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El'endia Starman
El'endia Starman
12:00 AM
Tametsi's tutorial teaches you mechanics as well. Missed that bit.
 
Eric Tressler
Eric Tressler
I guess it isn't explicitly labelled that in the game, but internally it is. The ids of the first ten levels are T1 - T10
 
ASCII-only
ASCII-only
:| the first 10 levels are hard?
like even #9 or #10?
maybe i was just playing too much Hexcells
 
El'endia Starman
El'endia Starman
I rather enjoyed watching him struggle through 4: You Don't Have to Guess. I was tempted to offer a hint several times, but resisted. T'was gratifying when he got it.
@ASCII-only "I should probably google that." [googles] Oh yeah, I see where a lot of Tametsi's inspiration comes from. You definitely got a step up in that area.
 
flawr
flawr
Hehe, I didn't know Hexcells, but I thought it was a mix of a few other similar games (bimaru, nonogramms, sudoku, minesweeper come to mind)
 
Eric Tressler
Eric Tressler
You've never played HexCells? All 3 of them are pretty good, though now you'd probably breeze through them (their very hardest levels are about on par with the 70-80 levels in mine, as a ballpark estimate).
 
ASCII-only
ASCII-only
12:07 AM
I'd say 50 imo
Because that's basically where I'm up to on Tametsi lol
whereas I've almost finished Hexcells Infinite, I just need to find the time to get those last few levels
 
El'endia Starman
El'endia Starman
The hexagonal levels in Tametsi do tend to be easier in a relative sense compared with other layouts.
 
ASCII-only
ASCII-only
I think that's because they are 1. a regular tessellation, and 2. each tile has the maximum number of neighbors possible for a regular tessellation
 
El'endia Starman
El'endia Starman
Nah, the square layouts where each tile has 8 neighbors are harder.
 
Eric Tressler
Eric Tressler
Yeah, @ASCII-only, sorry to disagree, but it's just the connectivity properties of the adjacency graph that determine how hard the level can be. Hexcells has its own ways around that; it has column hints, and also some range-2 cells (they tell you how many mines are within distance 2 of the tile, so they have 18 neighbors).
 
El'endia Starman
El'endia Starman
IIRC Eric tested having all triangles with corner neighbors (12 neighbors per tile) but found it too difficult to play/solve.
 
Eric Tressler
Eric Tressler
12:16 AM
It's just annoying, I didn't even play anything long enough to find out how difficult it was. My immediate reaction was just "oh, no, this is terrible"
I think Minesweeper conditioned everyone to be okay with looking at corner neighbors on a square grid. It felt extremely awkward to translate that to the triangular grid.
 
ASCII-only
ASCII-only
@EricTressler Yeah, I guess that's not exactly what I intended to say
 
DJMcMayhem
DJMcMayhem
@EricTressler Did you try triangular without corners?
 
ASCII-only
ASCII-only
hexagonal cells one cell apart have an added advantage of only sharing two neighbors (vs 3 for squares and a weird number for triangles with corner neighbors)
 
DJMcMayhem
DJMcMayhem
Or triangles of variable size?
 
El'endia Starman
El'endia Starman
@DJMcMayhem IIRC yes; too easy.
 
Eric Tressler
Eric Tressler
12:20 AM
@DJMcMayhem I did not try triangles of variable size. I could try a sierpinski level, but I wouldn't be too optimistic. For what it's worth, now that I have the game set up to load levels, I could show you what it's like to play triangles with corners, etc. I don't have to share them with the world.
 
DJMcMayhem
DJMcMayhem
Oh also, @EricTressler What tilings do the last 6 have? I'm nowhere close to beating all the 90s, and I'm really curious
 
ASCII-only
ASCII-only
@DJMcMayhem pretty normal
mostly square
some hexagon
(disclaimer: idk what 91-96 are)
 
DJMcMayhem
DJMcMayhem
Oh, are they not themed?
 
Martin Ender
Martin Ender
Have you unlocked/played the Girih levels from the bonus section? Those should be the only grids you haven't seen yet.
 
DJMcMayhem
DJMcMayhem
@ASCII-only What? How could you know the last 6 (that require you to beat all first) without knowing all the 90s?
 
