Today's addictive game encounter (pointed out by Jesse Ruderman): Net by Pāvils Jurjāns. It's one of these really good basic, well designed mind games where you have a complete overview of the board, and set it straight in as few turns (and, I presume, as little time) as possible, to the set of logic rules dictated by the game. I'm not yet sure if it's as addictive as Minesweeper which, despite suffering from the misfeature of occasionally forcing the element of chance on your completion of a stage, through similarly basic rules, comes out a great time sink. Or, as might be argued, that may well be what makes Minesweeper so compelling to some.
Either way, I started out trying to find the rules, to soon be puzzled finding my optimal solutions were a few turns more than the reported minimum required amount of turns. As it turns out, the turn count was not how many times a tile had been rotated 90 degrees, but how many turns a tile had been rotated any angle you well please. (Okay, so let's not make necessary partial rotations until we know for sure just which rotation is the correct configuration of every tile.) Results crept down to suggested figures. Until I suddenly found myself having completed a minimum 44 turn stage in 43 turns. (Yay! :-) Wish I'd had a screenshot of it before I started, too, but I suppose I'll bug report it, either way. Not that it matters much to game play, but the author might want to know (assuming he isn't already aware of the issue).
Maybe this bug actually adds to the game more than had it not been there in the first place; it's very rewarding to not only complete a game, but to actually beat it. I'll feel much better leaving the game in a mental state of victory over leaving it after a lengthy session of having just played it successfully, beating my time scores for as many times as that remains interesting. In a free game, this might be a feature indeed, whereas it would probably be an economic set-back in a pay per play time arcade or internet game.
(Seems it can be off by more than one turn, too; I just completed a nine by nine board in 55 turns of 58. :-)
Good game isn't it - what's your best score? I've managed a 108 move 13x11 wrapping in 108 moves, 3min20: 1,101,100.
ReplyDeleteSooo addictive!
I'm not sure, but the last one I took a screen shot of was a 104 move 13x11 wrapping in 103 moves, 4min32: 985,753. :-)
ReplyDeleteAh yes, I see your geekery, and I raise you to 108 move 13x11 wrapping in 108 moves, 3min16: 1,108,979
ReplyDelete;-)
I've beat the "minimum required" many, many times. I wouldn't call it a bug as the description above dubs it, because the minimum number is apparently always right for the arrangement established and expected by the program; however, with some regularity -- say 1/8 games -- there is an alternative arrangement of circuitry that requires fewer tile turns -- incredibly as many as 10 fewer turns. Conversely just a couple times out of the too-many-to- really-count times I've played, there is an alternative arrangement that takes more turns than specified. So, yeah, as previously suggested, it's not a bug but more a point of pride when you beat the established minimum required moves.
ReplyDeleteI've mailed the author. He said he was too busy, and that to make the game to have a single solution for each puzzle would be complicated.
ReplyDeleteBesides he likes the "multiple solution" twist.
I also like that twist sometimes. But i'd prefer the single solution.
I got sooo addicted that i installed a program in my pocket pc that plays swf, and now i play it everywhere!
My best score on the 13x11 "normal" (non-wrapping) mode had hovered in the 1.2 million range for a long time, until I trained myself to not ever use the lock feature.
ReplyDeleteIt took me quite a while to break a million after that, but recently I got a very lucky board where everything just fell into place and it took me less than two minutes and I got 1.41 million.
My wife is about as fast a thinker as I am, but her bets score is under 1.1 million. There is some difference between her laptop and mine; the elements rotate much faster on mine than on hers. Those of you who break a million can probably appreciate that the speed of your computer matters.
--JMike