If you ever make a Manufactoria 2, I suggest also having registers. You could also compare them, for things like “Accept if: there are more reds than blues.” Have a red/blue sorting loop, increment A register if it’s blue, B if red, when no colors left compare if A < B then go down and accept.
If you run into a seemingly insurmountable problem, try to simplify it!
For engineers, a reasonable sub-problem to start with is “accept only strings that have the same first & last symbol.” (After all, if it doesn’t begin & end the same, it can’t be symmetrical!) Then, if you haven’t rejected the string, you can repeat that test on the symbols in between, until you’ve either rejected the string or examined all the symbols.
Best of luck!
(Also, sorry for the delay in answering – the notification got caught in filters.)
i actually did end up solving it. ive solved all but the level after metatron. ophanim took me the whole board though.. are you going to make a new game anytime soon?
manufactoria is realy a good one, kind of mind-tiring but a true pleasure to complete.
i misunderstood a problem and solved something else instead : put a yellow in the middle of a tape and remove the color which was at this place(ODD lengh). Interesting problem just a bit harder than for the even lengh problem i think.
thanks for the game
Unfortunately, I don’t have a sequel planned, but I’d recommend you look at Zachtronics’ games, if you haven’t already: http://www.zachtronicsindustries.com/ . His games were a big inspira…
Unfortunately, I don’t have a sequel planned, but I’d recommend you look at Zachtronics’ games, if you haven’t already: http://www.zachtronicsindustries.com/ . His games were a big inspiration for Manufactoria, and they’re all totally free. Codex of Alchemical Engineering, Bureau of Steam Engineering, and KOHCTPYKTOP are my personal favorites.
I want to be able to build my own custom gates. game would be much easyer if I could have a gate that goes through one of my own maps and preforms the convayer belt sequence there putting it in one of three holes that corisponds to the three output brances on my custom function gate. because as it is there just isn’t enough space and a lot of the t…
I want to be able to build my own custom gates. game would be much easyer if I could have a gate that goes through one of my own maps and preforms the convayer belt sequence there putting it in one of three holes that corisponds to the three output brances on my custom function gate. because as it is there just isn’t enough space and a lot of the things you do need to be pasted over and over in diffrent places. looking down a bit I think jjb770 posted something really similar. for example I passed the are two strings devided by a green dot = test. and the put a green dot in the center test. but there is no way in the blackest pits of hell that both solutions will fit on a map allowing me to do the is this string A A level.
Being a CS undergrad, Manufactoria is definitely one of my favorite games so far. It leans more to the parser/compiler side than Lightbot (which I don’t like that much; dunno why). I wonder though, whether the machines you can build could be formalized somehow. It has some similarities with a push-down automaton used for accepting context-free lang…
Being a CS undergrad, Manufactoria is definitely one of my favorite games so far. It leans more to the parser/compiler side than Lightbot (which I don’t like that much; dunno why). I wonder though, whether the machines you can build could be formalized somehow. It has some similarities with a push-down automaton used for accepting context-free languages, but the robot’s tape isn’t a stack but a queue.
Anyway, thanks for the great game and I still haven’t completed it yet.
Happy to hear you like the game! The machines in the game are actually a somewhat obscure Turing-equivalent automaton called Queue Machines ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queue_machine ), and it’s fai…
Happy to hear you like the game! The machines in the game are actually a somewhat obscure Turing-equivalent automaton called Queue Machines ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queue_machine ), and it’s fairly easy to translate from the machines in the game to the formal description, though the explanation (much less the proof) is too large for this margin to contain it.
Also, I actually hadn’t heard of Lightbot before. Interesting-looking game! I’ll have to give it a shot at some point.
Who wouldn’t enjoy it? The very idea is preposterous! ;) By the way, I have designed a machine that converts 5-bit binary numbers into a ten pixel high text string! Can’t build it though, because it’s…
Who wouldn’t enjoy it? The very idea is preposterous! ;) By the way, I have designed a machine that converts 5-bit binary numbers into a ten pixel high text string! Can’t build it though, because it’s HUGE! Ninety squares wide!
I love Manufactoria…the one thing that I can’t find (even in the credits!) is what the music is. It’s great, sounds like a loop of a Shostakovitch symphony, or some such.
Manufactoria is possibly the best flash game I’ve ever played online. Kudos to you. Any plans for a sequel, using the same game but with different puzzles?
Also, if the puzzles become more complicated, maybe you could be allowed to insert any puzzles you solved before in later puzzles as a gate on the board, so the complexity of the puzzles could…
Manufactoria is possibly the best flash game I’ve ever played online. Kudos to you. Any plans for a sequel, using the same game but with different puzzles?