ASCII-only
ASCII-only
12:22 AM
@DJMcMayhem they are kinda, but yeah there aren't that many tilings
 
El'endia Starman
El'endia Starman
I wonder what it would be like to turn the Fano Plane and Petersen graph into Tametsi levels.
 
ASCII-only
ASCII-only
@DJMcMayhem oh you mean the sidebar >_>
 
DJMcMayhem
DJMcMayhem
But the last 6 require you to beat 100 first
Yes
 
ASCII-only
ASCII-only
wait
100 levels not level 100 right
 
DJMcMayhem
DJMcMayhem
CL(123), GH(123), and TM(123) don't, but there are 6 others I haven't tried yet
@ASCII-only All 100, not including the sidebar (afaik)
 
Martin Ender
Martin Ender
12:24 AM
I think the ones you're missing have standard tilings.
 
Eric Tressler
Eric Tressler
@DJMcMayhem You don't have to beat all 100 to unlock the next 3
 
Martin Ender
Martin Ender
Girih is the only special one there so far.
 
DJMcMayhem
DJMcMayhem
@EricTressler How do I?
 
Martin Ender
Martin Ender
But they are some very interesting levels nonetheless.
 
Eric Tressler
Eric Tressler
@DJMcMayhem finish level 84
 
ASCII-only
ASCII-only
12:25 AM
:| it just had to be on the other side of the board
 
DJMcMayhem
DJMcMayhem
:| Oh
I can't remember if I have yet or not
@EricTressler I would like that a lot
 
Eric Tressler
Eric Tressler
What, trying the triangle tiling?
 
DJMcMayhem
DJMcMayhem
Yes
Or really any weird levels you don't feel like sharing with the public
 
Eric Tressler
Eric Tressler
Yeah, sure. I don't have one ready right now (or even the generator for that tileset), but it won't take too long. I'll share that here, and maybe also some other failed tilesets to show you how they're degenerate.
 
 
2 hours later…
Nathan Merrill
Nathan Merrill
2:33 AM
finally ended up getting stephen's sausage roll
I'm on the fence about it
I've done maybe 5 or so puzzles
the controls are weird, but I understand the logic of why he did what he did
 
Nathan Merrill
Nathan Merrill
2:51 AM
I will say that one of my favorite things he did is make "Undo" undo "Reset"
 
ASCII-only
ASCII-only
that actually sounds like it would sometimes be useful
 
Eric Tressler
Eric Tressler
3:14 AM
I spent the bare minimum amount of time to give these layouts a fair chance, but you'll get the idea
 
El'endia Starman
El'endia Starman
4:06 AM
Penrose with corners was actually pretty decent. Just tricky. I agree though that the others were either really easy or really hard/annoying.
I have yet to solve the triangles-with-corners and 3636-dual-with-corners levels.
 
Eric Tressler
Eric Tressler
I didn't finish solving them either. By my difficulty scale, they're only medium difficulty (level 30-50 range), but they're difficult mainly because I can't get used to looking at the corners on them.
The Penrose with corners level is a bit easier, because I didn't let it go through multiple rounds of mine placement
 
El'endia Starman
El'endia Starman
Just solved 3636-dual-with-corners. The Penrose-with-corners level trained me enough to make solving that one fairly easy.
 
Eric Tressler
Eric Tressler
Oh, sorry, so is the 3636 dual level, but mainly because it's very small. Those levels could have gotten out of hand if I'd made them larger. I have a feeling all of those levels with corners could be made extremely difficult, given enough time
 
El'endia Starman
El'endia Starman
Yeah.
Triangles-with-corners is really intimidating.
 
Eric Tressler
Eric Tressler
Yeah, it is. I like the way some of these look, but I think this is a pretty clear illustration of why I gave up on them. The variants without corners basically get 1 nontrivial step per column or color hint (and the overall mine count), and that's all they can have.
 
 
1 hour later…
ASCII-only
ASCII-only
5:33 AM
@EricTressler wait can the steam version load levels now?
 
Eric Tressler
Eric Tressler
Yes, for a long time now.
 
