Elf Minder 9000

Objective

Assist Poinsettia McMittens with playing a game of Elf Minder 9000.

Hints

From	Hint
Poinsettia McMittens	Be sure you read the “Help” section thoroughly! In doing so, you will learn how to use the tools necessary to safely guide your elf and collect all the crates.
Poinsettia McMittens	Some levels will require you to click and rotate paths in order for your elf to collect all the crates.
Poinsettia McMittens	When developing a video game—even a simple one—it’s surprisingly easy to overlook an edge case in the game logic, which can lead to unexpected behavior.

Solution pr level.

Explanatory comments provided when necessary.

Sandy Start

Waves and crates

Tidal Treasures

Dune Dash

In order to solve this, we must turn the trajectory path for the elf once he has gone back into the tunnel, so that on the return he’ll hook up to the path leading to the goal flag.

Coral Cove

Shell Seekers

Palm Gove Shuffle

Once the elf has gone through the tunnel, we change the trajectory path so upon return the elf will head for the spring instead.

Tropical Tangle

For this level we must change trajectory two times in order to traverse into the goal flag.

Crate Caper

In this level we must change the trajectory multiple times. The elf has to be routed to the goal flag and back using multiple routes in order to collect the crates.

Shoreline Shuffle

Yet again, this level consists of multiple trajectory path changes in order to collec the crates

Beach Bounty

Driftwood Dunes

This was pretty straight forward, no change of trajectory neeeded

A real pickle

Stumbled on this part in the HTML source code, apparently it is an editor:

Removed the “hidden” stylesheet tag to make it visible:

Clicked the “Clear Entities” button, and placed a tunnel at the goal flag:

Then clicked restart:

Found this gem in the source code:

https://hhc24-elfminder.holidayhackchallenge.com/game2.js

if (isEditor) {
    adminControls.classList.remove('hidden');
    console.log('⚡⚡⚡⚡⚡⚡⚡⚡⚡⚡⚡⚡⚡⚡⚡');
    console.log('⚡ Hey, I noticed you are in edit mode! Awesome!');
    console.log('⚡ Use the tools to create your own level.');
    console.log('⚡ Level data is saved to a variable called `game.entities`.');
    console.log('⚡ I\'d love to check out your level--');
    console.log('⚡ Email `JSON.stringify(game.entities)` to evan@counterhack.com');
    console.log('⚡⚡⚡⚡⚡⚡⚡⚡⚡⚡⚡⚡⚡⚡⚡');
}

Mapping

Prior to playing this game I spent a lot of time mapping out the technology that controls it. Here are my notes.

Movement

Y-axis

Position	Value	Content
game.entities[0][1]	1	First dot from upper right corner
game.entities[0][1]	10	Last dot from upper right corner, max. 10

X-axis

Position	Value	Content
game.entities[0][0]	1	First dot from upper left side
game.entities[0][0]	10	Last dot from upper left side, max. 12

Entities

Entity	Value	Entity Type
game.entities[0][2]	0	Start
game.entities[0][2]	1	Flag
game.entities[0][2]	2	Crate
game.entities[0][2]	3	Stone
game.entities[0][2]	4	Sleepy Crab
game.entities[0][2]	5	Sizzling Sand
game.entities[0][2]	6	Tunnel
game.entities[0][2]	7	Spring

game.entities.forEach((item) => {
  // Move start flag
  if (item[2] == 0) {
    item[0] = 1;
    item[1] = 1;
  }

  // Move goal flag
  else if (item[2] == 1) {
    item[0] = 1;
    item[1] = 9;
  }

  // Move crates
  else if (item[2] == 2) {
    item[0] = 1;
  }

  // Other things
  else {
    item[1] = 12
  }

});






game.entities.forEach((item) => {
  if (item[2] !== 0 && item[2] !== 1 && item[2] !== 2) {
    item[1] = 12;
  }
});

enable edit mode:
https://hhc24-elfminder.holidayhackchallenge.com/index.html?id=30d23f1c-4d17-4646-8475-f8ed051fbaf2&level=Sandy%20Start&edit=1