Blue
is scattered data. Click any blue block and you pick up the whole run it
belongs to. It turns amber
to show what you are holding.
2. Put it down
White
is empty space. Click a white block and what you are holding is written
there in one piece, turning navy
.
Navy is tidy data, and navy is your score. Hover before you click and the
space you are about to fill lights up.
3. The front of the disk is the good stuff
The first blocks on the drive, up in the top left, are worth many times
what the blocks at the far end are worth. Spend that space on your big
runs, not your little ones.
4. Green blocks never move
Green is system data,
nailed down where it sits. It chops the free space into smaller pieces,
so a long run may have nowhere to go.
5. Try not to leave holes
Any white gap left behind your tidy data
is charged against you at the end. A hole near the front is the most
expensive mistake in the game, so try to close up behind yourself.
6. Changed your mind?
Stop puts down what you are holding, back where it came from. The
Esc key does the same thing.
Disks
Pick your drive from the Disk menu. They are difficulty
settings.
Local Disk (C:) is the gentle one — least data, most
elbow room. Local Disk (D:) is busier. Network Drive (G:)
and Cloud Storage (Z:) are fuller again, more broken up by green
blocks, and they rot faster when Corruption is switched on. The harder
the drive, the bigger the score multiplier: C: pays half, D: pays
normally, G: pays 1.4 times and Z: pays 1.9 times.
The three switches below stack on top of that, so the multiplier you
see in the Volume box is the drive and your settings combined.
Corruption
Off by default. Switch it on and whatever you are holding starts going
bad from the far end, so dithering costs you data. Ruined blocks turn red
and get
dumped at the end of the disk for good. Collect enough of them and this
window will start to fall apart. Worth 1.6 times score.
Force write
Off by default, and you cannot have it on at the same time as
Corruption. Normally a run will only go somewhere it fits. With Force
write on it goes anywhere, squeezes in as far as it can, and the tail end
that did not fit is snipped off and lost. The status bar tells you how
many blocks will survive before you commit. Worth 1.2 times score.
Latency
Off by default, and only bites on the network and cloud drives. Your
write has to travel to the host first, so there is a pause before it
lands and the target sits blinking while it goes. With Corruption on as
well, it carries on rotting the whole way there. Worth 1.25 times score,
but only while Corruption is on — on its own it costs you nothing
but patience.