ASCII-only
ASCII-only
what is this magic
why have i not seen it before
 
Eric Tressler
Eric Tressler
Those extra levels on the righthand side are all loaded this way
 
ASCII-only
ASCII-only
Oh O_o does it just read some directory? (i.e. you could delete all of them and they would all disappear)
Thinking about it, that's a stupid question >_>
 
Eric Tressler
Eric Tressler
Yes, that's what it does
 
ASCII-only
ASCII-only
5:46 AM
Now all we need is the solver code and we can generate our own levels :P
 
Eric Tressler
Eric Tressler
If it were that easy, I would share it, believe me.
 
ASCII-only
ASCII-only
I guess it's still possible to handcraft puzzles
Do you happen to have some easy-to-share code to generate tilings?
 
Eric Tressler
Eric Tressler
I think it would be a challenge to use my code, since my graph class and my polygon class are both needed to define a tiling (my polygons are positioned relative to the nodes of a graph)
 
ASCII-only
ASCII-only
:| that's a good point
 
 
5 hours later…
flawr
flawr
10:49 AM
I only now discovered the pen feature in tametsi, that helps a lot :)
 
flawr
flawr
10:59 AM
Too bad it has no built in prolog console :D
 
Martin Ender
Martin Ender
:P
kids these days with their newfangled Tametsi 1.4 features ;)
 
flawr
flawr
You mean back in your day you cheated using punch cards? :)
 
ASCII-only
ASCII-only
what are you talking about
clearly he flipped switches and pressed buttons. to input things character-by-character
 
flawr
flawr
that is nothing, back in my day we used binary slide rules
 
 
1 hour later…
flawr
flawr
12:26 PM
@EricTressler feature-request ability to set the pen size for both pens (right/left mouse button) independently
 
AdmBorkBork
AdmBorkBork
12:39 PM
@flawr I played around with it a little way back when, before it was anywhere close to finished, but I must admit I haven't kept up with development on it since.
 
flawr
flawr
@AdmBorkBork That must have been ages ago, when I discovered it quite a while back it was finished I think.
Anyway, I do recommend it :)
 
AdmBorkBork
AdmBorkBork
I'll likely give it a go as soon as I'm done with HL2Ep2
 
 
2 hours later…
El'endia Starman
El'endia Starman
2:22 PM
@flawr How would you use that?
Also, scroll wheel adjusts pen size, apparently.
 
flawr
flawr
2:48 PM
@El'endiaStarman didn't know, but you could just make two sliders on the bottom
 
El'endia Starman
El'endia Starman
Eric tends to be pretty conservative on how much space his UI elements are using. What need do you have that would be solved by having independent pen sizes?
 
Nathan Merrill
Nathan Merrill
I forgot how the UI works: does the pen size affect the eraser?
 
El'endia Starman
El'endia Starman
Considering that the eraser is a pen "color", yes.
 
Nathan Merrill
Nathan Merrill
because I pretty much always want my eraser to be bigger
 
flawr
flawr
@NathanMerrill that was why I was asking!
 
Nathan Merrill
Nathan Merrill
3:05 PM
ok, another UI question: What's the cursor when you are drawing?
does it show the circle before you click?
or just a standard pointer?
hmmm...nevermind, my idea doesn't work
 
El'endia Starman
El'endia Starman
Standard pointer.
 
 
2 hours later…
flawr
flawr
4:48 PM
Oh no, the drawings get lost when you exit the game=(
 
El'endia Starman
El'endia Starman
The drawing is cleared when you exit a level as well.
 
Eric Tressler
Eric Tressler
@flawr yeah, they get lost if you reset or start another puzzle too. I thought about it, and I really don't want to have 2 pen size controls. I wouldn't be against making the eraser a bit bigger by default, and showing the circle you'll be drawing in on the board. It will cause some issues around the UI, though
So I'm not sure I want to go down that path. You could always just nudge the size up with the mousewheel when you want to erase
Ok, on second thought, I might be against doing that. It's not a terrible idea, but it has its own problems.
 
DJMcMayhem
DJMcMayhem
@EricTressler I'd like the eraser to be a bit larger too
 
Eric Tressler
Eric Tressler
Yeah, the problem is that then the pen size control is lying. Someone could legitimately complain about that
And having a preview circle is problematic because if you're hovering over a UI element (say, sound control) and you left click, you will toggle the sound. If you right click, you will draw.
 
