OK.  Finished the game, and now I'm going back for that extra amusement to be had in trying to do it that one bit better.  The OCD challenges are ok, but for whatever reason the challenges to do it faster, or in less moves, don't do anything for me.  For me its all about balls.  Make whatever puerile jokes you feel necessary at this point.  Done?  Good.  Lets move on...

So for challenge goals I've been looking at the leaderboards, and most of the top folks manage to do Fisty's Bog with 11 balls saved.  I managed 10 with the obvious solution, and I can see how someone could shave another 1 off there somewhere.  sure, fine, whatever.  But the top 2 scores on the leaderboard are 14 and 15 respectively!  I don't see how you could possibly shave 5 balls off of my solution and still build a bridge, so all I can think of is that those 2 have worked out a way to dip the bridge down enough to pop the middle bits and break off the end, which you could then use as a floating island to hover over to the exit pipe.  And I can break the lower half of the bridge leaving it on a 1-ball pivot*, but no matter what I do I can't break the other half off without destroying everything.  any hints from the masters as to technique here?  Or am I totally barking up the wrong tree?

*Is it just me, or do we need to establish some terminology for things in this game, so I can describe a problem without having to resort to vague hand-waving, and saying "y'know, that wibbly bit on the end" a lot, or drawing bad ASCII art?

The two highscores are mine, and indeed, I have broken up the bridge to make 1 loose edge to fly to the other side.
Basically my strategy is: Build 2 triangles down, attach a lot of balloons so it's not pointing straight down. Now, attach 2 more triangles to what was/will be the bottom.

Now comes the trick. Attach 1 triangle inside the bottom triangle, connected to the two bottom nodes. Then connect a triangle to the top of the just-placed triangle, and the bottom right node.*

Now, you can remove the balloons, attach just 1 to the edge with which you're going to fly (you can probably see it coming together now)

This will pop the bottom right node, but not the left one. Now, you have to wobble the thing up and down until the lower left one breaks. This is quite difficult. I can't manage it without disconnecting all balloons, but you have to be fast enough to reconnect the balloon to your flying edge before it crashes down.

If you manage that, you're set. Remember you have undo bugs.

There's also a trick for having all goos survive, and not get in the way. This isn't so much skill as physics peculiarity, so I'll give away that strategy too: You can place them just above death-level, but below water-level. They will stay perfectly still, never move. Be ware though! Don't touch them with a goo you're carrying, don't shake the water violently, and don't let structure get near.

Good luck :)

*Took me a while before I thought of that. I think it's optimal.

Edit: I'll probably make a video sometime soon, if you can't figure out my instructions.

I just went and made a video, and apparently, the absolute maximum is 16. Must've killed a goo off somewhere when I wasn't watching.

To get 16 you need 1 more strategic trick, but you'll see that in the video.

Link

Oh VERY sneaky!  I had the idea for breaking the bit off, but I couldn't see how to break through the top layer of the bridge; with your inset triangle, there _is_ no connection on the top level!  Thanks for sharing your moves!

I'm not quite sure I see what hiding the goos down in the water does for you; is it just to make sure none are accidentally lost while you're breaking off your hover assault craft?

think you could repost your video?  I cant seem to get it to work? :)

[quote author=Dev Null link=topic=647.msg4668#msg4668 date=1225335381]I'm not quite sure I see what hiding the goos down in the water does for you; is it just to make sure none are accidentally lost while you're breaking off your hover assault craft?Indeed. I don't want any goos to die. It's probably faster to not hide them underwater, but whatever :P For the moment I have 3 more gooballs than anyone else in the world so I'm goo'd for a while :P


Except... there seems to be a guy with 19 balls in 75 seconds. I don't want to call bullshit immediately, considering some of the weird scores I make, but, does anyone have any clue how this might be done?