40x40???? Wow, that would take me several hours if not a workday or more. Goodness lord
Show HN: Pipes puzzle (a.k.a. Net) on a hexagonal grid
31–40 of 164 posts
Re: Show HN: Pipes puzzle (a.k.a. Net) on a hexagonal grid
#32Its annoying having to tap so many times, especially when certain pieces have few valid orientations.
You can check out "Orient / Lock" control mode in the settings. It lets you orient a tile in one tap but needs precision about where you tap. I mostly use this mode but it takes some getting used to, so I didn't make it the default.
Re: Show HN: Pipes puzzle (a.k.a. Net) on a hexagonal grid
#33I have a minor nitpick to share. I’d like it if there was an option to hide the timer, because being under time pressure to solve a puzzle can stress me out. Overall, it’s a fun puzzle, though!
Thanks for sharing, I'll add that option (on the weekend most likely).
Re: Show HN: Pipes puzzle (a.k.a. Net) on a hexagonal grid
#34Awesome puzzle. Great job!
Re: Show HN: Pipes puzzle (a.k.a. Net) on a hexagonal grid
#35Great game!
I humbly suggest that you flesh out the rules just a bit more. I struggled to figure out if pipes were allowed to run out of bounds, whether they all had to be connected into a single network, and the significance of the bulb-ended ones. I'm not totally dense and could make some guesses, but this still made the puzzle less than approachable for me at first. Basically I just guessed at these things, tried to see if I could solve one, and once I did and saw my complete solution all was clear. But why not state these things up front? Or maybe that's part of the puzzle? :-)
My first solve took 9min, then 3, then 1.5min for my third.
Re: Show HN: Pipes puzzle (a.k.a. Net) on a hexagonal grid
#36Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well the way I wrote my pipes solver was to keep a set of possible orientations of every tile and gradually remove impossible options by using border conditions and some heuristics like avoiding islands and loops. And when this doesn't turn up any new info I resort to depth-first search. The generator basically does the same but every tile starts out with a full set of possible orientations - every rotation of every…
My understanding is that since the game mentions: "Rotate the tiles so that all pipes are connected with no loops ." These is exactly what a Spanning Tree is. So, any spanning tree generation algorithm would do. You just generate a random ST each time and cut this tree where the hexagon borders intersect with it (to get pipe pieces) and randomize their orientation. These algorithms are not going to disappoint you in…
There might still be issues with multiple solutions... Because when a board has multiple solutions they're all valid Spanning Trees. But there probably is some way around this.
An efficient generator could perhaps even work client side, so I wouldn't have to store premade puzzle instances in the repo. That would be cool =).
Re: Show HN: Pipes puzzle (a.k.a. Net) on a hexagonal grid
#37Earlier quoted context omitted.
I finished my first on 1:33, starting from the edge and working in, moving to a different spot when I noticed too much flex was my strategy. Given the authors note in this thread about each puzzle only having one solution probably means I stumbled onto a decent strategy
This is pretty much how I solve regular puzzles too. I can do most 5x5s in under 20 seconds. Too often did my debugging sessions devolve into puzzle marathons =). Wrap variants are another story as they have no outer edges. Discovering which tile groups give initial clues there is pretty fun too (when the regular puzzles aren't much of a challenge any more).
> Too often did my debugging sessions devolve into puzzle marathons =).
This is why I suck at game development. Congratulations for getting it out the door!
Re: Show HN: Pipes puzzle (a.k.a. Net) on a hexagonal grid
#38Solved in 1:39, very fun game and great implementation! I'm not much a fan of pipes games but have played similar concepts such as Infinite Energy on mobile. This is a good job for such a quickly developed project
Re: Show HN: Pipes puzzle (a.k.a. Net) on a hexagonal grid
#39I have a minor nitpick to share. I’d like it if there was an option to hide the timer, because being under time pressure to solve a puzzle can stress me out. Overall, it’s a fun puzzle, though!
I'd like an opposite option.. where the timer runs out :-) maybe with a neat graphics of water flowing from the bulb starting point(s)
Re: Show HN: Pipes puzzle (a.k.a. Net) on a hexagonal grid
#40Why are the SVG tiles specified to 599.99999999 instead of 600 or something? I think a SVGO optimizations run would reduce the size of the assets a tad.