Message #517

From: Roice Nelson <roice3@gmail.com>
Subject: Magic120Cell update and slashdot link
Date: Tue, 20 May 2008 09:15:56 -0500

Hey guys,

Just a heads up that I uploaded a newer version of Magic120Cell. There is
some fine-tuning of mouse controls and a couple new ones, most notably the
new piece finder (info is on the help menu), as well as these other
improvements Melinda had suggested:

• new option for scrambling with a custom number of twists.
  
• puzzle beeps when solved.
  
• puzzle recognizes when twists are actually undos and applies them as such.
  
• new slider to easily hide layers of cells relative to puzzle "center".
  
• escape will stop an auto-solve so you aren’t stuck having to close the
  program.
  
• new menu option for controlling the geometry of the cell slices (and lots
  of fun to be had by hacking the R1, R2, and R3 values in the .settings files
  if you are so inclined - these are sticker size ratios).

That’s it for now. This will be the official version (1+sqrt(5))/2 (the
golden ratio, which permeates the geometry of this puzzle).

cya,
Roice

P.S. Slashdot accepted a post about Magic120Cell last week, and the article
is at http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/05/13/1454243&from=rss if
you are interested to check it out. The traffic wasn’t nearly as heavy for
me as when MC5D was slashdotted, about a third of what I saw before. I
think that is likely because the post lacked the eye-catching word "Rubik",
but it still resulted in a huge boost in traffic (about 40K visitors, and
hopefully some new group members too). I’m attaching a couple of pics
showing how "the slashdot effect <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slashdotted>"
played out…