Posts with ‘PleasingFungus’ Tag

Manufactoria

By: Derek Yu

On: May 31st, 2010

Manufactoria

PleasingFungus’s Manufactoria is alternately stressing me out about old computer science courses as well as reminding me why I enjoy the challenge of programming. In the game you’re put in charge of accepting or rejecting robots based on their input, a sequence of red or blue dots. To beat each level you must devise a finite state machine that will read the input and send the robot to the “accepted” tile if the input passes the level’s requirements. For example, in the devious “Androids!” level, the requirement is “some number of blue, then the same number of red!”

To determine if your machine works, a test is run at the end of the level, sending down a number of robots, some with a fixed input and some with a randomized input. It is possible to design machines that work for the test but not for every possible input… but then you’d have to live in the horrifying shame of not finding a robust solution. (Although that’s probably not quite as shameful as having to look at someone else’s solution for Androids!, cough.)

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