Bot Paths Claustrophobia research

@QuantumForce Yes, he also always stops in a claustrophobic loop after a certain number of cycles. It might have to do with the loop's size. It's also worth mentioning that the "exit" must be at the same level of the path -- so if B enters the loop by an ascending staircase, he would not see the sunken entrance as the exit. This gives a reliable loop setup where B would keep running without exiting the loop (as in the first tree loop of my Conquer). I figured this out because the behavior of B would change depending on the orientation of the exit -- N/E/S/W directions do affect his choice of exits. I think @explorer and @Scare Crow have done quite some experiments on the preference of exits.

 

Ah, what I meant was that the sunken entrance would override B's decision to exit the loop. That is, if the staircase is part of the loop itself such that B steps onto the staircase from a lower block, he would not exit no matter what direction it is.

 

Just to illustrate how I used the setup on the right to make sure B won't come out of the tree in Conquer I:

Spoiler

In the left setup, B would exit the loop if he runs clockwise (but not counterclockwise). The right setup however doesn't cause him to exit in either directions.

 

I believe it has to do with the fact that under claustrophobia, B treats all the staircases as normal blocks and would keep running on blocks at the same elevation (hence ignoring the sunken grass block outside the loop). The grass block is therefore not considered as a "legit" exit as it is lower than the loop itself (although he was standing there before entering the loop).

 

Two more cards I made while playing around with multiple exits:

Spoiler: 1.

In the above card, the N exit (a low-priority one) only becomes valid when the draggable S branch is moved to the left. This creates an exit that only works when the branch is "removed" (i.e. slid to the left such that the whole floor plan becomes one single zigzag path). This seems to suggest that the path is calculated on a per-juncture basis, and if you offer B a dead-end towards S while the exit is of the lowest priority (towards N), B would just prefer to stay under the ceiling instead of taking the N exit. What surprised me in this card, however, is that B is affected by the false exit to S (which actually has a ceiling) and would not exit to N if the S branch is not removed.

Spoiler: 2.

This one is easier to explain and is basically a setup to show the order of exits B would choose. At first B can only come out if the ceiling is open at E (not even W is attractive enough for him). As he arrives at E, rotate the ceiling so that the open spot is W, and B would move to W. However if you rotate the ceiling opening to N or S, B would simply refuse to go there, which makes the Win only accessible from E or W.

Anyhow, although I do think that these patterns are probably too cryptic for a fun / popular puzzle, I figured it might be interesting for creators to at least know about them.

 

@QuantumForce I was considering making one earlier, but shelved it for now as I think most players won't be interested in digging into those patterns.