Feedback

[Ikarus]

So first of all thx for your work.

When I tried the game first I felt at the first start that the "Try" Button was maybe a bit small.

Time Limit - I guess the timeout is set in a way that it is never really hard to get and mostly all working solutions are way faster than the limit. Still the values on some maps looked a bit awkward.

In my opinion the game should save your own highscore on each map. When I did the "Evil genius" achievement it was hard to see how bad it is in comparison to my best.

[Paul]

Thank you for your feedback.

I just updated the game and now the try button is sufficiently massive.

The counter/timeout system was originally only to ban infinite loops. It's not supposed to add an additional challenge though it does ban some long solutions.

[Ikarus]

i think i found a bug. penguin can move the dog with the boulders (uploaded a screenshot). this is most likely not intended.

[Paul]

This is a new mechanic that I just added. Yes now entities such as penguin and dog can be pushed in rows just like boulders. I might need it for Series 3.

And yes it completely broke my own solution for Forest #14 However Neko quickly found another solution

[Ikarus]

I published my optimized solutions guide for the 2nd series. Please take a look at #13 / #14. Especially in 13 not hitting the pink arrow because of the push feels strange.

[Paul]

Your optimized solutions are very impressive.

You always find one that makes me laugh like the #8. I didn't know myself it was so simple.

In #13, the reason that the penguin does not hit the pink arrow can be explained by the game's code. The tiles are "executed" in order from top to bottom, left to right. So the first things that happens is that the dog pushes down both the remaining boulder and the penguin (entities are assumed to have infinite strength, yes, to push entire rows of entities). During the same tick, the penguin still wants to move left. Now the reason that the penguin ignores the arrow is because the moment where arrows assign directions, and the moment where entities move, are separate.

It think it's my fault. I did not take into account that an entity can move twice during the same tick and trigger multiple arrows. This does seem to break the intuitive rules of the game as I present them to the player. Maybe I could find a more intuitive way to code this. But it would break your solutions again probably.

[Paul]

I just pushed an update which should fix the problem. Now of course it means your solution #13 is now likely broken.

[Ikarus]

yeah but actually managed to find a faster one :)

[Paul]

Series 3 is entering beta mode. Lots of new mechanics that can go wrong.

[Paul]

I'm not adding special achievements for Series 2 for now. I know you want extra rewards for optimizations but right now I'm focused on expanding the content. :D

[Ikarus]

for now i found 1 thing which looks for me as not intended. that the penguin gets grabbed by the grabber in #5 when pushing the block of. will upload solutions later on.

[Ikarus]

what also was not clear to me is that the time stops when one clone dies.

i really liked #11, really hard to optimize.

[Paul]

#5 is normal. Penguins get grabbed like boulders.

Yes, I think it should only stop when all penguins are dead. But I forgot to implement it because it's not needed for those levels.

[Ikarus]

So i can now use a bug for #15 and also #20. (20 is in the guide for now). Penguin uses dead bodies as a bridge.

Dont know if #18 was supposed to be done this way.

[Paul]

No, dead bodies are not used as bridge. However, as usual my code is flawed and penguins push each other and move at the same time (thus moving 2 tiles in one tick) skipping the water. Fixed, but as usual some solutions involving water/lava may break (because the interaction with liquid has moved to a slightly different place in the code).

My level design is getting worse and worse and I'm not seeing some obvious shortcuts again.

#18 is correct.
#19 I changed the level.
#20 the exploit no longer works. :)

Thank you Ikarus for saving the game again. :)

[Ikarus]

#18 had beforehand a solution where i pushed the blocks further down and basically went a row lower which doesn't need the red door. for some reason i wanted to do something else entirely here and it was quite hard to find the correct solution :P

#20 might be a bit easy right now.

#21 is really super hard to optimize with more than 1 penguin. (edit: but now looks good for me, uploaded 8 different solutions in my guide until i got there)