Also, if the puzzles become more complicated, maybe you could be allowed to insert any puzzles you solved before in later puzzles as a gate on the board, so the complexity of the puzzles could grow and build on themselves. :-)
Or with the copy-paste feature, for that matter – but that can take up a lot of space, depending on the solution. I think JB was suggesting that you would be able to insert them as single tiles, that …
Or with the copy-paste feature, for that matter – but that can take up a lot of space, depending on the solution. I think JB was suggesting that you would be able to insert them as single tiles, that would automatically perform the operation their parent-level performed – probably accept/reject levels would branch, while output levels would modify the tape. You could iconographically represent them as literal ‘black boxes’, with the symbol of their level inscribed…
…hm. The idea of a game in which you very literally build your own tools from the most basic building blocks is tempting, but my current stance on the matter is that I’d prefer to focus on creating New and Innovative things. I do have one more major update planned for Manufactoria, introducing patented* MALEVOLENCETECHNOLOGY, to make level solution-verification much more reliable than it is at present – it’s not so great right now, and I get a ton of valid complaints about the problem. Anyway, I’m going to patch that in, add level-sharing for custom levels, fix some other bugs (some of which are already fixed, but not uploaded)… and honestly, I’ve thought I was done working on this game four times now, and see how that’s gone – but aside from that, no plans for a sequel.
Glad you’re enjoying the game! Hopefully custom-level sharing will help scratch your itch a little bit, once I get that up. (And maybe I’ll do some work on the terrible custom-level UI, while I’m at it…)
I’ve had some classes about computing, been all over all the finite state machines, pushdowns and turings, and still, some of the levels give me a headache… It’s mostly that I feel somewhat claustrophobic, knowing that even if I manage to create a correct algorithm, I won’t have enough place to implement it. Of course, there’s enough for a more opt…
I’ve had some classes about computing, been all over all the finite state machines, pushdowns and turings, and still, some of the levels give me a headache… It’s mostly that I feel somewhat claustrophobic, knowing that even if I manage to create a correct algorithm, I won’t have enough place to implement it. Of course, there’s enough for a more optimized algorithms, but these are extremely hard to make. It would be great if only a few more blocks were available :)
I am stubborn and I refuse to peek at available solutions, but I guess this is gonna take a while for me to finish the game. Some levels are the examples of the recursive languages (for example “same number of blue, then same number of red”) and that would be easier with stack-based track, but the game mechanics work with the queue, so it makes it a bit more difficult on such levels.
Also, perhaps it would be good if we can try all tests even if one fails, and then you get 4/6 passed, for example. Of course, the level would be considered completed only when all tests pass, but it is annoying to try first two tests which (for some scenarion) always pass, only to realize that the third one won’t. It would be great if we could test only the third.
Another thing that you really got to add is add a keyboard shortcut for “speed up/speed down”. Perhaps A and D (or W and S) since you already have a hand on those keys, and these have no use while in test mode. It’s really hard to do this with precision by using the mouse.
Other than that, this is the most intelligent game I’ve seen in a few years. Keep up the good work.
Sorry about the slow response! I’ve gotten behind on my correspondence.
1) Sorry about the claustrophobia! Mostly that’s an artifact of the limited resolution, and my reluctance to implement scrolling; there’s only so many grid squares you can fit in a 240×240 space! (Closer to 208×208, actually.)
3) Sort of a skipping-around thing… probably a ‘skip test’ button, though that’d be confusing… hm. Probably not going to happen, but I need to think about it.
4) Keyboard shortcut added! In for the next version. (I’ll have to document it somewhere…)
Weee, you implemented speed up, that’s gonna keep me playing for a bit longer… ;) Nice job. Yeah, I am a programmer too and trust me, I know how fuzzy scrolling can get, so no problem… I just need to …
Weee, you implemented speed up, that’s gonna keep me playing for a bit longer… ;) Nice job. Yeah, I am a programmer too and trust me, I know how fuzzy scrolling can get, so no problem… I just need to wrap my mind about the problem and stop thinking linear. Recursion! Recursion! Recursion!
I just wanted to post here and say how much I enjoyed your game Manufactoria. It was an ingenious way of showcasing finite state machines, error testing and algorithm implementation. I wish you all the best for any future games you release and am glad that there is someone else who is making games that kind-of-in-a-small-way teach programming conce…
I just wanted to post here and say how much I enjoyed your game Manufactoria. It was an ingenious way of showcasing finite state machines, error testing and algorithm implementation. I wish you all the best for any future games you release and am glad that there is someone else who is making games that kind-of-in-a-small-way teach programming concepts too. Great job!
