Armadillo Run forum

Well, I guess I should have tested the difficulty of the level a bit more before posting it.
In any case, despite bythelee being the only person to submit an entry, his best score is well deserving of the win.

1st with 1438 - bythelee!
vs my horrible POC of 792

congrats bythelee!

Ah. I had just thought that dec10 had edited his post to say he was still trying after all, then it finishes.

I was just having a go to see if the "Southern Passage" was viable for the non-rocket powered option.
It was hard work getting the mechanism to give enough power and direction to the dillo.
Two "perfect launches" (with different geometry) got the dillo close to the anchor just below the apex between O and W, but not enough to go over.
Closer examination showed the guiding channel to have just enough undulation, that the fast dillo was being launched off the outer rail into a dip in the inner. The cascading rebounds took away enough energy for the method to fail. Adding one smoothing plate helped one of the geometries to get to the apex, but not over it. So another little helper was needed for the method to succeed.

The extra bits reduced the score to 1176, but it does show the Southern Passage through the O was ultimately viable.

But the wobbly bits of the "O" certainly made this a very tough challenge, needing a lot of trial and error to complete.

External rocket !! (bangs head with both hands)

I was determined to get a rocket answer, and never even went near that one.
I got mental "set" because of the solid walls.

Brilliant.
Beat you next time...

(Sorry, Andrew)

There was always one big problem with the internal rocket:
How to get the dillo into the finishing portal.

I had a cheap idea, but the rocket wasn't powerful enough.
After a bit more experimenting, I found an expensive solution.

So, here's the internal rocket solution, using one rocket all the way to the finish. Not a winner, at 1262.