A Halting Problem

kuro 2022-04-04 16:11

The level of polish on this one is amazing. Really liked the music and the visuals. Simple and effective (I'd replace the font on the "Textbook excerpt" or do something with it, bc it uglyfies the otherwise beautiful experience, but I'm not taking that into account in the rating)

I've seen a lot of games like this last LD so there's not much innovation wise, and I don't really get the theme connection.

Got pretty far, but I don't like to think so didn't finish this one.

Well done :thumbsup:

honey-pony 2022-04-04 19:55

@kuro Thank you for the feedback!

If I'm gonna be honest the main things I ended up liking about my game are the main menu and the music :sweat_smile:

If you want to know the theme connection, it is intended to be this: each program is inevitably going to halt, so your goal is to "delay" the halting until after the task is done.

In practice... you just move the "stop" command to the end of the program each time. So, the thematic connection ended up being extremely weak. At least for me--I definitely don't feel like I'm delaying anything when playing through each level.

lone-wolf 2022-04-05 02:30

This didn't feel as content-packed as some of your previous games. But the puzzle 'potency' seemed the same, which I think you were aiming for, so good job :P

I think the 'medkits' (to give you my internal name for them) gave me the strongest feeling of delaying the inevitable, they even let you change what the inevitable thing was. (Note: I didn't think of this until I read the comments here)

One thing I'd suggest is saving the command tree across executions, so you don't have to rebuild it every time you fail. I was using Flameshot's Pin feature in some of the harder puzzles.

Nice work though! I had an enjoyable ~~14 minutes

2022-04-04_18-42.png

honey-pony 2022-04-05 15:55

@lone-wolf I definitely think that either saving the command tree somehow or having an undo/redo system would be a major improvement. Thanks for playing and congrats on winning! :smile:

lcstark 2022-04-06 19:19

I always enjoy a nice command set programming game, and this one was no exception.

The drag&drop system was intuitive and worked well, for the most part. I think its drop zones could use a bit of adjusting. I had some troubles with moving an instruction to the very end or with placing an instruction in a proper place in a repeat block. I think it didn't detect the drop area properly and just left the instruction where I picked it up from.

I haven't finished it yet (I've gone through something like 10 puzzles), but I will definitely return to it later. ;)

tomssuli 2022-04-07 08:47

Solid simple game.

I have played these so many times with different themes (minecraft etc) so I'm used to this kind of games. I wish there had been a twist somewhere in addition to collecting additional orders but after ~10 puzzles there's not much new on the table. Maybe I'll finish later. Music is ok but had to turn it off after a while as it became jarring.

I had high hopes for mood from your earlier games. This game didn't have any of that, but it's a complete solid game and I couldn't find any bugs. I couldn't also tell how the game fit the theme, but maybe I didn't read the notes well enough or maybe there was more plot at a later point.

Oh and for the sounds, I liked the detail that there was different click sounds when you hovered the button :smile:

EDIT: I actually solved the rest of the puzzles and graduated. Good workout for the brain.

trexxak 2022-04-07 13:19

I was immediately thinking to myself 'hm, didn't Honey Pony do something very similar before?' and turns out my memory served me right! I do have to say that this iteration is way more fun, though.

Loved the twist with the toolboxes, and how it actually did add one layer of strategy on top of the program execution game. On another note, I really appreciate the visual representation of levels in your UIs, with multiple related levels being connected. It just feels very structured and helps remembering the 'lessons' that came before! Great job :D

realryanrogers 2022-04-11 20:22

Enjoyed the game, but the sound design and UI presentation were top notch!

scrawny 2022-04-11 20:46

Had a great time, the puzzle design and progression was pretty impressive for a compo game, seemed very deliberate and purposeful. Would definitely need to save the command stack between failed attempts though, if the puzzles got any more complex. Fun, intuitive, neat idea, all-around great entry. Good job

omgitsleana 2022-04-11 21:17

Nice game, simple but well polished.

The difficulty curve is not perfect, but for a jam I'd say it's good.

