[FEATURE REQUEST] ..Infinity products ... portal instead of trailing off screen

[Cr45h - B4ng - W4110p]

Apologies in advance if what I'm requesting appears later in the game.

I have encountered my first 'infinity' product .... what I notice about it is that the chain of infinitely long product trails off in a straight line off the edge of the screen. What if instead it fed into a portal ? more-or-less like the portal a typical product disappears into .... except with an 'infinity' product, just the end of the chain feeds in to the portal ?

at the end of the chain, you have the proposed portal. at the beginning you have the bonding process ... the portal is 'triggered' by the bonding process at the beginning of the chain. the portal simply won't work/open unless it is being fed a chain of the appropriate product, and it doesn't swallow the whole thing ... just the end of the chain that is being fed in to it.

I think this would look a lot more elegant, and would also allow for infinity chains that are curved (i.e rotated)

anyone get what I'm suggesting here ?

---more detail below, copy & pasted from a post of mine further down the thread----

Originally posted by DMGregory:

If the portal maintains a fixed position, doesn't that then limit how much I can move or rotate the chain as I'm building it?

Not at all, you could have a bonding mechanism right before the portal. Leaving you free to do as much rotating and movement as you need with the product (for this purpose, think of it as a 'link' within a chain) until it's taken the neccessary form... then just move it to a point where it can be 'added' (or 'linked') to the chain with a bonding process that comes before the portal, at a point where it could continue on into the portal in one continuous stream. i.e, right in front of the portal. .... rotated, pushed or pulled.

really, it shouldn't inhibit the creativity, engineering or expansiveness of the solution at all .... it should just make for much more elegant looking solutions, more in line with the premise of the game, and regarding the purely puzzle aspect of the game I think it's better to send a continuous stream into a definitive portal rather than swinging a whole infinitely long chain around off the sides of the screen and having it just wander off the alchemists work table... if that possibly makes for [slightly] more demanding solutions, all the better imo.

[inappropriately_gendered_fungus]

One of the problems I see with this is that it would eliminate bonding the new segment to the total product, which I think is a key part of the challenge.

[Cr45h - B4ng - W4110p]

no, it wouldn't ... at the end of the chain, you have the proposed portal. at the beginning you have the bonding process ... the portal is 'triggered' by the bonding process at the beginning of the chain. the portal simply won't work/open unless it is being fed a chain of the appropriate product, and it doesn't swallow the whole thing ... just the end of the chain that is being fed in to it.

and strictly speaking, there is no 'total' product ... the product is an infinite chain ... the puzzle completes after it has been fed a determined length of it.

[DavidN]

I see what you mean and I think that it would look neater as well (it would also allow them to be rotated!) - but it might change some solutions in that it would free up space on the back side of the portal, where it's currently covered by the giant chain.

[DMGregory]

If I rotate a chain that's feeding into the portal, does the portal swing around to follow the near end of the chain that I'm still holding? Can I insert a chain into the portal, rotate the chain, then back the chain out again to effectively move the portal around my machine? ;)
(Yes I'm a trouble-maker)

[Cr45h - B4ng - W4110p]

the portal is in a fixed postion, so it would need to be fed the chain in a consistent stream ... which, again, I think is a more elegant lookin scenario anyway.

as it currently works, you can rotate the whole chain, so long as it settles on the path direction for the duration of a 1 cycle, it will tally up the product count .... swinging a whole chain around that just trails off screen doesn't look good, and while I know it's a puzzle game so the premise shouldn't be taken too literally - if at all, it doesn't really fit into the idea of an alchemist preparing a compound .... it's just trailing off the alchemists work space. surely it has to go somewhere definitive to be collected ... i.e a portal

[DMGregory]

If the portal maintains a fixed position, doesn't that then limit how much I can move or rotate the chain as I'm building it? The current scheme is kind of nice in that it's a completely open field - if I want to do something absurd like put my chain-holder on a rail that spins it like a propeller around a central core, collecting new atoms on the inner edge with each revolution, the system lets me do it.

Adding an aperture that only leaves a finite amount of wiggle room starts to prescribe a narrower set of solutions (even if, granted, that narrower set probably contains all *practical* solutions - some of the fun in this game is being deliberately, flagrantly impractical)

[Cr45h - B4ng - W4110p]

Originally posted by DMGregory:

If the portal maintains a fixed position, doesn't that then limit how much I can move or rotate the chain as I'm building it?

Not at all, you could have a bonding mechanism right before the portal. Leaving you free to do as much rotating and movement as you need with the product (for this purpose, think of it as a 'link' within a chain) until it's taken the neccessary form... then just move it to a point where it can be 'added' (or 'linked') to the chain with a bonding process that comes before the portal, at a point where it could continue on into the portal in one continuous stream. i.e, right in front of the portal. .... rotated, pushed or pulled.

really, it shouldn't inhibit the creativity, engineering or expansiveness of the solution at all .... it should just make for much more elegant looking solutions, more in line with the premise of the game, and regarding the purely puzzle aspect of the game I think it's better to send a continuous stream into a definitive portal rather than swinging a whole infinitely long chain around off the sides of the screen and having it just wander off the alchemists work table... if that possibly makes for [slightly] more demanding solutions, all the better imo.

[Marconius]

I'm actually having a really hard time understanding your suggestion; maybe you could create a diagram or a mockup or something?

From the first read, my main issue with this is it seems you would need a "bonder" or something right before the portal, plus the normal thing you need to build your thing in the first place. In the current implementation, a lot of the infinite puzzles can be solved with a single arm (lowest cost); but if you needed a second arm at the other end near the portal, that would obviously become impossible.

But maybe I'm misunderstanding your suggestion here...

[Cr45h - B4ng - W4110p]

Well, first of all your main issue is completely moot. The lowest cost to solve a puzzle is variable, depending on a combination of the puzzle and the mechanics of the game. If the mechanics of the game are tweaked, the lowest cost of the puzzle might shift by, say, 60g to 80g .... but 80g will be the lowest cost to solve the puzzle .... there would be absolutely no other way to solve it at a lower cost, no one else in the database will be solving it at a lower cost, the histograms and scoreboard will all reflect this .... it will be unequivocally: the lowest cost solution, no ifs ands or buts.

so that concern really is moot. And if this is an issue for you, you should be warned that in other areas of the game, Zach is already considering increasing the cost of certain items ... the piston arm for example, he's getting a lot of feedback that it is too cheap and he is strongly considering to make it more expensive.


as for not understanding my request .... well, a diagram or mockup .... hmmm, i dunno if I could make a good enough mockup that would be any more helpful than a text description .... if I think of some way to make a good mockup I will make one .... in the mean time, I may come back to my original post and edit it, to make the text as absolutely clear as possible.

Thanks!

[Miblo]

I like this idea. The way I'm solving these infinite product puzzles right now is just to bond before the output, and then move along a track the length of one product, to push it out. In this new idea, if I understand it right, I'd still bond before the output, but would then have the option of either moving along a track or rotating onto the portal, to push the stuff out.

Correct me if I'm wrong, Cr45h, but you're basically suggesting changing the output area (the whole thing, not just the mouth of it) from a fixed, straight area, to one that matches our trajectory into it. So if we move along a track into it, the area is straight, but if we rotate into it, the area is curved.