First of all: Great game, got my brain overheating for several hours now. But there is something not working with the level sharing: If someone posts a custom level, and you try to load it, you are sent to the in-game lecel selection screen and nothing else happens. There is also no entry in the custom levels selection. As I would like it very much…
First of all: Great game, got my brain overheating for several hours now. But there is something not working with the level sharing: If someone posts a custom level, and you try to load it, you are sent to the in-game lecel selection screen and nothing else happens. There is also no entry in the custom levels selection. As I would like it very much to try some new challenges (although Metatron still remains to be solved), it would be very nice if you could fix that, or tell me what the problem about it is, or tell me if there is something I missed. Thanks in advance, XLNT
Oh, BTW: I just finished Metatron, and I was looking forward to compare my scores to those of others. But the game did not submit any score, although I have solved all levels. What triggers the submit…
Oh, BTW: I just finished Metatron, and I was looking forward to compare my scores to those of others. But the game did not submit any score, although I have solved all levels. What triggers the submitting of scores? I thought probably finishing Engineers again, but no. Reload of the page also does not help…
1) Thanks for letting me know about the custom-levels problem; I’ll look into it. For the moment, you can just paste the links you got into the field on the left side of the select screen; they’ll be …
1) Thanks for letting me know about the custom-levels problem; I’ll look into it. For the moment, you can just paste the links you got into the field on the left side of the select screen; they’ll be loaded into the selected level-slot on the right. It’s a bit more of a hassle – and I’ll try to fix the problem – but it should tide you by.
2) Scores are a horrific mess. (Just look at the parts-scores!) I do not even know what is going on there. I will do what I can to fix things.
@PleasingFungus: Kudos to this game. It proved to be better than similar algorithm based games. One thing about doing testing, as you say, it is not feasible to test for all cases. But a suitable set of test inputs should validate the correctness of the algo by testing fringe cases and a few in between.
@PleasingFungus: Kudos to this game. It proved to be better than similar algorithm based games. One thing about doing testing, as you say, it is not feasible to test for all cases. But a suitable set of test inputs should validate the correctness of the algo by testing fringe cases and a few in between.
And btw, the recent update got the maps swapped, but on a few, the solutions were not correctly updated. Level 22 I think is one of them.
The only gripe I have about this game is the limited game space. If random input is given, then large or unlimited game space should be provided. This allows different solutions, even inefficient ones, and prevents the player from coding for specific patterns.
If a limited game space is provided, then the input should not be random, as the very constraining of space means that a specific type of solution is meant as the “right” answer and not an open-ended solution.
Test cases: the exact line to draw is unclear. Certainly some fixed cases should be covered for each, and if players tell me that some very obvious case is omitted, then I’ll correct that… but, again,…
Test cases: the exact line to draw is unclear. Certainly some fixed cases should be covered for each, and if players tell me that some very obvious case is omitted, then I’ll correct that… but, again, it’s impossible to cover everything; there’s always going to be some case that’s just barely more specific than what I have that won’t necessarily be tested for. It’s a balancing act.
Map-swapping: Yeah, I know. That was intentional – for game balance/flow purposes. After the player beats ‘Androids’, they’re supposed to know how to do certain things, but the level that was there before was so easy to ‘cheat’ past, players weren’t learning those things… the problem was that, as you noted, it broke solutions. Up until now, I haven’t had any way to tell what version of the game people’s saves are from… accordingly, I couldn’t just swap the solutions between Androids and Robo-Children, or they’d swap every time you loaded the level!
There’s a version-number that saves are now being marked with, but I can’t really do anything retroactively. Very sorry about the mess.
Game space: It’s an issue, I agree, especially for the bonus levels. Mostly I’ve tried to leave ample space for levels, but technical constraints (the max 13×13 grid that will fit inside the window) mean that the later ones get kinda cramped.
I agree that it’s non-ideal – though I’m not sure what you mean about a larger game-space preventing the player from coding for specific patterns? – but I’m not certain that it needs to be changed. I’ve seen a great deal of variety in solutions, even for the very late ones… it does mean that some optimization is required, but honestly, the late ones are so complex, they’d probably never finish without optimization!
I noticed that the test cases were fairly complete. One thing that I would like is for there to be some one to view the robot’s starting pattern, when it gets stuck in an infinite loop I have to redo…
I noticed that the test cases were fairly complete. One thing that I would like is for there to be some one to view the robot’s starting pattern, when it gets stuck in an infinite loop I have to redo the series of tests to find out what input caused that.
