Slimes turn right
The first thing to understand about slimes is that they *always* turn right with
one exception. If they want to eat something they'll go for that first. You might
be thinking... but hey! I've seen them turn left! That's clearly a lie! But
trust me... they never do. They only appear to.
When a slime is travelling along a path it hasn't visited before and it reaches
an obstacle in it's path which it can't eat it will turn right and start walking
in that direction if it can.
Slimes Eat First
A slime will eat food first. So if there's a MIRROR or a TNT nearby it will eat
the mirror or TNT before following the turn right rule. In fact that's the only
exception to the turn right rule. When a slime eats it dies. I guess shards of
glass and explosives aren't good for living things. An unfortunate diet.
While slimes aren't too smart about what they eat they do have enough sense not
to try and eat laser beams. So a mirror with a laser hitting it is safe and
won't be considered food.
Slimes Remember where they've been
This is the most confusing and difficult part to understand about slimes. It's
also the reason that slimes appear to turn in other directions. When a slime
travels to any square on the level it remembers that it's been on that square
and it remembers where it went when it left the square. If a slime reaches a square
that it's already been to, and the last time it was there it travelled up already,
it will look for a new path to follow. How does it find the new path? It turns right
and tries the next direction. If that's also been visited it turns right again.
If by some chance it's already searched everywhere then it forgets everything it
knew about that square and starts over.
Each slime has it's own memory so if a 2nd slime reaches a square where the 1st
slime has been, the memory of the first slime has no effect. If you're clever you
can use this information to control the slimes more carefully, but the downside of
it is that after a slime has travelled in an area it's basically impossible to
predict where it will go because you'd have to remember everything the slime
remembers and the slime, unlike you, has very good short term memory.
Never mind their memory
In general you don't need to know the specifics of what a slime remembers. It's true
that it's hard if not impossible to totally predict where a slime will go in a complex
scenario, but generally speaking you control where the slime will go before you
set it free.
Another very important thing to know about slimes is that if you fence it up in an
area it will eventually search out every square in that area. That means, you don't
necessarily have to explicitely direct a slime to it's intended goal in order to use
it to eat an obstacle. Merely fence it into the area you want and let it go a while.
It will eventually find it's way.
