| generic slither link app? |
PuzzleLover
Kwon-Tom Obsessive
Puzzles: 1033
Best Total: 38m 17s | Posted - 2006.04.28 02:30:27
Does anyone know of a slither link app one can load puzzles or patterns into and experiment? All the web hosts I know have specific puzzles. Thanks. |
Helge
Kwon-Tom Obsessive
Puzzles: 3548
Best Total: 11m 26s | Posted - 2006.04.28 06:13:50
A bit off topic, but can I ask what other web hosts you know about? |
PuzzleLover
Kwon-Tom Obsessive
Puzzles: 1033
Best Total: 38m 17s | Posted - 2006.04.28 09:07:42
Quote: Originally Posted by helge A bit off topic, but can I ask what other web hosts you know about? |
 Besides Kwon-Tom (my favorite by far):
http://www.puzzle-loop.com/ has a huge collection of various square sizes and two difficulty levels. These puzzles are easy by Kwon-Tom standards.
http://www.pro.or.jp/~fuji/java/puzzle/numline/index-eng.html has a very nice set of puzzles. Hirofumi Fujiwara must be a master designer. Unfortuantely there are only 38 puzzles total here.
http://janko.at/Raetsel/Schlangenlinie/index.htm is a German site with several puzzles.
http://www.puzzle.jp/letsplay/play_slitherlink-e.html - Puzzle Japan/Nikoli. Mostly easy puzzles, good for an introduction. The first slither link site I found. I directed my Mom to this site
Last edited by PuzzleLover - 2006.04.28 09:09:26 |
astrokath
Kwon-Tom Obsessive
Puzzles: 3258
Best Total: 13m 42s | Posted - 2006.04.28 09:33:31
Quote: Originally Posted by puzzlelover http://www.puzzle-loop.com/ has a huge collection of various square sizes and two difficulty levels. These puzzles are easy by Kwon-Tom standards. |
Thanks - I'd not seen this one before. |
foilman
Kwon-Tom Admin
Puzzles: 3406
Best Total: 24m 6s | Posted - 2006.04.28 10:20:41
Good selection of links, thanks for that! |
m2e
Kwon-Tom Obsessive
Puzzles: 607
Best Total: 16m 43s | Posted - 2006.04.28 11:44:05
Yeah those are pretty good links. There are a few more sites but they only have puzzles that are the really small (5x5 i think) |
kiwigeek
Kwon-Tom Noob
Puzzles: 4 | Posted - 2006.05.17 08:11:13
Try http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/puzzles/
You can make custom puzzles, but I'm not sure how much control you have. There is a coded way to specify a particular puzzle, and I bet that code includes the entire definition of the board. |
chairman
Kwon-Tom Obsessive
Puzzles: 1397
Best Total: 17m 32s | Posted - 2006.05.17 08:53:07
The code makes sense.
It starts with the number of columns, then a 'x', then the number of lines, followed by a ':' Then it scans the block, top to bottom, left to right. Numbers are simply denoted. If there are, say, 4 consecutive blank spots, this is denoted by a 'd', the fourth
character. So, the puzzle below has the following code:
5x4:a22a32d132b3a2a3
It is almost the code used by this forum site. |
kiwigeek
Kwon-Tom Noob
Puzzles: 4 | Posted - 2006.05.17 09:19:38
In this program, you can save multiple boards, print, and undo. (unfortunately, no coloring) In addition to entering a specific board, you can get the code for the current board. So it would be very useful to be able to copy such a code from this website, paste it to the program, and, say, work on the puzzle when you can't be online. Of course, those who are trying to be on the leaderboard probably wouldn't use this, because they couldn't copy the solution, AFAIK. |
foilman
Kwon-Tom Admin
Puzzles: 3406
Best Total: 24m 6s | Posted - 2006.05.17 10:24:13
Thanks for the link, looks like a good app! I don't think I'll offer an export/import option for the puzzles here, though... mainly because the application has a "solve" option which you could use to get a really quick time!!! I'm delving into his source code to see how he generates puzzles... because it's infinitely quicker than my method... hehe. |
kiwigeek
Kwon-Tom Noob
Puzzles: 4 | Posted - 2006.05.18 05:07:06
Is everybody here into speed? Personally, I find it more satisfying to do a puzzle without any guessing, or to do a really tough puzzle no matter how long it takes, or to ponder the logic involved. Maybe in time there could be some features that, if used, will disqualify you from the leaderboard? Maybe some people would like to develop a different type of competition, such as number of puzzles solved, or solving the most difficult without fixing the position?
