[HN Gopher] Show HN: I may have created a new type of puzzle
___________________________________________________________________
Show HN: I may have created a new type of puzzle
Author : drcode
Score : 1376 points
Date : 2022-09-18 04:37 UTC (18 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.dogbunnypuzzle.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.dogbunnypuzzle.com)
| darkwater wrote:
| Nice one, finished in about 20 minutes, I think it can be seen as
| a variation of the classical (don't know the English name) "order
| the numbers from 1 to 9, whith a blank space", with some extra
| rules.
|
| By the way, on Firefox/Android a bunny flew away to never return
| when I was dragging it from the boat.
| hacoo wrote:
| This is a fun puzzle! Great job.
|
| It took me a minute to figure out the rules, but I was able to
| with some experimentation. I think the lack of explicit
| instructions adds to the charm.
|
| There's lots of other elements you could add to these puzzles to
| spice them up, eg, wolves that try to eat the rabbits, or streets
| which are blocked at a certain frequency by cars.
|
| Some feedback: - needs a reset button! And maybe a sad-rabbit
| 'you failed' notification if you get stuck. - it already looks
| good, some cute animations would go a long way if you decide to
| work on the presentation - you could make it a little more
| obvious what moves are available when you pick up a dog/rabbit,
| the shift from white to blue didn't always 'grab' my eye and
| sometimes I didn't notice a move was available. Again, a simple
| animation would help - overall I like the minimalism though, so I
| don't think you need to go overboard with visual improvements :)
| yakcyll wrote:
| The labels as required preconditions take a moment to figure out,
| but I found it satisfying to do so.
|
| I'm a sucker for graph and topology puzzles, so this was very
| enjoyable to me. I loved that you could clearly sense progress
| mounting with each step.
|
| The flashing lights at the end could use a bit of calming down
| though.
|
| Fantastic prototype, is what this smells like : p
| nzealand wrote:
| Very fun.
|
| I also found it took a while to understand the rules, which I
| enjoyed, but others may not.
|
| You could add a restart button to encourage experimentation, or
| flash preconditions red when blocking passage to communicate
| rules more clearly, or start off with a simple puzzle that
| illustrates one rule then allow people to level up to more
| complex puzzles with additional rules.
|
| Nice job.
| nabakin wrote:
| I'd change the word "Get" to "Move". I spent a minute trying to
| figure out how this game worked but I think changing those Gets
| to Moves would've helped
| eps wrote:
| Is this playable on iPads? No element appears to be actionable...
| :(
| Jtsummers wrote:
| Yes. That's what I played it on. Javascript disabled?
| eps wrote:
| No, just stock Mobile Safari with a DNS ad-blocker. Nothing
| exotic.
| Jtsummers wrote:
| So I finally pulled it up on my laptop, what's particularly
| weird about that is that all the resources when loading the
| page seem to be from the site, same domain. It's not
| pulling in resources from another domain that may be
| getting blocked.
| avindroth wrote:
| Same here. Thought the puzzle was obscure on purpose.
| akrauss wrote:
| When dog and rabbit are on the same node, it was somewhat hard
| for me to pick the right one to move (on mobile Safari), but I
| eventually managed. Very nice game.
| WesleyJohnson wrote:
| If the author is looking for ideas here, with minimal impact on
| the existing design, I'd recommend putting the most-recently
| dropped animal in the back to allow for cycling through which
| one you pick up.
|
| Another possibility is a "hover" state when when you mouseover
| a node with 2 animals, they animate quickly into a side-by-side
| orientation so you can easily pick which one you want to
| interact with.
| eequah9L wrote:
| Did you manage to? I couldn't choose the other one. (I forgot
| which one it was.) Even now on desktop it keeps picking up the
| dog and can't choose the rabbit.
| Insanity wrote:
| That was very fun, would definitely play more as a casual game on
| my phone while commuting or during other downtime activities:)
| ericskiff wrote:
| Well, I quite enjoyed that! Well done, and I agree that I haven't
| really seen this type of puzzle before. It's similar to those
| slide around number/picture puzzles. I did a bit of
| experimentation and figured out that characters could overlap
| places and then the rest was just figuring out how to get to
| positions that I could move forward from (getting the dog up to
| the top loop, etc)
|
| Nicely done!
| x49asvk wrote:
| This was a fun timepass for me, i am happy to have figured oyt
| and solved it in less than 4 minutes. Good job!
| cheunste wrote:
| I feel like I've seen this in a Professor Layton game before.
| Just not laid out like this of course
| closedloop129 wrote:
| This is fun.
|
| A minor issue: It would be nice if nodes could be skipped.
|
| E.g. initially, the dog is on the tree and can move to the carrot
| in two steps. It is required to make both steps and drop the dog
| on the well. I would prefer if I could put the dog directly on
| the carrot, or if I could put the dog on the carrot after
| hovering the dog over the well.
| brandnewaccount wrote:
| I like having to drop the dog, it makes it easier to figure out
| the rules initially without instruction. Also it forces more
| explicit play, rather than just checking where you're allowed
| to drop the dog. Obviously it's not very hard to figure out,
| but I'm imagining kids might end up playing this--having them
| drop the dog makes sure they understand the solution.
| sheepdestroyer wrote:
| It was fun
| 1970-01-01 wrote:
| I couldn't understand how everyone was able to understand the
| puzzle and solve it without hints. Took me a few minutes to
| realize this is an interactive, click-and-drag game. I don't need
| any hints now. :)
| jmkd wrote:
| Ultra frustrating, impossible learning curve. Tried twice several
| hours apart, no progress. Congratulations if that's what you
| wanted.
| caf wrote:
| As I moved the last piece I was 75% expecting to be rickrolled.
