Event recap:
This was my first event and it didn't start off well. For the first two days it didn't receive any submissions at all. Then I get a submission, I look at it and it's like "pls fix, puzzle broken, no purification". I think what happened is I needed to fix something (the inputs and outputs were offcenter so it looked bad in the solution editor), so then I went and made a new puzzle, and this time I forgot to set the glyphs, and then I immediately published the puzzle.
The first metric was Cycles > LexC > Cost. I'm willing to bet that scoring on 6th product and then 1st product probably didn't help with the metric's attention. What I wanted to find was a traditional cycles solve that pumped out each product as quickly as possible.
The second metric was Trackless Executed Instructions > Rate > Area. I'm surprised no one really abused the "executed" part of this metric. It would have been hard to, but I'm still a little surprised no one solved this at min rate.
The third metric, clearly the one that got the most attention, was Restricted Instructions > Cycles > Area. The ideal solution has 9 track and is period 4, with minimum latency and either input suppression to avoid inputs spawning early, or an arm with a halt instruction delivering inputs when needed.
And then there was showcase. So, after 5 days of thinking or something, I finally realized that showcase probably means they don’t…score. I thought it was a convenient way to show submissions when done.
The next puzzle won't have as interesting metrics, but will be harder. Beware.
And for the puzzle 2 spoiler…
🐄