I notice some of the reviewers for the quite excellent projectile game Compulse are interested in finding the minimal score for the game. I believe I've either come close or, excluding bugs, have found that minimal number at 100 under par (or 4 under pro).

I believe the principles of the game mechanics are as follows:

* If left to its own devices, the ball will accelerate towards the bottom of the screen, obviously. However, it it bounces off the bottom of the screen, it will lose ~20% of its vertical. If it bounces off the sides, it will not lose any horizontal momentum. This applies to one-way walls as well as the edges of the game area.
* A note about the walls: if the ball approaches a wall from the side, it will appear to warp if any part of the ball is on the other side of the wall as it crosses it.
* The edge of the ball is the white border. The edge of the blocks is the grey borders.
* If any part of the ball is touching a block, it will accelerate in the direction of the block at a uniform pace per unit time. That is to say, the longer the ball is in contact with the block, the more the block will affect the ball's velocity.

This is important, as it leads to the following:

* If you want to slightly increase/decrease the effect of a block without putting in another block, you should just move the one block accordingly.
* If you want to use less blocks to get a ball moving quickly, place the block so the ball will contact it when the ball is moving in the desired direction, or when it is moving slowly.
* Blocks can be placed anywhere, including over switches, the goal and (although this is useless), mines.

I think that about covers the main points. My scores for the levels are as follows:

Lvl | Score (Par, Pro)
1 - 1 (2,1)
2 - 1 (2,1)
3 - 1 (2,1)
4 - 1 (2,1)
5 - 2 (4,2)
6 - 1 (4,1)
7 - 2 (6,2)
8 - 1 (4,1)
9 - 2 (8,2)
10 - 3 (6,3)
11 - 2 (6,2)
12 - 1 (6,1)
13 - 1 (3,1)
14 - 3 (7,5)
15 - 1 (7,1)
16 - 2 (8,3)
17 - 2 (5,2)
18 - 1 (5,1)
19 - 5 (10,5)
20 - 5 (10,5)
21 - 5 (10,5)
22 - 2 (6,2)
23 - 2 (7,2)
24 - 3 (14,4)
25 - 6 (12,6)

If anybody wants, I can post why I think they are the minimal scores, or how such can be acheived. If anybody can beat these scores, I'd like to know how it was done :D

(posted for the sake of completeness, I didn't want to bump the thread seeing as this is only related to V1.1)

So reading the blog, I noticed SP3000 et al. managed to score a low 44, to which I thought "how is this possible! D:<"

So I went back and tried to trim down some of my old solutions. Lo and behold, some of the scores above aren't actually the best. How embarrassing.

Hey, I'm a dork too!

I mean, seriously. I'm seriously competing in the Compulse contest: I want that iPod! My old mp3 player has been on the fritz for ages and nothing I do to try and get it working again...works.

Woah, wait, the results I posted above? They're for the first Compulse. I haven't properly revealed my results for the second one- but I can tell you that 100 under par is closer to 30 under pro in the second.