Interesting concept, but I don't see the relation between collatz conjecture and incremental mechanisms.
Currently, the only incremental mechanism in the game that makes use of the conjecture, is how many steps each number will take to go back to 1. This determines how many producer ticks can be made per verifier tick. This is just 'idle clockwork', not 'collatz clockwork'.
I have some ideas for improvement:
1. Concept:
This is just a game, and players' computers are nowhere near enough to find nontrivial results to collatz conjecture.
Even if a number diverges, the player's computer has no way to determine it's actually a counterexample. This process can't prove the conjecture either.
Limiting the money gain by the player's computer power will also severely limit the incremental growth of the game, and therefore limiting game design.
So you can forget about proving the lower bound, and instead make use of the sequence produced from the numbers. This will allow for more interesting incremental mechanisms, and stays close to the conjecture.
2. 'Level' skips:
Instead of trying to check every number to 1, you can instead skip some numbers that will trivially reduce to some previously checked numbers, like even numbers.
3. Sequence based mechanisms:
It's very simple to design, like 'multiply money gained based on current sequence length', or even 'multiply money by log of highest number reached in the current sequence'. These are much more interesting and also more connected to the conjecture.
These upgrades will benefit from finding a longer sequence that oscillates wildly before eventually converges (or maybe doesn't converge within the available steps). The level skip could completely discard the current verification scheme, and instead focus on searching numbers that leads to such interesting sequences.
Instead of rushing an unfinished product for some silly contest, how about putting in some time and work and making a quality product? You just might make a little bit of money that way...
Sorry to anyone not seeing text! It seems like Chrome doesn't support the way I'm checking/updating the font size (my bad for not testing it in anything outside of Firefox before uploading). Until I fix that, unfortunately all I can suggest is playing on Firefox (you can try copying the "collatz-clockwork-save-state" from Chrome to Firefox if you want to keep your progress: https://developer.chrome.com/docs/devtools/storage/localstorage/ https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/storage). Thanks for playing, and sorry for the inconvenience!
edit: The text should at least be visible now, if not the perfect size.
Also, it seems that running in an iframe causes the clocks to sync up due to the lower timer resolution (this probably also depends on your browser). Here's a standalone version on Github Pages: https://chansmith.github.io/collatz-clockwork/
I can confirm that all numeric representations of n, money, and checking are not showing up. The only indication that the game is functional at ALL, is the upgrade menu will show when an upgrade is purchasable. The game otherwise resembles a clock simulator grid. Scaling down the cell size shrank the labels for the aforementioned missing values, but scaling up did not restore the labels from a 0 pt font size. No minimum limit to cell size means that the font not just essentially, but LITERALLY disappears.
values aren't displaying. Changing scale of the boxes causes the font to get smaller without ever being restored. Results in the font essentially disappearing.
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Interesting concept, but I don't see the relation between collatz conjecture and incremental mechanisms.
Currently, the only incremental mechanism in the game that makes use of the conjecture, is how many steps each number will take to go back to 1. This determines how many producer ticks can be made per verifier tick. This is just 'idle clockwork', not 'collatz clockwork'.
I have some ideas for improvement:
1. Concept:
This is just a game, and players' computers are nowhere near enough to find nontrivial results to collatz conjecture.
Even if a number diverges, the player's computer has no way to determine it's actually a counterexample. This process can't prove the conjecture either.
Limiting the money gain by the player's computer power will also severely limit the incremental growth of the game, and therefore limiting game design.
So you can forget about proving the lower bound, and instead make use of the sequence produced from the numbers. This will allow for more interesting incremental mechanisms, and stays close to the conjecture.
2. 'Level' skips:
Instead of trying to check every number to 1, you can instead skip some numbers that will trivially reduce to some previously checked numbers, like even numbers.
3. Sequence based mechanisms:
It's very simple to design, like 'multiply money gained based on current sequence length', or even 'multiply money by log of highest number reached in the current sequence'. These are much more interesting and also more connected to the conjecture.
These upgrades will benefit from finding a longer sequence that oscillates wildly before eventually converges (or maybe doesn't converge within the available steps). The level skip could completely discard the current verification scheme, and instead focus on searching numbers that leads to such interesting sequences.
Instead of rushing an unfinished product for some silly contest, how about putting in some time and work and making a quality product? You just might make a little bit of money that way...
Link the game you made.
😂
Sorry to anyone not seeing text!
It seems like Chrome doesn't support the way I'm checking/updating the font size (my bad for not testing it in anything outside of Firefox before uploading). Until I fix that, unfortunately all I can suggest is playing on Firefox (you can try copying the "collatz-clockwork-save-state" from Chrome to Firefox if you want to keep your progress: https://developer.chrome.com/docs/devtools/storage/localstorage/
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/storage).
Thanks for playing, and sorry for the inconvenience!
edit: The text should at least be visible now, if not the perfect size.
Also, it seems that running in an iframe causes the clocks to sync up due to the lower timer resolution (this probably also depends on your browser). Here's a standalone version on Github Pages: https://chansmith.github.io/collatz-clockwork/
I can confirm that all numeric representations of n, money, and checking are not showing up. The only indication that the game is functional at ALL, is the upgrade menu will show when an upgrade is purchasable. The game otherwise resembles a clock simulator grid. Scaling down the cell size shrank the labels for the aforementioned missing values, but scaling up did not restore the labels from a 0 pt font size. No minimum limit to cell size means that the font not just essentially, but LITERALLY disappears.
Thanks for playing, and sorry about that! The text should be visible now.
Values font sizes are getting smaller with every update to their value.
values aren't displaying.
Changing scale of the boxes causes the font to get smaller without ever being restored. Results in the font essentially disappearing.
Thanks for playing, and sorry about that! The text should be visible now.
Hey, does not show the money or check on my screen...
Thanks for playing, and sorry about that! The text should be visible now.
Starting a new game : it says 0 Money 2 Checking...once one clock of producer or checker runs thorugh the text vanishes again :(
Same loading an old game..it shows the money but once a clock adds additions, it vanishes.
Sorry for the bait -- I slid the cell size bar around and didn't long enough for a clock to tick when I tested it. Updated again!