My molecules, let me show you them



  •  I just stumbled on this little indie game called SpaceChem which involves designing one or more machines that take a set of atoms/molecules, puts them through a set of transformations and produce a different set of atoms/molecules. To do this you effectively build a two thread program that can run in a loop indefinitely without conflict. The cool part is that as things get more complicated there are more and more different ways to achieve your goal depending on whether you want to optimize for speed or simplicity. Once you're done with a level, the game shows you how your design measures up to other people's. So you design this awesome mechanism, laugh like a mad genius when it finally works, then rage when you see other people's statistics because "godammit I'm a professional" and go back to make it better.

    I figured I'd give you a guys a heads up since it's the sort of thing that appeals to the programmer mindset.



  • It's on Steam for $15. Sadly it was on sale a week or two ago, I passed because the screenshots and promo stuff doesn't look very impressive. Next time it goes on sale maybe I'll pick it up.



  •  Incidentally the demo has 19 levels and at least a day's worth of gameplay. It's what I've played so far.



  •  I'ma check it owt



  • SpaceChem is on sale at Steam again, today only apparently: $5.09.



  • @blakeyrat said:

    $5.09
     

    Ah, you mean 5,09.

    What the fuck, motherfucking fuckfuckers.



  • @dhromed said:

    @blakeyrat said:

    $5.09
     

    Ah, you mean 5,09.

    What the fuck, motherfucking fuckfuckers.

    Steam's currency conversion broken?


  • Garbage Person

    @blakeyrat said:

    Steam's currency conversion broken?
    Nah, pricing is done individually per currency, so they wind up with nice "attractive looking" numbers in every currency. 



  • @blakeyrat said:

    Steam's currency conversion broken?
     

    I guess that's the "benefit of the doubt" way of looking at it.

    This happens to all games. Anomaly: Warzone Earth is $9.99, and also €9,99.

    It's been like this forever, and I consider it a scam.



  • @Weng said:

    Nah, pricing is done individually per currency, so they wind up with nice "attractive looking" numbers in every currency. 
     

    Not sure if serious...


  • Garbage Person

    @dhromed said:

    @Weng said:

    Nah, pricing is done individually per currency, so they wind up with nice "attractive looking" numbers in every currency. 
     

    Not sure if serious...

    Totally serious. I've been talking to some indie devs with their games on Steam and they provided the info (I'm looking at listing one of my own and Valve won't talk to you until you've got a 99% finished product unless you're a AAA developer).

    Every game is priced to the demand curve of each region (they're all mostly the same) at the price the market will bear - and then the base prices are adjusted to do that nice mental trickery bit where the dumber part of your brain says "WOW IT'S ONLY $14!" when it's actually $15.The exact trickery varies per region and culture, but they tend towards it. Minor currencies MAY get a straight-up conversion, but not major ones.



  • @Weng said:

    Totally serious.
     

    5.09 is a stipud number. It's not "attractive looking" by any standard. You mean prices like $4.99, which are common-looking, even if they're not nice. This is not one of those prices.

    @Weng said:

    Every game is priced to the demand curve of each region
     

    That may be true, but it's also unrelated, given the fact that the "price" is $5.09 AND ALSO €5,09. Do you know that the € is worthabout $1.20? I'm being dicked for 20%.

    @Weng said:

    the base prices are adjusted to do that nice mental trickery bit

    You mean the "subtract 1 cent" trick? Derp. My IQ is higher than 50. I'm not thrown off by that kind of thing and it's not what I'm referring to at all.

     @Weng said:

    Minor currencies MAY get a straight-up conversion, but not major ones.

    What? No conversion of any kind took place. They swapped the %$#! currency symbol. There is no conceivable price conversion where 5.09 just happens to convert to 5.09. This is not a single incident. It happens all the time. It's a goddamn scam.

    I would, however, like to put some rigor to that final statement. So now, I'm going to find some random games, both indie and AAA, and post links and record the price. I hope I'm wrong, and that it's merely coincidence and pricing error, because buying shit online is fucking convenient and I really love Steam in that sense.

     



  •  Ok. Now all you have to do is click the links and tell me the price.

    All those damn daily deals make it kind of hard to get reliable data, though.

    ======================

    SpaceChem

    € 10,04

    Plants vs. Zombies GOTY Edition-66% 9,99€ => 3,39€


    Anomaly: Warzone Earth-50% 9,99€ => 4,99€

    Assassin’s Creed® Brotherhood-25% 49,99€ => 37,49€

    Assassin's Creed™: Director's Cut Edition-25% 19,99€ 14,99€
    Collector's pack
    -25% 79,98€ => 59,98€

    Half-Life 2: Episode Two -75% 6,99€ => 1,74€

    Osmos -75% 8,99€ => 2,24€

    Braid-50% 8,99€ => 4,49€

    All Aspect Warfare-75% 24,99€ => 6,24€

    Capsized-50% 9,99€ => 4,99€

    Inside a Star-filled Sky-33% 7,99€ => 5,35€



  • Wait, what? We have to do homework? Feh.

    Fine. (I'm not going to look at the indies because you should pay more for indies anyway.

    Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood. Normal game: $39.99 - 25% = $29.99 (your price: 37.49€)

    Assassin's Creed Director's Edition: $19.99 - 25% = $14.99 (your price: 14.99€)

    Yup, guess you're getting screwed! Better only buy local games-- wait does Germany even have a games industry? I see more games coming out of Croatia. (Seriously, that's where Croteam is. Pun intended.) I see quite a few British games. The Russians (or one of their ex-satellite nations, I'm not 100% sure) made the excellent STALKER series and Metro 2033...

