Easy Braniac / Positronic Brain Acheievement

Exactly how to obtain the Braniac and Positronic Brain acheievement, complete with numbered code which i slaved to create!

Welcome, my fellow Achievement Grinders

Your goal here is to light up all eight of the towers in this level in under 60 seconds.

The towers can either be clicked on or toggled with the 1-8 keys. It's also worth noting that pausing works and fully stops the in-game timer you're trying to beat, though it is not an active pause as-in the rest of the game which limits it's usefulness.

Methods

Getting these achievements is as simple as typing out the numbers sequenced out in the section below. you can put the game into 800x600 and type it as-written off this guide



If you're either up for "solving" the puzzle yourself or are not confident in your word processing skills (a single typo in the wrong spot is potential cause for an instant reset), it's also more than possible to simply perform the whole sequence step-by-step without any memorization if you understand how the level functions (see section below).

I find the most effective method for doing it "natural" to be clicking on towers 3-8 while toggling towers 1 and 2 with your number keys. It also helps to zoom out the level as far as you can within comfort as this will require you to move your mouse far less in order to get between the towers, increasing overall speed.

exclusively using the keyboard exclusively is absolutely possible, but it is almost guaranteed that you'll get lost on what you're trying to accomplish next in order to get further in the puzzle. While slower in an "input speed" sense, the fact that mistakes are much harder to make and that a single mistake could well cost you a ton of time or force you to restart, I'd highly recommend using the mouse if you're attempting it fully naked. Frankly, if you're confident enough to think exclusive keyboard is the better method you're better off just inputting the sequence raw. It's much easier

The necessity of including the keyboard for 1 and 2 is made clear if you look at the sequence. Due how the level works (see below), every time you want to toggle a different tower, the 1 and 2 towers must first be toggled. the toggle sequence is also the same buttons every single time: #1-#2-#1. This lends it to easy inclusion without messing up your mouse hand, you'll learn to press the keys via muscle memory in short order. In addition, if you have the accuracy and speed necessary to do the whole puzzle in 60s exclusively with mouse your time would likely be better spent getting scouted by a pro CS:GO org.

Numerical sequence

This set is organized for the data-entry style typing method.


121 3121 4121 3121 5121 3121

4121 3121 6121 3121 4121 3121

5121 3121 4121 3121 7121 3121

4121 3121 5121 3121 4121 3121

6121 3121 4121 3121 5121 3121

4121 3121 8121 3121 4121 3121

5121 3121 4121 3121 6121 3121

412



this set is row organized for reference by people manually attempting the puzzle or watching the towers as they type. It's generally organized to go to the next row when you first activate a tower of a given level, as that point is is where I've noticed it's easy to suddenly blank out on what to do next


121 3121 4121

3121 5121

3121 4121 3121 6121

3121 4121 3121 5121 3121 4121 3121 7121

3121 4121 3121 5121 3121 4121 3121 6121

3121 4121 3121 5121 3121 4121 3121 8121

3121 4121 3121 5121 3121 4121 3121 6121

3121 412

In-depth on the level

This section can optionally be skipped. It includes some info necessary for "trying" the puzzle yourself, some info useful for that end but not entirely necessary, and also includes some basically useless (if personally interesting to me) points on stuff I've noticed about how this level functions.

More than a passive understanding how the level actually functions is technically unnecessary to complete it. Presuming, however, that you're choosing to enter the sequence manually, and considering the overall length of the tower sequence, understanding what you're actually doing may help you keep focus and should also give you the ability to pause and plan out a recovery if you make a mistake, rather than forcing you to restart from the beginning to hit your time target.



There are 3 rules to this map pertaining to whether or not a tower can be toggled on/off


1) the tower 1 number below must be ON

For example, if you want to toggle tower #2, tower #1 must be ON.



2) save for the tower mentioned above, all other towers of a lower number must be OFF.

For example, if you want to toggle tower #5, towers #1, #2, and #3 must be powered OFF. As per the 1st rule, tower #4 must be powered ON.



third: tower #1 can be toggled regardless of any other towers



By these rules, it's quite easy to understand and even to execute. In practice, what quickly becomes obvious is that the amount of inputs required to toggle the "next" tower doubles from the last one.

This expansion is due to the fact that once you've activated a tower, you essentially have to re-input the entire sequence up to that point, keystroke for keystroke, in order to make the next tower beyond that toggleable. Once you do get that next tower toggleable, you then realize that the tower beyond that has the same requirement: you will now essentially have to repeat every keystroke you've made up till now.

This then means you essentially have have to once again repeat the original set of keystrokes you've just finished repeating, as well as once again redoing the "repeat" itself.

