A Halting Problem
In A Halting Problem, you are tasked with programming a robot to navigate some simple mazes. The only catch: every single program has a fixed set of instructions, including a "stop" instruction.
Can you master the art of programming these machines?
Notes on Web Version
Fullscreen highly recommended!
Audio latency is really bad on Firefox. I recommend playing in Chrome.
Comments
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For the record, having played with Firefox (and not willing to support seedy noxious Google), I experienced no sound lag. (The only problem was that I let the game run for the night not to lose my progress, and there was no more sound when getting back to it, which may be a Web problem?)
I am totally stuck in level Twisting Curve… I am puzzled! I managed all the other levels at my first try and very fast without any problem, but this one mesmerizes me. This might not just be me, seeing how someone else (nyxkn) also took notice of this level. I went as far as writing the elementary moves in an algebraic-inspired way to see where the loops could fit, but this did not do the trick! X)
Thanks for playing!
That level has a lot of history, strangely enough. A very similar level is in one of my previous games (Super Box Bot's Package Push). Both of them come from a fractal pattern I started drawing just for fun maybe 7 years ago. Funnily enough, it took me a few years before I sat down and figured out how to algorithmically represent that fractal, despite a couple of failed attempts! It is kind of a tricky pattern.
Anyways, I took a screenshot of the solution and uploaded it to imgur here.
If you want a hint, though, here's what I could say: start with a small piece of code that gets around the first U-shaped bend, and then see what would be necessary to repeat that process around all 3 bends.
Hey there! Coming back to it after quite some busy time (by the way, thank you for the answer and backstory, I love this kind of details), you know what? Solved it almost instantly. XD I realized where my thinking went wrong: [spoiler] I had counted how many tiles the machine had to move, which is 18, and then proceeded to compute how many loops one could make; this is 3 × 3 × 2, which is 18. And so… I wrongfully deducted I had to have all move instructions at the innermost part of the code, imbricating all three loops, because I totally overlooked the implicit number of move commands (a nice nifty 2). This just goes to show where analytical thinking gone wrong — or rather, with wrong premisses — can get you!! I spent way too much time on this level, this is ridiculous. XD
You know, this was exactly how I approached the level first, I just kept on having this weird fixation of forgetting to factor in the aforesaid implicit 2 factor. X)
Anyway, thanks for the game! Just my two cents: while the finishing touches are incredible (I would be hard-pressed to come up with this; I still have to take a serious look at Godot, though, and only barely know Bevy when it comes to 3D engines), as you noted yourself, the concept did not match the theme, and was not such a twist (except for the title of that evil ‘twisting curve’!); I am very concept-oriented and could be pleased with literally only geometric primitives but a fantastic concept. Which is what I will (clumsily?) go for in my first attempt at Ludum Dare. Be warned if you stumbled upon it in these parts!
(I don’t want to sound overly critical, it’s just my obsession with originality; the game/prototype was pleasant and commenters already pointed out its merits, I think!)
Oh yes, side question: how did you make the music? This may be useful to me, although I may end up going full mouth-made audio. ;)
Well, I absolutely appreciate the feedback! I may well return the favor this upcoming Ludum Dare :)
Warning: lots of info regarding Ludum Dare music and sound incoming!
The DAW I used for this game is Reaper, which is nice because it is cheap and not a subscription fee -- overall very nice IMO. However, I used to use LMMS, which is completely free, for Ludum Dare music. It's honestly in some ways easier to use than Reaper, and I don't do anything with Reaper that is that different from my LMMS work.
Besides the DAW itself, I used a handful of virtual instruments:
- The drums are from Spitfire LABS -- which is a collection of free virtual instruments from Spitfire Audio/
- The bass guitar is Ample Bass P Lite II, which is free and honestly is one of my favorites--it has actually inspired me to start learning the bass guitar!
- The piano is Spitfire's "Felt Piano," which I got because it was apparently used in Celeste's soundtrack.
- The synth parts are done with Matt Tytel's Helm, which is a nice synthesizer. He also makes Vital which is pretty neat as well.
- The strings are another Spitfire LABS instrument.
But, I have made music a whole bunch of ways over the past few years doing Ludum Dare.
