3
points
tikotus
Joined 213 karma
Making games in many forms
Daily logic puzzle: https://cluesbysam.com
Ad free mobile games: https://games-by-sam.com
Physical mystery puzzle magazine: https://cluehound.com
Consulting: https://adartis.fi
- tikotusIndeed! Thank you, fixed!
- Thank you so much! Also, you might find this interesting regarding testing LLMs: https://www.nicksypteras.com/blog/cbs-benchmark.html
- Thank you!
It's a pretty normal mid week puzzle. They start easy on Monday and get harder towards Sunday. But don't be afraid to use hints to get started with the game! It gets easier with time!
- It's a mix of things. For example, there's an algorithm that ensures all valid deductions are allowed (I'm not smart enough to ensure all of them manually!). But a good amount of manual work goes into each daily puzzle.
- Oh, and perhaps worth mentioning that today's puzzle is not very representative of a regular puzzle, as usually the grid is filled with different professions and not reindeers!
- I don't know how you're able to focus while walking the dog, but good job! And thank you!
- Awesome! Thank you so much!
- Hi there!
- Thank you so much! Indeed, it's quite tempting to blame the game, but the algorithm that ensures all valid deductions are enabled hasn't been wrong a single time since it was finished in June. Often I don't believe it myself, but it always turns out to be smarter than me!
- https://cluesbysam.com
I started making a daily logic puzzle called Clues by Sam in May and it's been stadily growing since. The number one thing people were asking for was more puzzles, so I started selling puzzle packs instead of monetizing with ads. The reception has been great, and the revenue has been enough for me to decline some consulting gigs and instead focus on improving the game.
- Here's someone else testing models on a daily logic puzzle (Clues by Sam): https://www.nicksypteras.com/blog/cbs-benchmark.html GPT 5 Pro was the winner already before in that test.
- This is a conjencture, even if I do work in the industry but not AAA, but: Following the trends simply isn't part of their business model. Following current trends is a very unpredictable business. Many try, and many fail. AAA had the luxury of somewhat predictable sales. They can make big bets like working years on a game, since they know they will have millions of players. And they know smaller studios can't compete with them in that business.
But, of course, making games is hard, and sometimes they fail. And now the free tools are getting really good, and smaller studios are becoming increasingly competent. Will we soon see the big ones fall? Their only way to survive is to keep going bigger, escaping the smaller studios to a place they can't reach. Now we have AAAA games. But is there a limit where players stop caring how many As a game has?
- I'd rather phrase it as "code is straight out of GitHub, but tailored to match your data structures"
That's at least how I use it. If I know there's a library that can solve the issue, I know an LLM can implement the same thing for me. Often much faster than integrating the library. And hey, now it's my code. Ethical? Probably not. Useful? Sometimes.
If I know there isn't a library available, and I'm not doing the most trivial UI or data processing, well, then it can be very tough to get anything usable out of an LLM.
- I didn't know the same person was behind both Planescape: Tormentand Fallout 2, some of my favorite games of all time. Torment I actually played only recently (had only played Baldur's Gate 1&2 before) and absolutely loved it. So it's not even just nostalgia.
- I posted in this monthly thread first time in May when I launched a daily logic puzzle, Clues by Sam. Since then it's grown significantly, and I couldn't be happier!
The game has a farily simple frontend, but there is a fairly complex constraint solving algorithm as part of the puzzle making process. What makes the puzzle quite unique is that you can't "guess". You can only make guesses that are provable by logic. The algorithm ensuring this has worked flawlessly for months now (though I've manually inserted some silly mistakes once or twice).
Today's puzzle is one of the hardest to date. The difficulty resets on Mondays, and then gets harder again towards Sunday.
- Yes, they are essential. Therefore no permission needed for those.
- I recently started it on Deck. At first I thought it was ok, perhaps a bit blurry and hard to read. Then I put it on the TV and oh my when those pixels came at me! I don't consider myself a hifi person, I really don't care much about such things. But that pixel mush was borderline unplayable! And I couldn't up the quality without making the game run unbearably slow. I don't understand why everyone is saying it works great or even fine on SD. Perhaps others don't really use an external screen for it? But now I can't get comfortable looking at it on the small screen either...
- Good question, but I'm not yet experienced enough in language design to give a coherent answer. And I'm not very familiar with delimited continuations. But I think it boils down to keeping the VM simple. Now it's just all closures, and I can focus on optimizing closures. Adding first class continuations would reauire me to also optimize those. Also having continuations makes optimizing closures harder, since it prevents certain assumptions. As long as closures and CPS enable everything I need, I'm not tempted to add another, more powrful structure.
- I've implemented my lisp/scheme based on Three Implementation Models for Scheme and also Lisp in Small Pieces. Both make a CPS transformation, which, after finally wrapping my head around it, is great for many things. For example it makes implementing async/await very easy (without implementing call/cc which I find too powerful). I use them a lot since I use the language for scripting games, where asynchronous structures really shine.