Armadillo Run forum

Well, there were four entrants this time around... and 3 very similar entries!
However, a couple of people managed to make it past the obvious rocket solution, and with a show of great engineering prowess the winner is bythelee with 18,270!

Nice one!

My congratulations, bythelee!
Win solution is super

Stunning !

thanks guys.
I think I was just lucky I started down a path (the double chain hexagonal top pulley) that led to a successful conclusion. Serendipity strikes again.

The "four free rocket" solutions are so simple and effective, I like them in their own way. Neat and elegant, with the right amount of spicy risk!

Also impressed that Mark_man's cloth chain could take the tension.....
I used to build pulleys and chains like that in AR1, until competing here showed me the "Way of the Bar".

But you can build a lot of structure for the $1000 per rocket, so it quickly turned into "how to build a rocketfree solution" to the challenge for me.

Next challenge will be up soon.

Very nice ,I had a very similar attempt but without the twin bars It was funny watching it fail (was like baubles falling of a Christmas tree).I had a smaller wheel at the top and 3 smaller wheels than yours I also had the props . I think If I got the twin bar idea I might have give you a run for your money ,I also started with a single rocket to tease it up and to see where it needed strengthening .
very nice well done PS I'm sure you didn't tweak it out I got it down by 40 quickly so even better when you know you had that space to work with

mark_man wrote:PS I'm sure you didn't tweak it out I got it down by 40 quickly so even better when you know you had that space to work with

Actually I had tweaked it a lot. I did suspect there was more to come, but felt I'd probably have to play around with the position of the smaller pulleys, moving them all one anchor point lower. I'd already spend a lot of time on it, and was a bit "locked in" to how it was working to see any more obvious gains to make.

I did try other counterweights too, but the swinging weights added that tiny bit of centrifugal load that helped get it past the early "notches".

That it already seemed so borderline (and many tweaks did get stuck early) meant I was expecting someone else to have submitted a better entry.

PS "baubles" It's been many years (many decades, actually) since I had a Christmas tree with loose bits on it.

here it is

Congrats bythelee!!! That must have taken ages

rob wrote:Congrats bythelee!!! That must have taken ages

No, actually. Well, not in the way you're probably thinking, anyway.

The smaller pulleys were just a copy and paste job, so very quick to build. What's there, probably took 15 minutes max to put together.

And I quickly get through the very slow start by using "hyperspeed" - right-click on the "slow" button on the bottom right of the solving problem to get a "faster" mode instead of the usual slow motion using left-click.

What took time was the multiple tiny tweaks and adjustments to coax it past getting stuck early, or not breaking prematurely....

And I did spend a lot of time trying to get portal catchers to work.
Either having a lock behind the triangular sled (one did work, but the dillo ended up just too low, poking out of the portal) or the two (eventually working) catchers that ignored the sled. But it was the rare result where the big pulley didn't break, heaving the dillo completely over the top of the ramp, that got me thinking about how to stall the system at the right moment.

But, hey, I was just happy to get it working without a rocket.


Mark_man's tweaks are surprising - I had many early pulley failures due to shock loads - just shows that the system has some very weak links while others are vastly over-engineered.