cutscenes. When you’re ready for some R&R, play a new kind of solitaire, solve Zachtronics-style puzzles, and even read the U.S. military manuals that inspired the game.

In addition to the actual game parts of the games, most Zachtronics games have cool extras and minigames that you can usually engage with at will. There's strange solitaire games (SHENZEN I/O had a standalone release), whatever that Sigmar's Garden in Opus Magnum is (it's fun, that's what it is), and EXAPUNKS basically has a programmable little game boy (all I've made it do is play the Dark World Theme from Zelda). When your brain is wrung out from puzzling, you can chill out with everything else the games have to offer.

GROUND_RULES
Always spoiler tag your gifs and describe what game it's from, and which puzzle it's from! Accidentally seeing the solution to a puzzle you've been simmering on for days sucks so bad, guys, and I need you to be careful about that poo poo.

ok that's it

COOL_STUFF.bin
The big thing about Zachtronics games is that most of them let you export your solution to a gif, which you can then show off to everyone else so they can marvel at how amazing or terrible it is, that's one cool thing we can do in this thread.
The other big thing is that if you're friends with someone, you can compare your solution to theirs, so let's all be friends. I'm probably gonna gently caress with a spreadsheet eventually, but for now, I'll edit your profile into the OP.

ZACHEADS.lame
https://steamcommunity.com/id/marchidian/
https://steamcommunity.com/id/GuavaMoment
https://steamcommunity.com/id/glareseethe/
https://steamcommunity.com/id/bort_simpsone/
https://steamcommunity.com/id/stickasylum/
https://steamcommunity.com/id/daedalus/

Other than that, please let me know what I should fix or add to the OP. Now go get your brains broken.

https://twitter.com/shrecknet/status/950473795759828995

Black Griffon fucked around with this message at 11:25 on Oct 28, 2020

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Zedd
Jul 6, 2009

I mean, who would have noticed another madman around here?



Zedd posted:

To this day I have no Idea how I ever beat Spacechem on my own.

And I should play TIS-100, it's been in my library forever now.

Black Griffon
Mar 12, 2005

Now, in the quantum moment before the closure, when all become one. One moment left. One point of space and time.

I know who you are. You are destiny.


Zedd posted:

And I should play TIS-100, it's been in my library forever now.

The feeling of accomplishing something in TIS-100 is unlike any other gaming experience I've had. I treasure it very, very much.

Jeffrey of YOSPOS
Dec 22, 2005

GET LOSE, YOU CAN'T COMPARE WITH MY POWERS
Optimizing for power in Shenzhen IO spoke to my weird brain in ways no game before or since ever has and I love it to pieces. I've spent 200+ hours optimizing my solutions and never even beat the campaign.

Basically, you work for a cheap electronics manufacturer and are given a spec for each puzzle. You get a number of components to use, but the big one is a microcontroller that you program using the game's own very simple assembly language. You are encouraged to cut corners to save power/cost, and the specs are incomplete and let you produce products which do unexpected things or work poorly in undefined cases. As an example, you make a doll that plays music, but you never actually have to play the same song more than once. So it's totally fine if playing the song a second time will fail - the child who has to reboot their doll to hear the song again won't be happy, but your bottom line will be. It's simple enough that you can play without knowing anything about assembly language, but deep enough that you can spend a long time optimizing if you want to top the leaderboards. Beat my high scores, thanks in advance.

Shrecknet
Jan 2, 2005


https://twitter.com/shrecknet/status/950473795759828995

Fuzzy Mammal
Aug 15, 2001

Lipstick Apathy
I love all Zachtronics games. I think Opus Magnum is my favourite. Even got the physical patch for being one of the first few hundred to beat the story, heh. I made a YOSPOS custom puzzle if anyone wants to try it out. It links the letters kind of like the forum icon





bees x1000
Jun 11, 2020

Exapunks is great, really great.

GuavaMoment
Aug 13, 2006

YouTube dude
Zachtronics games are literally the only games that are instant pre-orders once I discover they're available for sale. Steamfriending me (https://steamcommunity.com/id/GuavaMoment) has the side effect of having my name show up on all your leaderboards.

Black Griffon posted:

(Can anyone find the gif of the cool Opus Magnum crab so I can edit it in here?)

Is it one of these?





Jabor
Jul 16, 2010

#1 Loser at SpaceChem
It's me, the zachtronics fan.

