SpaceChem Review 

Depending on how invested I am in the game, I'll either walk away, or start consulting Google for solutions so I can get to more content. So I have seen the end of SpaceChem, but only because I copied solutions shared by others.

Try Opus Magnum? Unlike SpaceChem and most Zachtronics games the complexity doesn't spiral off into insanity. You have an infinite board and an infinite number of devices that can each be programmed arbitrarily. So there's pretty much always a straightforward solution to get past any sticking point by taking more time and using more space. The difficulty comes back while trying to optimize your solutions but that's always a self-motivated thing -- you never *have* to do it.

Totally wasted opportunity! I was thinking that in 'Recommending Zachatronics', too...

SiestaYonJyuGo I mean, personally, I couldn't care less. I mainly watch dated material because it's too difficult to keep up with everything, plus it's impossible to completely future-proof something. If you wanted to make a concession, just leave out the number. "This is the first in a series of reviews" instead of "X reviews".

Sounds to me like you've never had something spoiled to you. Adding it in as a courtesy to people who were intrigued, but did not want to spoil themselves, is to me the better option. There are plenty of reviews out there which stay spoiler-free, and many others which will say "skip to [time] to avoid spoilers", so saying up-front that there's going to be spoilers is a nice bit of courtesy to those watching. That said, the main point of discussion, I think, wasn't about spoilers per se, since as Matthewmatosis pointed out himself, Spacechem isn't really structured in a way that can be spoiled exactly. You could copy his solutions, but that would almost be like cheating, but only you would know you're cheating, but the only thing you're really cheating yourself out of is the point of the game, which is to solve the puzzles by your own logic and planning. I'm not sure I understand your point about it being disingenuous.

oxygen-potassium

Zachtronics is a company that produced a half a dozen games about programming in different hats

@@yonatanbeer3475 zach actually said it himself lol

I'm a layman. Do explain away!

Well, apparently someone built a machine in Spacechem that can execute programs written in the programming language brainfuck. This demonstrates that Spacechem is Turing complete, or computationally universal. This means that Spacechem can simulate any computer, and that any and all algorithms and computer programs ever implemented could theoretically be implemented in Spacechem. That is ignoring limited memory/storage space, as a Turing machine is an abstract machine with infinite memory and SpaceChem isn't. Not to mention it would be terribly inefficient both in execution and to work with, so you'd have to be an absolute loon to try to get any practical use out of it. But people are writing programs in brainfuck and that's already pretty loony, soooo ....

I'm now wondering if writing my code in SpaceChem would make my workday more or less enjoyable... At least i'm pretty sure it'd be superior to using powerpoint ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-uNjxe8ShM-8.html

"How are those ui components coming along, Johnson?" "It will probably be couple of years boss, I'm still implementing arithmetic operations." "You're fired." "Awww."

Yep.

I too wonder if Spacechem helped push me towards studying computer science. I was an engineering student at the time.

Danielle Anderson Your belief that the game has intended solutions or lessons isn't the game's fault. MM goes over this in the video, when he talks about how different players can generate different puzzles for themselves as they go, by making assumptions at the start and being unwilling to abandon their first approach to the level. Learning "lessons" in a different order is just an extension of that concept to the whole game, rather than within a level.

I actually never said I think there's intended solutions. In fact I called it open-ended. My complaint is that because it's open-ended the difficulty curve can vary from player to player, depending on whether or not they just happened to learn certain tricks that the developers intended players to learn. That's why a dev solution after each level (thus still providing the player a chance to come up with their own solution first) would be so useful. Obviously they wouldn't put the best solution, but one which shows exactly what the player was supposed to gain from it, so that on later levels they aren't left scratching their head trying to figure out how to do something completely trivial that the dev assumed they would already know.

Post-level developer solutions wouldn't have been possible all the way through. Zach himself didn't finish the last level.

I think this is another place where the histogram is a great feature. When I finished levels in the bottom sliver of anything I would usually think to myself "Okay... there's got to be a more elegant way to do this thing". It encouraged me to refine things or sometimes to just start over with an entirely different approach, and usually I'd learn a new technique or skill along the way.

They wouldn't even be necessary all the way through. Just enough to get the basics out.

It's something far more/less interesting (depending on point of view) - a directional arrow that takes up the instruction space in a square, but is only active every second time the square is visited by that waldo

yup, it was added in feb 2019 though so the video predates it

Turing completeness is a different thing, it means that assuming you had unlimited time and memory you could program anything within SpaceChem that the current computers can do.

He said in his previous video that the next 5 reviews would be on Zachtronics. I'm not sure why people are so caught off guard. Maybe they hit their head in the goldfish bowl.

My problem is not being challenged or having to think, it's more just that this is clearly a complicated game and there is no explanation into how it even works so I'm not getting much out of seeing it it hearing a discussion of it.

