To be honest, I don't know if there is a perfect symmetrical solution. I was envisioning a way to do it using all 4, but when I solved it, I only used one as well The true purpose of the splitters is to give more tools for making music. There are 4 levels that I added(with slightly musical names) that were intended to be quite good at making music(and less about having an actual hard solution). They are: Glockenspiel, Axiom, Orff, and Squier.
I gave up trying to find an nice-looking solution and managed to squash it down to an 15+5 (using only 1 splitter) instead. I'm sure idsky will manage to find a perfect answer, he seems to have the knack for solving the levels with style Thanks for the level pack again, there were some fun challenges in there
Haha, nicely done, I saw that you solved all of them. Congrats, you beat idsky, in fact I'm pretty sure you're the first person to ever solve all of them Your solution for the last one is definitely more efficient than mine was, for some reason that puzzle took me forever to solve, which is why I gave it 35 stars. My solution ended with one of the trains having to come back to the left side and then to the right again. I assumed that'd be one of the only ways to do it, but I guess I was wrong, heh If you could give it a guess, approximately how much time did it take you to solve this set of puzzles, and maybe a guess at the time for the first set as well?. I'm curious because I've never sat down and timed myself solving them before or anything like that.
Thanks The last one took a good couple of hours to figure out. I didn't consider sending trains back multiple times, because everything I tried either ended up with the trains merging on the way through, or the last yellow train ending up crashing into one of the red entrances. And if I had enough space for track to send them on a new lap, I would have had enough room to solve the issues I already had. I'd love to see your solution though - you obviously came at it in a different direction to me. I'd guess the level pack took me about 10-12 hours maybe? Most of the < 10* maps were really quick and worked first time, the rest largely involved working out a plan and spotting where the obvious problems are, with the bulk of the time spent tweaking and fixing. And you did give us a head start on 3 maps which helped a little No idea how long the original levels took, but would have been longer because of needing to learn what the game was and how to achieve different things like how to hold a train up for 2 / 4 / etc squares, how to split a track up in 3 directions (or merge 3 into 1), etc. With the new levels I could rely on that knowledge, with the difficulty coming from trying to squash things into the two squares you gave us
Sweet, thanks for the times, that's very good info to have. Here's my crazy/epic Bramblewood Lane solution: http://www.trainyard.ca/2Wm
Thanks, I can see why you needed two laps now. It would have been nice to have 3-way or some kind of auto-resetting switches for problems like that, but I guess that would have made it too easy And sure enough, idsky managed to make most of the right side of my solution redundant. He did end up with the same left half though so I don't feel totally stupid, and I got my revenge by trimming 1+3 off his Erindale map Out of curiosity, what's next? More levels? Trainyard 2? Something completely different? If you were sticking with TY, had you considered something like coloured gates (only yellow trains can pass through), multi-coloured trains (route the same engine to red, then blue, etc), or different length trains (just to make the tight loops and careful timing even more awkward), or maybe some kind of challenge / bonus / achievement system (solve Oakwood using only 1 splitter or just the blue changer, solve Rainbow without changing a train to a different colour, solve IndusBlue in under 30+1, etc)? They might ruin the game or make it too gimmicky, but it would be fun to experiment with.
Hmm, a lot of things coming. There won't be more levels for this game for a little bit, and Trainyard 2 is a while away. I think this is the first time I'm mentioning this: I'm about to submit Trainyard Express, which is basically the same engine, but with a new set of 60 puzzles(all different from the current game). There are no splitter puzzles, and I don't think most of them will be a huge challenge for you guys(the hardest ones are 10s and maybe an 11), but you may want to play it anyway just for all the new puzzles. Trainyard Express will be completely free. It's kinda like a lite version, but I don't want to call it that, because with 60 brand new puzzles it's a lot bigger than any lite game I've ever seen. It's definitely an App Store experiment, but I figure the worst thing that could happen is that people will enjoy it but not buy the main game. I love the idea of challenges+achievements. I'd though about doing them, but not in the way you suggested, I really like those ideas though. Your ideas for new pieces are also pretty cool. I kinda tried to do "coloured gates" by putting splitters next to goals, but it'd be way cooler if there was a dedicated piece to do it. I think for sure there are two new pieces that'll come eventually in Trainyard 2. One will be a "tunnel" sort of piece that teleports the train to the other side of the puzzle. The other will be a "brakes" piece that slows down the train for 1 step. I think the brakes piece will be really cool, because trains that were never able to sync up and merge will now be able to do that. In the plans for the next little while is also a Flash version of Trainyard Express, and then an iPad version of Trainyard, and a puzzle editor(hopefully for iPad and iPhone). I may take a break from working on Trainyard for a month to work on a really cool idea I had for a free cooperative iPad game. Again, all this is tentative plans, nothing for sure(except Trainyard Express), so I'm gonna see how it goes
Wow, a custom puzzle editors would really push this game over the time. Will this only be in Trainyard 2? Or in Trainyard as well? I've been thinking of getting this game and I think I will now that I hear that featuring is coming in an update.
I am definitely gonna aim to put it in an update, not in Trainyard 2. I can't give a timeline for this, it honestly won't be for at least a month, maybe even 2 months. But for sure it will be for Trainyard, and free in an update. -Matt
Great. The wait won't bother me, as long as it's coming in an update within a reasonable amount of time I'm satisfied. Gonna buy this game later today!
Sounds fun, will give it a look. Will it hook up to the website in the same way? The new pieces do sound intriguing, I look forward to seeing what you do with them
I'm debating that right now... Trying to figure out if I can handle the server load if it gets popular or not... I think I will do it, but I might keep it seperate from the trainyard.ca solutions.
Promo Codes Hey all, I just submitted the next update to iTunes... Not a whole lot of new puzzles(just four actually), because this is really more of a bug-fixing release. There is now Retina display support, and it uses the Retina assets on the iPad too, which looks really nice. I also fixed the weird crash-on-startup bug and a whole bunch of other little issues. Anyway, because I did the release, I've got a bunch of left over promo codes from the current version to give out. So just post in this thread if you want a promo code, and I'll send it to you.