I'll also give a shout-out to the proto-zach-likes that predate Spacechem - the codex of alchemical engineering and so forth.

Fans of Opus Magnum will see some similarities!

Arrhythmia
Jul 22, 2011

Jabor posted:

It's me, the zachtronics fan.

I'll also give a shout-out to the proto-zach-likes that predate Spacechem - the codex of alchemical engineering and so forth.

Fans of Opus Magnum will see some similarities!

Don't forget about CONSTRUCTOR (I'm not bothering to type that in cyrillic)

Node
May 20, 2001

KICKED IN THE COOTER
:dings:
Taco Defender

Jabor posted:

It's me, the zachtronics fan.

I'll also give a shout-out to the proto-zach-likes that predate Spacechem - the codex of alchemical engineering and so forth.

Fans of Opus Magnum will see some similarities!

You have had my favorite avatar for like forever.

Jabor
Jul 16, 2010

#1 Loser at SpaceChem

Node posted:

You have had my favorite avatar for like forever.

You can actually thank GuavaMoment for that one.

I like to think I did pretty well right up until I got a job and had less time to work on puzzles and ended up putting in a performance deserving of my reward.

CharlieFoxtrot
Mar 27, 2007

organize digital employees



Which game has the best solitaire

GuavaMoment
Aug 13, 2006

YouTube dude

CharlieFoxtrot posted:

Which game has the best solitaire

Shenzhen, its solitaire was released as a paid standalone game.

GotLag
Jul 17, 2005

食べちゃダメだよ
I printed the Shenzhen I/O manual (at work, of course) and bought a ring binder with cover page pocket to put it in.

For added authenticity, buy those reinforcing stickers and only put them on the punched pages that get torn.

For maximum authenticity, do what I did and lose it when you move house

CharlieFoxtrot
Mar 27, 2007

organize digital employees



I have the feelies for both the Shenzhen I/O and Exapunks special editions, they're really rad

Jeffrey of YOSPOS
Dec 22, 2005

GET LOSE, YOU CAN'T COMPARE WITH MY POWERS

CharlieFoxtrot posted:

I have the feelies for both the Shenzhen I/O and Exapunks special editions, they're really rad
Yeah I never buy stuff like this and largely don't want silly video game kitsch in my house but I'm happy I bought these.

Llamadeus
Dec 20, 2005

Jeffrey of YOSPOS posted:

Optimizing for power in Shenzhen IO spoke to my weird brain in ways no game before or since ever has and I love it to pieces. I've spent 200+ hours optimizing my solutions and never even beat the campaign.
Same, and I got the record score for Pollution-Sensing Window so it was all worth it.

Black Griffon
Mar 12, 2005

Now, in the quantum moment before the closure, when all become one. One moment left. One point of space and time.

I know who you are. You are destiny.


MZ is my current jam, and one of my favorite things with Zacthronics stuff is when you're learning the ropes and you make complete poo poo, just turds from an rear end, but you made it, and you're proud of it because it's your ugly baby.
(Diethyl Ether)


GuavaMoment posted:

Is it one of these?







It's 100% that first one, thanks!

Black Griffon fucked around with this message at 10:39 on Jul 11, 2020

Sway Grunt
May 15, 2004

Tenochtitlan, looking east.
Thanks for making the thread, Black Griffon.

SpaceChem is one of my favorite games ever but I actually never got any other Zachtronics stuff (other than Ironclad Tactics, but that's a different thing altogether) until Opus Magnum a few days ago because I found SpaceChem so intense that it actually scared me off a little. Intense as in it took over my brainspace in such a total, comprehensive way - I was constantly thinking up possible solutions at work and dreaming about it for weeks and weeks. After I beat it I really had to take a long break.

Opus Magnum feels very different so far. Much more open-ended and free-form, and much easier due to the lack of restrictions. I think it was the right game for me to go back.

I still intend to get 100% achievements in SpaceChem. At the moment I'm at 14/20. Need to solve more ResearchNet stuff and a few of the unique challenges. The one that I spent some time on a few years ago was to do Falling with two or fewer reactors. As I recall after staring at it for a while I concluded that it was Actually Impossible. And yet some people have done it. Also need to solve KOHCTPYKTOP, which is the only level in the main campaign I haven't beaten, I kinda just looked at it and nope'd out since it was optional. The weirdest one is the final level of the Australia DLC, Moustachium 608. For whatever reason I just haven't been able to do it at all, and this despite having beaten the game (without ever looking up any hints or solutions or whatever). I don't know what it is about that one level that trips me up.