First of all really great game I love it. Makes one think about what to do not just try somethhing
No an idea for an improvement. Why dont you make a feature so that its posible to make a test run with a specifick string defined by the user. Have atleast 2 machines thats been Accepted even thou I know its not right yet… would make it easier to make…
First of all really great game I love it. Makes one think about what to do not just try somethhing
No an idea for an improvement. Why dont you make a feature so that its posible to make a test run with a specifick string defined by the user. Have atleast 2 machines thats been Accepted even thou I know its not right yet… would make it easier to make the perfect machine and not just one that by luck worked.
I believe you asked the same question on Formspring, but it’s worth answering here: that feature’s already in the game! Click on the ‘wrench’ button, between the ‘save’ and ‘run’ buttons.
Yeah you did ;) It just wasnt obvius ingame (Went baning my head against a wall after you posted it ;))
Thanks for a really great game. As an idea for grey swapping. How about 1. space = swap colors, 2. space = swap grey, 3. Space = swap colors and so on… if thats an easy work around to it atleast ;)
Haha, you shouldn’t have to read Wikipedia to play a Flash game!
Lolkiller1, I’m sorry about the confusion; I didn’t want the explanatory-cutscene-things to be too long, so I ended up erring on the side of terseness with the binary one. I’ll try to lengthen it later, make it a bit more helpful.
I’m studying computer science and it became one of my favorite games around here the moment I saw it! Love puzzle games, can’t wait for more games from you!
Could you please add some pattern with three consecutive dots of any color in Robobears? This – ?lvl=7&code=p12:5f3;c11:5f0;c12:4f3;p10:5f3;p9:5f3;c9:6f3;c13:5f2;p14:5f3;p15:5f3;c15:6f3;c10:6f0;c10:7f2;c11:7f2;c14:7f0;c13:7f0;c12:7f3;c12:8f3;c12:9f3;c12:10f3;c9:7f2;c15:7f0; – pattern would fail any pattern with aforementioned element, regardles…
Could you please add some pattern with three consecutive dots of any color in Robobears? This – ?lvl=7&code=p12:5f3;c11:5f0;c12:4f3;p10:5f3;p9:5f3;c9:6f3;c13:5f2;p14:5f3;p15:5f3;c15:6f3;c10:6f0;c10:7f2;c11:7f2;c14:7f0;c13:7f0;c12:7f3;c12:8f3;c12:9f3;c12:10f3;c9:7f2;c15:7f0; – pattern would fail any pattern with aforementioned element, regardless of it’s vailidity, but gives off real results because of wrong tests.
You can always create a machine that works for the tests given without properly solving the level – no matter how many tests you add. It’s a Sisyphean task!
@PleasingFungus: Kudos to this game. It proved to be better than similar algorithm based games. One thing about doing testing, as you say, it is not feasible to test for all cases. But a suitable s…
@PleasingFungus: Kudos to this game. It proved to be better than similar algorithm based games. One thing about doing testing, as you say, it is not feasible to test for all cases. But a suitable set of test inputs should validate the correctness of the algo by testing fringe cases and a few in between.
And btw, the recent update got the maps swapped, but on a few, the solutions were not correctly updated. Level 22 I think is one of them.
Great concept but I hate the fact you cant preview upcoming patterns. Acceptably frustrating is building a machine you think is going to work but then it doesn’t. This game is unacceptably frustrating because u don’t know what to build until it’s served ! That one little tweak would take it from a 2/5 game to a 4/5 game. Just make it an option wher…
Great concept but I hate the fact you cant preview upcoming patterns. Acceptably frustrating is building a machine you think is going to work but then it doesn’t. This game is unacceptably frustrating because u don’t know what to build until it’s served ! That one little tweak would take it from a 2/5 game to a 4/5 game. Just make it an option where HARD has no preview and NORMAL gives you a preview. I like the music, A+ For the effort, but actual gameplay is 2/5 because of this one point.
@YorMuddar: I hear your pain. But as FarmeHE mentions, that is the very idea of the game. This is what developers/software engineers/programmers do. They get the generic definition of the input th…
@YorMuddar: I hear your pain. But as FarmeHE mentions, that is the very idea of the game. This is what developers/software engineers/programmers do. They get the generic definition of the input that their program would receive and the expected output. Their program is SUPPOSED to deal with every in between and deal those that fall outside as errors.
The only gripe I have about this game is the limited game space. If random input is given, then large or unlimited game space should be provided. This allows different solutions, even inefficient ones, and prevents the player from coding for specific patterns.
If a limited game space is provided, then the input should not be random, as the very constraining of space means that a specific type of solution is meant as the “right” answer and not an open-ended solution.
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