This occurrence can be demonstrated by looking the sequence above over, but can also be shown by simply counting from the above how many keystrokes are necessary to activate a tower for the first time.

tower #1: 1 keystroke
1

tower #2: 2 keystrokes
12

tower #3: 4 keystrokes
121 3

tower #4: 8 keystrokes
121 3121 4

tower #5: 16 keystrokes
121 3121 4121 3121 5121

tower #6: 32 keystrokes
121 3121 4121 3121 5121 3121 4121 3121 6121

and so on up to tower #8

I get weird and sappy about some crappy puzzle as though the CW3 guides tab is actually r/philosophy

found this whole puzzle to be very interesting. It was relatively difficult (to me) and yet entirely straightforward and easy to understand + perform. Generally I'm not an abnormally large fan of math or understanding equations despite having a high aptitude for it (compared only to the members of relatively small public highschool), but on rare occasion I do find something in that vein which fully peaks my interest and begs me to analyze it until I understand it fully, prompting me to fill the void where I found back in 2015 that a guide did not yet exist and took it upon myself to write up my first and only steam guide ever.

This little puzzle here, buried in a sub-level of a little known sequel to a slightly better known flash game I played for a while in middle school, a puzzle I know full-well I'd never have seen much less attempted had there not been an achievement tied to it in a game I also love, has scratched the ever living hell out of an itch I didn't know I had until I found it.

Thank you, game devs, for making this game which is itself amazing fun. Thank you, virgilw whoever you are, for all-but accidentally exposing me to this puzzle I'm certain you threw together in a couple minutes, thought was kind of crap, and then likely forgot about completely.

By pure coincidence, this puzzle happened to be of the exact complexity and difficulty level to peak my interest and make me work some dusty, unused corners of my mind. By a slew of these unintentional accidents and coincidences you have given me specifically a very rare level and rare type of personal enjoyment that I was not expecting to find and I assume you would not expect to see from someone playing this, by all accounts, really basic and generally bad level, itself hardly worthy of even referring to as a "puzzle".

All that being the case, all of that being understood, and the likelihood of anyone I'm speaking at through the void of the internet actually reading this, I still felt it necessary to express this feeling I've had with this, for the feeling itself as much as the by-all-accounts completely strange and unworthy source of it. I'm sure I could make some strange conclusion about "devaluing one's work" or "comparisons to other work being overvalued" or "someone somewhere loving your game," but i'm no psychiatrist, philosopher, or even so much as a person who understand game dev.

So while I have a tiny gleam of all those thoughts in my head, I prefer to leave all that be rather than muddying the waters. To leave open the opportunity (albeit horrifically small, this review has literally had 39 ratings in 6 years and one was me) for any others who know better to draw their own conclusions, choosing only to put forward only those things I know for certain: my own thoughts and my own feelings. Those thoughts and feelings themselves rather ironically being buried even deeper than the level they're sparked from, in a 6-years-after-posting edit of a little-seen achievement guide for a deep-buried level in a not-super-popular, itself near 8 years old videogame.

But, hey. If they hadn't published that crappy puzzle level I wouldn't have been convinced to write this. who knows effect what this inarguably even more crappy afterward to a perhaps marginally less crappy guide might have in as many years? Probably literally none whatsoever, but eh. Less likely stuff has happened.

[Florence HC3]

tried to cheat with autokeyboard programs, they dont seem to work for me (used about 2 programs before giving up) so i end up doing it manually. thanks anyway

[astro]

I think its important to get the most value out of the Steam Sale by checking out what other helpful people have written. People should be grateful this is in base10. Thanks.

[Ludwig234]

I made a autohotkey script because I am lazy.
Link [gist.github.com]

The script is triggerd by Shift+A. Be sure to close the script when you done otherwise writing capital "A" is going to be annoying.

[ElderAxe]

You don't need the last 4 numbers.

"6121 3121 412" completes the sequence.

[DevilMcSheep]

Thanks for the guide!
Had it opened on the phone while I hammered it in via numpad.
Really not a fan of having cheated for this achievement, but I want that 100%, and call me a brainlet, but this achievement standing in the way of that is like signing up for a job as a plumber, but being asked to get quick at sudoku before receiving pay.

[V wie Falko]

Thank you! 43.5 on my first try :)

[dmichaelc]

To compute any given Grey Code number, it's done in binary by ((number >> 1) ^ number).
Also written as ((number 'right shift by 1') 'exclusive or with' number)

Example: 9 in binary is 1001. 9 >> 1 = 0100, with the remaining 1 dropped.
0100 Xor 1001 = 1101. 1101 is the Grey Code form of 9.

[dmichaelc]

Fun fact, the pattern of numbers is related to Grey Code, where Grey Code is a specific way to count numbers/bits that is used to for TV/Digital signal encoding.


Here's the pattern. In grey code, 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, is represented in binary as
0000, 0001, 0011, 0010, 0110, 0111, 0101, 0100, 1100, 1101, 1111.
The pattern is the bit that needs to be flipped to reach the next number.
At 0->1, flip 1 = 0001
At 1->2, flip 2 = 0011
At 2->3, flip 1 = 0010
At 3->4, flip 3 = 0110
At 4->5, flip 1 = 0111
...

Continue for the rest of the pattern until you've counted to 170, and you flip the last 1 bit to result in the Grey Code number 11111111 binary = 256 in base 10.

[Misato]

XTYRMIN8Z thx for this manual. So I know how it works. I have tried it several times, but I am too slow.

Thank you very much Apocalipsus, with the macro I made it

[Philadelphus]

Got it in 50.38 seconds using your code on my first attempt (having a numberpad helped)! Thanks!