This is me if anyone needs another name for SpaceChem or Opus Magnum (and perhaps more in the future). I'm still working my way through the OM campaign so haven't done a lot of optimizations, but I'm not very good anyway tbh.

Sway Grunt
May 15, 2004

Tenochtitlan, looking east.
I'm not thrilled with the output on this (OM/Sword Alloy) - I'm sure there's a way to make it both more efficient and aesthetically pleasing - but otherwise I'm quite happy with the rest of it. I've noticed I naturally gravitate towards tight-knitted designs and optimizing for area first; I basically try to have everything as bunched up as possible.





edit: I shaved off four cycles down to 133, heh.

Wish they'd backport the auto-gif function to SpaceChem as the videos it generates are far less handy for sharing.

Sway Grunt fucked around with this message at 19:20 on Jul 11, 2020

FUCK SNEEP
Apr 21, 2007




EXAPUNKS is one of my favorite games and I haven't even completed half of it. The Zine for it is perfect, too! I think I just bought physical copies from his site a couple weeks back.

Ciaphas
Nov 20, 2005

> BEWARE, COWARD :ovr:


Black Griffon posted:

MZ is my current jam, and one of my favorite things with Zacthronics stuff is when you're learning the ropes and you make complete poo poo, just turds from an rear end, but you made it, and you're proud of it because it's your ugly baby.
(Diethyl Ether)



It's 100% that first one, thanks!

So what are your tools/controls in Druglab Sim 2020 here? I've only ever seen GIFs and it's not terribly clear what's being manipulated where or why compounds are appearing

Nanpa
Apr 24, 2007
Nap Ghost
I love zachtronics games, and I think I've bought all of them the day or so the came out (except ironclad tactics and Eliza, which I got later). I've never actually finished any of them, but I've enjoyed them completely, which is also good I guess?

Favourites so far have definitely been infinifactory and exapunks.

Exapunks is definitely the highlight of the TIS-100/Shenzhen/Exapunks sequence, with the graphics showing how your solution is working out, and integrating a bunch of Easter eggs.

Infinifactory otoh is the highlight of the spacechem sort of branch, and although the alieness of the situation is pretty great, it can make it hard to see what's going on at times.

My biggest problem is that I sort of get a fair way through them, and then get side tracked at a challenging puzzle, and end up dicking around trying to beat friends scores in older puzzles, then forgetting the tricks I'd learned in order to get through the harder puzzles

That said, really fun. Also a highlight of mine was sending a bugged save file (progress disappeared) to Zach during the EA of Infinifactory and getting a fix within a day or two.

Black Griffon
Mar 12, 2005

Now, in the quantum moment before the closure, when all become one. One moment left. One point of space and time.

I know who you are. You are destiny.


Ciaphas posted:

So what are your tools/controls in Druglab Sim 2020 here? I've only ever seen GIFs and it's not terribly clear what's being manipulated where or why compounds are appearing

Inside the hexagon, you can place various molecules. The spot you place rhe molecule acts as a "spawn", so if the spots occupied by the molecule are cleared, a new molecule of the same type appears in the same spot.

On the perimeter of the hexagon, you've got six manipulators. With these you can move and rotate molecules, delete them, send them to output and–most interestingly–manipulate the hydrogen atoms bonded to component parts of the molecule. You can add or remove hydrogen or push it along the molecular chain, and in this way you not only change the hydrogen count of atmos, but you also manipulate the molecular bonds. Any given atom has a limited amount of bonds, which means it will bond or detach from other atoms if you change the hydrogen count.

The goal is to use precursor molecules to build more complex molecules, there's a lot to remind you of OM there, but I find that it's a deceptively simple, elegant and clever game that stand on its own.

GotLag
Jul 17, 2005

食べちゃダメだよ
It took me an embarrassingly long time to realise that the emitters could be programmed to slide around the perimeter of Romanian Drug Lab Simulator

Black Griffon
Mar 12, 2005

Now, in the quantum moment before the closure, when all become one. One moment left. One point of space and time.

I know who you are. You are destiny.


