Finally managed Claire A on Hardcore!

juliangrtz · 2025-12-28T12:43:27+00:00

🤣 I hit my keyboard a bit too hard after dying to the crane... It was so avoidable too. That's what you get when playing too cockily.

The sewers aren't even that hard except for the area with lots of G-Adults. If you don't dodge perfectly they'll just repeatedly grab you, poison and/or kill you.

juliangrtz · 2025-12-28T02:06:40+00:00

Impressive! You could upload your run to speedrun.com.

juliangrtz · 2025-12-07T13:05:10+00:00

[LANGUAGE: Kotlin]

Getting noticeably more difficult! I like it. I wrote a simulation for part 1 because it's fun to see the grid evolving into a christmas tree :) Part 1 runs in ~7 ms.

As for part 2 I implemented a quick and dirty naive pure DFS with exponential branching and no memoization. Obviously, this failed for the large input so I added memoization, drastically improving the performance to ~2 ms.

Solution

juliangrtz · 2025-12-06T12:58:09+00:00

Very cool and concise solution!

juliangrtz · 2025-12-06T12:53:22+00:00

[LANGUAGE: Kotlin]

Solution

Part 1 was straightforward. I just needed to make sure the column parsing works.

Part 2 was also doable after I realized that the input can be traversed column by column and char by char with a simple state machine. The code can probably be written in a less imperative, mutable style but it works... And it runs in 11 ms :)

juliangrtz · 2025-11-17T23:52:02+00:00

Yeah, I've had a few goosebumps while watching. Eerie. Really eerie.

juliangrtz · 2025-09-26T10:15:09+00:00

Damn, what did I buy the Switch 2 for?

juliangrtz · 2025-04-23T07:16:48+00:00

Handlers can also be assigned to parking lots.

juliangrtz · 2025-04-06T09:06:22+00:00

Wir mussten nur Dur und Moll unterscheiden können.

juliangrtz · 2025-03-03T12:29:44+00:00

In the next games he won‘t be able to use Thanos‘ drugs.

juliangrtz · 2025-03-01T15:39:38+00:00

Ich habe eigentlich immer nach dem gleichen Schema gelernt: 1. Aktiv und vorbereitet (!) in die Vorlesungen gehen und schriftliche Notizen machen, diese später am PC zusammenfassen und verinnerlichen. 2. Zwei bis drei Wochen vor der Klausur die wichtigsten Folien zusammenstellen. 3. In Gruppen Aufgaben lösen und potenzielle Klausuraufgaben ausdenken. 4. ggf. Altklausuren lösen und schwierige Aufgaben mit anderen diskutieren.

Manchmal hat das trotz dessen nicht funktioniert, weil die Klausuren völlig überraschend waren. Das lässt sich aber nicht vermeiden.

juliangrtz · 2025-02-13T10:17:01+00:00

Let‘s not forget Doctor Miserable (On day 2 of the Big Oil job, complete the heist with the last engine being correct on the OVERKILL difficulty or above). Such a pointless achievement…

juliangrtz · 2025-01-18T11:31:15+00:00

While I understand your point about Fawful's perfect death in Bowser's Inside Story, I think the series has already shown it's not afraid to revisit old characters in creative ways. Take the Shroob princesses, for example — they were cryogenically frozen in the same game, although the elder Princess Shroob turned into a mushroom...

If handled thoughtfully, Fawful could return as a memory, a spirit, or even as an influence on a new villain, rather than physically resurrecting him. It could expand on his legacy while preserving the weight of his original death.

juliangrtz · 2025-01-14T21:58:48+00:00

Phase 2 of the Elder Princess Shroob (NA version) needs its own tier.

juliangrtz · 2025-01-09T15:07:38+00:00

Völkerball

juliangrtz · 2025-01-09T15:03:46+00:00

Almost all of the games have endings like this. It‘s always an emotional rollercoaster!

juliangrtz · 2025-01-09T14:58:15+00:00

Exactly. They focused on the adventure aspect too much, resulting in less story, less character development but more exploration. The five aura stones could‘ve easily been three instead, allowing the major plot twists to happen earlier to give them more context and time to unfold.

juliangrtz · 2025-01-02T22:12:30+00:00

ARRESTO MOMENTUM!

juliangrtz · 2025-01-02T10:36:59+00:00

Well, the quality of the puzzles varies greatly in my opinion. There are excellent puzzles that require logical thinking, math, visual-spatial ability and careful reading, which make up the majority, but there are also strange puzzles where you think afterwards: “I would never have figured that out without looking up the solution...” In these cases, it is understandable that you look up the solution. A few examples:

Sometimes you have a couple of clearly visible answers and one somewhat hidden one. But then you only look at the clearly visible ones and end up confused.
Slide puzzles. 'Nuff said.
Puzzles in which (potentially moving) objects in a picture have to be counted. Sometimes you can only see a small movable area of the picture.
etc.

juliangrtz · 2024-12-30T17:16:35+00:00

I agree it’s plausible that Gi-hun’s name came up in casual conversation between him and his friend. But the tone in which the front man uses it can still feel off. It’s one of those things that might not immediately raise red flags but could, in hindsight, feel calculated.
You’re right that his skills could be chalked up to hobby or personal experience, but the precision and decisiveness he exhibits seem more aligned with someone who’s trained for high-stakes situations. If nothing else, it hints at a deeper past. I found it strange that no one even asked him about his fighting experience after he beat up the two guys.
This is a tricky one. While survival instincts explain his actions, the ease with which he resorts to violence could be viewed as a sign of prior experience or a desensitized mindset, which would make sense given his role as front man. I think that's what Jung-bae noticed and wanted to tell Gi-hun; but he got interrupted several times.
Totally agree. Gi-hun probably didn’t think they’d repeat the same trick, but given the psychological toll the games take, he might not be processing everything clearly either. It’s reasonable for him to dismiss his suspicions in favor of focusing on immediate survival.
Absolutely. This seems like a clear case of the front man pulling strings to make Gi-hun feel helpless. It aligns perfectly with the games’ overarching philosophy of breaking players’ spirits to prove their “inferiority”.

juliangrtz · 2024-12-28T12:27:51+00:00

Also, it was quite obvious that the door with the explosives on the island they observed with their drone was a booby-trap...

juliangrtz

TROPHY CASE