As of writing, there are only 10 days left in the Ruckingenur Challenge. If you haven’t started your level yet, get to it – I’ve only received one submission so far!
If you’re lacking inspiration, here’s a special feature to help your creativity along: the fifth level of Ruckingenur II.
As it’s unlikely that I’ll ever implement these levels as designed, I will proceed with full disclosure: the final three (for a total of seven) levels revolved around the exochip as a critical component of the circuits. What is an exochip? As it turns out, the Tangential Forces weren’t acting alone in their campaign of oppression against the Northern Continent; although no one knows the origins of the Visitors, their hybrid biotronics were far superior to any other technologies available, giving the Tangential Forces the military edge they needed to take control. Exochips are the centerpiece of the Visitors’ hybrid biotronic technologies, and consist of a genetically engineered organism capable of interfacing directly to a wide range of electronic signals. While exochips are more complicated than normal integrated circuits and require a constant flow of nutrient-rich exobrine, they are able to trivially learn and reproduce almost any task and can instantaneously communicate with any other exochip via psychic network. They are used extensively in the network of autonomous drones that constantly patrols the Northern Continent, locating hidden insurgent bases and eliminating opportunistic targets.
Level five would introduce the player to exochips, which could be controlled by pulsing various pins mapping to goals, concepts, and positive and negative reinforcement in the exochips’ neural paths. When this drone transmitter was lost, it was disabled; thus, the player’s objective would be to re-enable the device and signal for a drone to return to it, offering the insurgents a chance to ambush the drone when it arrived in an exposed position.
It should be noted that I was unable to create an exochip mechanic that I was happy with and felt properly achieved the same level of reverse engineering verisimilitude as the rest of the game; this is why the last three levels were eliminated from the game.
Where can we download it ?!?!?!
You can’t – levels 5, 6, and 7 were never completed.
Hi there!
Looks like a neat game. There’s something wrong with your spam detection software though–it’s been telling people who are simply following a link from a forum I frequent that "Spam is not appreciated". Since following a link from one site to another is not spamming, that means something ain’t quite working right–just thought I’d let you know.
Cheers,
Torben
Torben: I imagine it’s because the link points to my old URL and, in conjunction with the redirect script, is somehow redirecting to my spam page. Can you provide me any more information? A link to the forum page, so I can see for myself, would probably be best.
Here’s the link that was posted: http://thesiteformerlyknownas.zachtronicsindustries.com/pivot/entry.php?id=40
Clicking on the link in the other forum’s post causes the error; entering the link directly into the Location bar does not trigger the message. Makes me think it’s a referrer check: non-local HTTP_REFERER triggers the error; local or no HTTP_REFERER does not. Just a guess though.
Cheers, and thanks for the quick response–and oh yeah–the game. 🙂
Torben
Torben: It’s more than a referrer check, because links from other sites (like Hackaday) appear to work fine. There might be something weird in the forum link code (like anonymizing of links) or your forum might be blacklisted in the Pivot spam filter. I’d probably need a link to the thread in order to track down why this is happening.
Ah, you’re right. It’s not link anonymizing and nothing on the page appears to cause it–running the exact same page code from another domain does not trigger the error. IP block, maybe.
At any rate, here’s the link to the thread in question: http://www.electro-tech-on line.com/chit-chat/42950-fun-engineering-game.html (remove the space in "online" to unbreak the link; see below.)
Hehe. OK, trying to preview this post unexpectedly led me directly to the cause. The site in question has the term "-on line" (without the space) in its name; that string is in Pivot’s blocked phrases list as posted at http://www.pivotlog.net/docs/doku.php?id=blocked_phrases
I’m guessing it’s triggering on the referrer when the link is followed from the electro-tech forum and it’s obviously not allowing the text in comments posted here.
Anyway, thanks for the prompt attention to the problem.
Torben
Torben: Good work in figuring out what the problem was. I’ve gone ahead and removed “-online” from the spam phrase blacklist, so if you’re reading this, the problem should be fixed! Thanks!
Sweet! Yeah, another member of the forum just posted and said it appears to be fixed. Now I can sit back and see if I can figure out the game you’ve made. It certainly looks fun.
Thanks again,
Torben
I like the game, and would love to see this level, or something very similar, in future games. And I mean LOVE to see and play it. If you could continue to try to find a way to make this concept work, and figure it out, I would be ever grateful. Kudos for making such a great game.