My name is Beethro Budkin. I am a smitemaster.
I smite things to make a living. – [Author’s description]
Puzzle Script DROD (Lukas)
Posted by Tim
on February 28, 2014
My name is Beethro Budkin. I am a smitemaster.
I smite things to make a living. – [Author’s description]
Oh, I love this. Really captures the tactical feel of the original. I was always awful at the orthogonal tile rooms so I’m having a rough time beating the level in the screenshot, but this does a great job of condensing DROD puzzles into a PuzzleScript-appropriate level size.
Yeah, this is great. (I’ve only gotten that puzzle down to six remaining roaches, and it seems clear that the strategy that got me that far is likely a dead end.)
It’s totally doable: the trick is, after you’ve gotten rid of the roaches you can get rid of without moving, trap a roach on the upper trapdoor. You’ll be able to force the remainder to either stay behind their barrier, or come at you single-file.
Any chance for a more in-depth hint?
The moves that have gotten me the closest using your strategy have been (not including the initial sword swinging to take care of all free roaches at the start), with sword pointing East to begin: N, E, clockwise, E, N, N, N, N, N, clockwise. I have a feeling there’s still a fundamental solution-idea here that I haven’t gleaned?
General strategy: you want to eliminate the possibility of any roaches attacking you from behind, or from the sides. No roach should ever be closer than one square away: if that happens, you’re already dead. You have to take advantage of how the roaches move: if you keep shimmying up and down, they’ll do the same.
Pointing west, from the purple.
NWNSNSNS.
Now head north, and remember my first hint!
Ah, that’s frustrating. Unless I’m misinterpreting, it looks like this puzzle is dependent on roach turn-order, such that despite the room having East-West symmetry it’s easily solvable if you head west first and (I suspect) impossible to solve if you happen to head east.
It only works because the top of the three roaches on the right moves down first and blocks the movement of the middle one as you do your NSNSNS dance.
(It’s unfortunate that the two columns of roaches seem to have inverted turn-ordering — maybe a limitation of PuzzleScript?)
In any case, thanks for the help!