It takes all kinds. I really appreciate this site because so far, I can only solve Monday puzzles, so there's a lot of room for me to grow. |
PuzzleLover
Kwon-Tom Obsessive
Puzzles: 1033
Best Total: 38m 17s | Posted - 2006.05.18 05:42:13
Very nice, thanks!
Here's another fun app that does slither link on a variety of polygonal grids (square, hexagonal, octagon/square, triangle, other): http://www.deadofnight.org/download/LoopDeLoop.exe
Of the variants, I like the degree 3 grids best. Several new patterns and theorems to derive. It seems to be rapidly evolving since I first found it about a week ago. It now has Undo, though Load/Save seem to be disabled (unless some .NET wizardry is required -- can anyone help me here?)
Last edited by PuzzleLover - 2006.05.18 05:47:01 |
procrastinator
Kwon-Tom Obsessive
Puzzles: 1083
Best Total: 12m 56s | Posted - 2006.05.21 13:49:54
Quote: Originally Posted by kiwigeek Personally, I find it more satisfying to do a puzzle without any guessing, or to do a really tough puzzle no matter how long it takes, or to ponder the logic involved.
|
I find the harder problems more satisfying for sure, but speed is fun too. Having said that, even when I'm playing for speed I generally only hit Fix Position when I've visualized the answer all the way to the end but it's too far for me to trust my reading.
Quote: Originally Posted by kiwigeek
Maybe in time there could be some features that, if used, will disqualify you from the leaderboard?
|
That would be my ideal: a speed competition without FP or Xes. Maybe I should get off my arse and code it up? But I don't think there'd be enough interest to justify competing with this site: I'd never want to do anything that diluted the great community here.
Quote: Originally Posted by kiwigeek
It takes all kinds. I really appreciate this site because so far, I can only solve Monday puzzles, so there's a lot of room for me to grow.
|
How I envy that! I've done all the Schlangenlinies now, so I don't see much chance of finding new hard puzzles unless tzukanion and I finish the generator we were writing before finding Kwon-Tom Loop. I'm still not sure how to best rate the puzzles for hardness given everyone knows different patterns and some are much easier than others to scan for by computer. |
tilps
Kwon-Tom Obsessive
Puzzles: 6504
Best Total: 20m 22s | Posted - 2006.05.28 05:13:59
Quote: Originally Posted by puzzlelover Very nice, thanks!
Here's another fun app that does slither link on a variety of polygonal grids (square, hexagonal, octagon/square, triangle, other): http://www.themissingdocs.net/downloads/LoopDeLoop.exe
Of the variants, I like the degree 3 grids best. Several new patterns and theorems to derive. It seems to be rapidly evolving since I first found it about a week ago. It now has Undo, though Load/Save seem to be disabled (unless some .NET wizardry is required -- can anyone help me here?) |
I wrote this app (only started 2 weeks ago), and just today have updated that link with the latest version which now supports online multiplayer games where you compete head to head simultaneously solving the one grid with the aim of getting the highest score.
Load and save are working fine in this version as far as I can tell.
The multiplayer is currently in beta and will be improving over the coming weeks, but the rest of the app is pretty solid.
If you have any questions just drop me an email at smith at deadofnight dot org
Another new version since my last edit, this one makes the cell intersection option Much smarter, resulting in much more difficult puzzles when it is turned on.