DJMcMayhem
DJMcMayhem
True
 
flawr
flawr
5:08 PM
But you have to admit, the drawing tool is really lacking 3d support.
I need another hint for level 14
 
DJMcMayhem
DJMcMayhem
@flawr Look at the right most 2... That should imply something about a nearby number
 
flawr
flawr
thank you:)
 
DJMcMayhem
DJMcMayhem
 
flawr
flawr
@DJMcMayhem can you disable that?
 
El'endia Starman
El'endia Starman
@DJMcMayhem I turned on all the options in the launcher, in fact. Count down tiles, column hints, and color hints, darken finished tiles, and treat gray like a color.
Makes the mundane stuff much easier so I can focus on what's actually tough.
 
DJMcMayhem
DJMcMayhem
5:16 PM
@flawr Actually, you need to enable it. It's off by default (and in your screenshot)
@El'endiaStarman Same here actually. I like all of them on
 
flawr
flawr
Oh you mean not the countdown of the number of bombs?
I need to check this launcher
 
DJMcMayhem
DJMcMayhem
Yeah, I mean the tiles themselves. So in your screenshot, if you had it on the right most 2 would become a 1, and the 3 would become a 1 (because of the tiles you've already flagged)
 
Nathan Merrill
Nathan Merrill
Countdown changed everything
it almost feels cheaty, but I love it
it means I don't have to compare the currently highlighted mines to the number showing
and when I see a 0, I can just click away
 
El'endia Starman
El'endia Starman
Yep. I love being able to clear away half a dozen tiles because of a chain of 0s.
In my opinion, using countdown reduces the "fake" difficulty layered on top of the very real difficulty.
 
DJMcMayhem
DJMcMayhem
@NathanMerrill Only problem is that I've trained by brain to automatically click on 0's, which sometimes becomes a problem when I'm flagging hypothetical branches based on guesses
 
Nathan Merrill
Nathan Merrill
5:29 PM
@EricTressler The only realistic solution I can think of to the eraser problem is to:
1. Show the preview circle
2. Have the eraser bound to a keystroke (instead of right click). This way, when they press the key, the preview circle gets bigger, and you can use a mouse click to actually erase
 
El'endia Starman
El'endia Starman
That said, it did take me a little bit to adjust to the numbers counting down, and even my brother, who had never played before I introduced him with countdown enabled, had to get used to it. It's slightly more natural to have countdown disabled, which I imagine is why that's the default.
 
Nathan Merrill
Nathan Merrill
@DJMcMayhem if you can keep a mental flag as to whether you are in a hypothetical branch or not, then countdown actually makes this easier: You can unflag anything you can't quickly prove
 
DJMcMayhem
DJMcMayhem
What I've started doing is leaving a small dot on every real flag so that I can remember which ones are hypothetical or not
 
Nathan Merrill
Nathan Merrill
lol
 
 
1 hour later…
Martin Ender
Martin Ender
6:33 PM
@DJMcMayhem wow, am I the only one who doesn't? o_O
 
Eric Tressler
Eric Tressler
I play with countdown both on and off, for testing purposes. I still prefer countdown to be off, but I played for a really long time with it off and got used to it.
 
Martin Ender
Martin Ender
7:07 PM
Hollow Knight is on sale again (33% off) if anyone still doesn't have it but wants it.
 
AdmBorkBork
AdmBorkBork
if anyone still doesn't have it but wants it.
 
Martin Ender
Martin Ender
fixed
 
AdmBorkBork
AdmBorkBork
Definitely much better. :)
 
Martin Ender
Martin Ender
Apparently there's going to be an announcement week regarding the Switch release (and then hopefully also Gods & Glory soon)
 
flawr
flawr
@MartinEnder Stop it! I cannot even keep up with all the games I already have!
 
Martin Ender
Martin Ender
7:17 PM
But those games have the fundamental flaw that they aren't Hollow Knight.
3
 
AdmBorkBork
AdmBorkBork
Martin has an excellent point.
 
flawr
flawr
In that case I'll have to buy it.
 
Nathan Merrill
Nathan Merrill
I just started Stephen's Sausage Roll. You still sure that that flaw still applies?
 
flawr
flawr
Done.
 