Another thing that's so great and unique with the games is the first time you get a solution that's competitive with your way smarter steam friends on your first try.

(stone cold jane austen you're frustratingly clever)

(Valnoctamide)

Black Griffon fucked around with this message at 11:17 on Jul 13, 2020

grate deceiver
Jul 10, 2009

Just a funny av. Not a redtext or an own ok.
Seconding that ZACH is the only studio I will buy anything off of day 1 no questions asked. I have played like 20mins total of Moleksyntez. I will buy the next game day 1.

FormatAmerica
Jun 3, 2005
Grimey Drawer
This thread inspired me to give exapunks a try finally and I love it, having a ton of fun and will probably move on to Shenzhen I/O next.

I'm sort of glad I was too intimidated to play these games in the past because I have quite a bit of a backlog to go through now.

GotLag
Jul 17, 2005

食べちゃダメだよ

Black Griffon posted:

Another thing that's so great and unique with the games is the first time I get a solution that's competitive with your way smarter steam friends on your first try.

(stone cold jane austen you're frustratingly clever)

(Valnoctamide)


Hexane costs too many emitters and operations to carve up. I never use it unless the product contains a hexane ring, and not even always then.

Black Griffon
Mar 12, 2005

Now, in the quantum moment before the closure, when all become one. One moment left. One point of space and time.

I know who you are. You are destiny.


aaah, that's clever

Sway Grunt
May 15, 2004

Tenochtitlan, looking east.
One thing I still find confusing in Opus Magnum is the automatic looping / syncing / padding. Most of the time you don't have to worry about it but on occasion it just trips me up or doesn't work the way I expect it to. For one thing I think it's visually confusing to have the padding added at the end of an instruction set. If you have two sets and one has its first instruction several cycles after the first, say on cycle 10, then I think the game counts cycle 10 as the starting point for that set and adds the padding at the end to compensate, but visually I would find it a lot clearer if they both just "started" on cycle 1 and the first ten cycles for that set were just empty. And sometimes the amount of padding doesn't match what I think it should be so clearly I am not understanding something about the way it works.

I dunno, I was fighting with a solution yesterday trying to get the thing to work properly as it kept jamming on the second loop (and I didn't want to just copy & paste six instances of code just to get to 6/6). The only way I managed to get it to work eventually was by adding essentially "empty" instructions to the beginning of some sets, as otherwise the padding added at the end was delaying them on the second loop. So now there are some mechanisms executing meaningless instructions at the beginning of each loop. Maybe there is a way to get it to work properly, but by the end I was so confused by the whole thing I couldn't be bothered to figure it out.

Anyway... I'm at the end of chapter 4 now and although I said earlier the lack of restrictions make this game easier than SpaceChem I will say that the puzzles are now definitely getting spicier. Much like the harder puzzles in SpaceChem I find my immediate response to seeing a new puzzle is increasingly :psyduck:. Even if I know I could brute force it with a massive track or whatever, my inclination is to make something that looks decent and works at least somewhat efficiently, so the restriction is self-imposed. I'm generally not very good with sandboxes - I need the game to give me something - and though Opus Magnum isn't a straight sandbox it's definitely closer to it than SpaceChem. So I'm actually surprised that I'm able to self-restrict somewhat successfully here; I suppose the histograms are a good motivator too.

I know the bonus campaign does have some built-in restrictions, though, and I am looking forward to that eventually.

Llamadeus
Dec 20, 2005

Glare Seethe posted:

One thing I still find confusing in Opus Magnum is the automatic looping / syncing / padding. Most of the time you don't have to worry about it but on occasion it just trips me up or doesn't work the way I expect it to. For one thing I think it's visually confusing to have the padding added at the end of an instruction set. If you have two sets and one has its first instruction several cycles after the first, say on cycle 10, then I think the game counts cycle 10 as the starting point for that set and adds the padding at the end to compensate, but visually I would find it a lot clearer if they both just "started" on cycle 1 and the first ten cycles for that set were just empty. And sometimes the amount of padding doesn't match what I think it should be so clearly I am not understanding something about the way it works.
It basically works like: it takes the longest cycle out of all the arms (which is the time between first and last non instructions) and pads every arm's cycle out at the ends of their loops.

The whitespace the start of the instructions works differently in that it's a delay that only runs once per solution, and doesn't affect the real periods of arms.

