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Show HN: I may have created a new type of puzzle

dogbunnypuzzle.com

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Re: Show HN: I may have created a new type of puzzle

#451

Post by code_duck »

drcode wrote: post #413
soheil wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I liked the insanely rapidly flashing colors.

I know, I like them too! This was a popular thing to do in ye olde commodore 64 days, because you could cycle the background color easily in basic, and nobody thought yet that a video game could trigger epilepsy (honestly, I'm a bit skeptical about this theory even today, but will defer to the typical opinion on this matter, not being an epilepsy expert)

Atari games, too. This reminded me of the end of Missile Command and Adventure.

Re: Show HN: I may have created a new type of puzzle

#452

Post by yusungsim »

7thaccount wrote: post #163
yusungsim wrote: post #154

Hi! I enjoyed the puzzle and I liked how puzzle itself explains every rule within itself. :) I wrote an automatic solver for the puzzle in Scala and open-sourced in GitHub. : https://github.com/yusungsim/dogbunnysolver Check it out!

Cool. I see it is a solution that has the graph embedded in the code though. Any chance you could build one to work off a generic input model that describes the starting state of the characters, nodes, connections, and connection rules? That way you could run it every day without code tweeks.

Yes! In fact, I already listed-up my future plan for refactoring the code at the readme. One of the plan is to use file I/O to get the graph structure and the rules.

I expect there would be existing solutions for (de)serializing the generic graph. One tricky thing (I think) is to encode the connection rules in some parsable format.

I'm planning on extending the connection rule to propositional logic and find some fancy way to efficiently en(de)code the PL formula.

Maybe I should spend some more nights to refactor my ugly code :P anyway thanks for the reply!

Re: Show HN: I may have created a new type of puzzle

#453

Post by popcorncowboy »

x-complexity wrote: post #431
drcode wrote: post #175

(author here) Great feedback! Yes, I am the "Land of Lisp" guy Sorry about the potential epilepsy trigger- that was the fastest way I could think of to code a quick "reward effect", I will do something different in the next version. I didn't really expect anyone to care enough to solve the puzzle lol. Now that I know people like the puzzle, I will build out the website and post regular puzzles, follow my Twitter @lis…

Nice puzzle: Was able to complete it after some trial & error. Suggestions: - Mark uncrossable paths with (an 'X' in the middle of the line) OR (red) to make it clearer that the path cannot be currently crossed. - Mark paths with fulfilled conditions (as green OR with the 'X' removed) - Mark fulfilled conditions with (a tick symbol OR green) and unmet flags with (a cross ('X') OR red) to make the fulfillment state of…

All these suggestions are great and "make sense". And all of them would dramatically simplify the game and remove the challenge. The puzzle IS the trial and error.

Perfect illustration of how hard game design is.

Re: Show HN: I may have created a new type of puzzle

#454

Post by jasonm23 »

hombre_fatal wrote: post #386
runnerup wrote: post #376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

34 year old, probably took me 8 minutes

34yo and also around 8 minutes. Though, sheepishly, I wouldn't have even mustered the energy had I not seen that someone's kid solved it in two minutes.

Took me about a minute, but I have the mental age of 10, so moving rabbits and a kangaroo (dog?) around makes sense. I just read the boxes/looked at the pictures and moved things around, until the solution was obvious. Just quickly moving things quickly.

If I'd had to think about it without interaction... I'd probably never get it.

I do a lot of graphical work, and have to make things fit / function and the only way to do that is hack it, and then clean it up so it looks planned.

Re: Show HN: I may have created a new type of puzzle

#455

Post by djvdq »

jacobolus wrote: post #139
Buttons840 wrote: post #52

Feedback: 1. It was good enough that I finished. This is success! Good job! 2. It took me too long to realize characters could occupy the same space, and the game doesn't draw characters occupying the same space very well. 3. The flashing lights at the end are too fast, slow them way down and it will still look good. You'll probably only have to change a number in your code.

I found this particular puzzle pretty easy, but I have a lot of experience with puzzles (recently because my kid likes them). If you want to train novices up to solve very difficult puzzles of this style (or whatever style), start with very simple puzzles and build your way up in a sequence of steadily increasing difficulty, introducing only about one new trick at a time.

Can you recommend any online puzzles like this?

Re: Show HN: I may have created a new type of puzzle

#456

Post by ghostly_s »

drcode wrote: post #175

(author here) Great feedback! Yes, I am the "Land of Lisp" guy Sorry about the potential epilepsy trigger- that was the fastest way I could think of to code a quick "reward effect", I will do something different in the next version. I didn't really expect anyone to care enough to solve the puzzle lol. Now that I know people like the puzzle, I will build out the website and post regular puzzles, follow my Twitter @lis…

That multiple pieces can occupy any space is information you need to present to the player.

Re: Show HN: I may have created a new type of puzzle

#458

Post by hnbad »

I found it frustratingly tedious[0] but solved it. In my experience that means other people will love it, especially if they like logic puzzles.

It took me a while to realize you could put two animals on the same node as the animals are large enough to cover the entire node, which normally means they can't overlap. It also wasn't immediately obvious how multiple conditions on the same vertex interact, i.e. whether it's an either/or or and. This was a problem for me because I couldn't initially see the covered symbols and thus didn't know one condition was already met.

The only real problem, as others have pointed out, is the strobing effect. If you want an easy option that's safer and more pleasant consider simply adding confetti: https://www.kirilv.com/canvas-confetti/

[0]: I don't like thinking too many moves ahead so I often found myself having to run the same animal in circles to activate a condition I had overlooked. Again, this is a me problem. It's why I don't like chess.

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