Last edited by tilps - 2006.08.05 00:31:51 |
tilps
Kwon-Tom Obsessive
Puzzles: 6504
Best Total: 20m 22s | Posted - 2006.06.04 02:30:27
Just an update on my program,
I've diverted my attention back to the solver for the last few releases and have gotten some improved performance in some circumstances (and made the puzzles generated a little bit harder), and setup a framework for the more complicated color solver which I am working on next. Multiplayer is still very much beta - but totally playable. I'd love some feedback on what things are good/bad about the multiplayer.
I recommend generating puzzles using simple solver, consider cell intersection interactions turned on and consider multiple loops as alternative solutions turned off. Lookahead 2 for newbies like me  .
After a puzzle is generated it will have a line of text above it. SI# corresponds to Simple Solver + consider cell intersection interactions and lookahead=# - S# corresponds to simple solver without consider cell intersection interactions and lookahead=# - F means full solver only. After the SI# or S# will be a Depth:# - this is the number of passes the simple solver required. Higher depth generally indicates a harder puzzle, but only within a given solver class, and not accurately. The generated puzzle difficulty currently may be easier to then currently selected generation settings, this is because no clues can be removed without making it too hard for the currently selected generation settings. The rating text is to help you decide if you want to generate again.
If you want to drop a message specific to my loopdeloop program without cluttering up this forum, you can try Here. Guest posting is currently enabled.
Last edited by tilps - 2006.06.04 02:37:52 |
tilps
Kwon-Tom Obsessive
Puzzles: 6504
Best Total: 20m 22s | Posted - 2006.06.08 10:48:53
Still working away on my program, the latest version contains a feature which one user suggested which is to give the option of generating a puzzle with less zero's.
I've implemented this by adding a 'target line length fraction of max' option, which controls the minimum length of line which the puzzle generator will make. To avoid hanging your computer forever, the generator only tries up to 10000 times to make a line with the specified minimum length. After that it gives up and just gives the next generated loop. I find that upto 0.8 (at least 80% of intersections visited by line) can be reliably generated for the 10x10 square grid in under 10000 attempts.
Some experimentation may be needed to find your optimal choice. The default is 0.5 (at least 50% of intersections are visited by the line) which is what was used previously. |
tilps
Kwon-Tom Obsessive
Puzzles: 6504
Best Total: 20m 22s | Posted - 2006.06.15 11:53:34
If there are any technically capable (willing to get their hands dirty with compiling code, applying patches, etc) Mac OS-X people here, I'd be interested in hearing of experience with the new mono version of LoopDeLoop available at my Smiths Stuff page.
http://www.deadofnight.org/Smiths_Stuff.shtml
I can point out the bugs on the mono bug tracking which have patches (written by me) which need to be applied to the latest mono sources to make it work. Hopefully they will be merged with the latest sources soon.
I have tested it on linux with the patches, and it is basically working from my limited testing. Graphically its much much uglier then its windows .net 2.0 counterpart, mostly due to unavailable fonts being replaced with other bigger fonts, etc. But I don't have a Mac OS-X machine to test it with.
Edit: seems you can't specify a url capitalization without making the url the name.
Last edited by tilps - 2006.08.06 23:43:20 |
tzukanion
Kwon-Tom Addict
Puzzles: 439
Best Total: 17m 39s | Posted - 2006.06.18 11:43:20
Hi tilps,
I have a mac with OS X and I'd be willing to test out your patches etc, however the link you posted in your message above does'nt seem to work. |
m2e
Kwon-Tom Obsessive
Puzzles: 607
Best Total: 16m 43s | Posted - 2006.06.18 12:57:06
Maybe try this http://www.deadofnight.org/Smiths_Stuff.shtml |
tilps
Kwon-Tom Obsessive
Puzzles: 6504
Best Total: 20m 22s | Posted - 2006.06.18 21:08:23
Fixed the link, silly case sensitive web server.
Step 1 in testing for Mac OS-X is - being able to build mono from a checkout of the anonymous subversion repository. Once you can do that, I'll point out the patch which is needed to mono (down to just one patch now) - Then the program on the linked page will actually run without instantly crashing.
Last edited by Tilps - 2006.06.19 06:00:16 |
