Haunted vending machine
The objective is simple enough... fill a vending machine with coins in order to obtain your purchase. However the machine seems haunted and keeps rejecting your coins. Can you persuade the machine to accept your cash?
- Number of puzzles: 12
- Average play time: 1h
- First published: June 2002 (itch.io relaunch June 2022)
- Background: http://www.clickmazes.com/ovd/new-ovend.htm
- Keyboard controls: arrow keys or WASD to move; [Z] to undo; [R] for restart.
- Touchscreen controls: tap at the main menu; swipe to move; open the tab menu in the upper left to undo moves and restart.
- Hack: source-code
Bought to you with thanks to Auroriax - maintainer of Puzzlescript Plus
puzzle concept & designs - Oskar van Deventer - 2002
puzzlescript implementation - Andrea Gilbert - 2022
Development log
- V2: bug-fix #1Jun 24, 2022
Comments
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I somehow got this bug with 12 coins. Note that a ball is on a green ledge. All I did was keep dropping the middle ball.
(I don't claim I solved all previous levels. I solved some by accident, but I don't have a strategy. This is a very smart game)
From this state, drop the middle ball.
to get a ball on a green ledge:
Oh dear! Thank you for the bug report. I'm investigating right now.
The issue is now fixed and V2 of the app is uploaded. The problem was triggered by a short stack of exactly two coins falling in unison. The first would hit the tail off a switch and fall through and the upper coin would then get caught (but the slot would remain green). An interesting edge-case, although I'm surprised it crops up so rarely!
Thank you for the quick fix.
I am in the process of making a strategy. I find it hard to reason about the timing of which coin falls down first when multiple fallings are happening. (Maybe I'll take a peek at the source code 🤔)
The strategy beyond two levels deep I really struggle with also. If you can find a solid strategy for the 7-switch puzzle I would consider this a success, especially if it also works for the 10-switch puzzle. Historically this puzzle was first offered as a java applet (20 years ago) which in itself was a virtual manifestation of a pre-existing physical puzzle, neither of which I originally implemented. The bug yesterday made me question whether this new app is behaving exactly like the old applet. Both apps must be fully deterministic, but differences in timing and animation could mean events happen in a slightly different order, during a large cascade of coins. The available coin slots at the top would have been chosen to ensure that all puzzles are solvable regardless of the start-state of the switches, but is this still true? Now I am not so sure. If I can clarify, I will let you know.
I'm sorry, that image was just too good to not post it.
oh! That was a real story. Haha!
...What do you mean "real story" ? You got dominated by a vending machine before ?
I found this… https://mashable.com/article/internet-of-things-university-network-#NApsGv34mOqD