    Ok, I looked it up. According to the Wikis, you guys made Far Cry and the Gothic series of RPGs. So a good, but overrated, game, and a series I've never played. But the movies and screenshots in Steam make it look like a total sausage-fest. Pun, once again, intended.

    ArcaniA - Gothic 4: $49.99 - 50% = $24.99

    I'm going to be laughing my ass off if you still pay more for a game developed a couple miles from your house, so fair warning before you post the price.



  • Grr, why is there no RESET button? The only way to clear the board is to spaz-out on "Undo" like 40 times. How can it have such a busy UI and STILL lack critical functions?





  • @blakeyrat said:

    Better only buy local games-- wait does Germany even have a games industry?
     

    I'm Dutch, you dweeb.

    @blakeyrat said:

    ArcaniA - Gothic 4: $49.99 - 50% = $24.99
     

    Yep, go laugh.

    It's €24,99 according to Steam.



  • @dhromed said:

    @blakeyrat said:

    Better only buy local games-- wait does Germany even have a games industry?
     

    I'm Dutch, you dweeb.

    @blakeyrat said:

    ArcaniA - Gothic 4: $49.99 - 50% = $24.99
     

    Yep, go laugh.

    It's €24,99 according to Steam.

    Is dweeb still an insult there? Man, your culture is backwards. Anyway, make some games!



  • @blakeyrat said:

    Anyway, make some games!
     

    Dude, Overlord [II] was created three blocks away from my house. Dweeb.


  • Garbage Person

      @dhromed said:

     

    5.09 is a stipud number. It's not "attractive looking" by any standard. You mean prices like $4.99, which are common-looking, even if they're not nice. This is not one of those prices.

    The base price is $14.99 - a round number. The discount is 66% - a round number. Yes, $5.09 is ugly, but getting that discount to be a nice attractive fraction is important.

    @dhromed said:

     

    That may be true, but it's also unrelated, given the fact that the "price" is $5.09 AND ALSO €5,09. Do you know that the € is worthabout $1.20? I'm being dicked for 20%.

    How is it unrelated? Your fellow eurozoners will gladly pay 20% more, so they charge 20% more.

     



  • @blakeyrat said:

    Grr, why is there no RESET button? The only way to clear the board is to spaz-out on "Undo" like 40 times. How can it have such a busy UI and STILL lack critical functions?
    Select everything with the mouse and hit delete. Also real engineers get it right the first time.@blakeyrat said:
    Here's my solution to the first non-trivial puzzle... tell me, is this in fact the dumbest, most inefficient way to do it? Yes, yes I bet it is. This link is really long. Good luck indexing this shit, Google.
    You should be ashamed of yourself. Unfortunately I can't upload my own solution, it just gives me a generic "can't connect" error...

     

     



  • @DOA said:

    @blakeyrat said:
    Grr, why is there no RESET button? The only way to clear the board is to spaz-out on "Undo" like 40 times. How can it have such a busy UI and STILL lack critical functions?
    Select everything with the mouse and hit delete.

    Yah, I figured that out, but:

    1) They also don't tell you you can rubber-band elements

    2) Rubber-band selecting isn't useful for ANYTHING ELSE in the game, other than resetting the board

    So they're idiots. There's a magical way of resetting the board, but it involves an undiscoverable, otherwise useless, feature you only come across if you search Google for "where's the fucking reset button in Space Chem you fucking douchebags?" and read a dozen forum entries.

    @DOA said:

    You should be ashamed of yourself. Unfortunately I can't upload my own solution, it just gives me a generic "can't connect" error...

    A real engineer would be able to use YouTube. You should be ashamed.

    But yah, the video uploading is buggy. Firstly, it doesn't save your password, probably due to the program being written by Lunix freaks obsessed over PRIVACY!!! (Also explains why the UI sucks.) Which is a huge pain because my password is long and complex and their shitty non-OS fields don't support holding down the Delete key when you get it wrong. Also a couple videos it refuses to upload for some reason, when I try and use "Copy Link" it copies the link of an old movie, and never uploads the new one.



  • BTW I redeemed the Space Chem expansion in the Steam summer sale, but I can't figure out how to get it... it doesn't show up as as separate download in Steam, and the game itself doesn't seem to have a way of selecting those levels... anybody know?



  • @blakeyrat said:

    BTW I redeemed the Space Chem expansion in the Steam summer sale, but I can't figure out how to get it... it doesn't show up as as separate download in Steam, and the game itself doesn't seem to have a way of selecting those levels... anybody know?

    Ok, Steam shows it under "Downloadable Content", but I still can't figure out how to access it in-game... Grr.

    Oh, it shows up as an orange-on-orange planet hovering in one of the windows of the title screen. Christ. It's not just a bad UI, didn't their artist say "hey use contrasting colors if you want something to stand out?" Christ! Grr.



  • @blakeyrat said:

    an undiscoverable, otherwise useless, feature you only come across if you search Google for "where's the fucking reset button in Space Chem you fucking douchebags?" and read a dozen forum entries
     

    I suspect that  "where's the fucking ________  in __________  you fucking douchebags?" is the most common search used in Google.



  • I think it's more likely "pictures of _______ naked"


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