Examples: How the game determines outcome using jelly fish

christinewupp

I find these levels so predictable I'll start a thread to show some examples. I've come across this one today, which after a long stretch of easy levels is the first of the end of episode challenging ones. It is rated super hard. Here a screenshot of the opening board for reference.

When I just played it I had the super charger and used a hand switch to bring two super chargers together. I was expecting some luck for having made this move. The next 20 moves were easy and full of luck but at the end I am left with this board:

One jelly left and no possible move to break the jelly or create a fish. I feel I should have luck written into the game. I expect a jelly fish to turn up on my next move because I made the right moves earlier to deserve some luck.

Granted!

It's a simple way to control the end of level algorithm: If the game had wanted me to fail it would have dropped the wrong candies and left me with that jelly on the board.

I am convinced that the new version jelly fish were introduced with this in mind: This method of helping determine the final outcome in the last few moves is easy for an AI to learn to manipulate. Outcomes of each level can be changed easily using AI just by computing changes to the last three moves. This way level difficulty can be changed over time and differ according to which opening board was given and which boosters were played in the first three moves.

This way the game remains "fresh", well so they think…

christinewupp

I have found an example where the jelly fish was useful:

Here I have 5 moves left, so I have entered the end of level algorithm. By this time I think I have done enough for the game to allow me to pass: I had played boosters early on in the level to get me this close and got some luck during the middle section as well. So I play the fish + stripe combo. It may be programmed to go for the last remaining frosting as a rule, but it could go either horizontal or vertical. It goes vertical which has a much better impact, and gives me an easy win:

Often the fish+stripe combo will do exactly the opposite if we are on a "fail" end of level algorithm. In such cases it will fire off in the wrong direction or set off a stripe already on the board (how useless is that!).

christinewupp

I have found an example where the jelly fish was useful:

Here I have 5 moves left, so I have entered the end of level algorithm. By this time I think I have done enough for the game to allow me to pass: I had played boosters early on in the level to get me this close and got some luck during the middle section as well. So I play the fish + stripe combo. It may be programmed to go for the last remaining frosting as a rule, but it could go either horizontal or vertical. It goes vertical which has a much better impact, and gives me an easy win:

Often the fish+stripe combo will do exactly the opposite if we are on a "fail" end of level algorithm. In such cases it will fire off in the wrong direction or set off a stripe already on the board (how useless is that!).