One thing I used to use a lot of was SoundFonts. I believe they're basically an old, somewhat standardized sampler format, or something. But, the basic idea is, you can download a big SoundFont pack that has like a hundred different instrument sounds in it, and at least to my untrained ears they all tend to sound nice. They're a nice way to quickly get a lot of options for acoustic-sounding virtual instruments without researching in-depth a bunch of specific plugins; you just have one plugin that plays SoundFont files and then you can browse through the SoundFonts you downloaded and see if any of them sound right for whatever you're doing. (I have been considering getting back into SoundFonts myself, but they are actually harder to use in Reaper than in LMMS...!)
Also, a nice DAW-less way to make Ludum Dare music is through beepbox.co. It's a great tool, very easy to just dive in and start making music with, all you really need is a mouse and some speakers. The last time I used Beepbox for Ludum Dare music was Ludum Dare 45. It's definitely one of my favorite tools, even if I haven't used it in a while.
(And, speaking of classic Ludum Dare sound tools -- maybe you've heard of sfxr and bfxr and the chiptune sounds they can generate. One more tool I can recommend in that genre is sfxia, which is unfortunately kind of obscure but is great at making clicky sounds IMO)
Well, hopefully some of that information is useful. I'm not sure quite where you're coming from, maybe you already have a DAW you're very comfortable with, and all. But, now you know what I use!
Anyways, good luck with your first Ludum Dare! 😄
A great thank you for the information; I did not expect the full list of instruments! Sounds (!) like you went out of your way to provide nice music.
I knew about soundfonts (which I believe you can use in FL Studio? Which I still have not tried), although I never used it. This may be the time, as I was precisely considering LMMS! I shall see tomorrow how this is coming along. I also stumbled upon Magix Music Maker; I may take a look.
I also knew about Beepbox, actually! Nevertheless, I think it may not be so easy to use in a short time frame if you are not a bit experimented as a musician, as you seem to be forced into getting a set of keys at each point. I had a bit of tearing my hair out when merely trying to compose a test for a melody I had in mind (for something totally different, my dream game project) because of this! Or maybe there is a way to have the full span of notes, but I did not see it in the numerous options — I only made a few attempts, but I definitely thought it would be useful to me at least for testing out ideas and possibly composing (although preferably outside of short game jams).
sfxr and bfxr were also already known to me (my various patient research around game creation paid off!); I used sfxr some times, it is definitely useful for prototyping or 8-bit sounding games. I do not think I knew about sfxia, but this is also for sound effects, apparently; hey, maybe you can use these as notes, or create your own soundfonts with them! :) Not at all experimented enough to do this for the time being, though.
By the way, I discovered SUPER-LOOPER (thanks to Elephant In The Room). It sounds awesome even when clicking somewhat randomly, which is a nice feature. ;) Although I guess it has a more distinctive style and is thus more recognisable.
I am a programmer at heart, curious for everything but expert at (almost?) nothing, and am a total amateur when it comes to music. X) Progressing slowly but steadily (and thus winning the race?…) in many areas, and I thought I might settle on FL Studio someday since it seems so able, but for now, really in an explore-and-test phase. I really wanted to create my own music up to here, but the time limits (which are supposed to boost creativity, and did in concepts and programming) made me end up lazily relying on good friend Kevin MacLeod…
I am sure I will need it. XD Thanks, may the spirit of creativity dawn upon you!
(Speaking of short game jams as a challenge: I tried several three-day game jams where I almost infallibly ran into time problems, and only one two-day game jam, the latter being a semi-dire lesson in how puzzle design requires thinking up the levels as a top priority before almost everything else! Ironically, I still managed to pull it off reasonably for a three-day game jam while designing the 17 levels towards the end — although the core idea and some subtle cases programming are what I am really most happy with —, but had to start too late to get feedback on it; and even more ironically, the only ‘long’ (7-day) game jam I took part in was towards the last day with a very small witty game, which was super well received for originality. From all of this and also from seeing several ‘puzzle games’, I came to the conclusion that managing to design a reflection game that is not a succession of levels could be clever both in terms of time management and innovation. This is the theory, but things may go completely awry, of course. XD)
PS: I forgot to mention CGmusic, which is apparently a music generator (and thus falls somewhat in the grey line of AI-generated content debate, I think), and GXSCC which can make any MIDI feel like a chiptune. (Both discovered yesterday through Total Party Kill.) I will not use such automated generating tool, as I feel this is a bit outside of the do-it-yourself spirit, but it is still interesting in itself.