Martin Ender
Martin Ender
:D
@NathanMerrill Yeah. :P SSR is great though. I still need to finish that.
 
Nathan Merrill
Nathan Merrill
7:20 PM
I posted some thoughts above
 
flawr
flawr
I mean I haven't finished The Witness yet, and in Tametsi I'm only at level 15
 
Martin Ender
Martin Ender
@NathanMerrill yeah I read them, but forgot to respond. but now that I reread them I'm also not sure I've got anything to say. ;)
 
Nathan Merrill
Nathan Merrill
lol, ok
I had another thing bouncing around my head: I wish there was more of a sense of progression
 
Martin Ender
Martin Ender
the controls definitely feel awkward at first, but he makes good use of them in his puzzle design
 
Nathan Merrill
Nathan Merrill
like, I enjoy the fact that the world is made up of the levels
and so when you walk around the world, you see past levels
but I still want like a number or some bar that fills up, or something similar
 
Martin Ender
Martin Ender
7:22 PM
isn't there the sausage count somewhere?
 
Nathan Merrill
Nathan Merrill
yeah on the load game page
if that was on the world page
and a maximum sausage count
that would be fantastic
 
Martin Ender
Martin Ender
ah yeah
 
Eric Tressler
Eric Tressler
I should include a maximum sausage count too. Every game should, really.
 
Nathan Merrill
Nathan Merrill
@EricTressler It should be out of 1, and increment it once they finish a level that is sausage-shaped
it's primary purpose is to confuse people
 
Martin Ender
Martin Ender
What I really like about SSR is that it has the same approach to puzzle design as The Witness (or Jonathan Blow, I suppose): every puzzle teaches you something new about what you can do with the mechanics or how you can deduce a solution. There are no levels that feel like filler or just more of the same.
(But of course the difference between SSR and The Witness is that SSR is an absolute jerk and proud of it. :D)
 
Nathan Merrill
Nathan Merrill
7:51 PM
@MartinEnder I actually get disagree with that. They don't all teach a new concept
 
Martin Ender
Martin Ender
hm really? I never got to a level where I thought "oh yeah, this is the same trick I used on that other level".
 
Nathan Merrill
Nathan Merrill
well, they are all tough
and I have to figure them all out
but its not like a new "concept" is being introduced every level
some of them just require some tough maneuvering
 
Martin Ender
Martin Ender
depends on what you define as a concept, I suppose
 
Nathan Merrill
Nathan Merrill
fair enough :)
 
Martin Ender
Martin Ender
I don't mean each puzzle teaches a new mechanic
but I found that each puzzle gives you new insight into ... I don't know ... "the puzzle space" if that makes any sense?
 
Nathan Merrill
Nathan Merrill
7:54 PM
one of my favorite levels is one where I had to get the two sausages on opposite sides
I'm trying to find an image of it
aha!
Infant's Break
anyways, I quit on the "Tower" level. it feels way overwhelming
there are two new mechanics in that level I don't understand yet
how sausages roll on top of each other, and walking on sausages
 
Martin Ender
Martin Ender
@NathanMerrill Sp3000 hat warned me about that road block but it actually seems more intimidating than it is
 
Nathan Merrill
Nathan Merrill
and trying to figure how to cook like 10 sausages
also, am I correct in the assumption that it's impossible to unskewer if you skewered on the end?
 
Martin Ender
Martin Ender
as far as I've played, yes
but yeah I think I managed to arrive at a solution to the tower through reasoning instead of try random things (that is, I played around with the level for a bit to understand the stacked sausages and stuff, but once I understood the mechanics it was possible to discard a lot of possible approaches quite quickly)
 
Nathan Merrill
Nathan Merrill
I don't the game open, but my current theory in my head is to put a sausage in the opening, skewer, remove sausage, flip, repeat
 
Martin Ender
Martin Ender
8:20 PM
also, after the first world the difficulty ramps up a bit more gradually
the first world has a pretty crazy learning curve for a game though
 
Nathan Merrill
Nathan Merrill
9:06 PM
I can agree with that
I still haven't internalized the concepts yet
like, at the start of each level I kind of just play around to figure out what's happening
 

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