I would have really liked to have the ability to zoom out for levels where you couldn't see the whole layout at once. Also, when you make an attempt that doesn't succeed, your code gets reset, and that's pretty frustrating.

Really fun otherwise, and the UI was very good, well done!

likirus 2022-04-12 08:12

Amazing game. Very well polished. Although creating a programming game in a competition full of programmers, who can reasonably be expected to like programming games, might be considered cheating :D The only minor complaint I had is what others have already mentioned that the code gets reset when you fail. Differentiating between left and right is A LOT more difficult than programming, and I may or may not have created the right code, but messed up left and right and had to redo everything instead of only changing the direction. ld_programming_game.png

ambrits 2022-04-12 21:54

Fun idea, nice difficulty curve and perfectly working UI. My only complaint is the same one others have mentioned about the code reset. Nice work!

frogravity 2022-04-13 15:49

Really nice game! I loved all the UI (especially the level select menu) and transitions, they were really polished. There were also quite a lot of puzzles. The med kits and nested repeat instructions were good, unexpected ideas. The "stop" command being inevitable felt really tacked on, especially since every single puzzle required you to just move it to the end of the program - I would've loved to see a puzzle where it was actually useful, like to abort a loop or something.

Overall, this felt like a more polished, albeit watered-down, version of your previous entry. Still, it's a very good entry!

harmadillo 2022-04-13 17:40

Great game. Enjoyed the puzzles. UI was excellent, especially the arranging of the code.

bernhard 2022-04-15 15:01

Very impressive entry. I once tried something [similar for LD47](https://schellingb.github.io/Botloop/) but this is far beyond in every way. First of all the stages are all a decent challenge with a good steadily difficulty increase. As many have mentioned the UI is a joy to use and very intuitive. I have yet to try Godot so it's hard to say how much of the functionality comes built-in and how much was made for the jam, but nevertheless this being done in 48 hours with everything around it is astounding.

saintchristopher777 2022-04-16 12:28

Very cool game! (I mean, you can hardly go wrong with a programming game being played and rated by other game programmers, right?) ;-)

The game is well polished and fun. sure, the theme connection is a bit weak, but who really cares. The only "bug" I ran into was visual - sometimes the "preview" of the commands you'd get from the parts boxes would go off screen so I couldn't fully see what I would get from them:

Halting.png

Anyway, great work, I had fun!

honey-pony 2022-04-16 15:47

@saintchristopher777

Do note it is possible to pan with the mouse in order to bring those popups into view. (This is only mentioned once IIRC so it may be easy to miss).

Either way thanks for playing!

acearcher 2022-04-18 21:45

Overall, very enjoyable and super impressive for a jam game, let alone compo! I only had a few issues, but they've all been addressed already (saving the configuration, box contents off screen, zooming) and are pretty minor. It's been a while since I personally have played a game in this style, and I always love a good puzzle! This is the kind of thing I'd love to see expanded and fleshed out with more levels in the future, especially since it's already so polished.

nyxkn 2022-04-19 13:49

Really well made! Twisting curve was EVIL. Took me way longer than I care to admit. Really well executed game. Good scope and great polish. The level select menu was really pretty! Glad to see menus receiving some love. Music got a little annoying after a while so I'm glad there was a volume slider. The only criticism is that on failure I would have liked to see the old code to better connect what I had written to what had happened.

mikouaji 2022-04-19 14:06

Interesting use of the theme :D The game plays very good, nothing broke. Visuals are nice and the sound is very good :) Impressive how much you have done and the quality of the game in such short time!

mossieur-patate 2022-09-05 15:40

I just want to second nyxkn’s opinion that *Twisting Curve* is way more difficult than the rest, at least from the beginning to here (since I am stuck there), because I thought the others were straightforward (and I had no trouble with left and right, contrary to Likirus), while I just cannot figure the solution here, even staring wide-eyedly at the screen. Or maybe is my brain bugging!

The lesson is probably that nested loops add a strong layer of difficulty.

mariam 2023-01-11 04:41

This is very annoying, but you still have to solve.

https://www.mymilestonecard.top/