http://ruilov.posterous.com/roboarm
The idea is to program the robotic arm to move the blocks to the right place (shown on top). It’s based on robozzle http://robozzle.com/ which is a really cool programming game
There’s 8 levels (fair warning: levels 7 and 8 are meant to be hard) but still lots of stuff to do.
Would love to hear if anyone has suggestions on how to modify the rules to make levels more interesting, or ideas for new levels.
We need a thumbs up/like on this forum 
I like the game. My daughter,7 years old, would love to play the game because she used to play the Bubble Ball on iPhone. Thank you for the fantastic game.
This is really fun. And hard! One of the puzzles looks like Tower of Hanoi?
I finally solved level 5. I can’t believe how long it took me
Simon that is one crazy solution, i’m still trying to understand how it works. Sorry it took you so long.
There’s another solution which would sort out any combination of red and green blocks in the central pile.
Spoiler below:
F1: down,f2 if red, f3 if green, f1
F2: left,down,right
F3: right,down,left
Ha ha @Simeon, you came up with another solution… I did it the easy way. I managed level 7 but stuck on some of the higher and lower ones. @ruilov, are the coloured boxes that appear in the program register meant to be clues? I couldn’t get them back…
Fred, no it’s a bug in that it doesn’t reset the background color of the register when you move from one level to the next. I’ll fix it, give me a second.
I’m thinking of adding a “conditional on not holding anything” button as it may make things a little more interesting
Fixed here: http://ruilov.posterous.com/roboarm2
Also added another green box to level 5
Edit: gah, now it’s really fixed
Edit2: added a couple more levels. The last few should be challenging but have a logic to them. In level 12 you count the number of reds to decide how many times to move each blue to the right. (but if you find a hack around them please post)
This is amazing ruilov! I really love programming games and have been tinkering away on one myself… but with nowhere near the same degree of panache!
What other solutions are there for level 6? I got the following but feel it’s not the intended one:
Edit: Stuck on level 9, @ruilov, help me out
This is really great. One of my other favorites is worth a look. Check out lightbot 2.0.
http://armorgames.com/play/6061/light-bot-20
For more ideas.
@simon, I had another solution in mind, but my wife found that one too, which is shorter and elegant. You can condense it into a 6 register function, so that’s why I made level 7 (I think)
Level 9, is the one where you sort two piles? It’s kind of the same as sorting one pile, but you don’t move the blocks all the way to their end place at first.
As for levels after that you need to discover the concept of a function stack. Note that functions do return and the instruction pointer goes back to where it was when the function was called.
@alvelda, cool let’s see what I can steal from that
I really like this, but I find that I get what seem like “ghost” effects. Sometimes I can pick up things that aren’t there yet (like yellow boxes) and sometimes it seems as though there’s a hidden extra box in the routine (I had one where I’d programmed five right moves and it did six, or something like that). I also don’t like the fact that it puts the move in every box that the touch passes over - I’d prefer it if it only did it where the touch ended. Otherwise, it’s hard to change just one move in the middle.
I’m having ui issues -how do I add a function? I need f2.
Andrew, sorry for the bugs, ghost effects are not intended. Touch end makes sense, thanks for the suggestion
Bortels, you can’t add new functions, have to use only the spaces available. That is, unless you’re trying to make a new level in editor mode.
I must be missing something.
Level 2 - I need to grab the block, move it over 3, then drop it. But I only have 4 instructions - so I can grab, move, move, move -but not drop.
I wanted f2 so I could f2=move.move.move, then f1 would be grab,f2,drop.
I must be missing something simple. I Also don’t get what the colors are for (I assume later levels)
By the way – awesome game, even if I don’t get it all yet. You’ve got the who’s-who of Codea people playing, including Simeon. you’ve hit an itch we all need to scratch (programming giant robots!)
Bortels, in level 2 you need to call f1 recursively
Yes the colors are for later levels, if you add color it will only execute that move if you’re holding a block of that color. i think you only need on level 5 and beyond
Call f1 recurs… Aieeee, the dreaded goto!!!
But that is an endless loop - the robot arm should crash thru the right side of the factory and rampage the countryside, oh, the horror… M00hahahahaaaa…
Bortels, it’s compliant with 5.2
But actually, it’s not a goto, it’s a function call which returns when the function is done (obviously in this level it never returns since it just loops)