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2020-05-08 14:22 nesdori  
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an art cave experiment inspired by  Arno 's lately pixelisations :) i was interested to see how accurately a painting can be reproduced using only bd objects from  krissz 's cave preview mode. i had to exclude voodoo rockfords because their tint and shade was close to butterflies and they always were next to each other and i wanted to make this cave playable. the image would be a bit more detailed with them enabled but the difference is not big. the colors and objects are carefully selected by optimizing the sum of euclidean distances of each object and the block of painting it represents over the entire image. the combined search space of 4 colors and all bd objects is pretty huge and it's quite complex optimization task to find the absolutely best combination of colors. the search space is full of so called local optimums (certain color sets where the image accuracy can't be further improved by doing a small change to any color value) and it's quite astonishing how whole different color sets managed to obtain quite good results. the darkest and lightest color can be almost any of the 4 colors and objects are changed accordingly.  
  
the combination of colors and objects used in this cave is the most accurate representation my algorithm could find after several different iterations and with some human guidance that what direction looks promising to the human eye. i'm almost certain that this still is not the global maximum (the best possible combination of colors) but i think it's close enough :)  
  
The small preview image looks a bit rough and too dark on browsers. When the scaled full size preview image is viewed using a software with decent interpolation (like gimp or photoshop) the image looks smoother and even better.  
  
the cave is surprisingly playable although not designed to be so; playability wasn't a feature included in the optimization :) there's a big probability that caves generated this way are totally unplayable but this cave is actually quite nice and there are clear sections. I initially thought that this cave would be just diamond collecting fun but when i tried to solve it to prove that it's solvable before publishing it, it took me several hours to solve it. it's easy to collect diamonds but the exit is heavily guarded. selecting an easier exit is not really an option because all titatiun wall pieces are located on the top and i wanted to keep the consistency of the image by choosing the exit be one of the original titanium walls and by choosing the birth place to be somewhere where voodoo rockford object would have be a good choise according to the algorithm.  
  
For those who are crazy enough to try this i'll give some hints because the cave would be a bit frustrating without them: the exit is located on the top of mona lisa's head and there are two ways to reach exit: either by right or left side of the head. I'm almost sure that one of the ways is impossible so try both of them :)

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2020-05-08 15:52 Arno  
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wow  nesdori ! :-o :-D  
  
i had such idea in the past, to use the bd tileset for mosaic pictures.  
  
do you remember my cave " Arno  351 portrait"? this is how far i got back then... ;-)  
but you nailed it with this one! :-D

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2020-05-08 16:24 DarkStoorM  
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Do I hear Pixelart playable Caveset series? :D:D:D  
That is amazing!

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2020-05-08 16:33 enrico  
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A wonderful idea. Sincere congratulations!

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2020-05-08 17:31 dustin  
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holla die waldfee, what a beautiful image!

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2020-05-08 17:51 shredder  
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wow! great work, chapeau bas! :)

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2020-05-08 23:27 trischi83  
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Der uebervater hat Urlaub:-) ) )great work  nesdori

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2020-05-09 00:17 nicol  
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this is insane ...  nesdori  amazing art !

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2020-05-09 14:04 DarkStoorM  
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Wow, 500 attempts already :D  
 My best run was getting close to her nose :(

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2020-05-09 16:14 dustin  
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mona lisa doesn't easily let you walk up her beautiful face ;d

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2020-05-09 19:06 Arno  
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after so many tries, perhaps time for a hint?  
  
 nesdori  in your succesful test run, did you move up along the left or right side of mona's head? i guess left side. right side is simply too crowded. at left side two nasty bflies must be passed.

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2020-05-09 19:36 nesdori  
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 Arno , actually i was thinking about giving another hint earlier but since there apparently are many players trying to solve this i decided to wait a little more so that maybe someone can find another way to solve this.  
  
but here's another hint:  
   
i solved this by moving up the right side of the face (SO the left side of the cave BECAuse her right side face is on the left). i was as stealthy as possible and avoided all contacts with fireflies and also tried to block them entering my path so that i could calmly think about my next move without a need to constantly dodge flies.  
  
but this is just how i did it and probably there are other methods. if someone is stubborn enough to kill as much flies as possible maybe it's possible to reach the exit purely by slalom skills also from the other side as well. but there are 948 fireflies swarming around the exit so it's a tough job! :)

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2020-05-10 10:48 dustin  
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wow... 1000 attempts... did any cave ever have so many tries before?

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2020-05-10 10:58 nesdori  
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 dustin , easily. you can do "most played" search on the database.  insch -208 currently has 51898 attempts :)

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2020-05-10 11:34 shredder  
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i did myself 1000+ attempts at t-947 ;d

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2020-05-10 12:23 shredder  
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boom! not hi-score run, just survival ;)

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2020-05-10 13:23 nesdori  
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shrdder, congrats! :) you finally made mona lisa's mysterious smile to fade! :) i can truly understand your choise of survival instead of high score, and in fact the last stage of the cave is a bit easier if you leave a pile of diamonds on the bottom to block a detached swarm of flies on the upper section but that depends on where you pick diamonds.

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2020-05-10 13:53 shredder  
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thanks  nesdori , from the begining i was focused on right side of the cave/left side of the mona lisa's face run.   
  
i found a simple catch. but for now, i don't want to spoil... :)

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2020-05-10 16:36 Arno  
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well done  shredder ! :-D  
  
so far i think the best strategy is to grab diamonds at the right side of the cave, while leaving them at the left side, so that the fflies at the left side remain imprisoned. still, there are a few places along the forehead where rockford must pass the ffly swarm. i don't see a way to reduce the risk of hitting a ffly at those points...

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2020-05-10 16:51 shredder  
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THANKS  Arno  :) in my run i grab aproximatly 600\ at the bottom-RIGHT  
and rest of the \ from the left side (RIGHT SHOULDER OF MONA LISA).  
AFTER THAT, I'M ABLE TO RUN TO THE EXIT, PASSING JUST FEW SPINING FFLIES. BUT... :d

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2020-05-11 16:12 shredder  
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i can explain what i mean about "but...", when this great cave will be too frustrating ;)

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2020-05-11 16:31 DarkStoorM  
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Maybe when we reach 10k attempts :)

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2020-05-11 17:05 shredder  
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 darkstoorm , i have your 'coq 02 drop down' in the garage :) realy interesting cave with nice charm.  
reminds me a little bit a movie "descent".  
  
10k tries? damn... i hope we'll see more solutions earlier ;)

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2020-05-14 18:56 shredder  
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demo free. very safe run.  
my strategy was simple: just do nothing for aproximatly 50 sec :D  
ridiculous, but it realy works! :D

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2020-05-14 19:10 nesdori  
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 shredder , oh wow! you chose the side which was supposed to be more difficult! :-O my solution was to go other side of the face (left side of the cave) and walk as near to the face as possible. i might try to repeat my run sometimes, of course i can't repeat the exact conditions but i think i can solve this cave with few tries using my general plan

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2020-05-14 19:17 shredder  
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strange, but when i start to play immediately and grab diamonds, always fall in troubles with too many flies.  
   
after few attempts with 'aprox-50-sec-idle' i was able to pass the remaining flies (near the left side of mona lisa's face) without any bigger problems :)

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2020-05-14 20:37 Arno  
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thx  shredder ! wow, i also thought you choose the left side (= right side of mona). that's what i've tried almost all the time. it seems that mona admires your tactful approach :-)

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2020-05-14 22:03 shredder  
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no problem  Arno  :) hmm, i wrote in my older comment about my 'right side of the cave' tries ;)