Expert Mine 3 Level 78

[jm28121977]

Hi everyone

I hope someone can help me. I have played level 78 of Expert Mine 3 over 11 million times now and I'm always one emerald short. This series of mines always has solvable levels so I think I'm probably doing something wrong somewhere. I've scoured the level in the editor and check the Yams' configuration but nothing leaps out at me. I'd be eternally grateful for any pointers.

Lots of love
Jamie x

[SLAPPYHAPPY2000]

Yo, Jamie,

It's me!

I know this post was made over a year ago (people call this "necroposting" and they call it a bad thing ) but I don't care. What I'm interested in is if you still need help with this, because I am all ears with this!

There is a screenshot of a stage attached to this reply. If you could kindly tell me if this is the stage that stumps you, I'll try it out and see what you need to do!

Stay safe,
SlappyHappy2000

[jm28121977]

Yo, SlappyHappy2000

I'm all in favour of necroposting as it's better than the complete silence I've had until now!

Yes, that's the stage. I'm 99.14% certain it's not solvable.

Best wishes
Jamie x

[filbo]

I've just tried that level and ... came up 1 short.

I did find a way to expose the needed emeralds, but not helpfully. At the last 2 bugs, instead of pushing the rock onto the top bug, stand under the rock (so it doesn't fall) and let the bug hit you -- boom, 3 emeralds, 1 diamond, 1 dead player :(

[SLAPPYHAPPY2000]

I've just tried that level and ... came up 1 short.

I did find a way to expose the needed emeralds, but not helpfully. At the last 2 bugs, instead of pushing the rock onto the top bug, stand under the rock (so it doesn't fall) and let the bug hit you -- boom, 3 emeralds, 1 diamond, 1 dead player

Filbo,

I don't mean to be a d*ck or anything, but could you do the whole level again up until the point where you have one gem short... and then press F1 to create a tape without having to complete a level? I want to see if I might be able to spot anything a bit strange.

Thanks.

[jm28121977]

Hi Filbo

Thank you - that's really helpful. It's comforting to know I wasn't doing something silly that caused me to be one emerald short. I'm now more confident that it's just an error in the level. I'm surprised, though, because the other 239 levels in the three Expert Mine sets are all solvable in terms of number of diamonds, although a few have some engine incompatibility issues which prevent a solution.

Cheers
Jamie

[SLAPPYHAPPY2000]

Yo, Jamie,

I played the level, and I also came up with one emerald short. Sorry, but I really think that this level is impossible.
As a joke though, I could modify the level to have one less emerald in the emerald count, so that the level is actually possible...

SlappyHappy2000

[jm28121977]

Yo, SlappyHappy2000

Cool, that's good to know! Rather it's the level designer messing up than me!

Cheers
Jamie

[Holger]

I haven't tried it yet, but it may be possible that this level could be solved with the new Emerald Mine game engine that will be released with the next R'n'D version soon. The new EM/EMC game engine fixes some bugs and problems of the current engine (for example, correct diamond creation in chain explosions of bugs) that made levels played with the current engine impossible to solve. (It also adds level wrap-around functionality to the new engine.)

Jamie: As you wrote about solvability of the other 239 "Expert Mine" levels -- could you send me the tapes for them? I would like to run them against the old and new Emerald Mine engine for potential differences...

[jm28121977]

Hi Holger

I'm really sorry and I'm an idiot but I switched off auto-recording a couple of years ago because I wasn't using it and it just seemed to be creating loads of files. Are there are particular levels it would be useful for me to redo (recorded this time)? Or would it help if I went through them again and listed the ones that require the wrap-around game feature?

Cheers
Jamie

[Holger]

No problem, you do not have to re-record anything.

Once the new R'n'D version is released, you could have a look if it changes anything for that level in question. Most relevant changes are working wrap-around movement, changes in the results of chain-exploding bugs, and probably a few moving/changing elements that can be stored in EM/EMC levels, but that do not survive changes in the level editor (like different stages of burning dynamite)...

[jm28121977]

Cool. I can't wait to try the new engine. There were quite a few levels that looked really fun but had to be skipped.

Cheers
Jamie

[filbo]

Holger -- I have nearly 20000 tapes of EMC levels which I solved -- not all of which play back successfully with current RnD. In fact, far fewer than I'd like. But could certainly be used for A/B testing whether the new engine succeeds on the same tapes the old one does...

[Holger]

filbo, this would be great! I would be happy if you could provide me with those tapes for cross-engine checking (attached here, by mail, download link, whatever ).

Of course, I also did such tape tests by myself for the new EMC engine already.

That test includes 2477 tapes of 31 EMC level sets. As far as I can see, I had to re-record two tapes for the new engine, as the existing tapes that succeeded with the old engine did not succeed with the new engine anymore. But it might be possible that a higher percentage than this will fail when testing with your tapes, depending on usage of certain engine code that changed...

In general, I indeed spent a lot of time to ensure that existing tapes also work well with the new game engine, which was quite tricky here and there, as the new engine (based on the original engine code from 2009) works differently in some regards than the old engine (which was based on the original engine code from 2000/2001).

Regarding broken tapes for EMC levels: Did these tapes suffer from the (unfortunately well-known) "tape consistency problem (bug)" (which means that they fail for levels just successfully solved), were they rendered broken by newer versions of R'n'D (which I don't assume, as the EMC engine hasn't changed for a long time), or did they fail for a different (maybe unknown) reason?

In any case, I would really be happy to run another tape check for the new EMC engine (even though I think I will release the new R'n'D version independently of the result, as it already took way too long, but this may help a lot anyway for the inevitable ".1" patch version that most probably will follow soon after the new majow release, as usual ).

[filbo]

I'm scanning my 'solution set' right now to get a feel for its current quality vs. RnD 4.1.4.2...