Womyn Capote
Jul 5, 2004


I would love a new infinifactory so much.

Sway Grunt
May 15, 2004

Tenochtitlan, looking east.

Llamadeus posted:

It basically works like: it takes the longest cycle out of all the arms (which is the time between first and last non instructions) and pads every arm's cycle out at the ends of their loops.

The whitespace the start of the instructions works differently in that it's a delay that only runs once per solution, and doesn't affect the real periods of arms.

Okay, after reading this and looking at my solutions for a further long time I think I understand more how the jamming happened. In fact I was able to fix it without adding empty instructions and get it to actually loop properly by deleting some instructions and minding the length of each set... What remains slightly unideal is that you don't know at any given moment which instruction set is the longest, i.e. which one is being matched. So making a small tweak to what was the longest set could mean that the padding now follows a different set, which can cause a collision. You kinda do have to just count, would be nice if there was an indication.

edit: I guess it's the one that doesn't have any padding, actually, so never mind.

It's still kind of confusing when I try to just logic through it in my brain (like if I try to answer the question "wait, how did I actually just fix this?") but pairing the info with actually looking at the solution helps it make sense.

Sway Grunt fucked around with this message at 15:22 on Jul 13, 2020

Reveilled
Apr 19, 2007

Take up your rifles
The second best part of playing EXAPUNKS was being in bed half asleep at 1am and suddenly needing to grab my ipad to type this into the notes app:

COPY M X
LINK 800
MARK CHECKHOST
LINK 800
LINK 800
HOST T
TEST T = X
FJMP CHECKHOST
; LOOKUP
COPY M X
GRAB 200
SEEK 9999 ; FINDS EOF
MARK LOOKUP
SEEK -2 ; STEPS BACK
TEST X = F ; X IS FILENM
FJMP LOOKUP
COPY F T ; COPIES START
COPY F X ; COPIES LENGTH
COPY X M
SEEK -9999
SEEK T ; MOVES TO START
MARK TRANSMIT
COPY F M ; TRANSMITS
SUBI X 1 X
TEST X = 0 ; STOPS @ END
FJMP TRANSMIT
HALT


The best part was entering that into the game the next morning and finding it worked.

Black Griffon
Mar 12, 2005

Now, in the quantum moment before the closure, when all become one. One moment left. One point of space and time.

I know who you are. You are destiny.


It's an incredible feeling. I remember playing TIS-100 and just jotting down code on loose slips of paper while at work, nothing else comes close.

GuavaMoment
Aug 13, 2006

YouTube dude
I was stuck on the Spacechem level to make Omega Pseudoethyne. I woke up one morning and literally one second later I knew how to solve the level. It was like my subconscious was working on the problem all night, and memory dumped the results into my active brain once I woke up. I don't know if that's incredible, or sad, or just really weird, but nothing else has occupied my thoughts like that before. There was also the time during WildM's Spacechem tournament where I went to bed thinking about a problem, realized I knew a way to shave a couple symbols off my solution, so I got up, booted the computer up and made a better solution before going back to bed. Then I repeated that entire process two more times. It was worth it though; I ended up with the best solution for that challenge!

Sway Grunt
May 15, 2004

Tenochtitlan, looking east.
I am :airquote: good at Opus Magnum.

Timing Crystal.





I know I can shave off cycles at the top there if the second arm wasn't doing almost everything on its own, but frankly no amount of optimization would make this solution competitive, I don't think. Oh well! It works and does look kind of clean, so that's nice.

edit: Also, Sigmar's Garden is insanely addictive.

edit2: Been reading some interviews/AMAs with Zach and it is very funny to me that he doesn't actually solve all of the puzzles in his games, but just "makes sure they are solveable". In his GDC talk about SpaceChem he says he spent like a week designing the final puzzle, made sure it's solveable "on paper" but never actually played it through. He claims he's not that good at his own games but somehow I doubt that.

Sway Grunt fucked around with this message at 21:05 on Jul 14, 2020

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Black Griffon
Mar 12, 2005

Now, in the quantum moment before the closure, when all become one. One moment left. One point of space and time.

I know who you are. You are destiny.


When I finally realized I got it down to 360 I kinda lost my breath for a minute.

Edit: got it down to 15 symbols and I swear there's 14 symbols just scratching at my cornea.

Black Griffon fucked around with this message at 09:19 on Jul 15, 2020

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