Playing the game would be a good first step

Krombopulos Michael: You get input molecules on the left side. You are supposed to rearrange them, using the bonders, into the molecules requested on the far right side, and move them to the output on the right. You move the molecules with the waldos, the red and blue rings. These follow the red and blue tracks you lay down, and you put down instructions for the waldos to grab, release, rotate, and more, the molecules along those tracks. That summarizes the base mechanics, and are all covered in giant capital letters in the video from 0:35 to 1:13

Dark Souls is the Spacechem of Action RPGs. It's a very Chem-like game.

let's be honest, most of them just copied solution from the internet see their name above others on leaderboard. Btw, what you described is the reason why Zachtronics preferred to use histograms over leaderboards, as Zach mentioned on one of his interview. Its better to make game more enjoyable to large percentage of good players, than trying to please very few galaxybrain-level engineers. Also it makes less appealing to cheat.

That is the concept of the game, yes.

How SpaceChem works: You are provided with specific chemicals as inputs and expected to produce specific chemicals as outputs. Knowledge of chemistry beyond a familiarity with the periodic table is irrelevant since the game doesn't care about anything more than the number of bonds an atom can form (and, later, its atomic number). Also, unlike real chemistry, everything in the game happens in 2D rather than 3D. There are two levels at which gameplay occurs - maps where you position reactors and connect them with pipes, and the interiors of reactors, where most of the work happens. The standard reactor is a 10-wide, 8-high square grid, with two 4x4 input zones on the left, two 4x4 output zones on the right, four +/- bonders and two waldoes. The waldoes are the red and blue circles that do all the work. Each square of the grid can hold up to one instruction for each waldo, and up to one directional arrow for each waldo. When a waldo enters a square, it executes the instruction there (some only affect the waldo and whatever it's carrying; some affect the entire reactor) then moves on in the direction of the arrow (or the direction it was going if there's no arrow - so by going horizontally and vertically through the same square, you can have the waldo visit it twice during each loop). The entire path of each waldo, from its unique START instruction to either looping or dead-ending against a wall is shown at all times. The basic instructions are: to input in a specific zone; to output from a specific zone; to grab the contents of the current square, drop the currently held atom in the current square, or do whichever of grabbing and dropping is currently possible; to rotate the currently held atom (and attached molecule) by 90 degrees in either direction; or to synchronise with the other waldo - whenever a waldo is on a SYNC instruction, it waits there until the other waldo is also on a SYNC instruction, then both move off. As the game progresses, further instructions are added, starting with BOND+ which cause all adjacent pairs of bonders to attempt to add a bond between the pair of atoms occupying those two squares (if there aren't two atoms there, one or both can't accept additional bonds, or the pair already has a triple bond, nothing will happen there), while BOND- attempts to remove a bond the same way. As the game progresses, you also get access to non-standard reactors - ones with only one type of bonder (+ or -); or ones with lots of bonders; or ones with only one, double-sized output zone; or ones with additional components - a sensor (a new instruction tests whether an atom of a specified element is currently over the sensor, applying a directional override if it is), or a fuser which adds one atom to another, summing their atomic numbers, or a teleporter that transports one atom (breaking any bonds to it) from one specific square to another, and I'm probably forgetting some. You set up your reactor(s) and then you start it running and watch the processes play out - if your solution has any problems, you have to stop and start the run from scratch once you've fixed your design - and then move on to the next level (after seeing how your performance compares). Typically, you're wanting to produce 10 or 40 of specific molecules, so you want your solution to be able to loop for at least a while - which is what the waldoes want to do naturally anyway (counting dead-ending against a wall or stalling waiting for a Sync or for an input/output to succeed as a single-action loop) so it's easier than it might sound. Hope that's provided more insight than confusion :)

Opus magnum will be the last in the series

also wtf: i.imgur.com/hpEAS9E.png

As always, fuck Hbomberguy. Marxist little shit.

Hey! Marx is great. On the other hand, Hbomberguy is great too. Matthewmattosis as well. In fact, I wonder what's going on here, are you guys on acid or something?

Nope. Just someone who likes to eat food, rather than the national dish of every Marxist country: nothing.

Was Marx a marxist? I don't think so

Hot Take: H.Bomberguy and Matthewmatosis are both great and Harris disagreeing with Matthew on Dark Souls 2 doesn't have to make them bitter enemies, so people like you can just calm down. Like.... you get he doesn't have a personal grudge against Matthewmatosis, right? Hbomb just liked Dark Souls 2, and since Matthewmatosis' video was the biggest one on the topic, he addressed it in part. Like, even that video wasn't a fully or even mostly a response to Matthewmatosis' video. I don't get the continued aggression from parts of Matthewmatosis' fanbase :/