| drcode wrote:
| I wish I had thought of that lol
| londons_explore wrote:
| When two of something are on the same tile, I think you need a
| different image - or to add some kind of stacking visual or
| something
| nullc wrote:
| It would be useful to design beginner levels so that there are no
| states you can get into but not solve the puzzle from.
|
| I believe it's easily possible to make puzzles where you can move
| into a subgroup that doesn't include the solution. Where that's
| possible you really want to solve the whole thing mentally before
| moving any pieces.
|
| This seems like a visualized version of the logic problems on the
| LSAT (and used to be on the GRE?).
| cols wrote:
| Super fun game solved it in < 5 min. Would love to have more
| levels!
|
| You might consider updating the meta tag that handles the Open
| Graph text preview image. Right now the text preview image of
| your website on an iPhone is the React logo.
|
| https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/technotes/tn2444...
| JestUM wrote:
| Once you get it, it's one of those games that give good vibes.
| sabujp wrote:
| If you're on mobile and you need to move a character to the left,
| you will want to swipe to the left very slowly to avoid
| triggering the gesture for moving back a page.
| drcode wrote:
| Yeah that's annoying, I'll have to see if the back gesture can
| be disabled
| krlx wrote:
| Great work, it is very easy to understand but challenging enough
| to be rewarding. A puzzle once a day with a timer or an action
| counter to compare with your friend could be quite successful!
| eXpl0it3r wrote:
| Reminded me a bit of the game Baba Is You
| whiterock wrote:
| might be an off-beat opinion, but I think the rules are perfectly
| clear as is. Took me around 5 minutes from first sighting.
| imakeinternet wrote:
| This was awesome. Loved it.
| ahaproudowl wrote:
| Great game, more levels and maybe a countdown for animals that
| will eat other animals (and end the game) if they are left on the
| same pad for too long.
| 7thaccount wrote:
| A timer would only be fun for me in order to compete with
| friends. Not a distracting one that you can see while playing,
| but a time at the end with the number of the puzzle (assuming
| more get made) would be helpful for sharing.
| Jverse wrote:
| I disagree about the countdown. It wouldn't change the actual
| puzzle and arguably wouldn't make the game more fun to play for
| most people.
| dpcan wrote:
| I don't like how the thing I have to move covers up the things I
| have to look at. Lost interest pretty quick because of this, but
| it seems like it would be pretty easy to put the moving thing
| next to the symbol or something.
| UberFly wrote:
| Same here. Found it more frustrating than fun for this reason.
| scubakid wrote:
| Do you think you might try to procedurally generate additional
| levels? Or craft them by hand?
| wez470 wrote:
| Loved it. Great work :)
| jimbob45 wrote:
| Word of warning: iPhone Firefox dark mode renders the game
| unplayable. Turn off dark mode to fix the issue.
| unsafecast wrote:
| I loved it. Could figure out the way it works with no
| instructions fairly quickly. There was never a moment where I got
| annoyed and wanted to put it down. It got me trying things all
| the time and I was never stuck in one place thinking for long.
| Yet, the solution wasn't something I just randomly found.
|
| Congrats! This is really good.
| RadiantJo wrote:
| Intuitive and nice brain teaser. Should share it on some kid's
| dedicated website. I bet they'll love it.
| laserbeam wrote:
| Quite nice. I enjoyed the distraction.
|
| Unsure if it's a new "type" of puzzle. Virtually any game with
| multiple characters, buttons and doors plays like this, and can
| be reduced to a similar graph.
|
| Despite that, I don't want to discourage you. Originality doesn't
| matter that much. Keep making puzzles like these.
| omeysalvi wrote:
| I agree, the title is a little self aggrandizing. As a game
| designer, I feel it disingenuous to claim it is a "new" kind of
| puzzle. The person just made a puzzle by adding rules to a set
| of constraints.
| barbazoo wrote:
| That was fun!!! Thank you!
| Waterluvian wrote:
| How do you generate levels or at least validate they're solvable?
| tibbar wrote:
| It's beautiful! Looks like the optimal solution is 26 steps:
| https://github.com/polkerty/dog-bunny-puzzle-solver
| wrbs wrote:
| Got the same.
|
| There are 200 ways of doing this (if you don't distinguish
| between the 2 bunnies when they're on the same tile, 420 if you
| do).
|
| If you merge together moves involving the same animal there are
| only 4 (with length 15).
|
| https://gist.github.com/wrbs/5824e9b17c55b5ad3d8467f93e12ed8...
| (svg graph of the 4)
| [deleted]
| aaron695 wrote:
| Nice.
|
| I tried to fuzz this rather than use an exhaustive search.
|
| So random animals walk randomly.
|
| It gets stuck. So I added if no animal moves after 100
| attempts, restart.
|
| But it seems to get stuck all the time. So it loops around
| mostly and eventually falls to the stuck position.
|
| I have to think about this, is the entropy such that you'll
| never practically escape by randomly walking?
|
| I feel like if I add more conditions it just becomes an
| exhaustive search with billions+ of times the extra
| calculations.
| ajkjk wrote:
| I think if you refuse to duplicate states you'll get the
| solution pretty quickly.
| aqw137 wrote:
| Feedback: add restart button so I don't have to reload the page
| when I get stuck.
|
| Great game!!
| [deleted]
| kjkisielewicz wrote:
| holy shit that was hard
| [deleted]
| benji-york wrote:
| Suggestion: make the dog eat the rabbit if they occupy the same
| space.
|
| (I solved it without doing so because I assumed that was a
| constraint.)
| sposeray wrote:
| bckr wrote:
| Possible epilepsy warning on completion?
|
| Great little puzzle, thanks for making this and sharing it.
| bzxcvbn wrote:
| Reminds me of baba is you.
| kjkisielewicz wrote:
| damn that was hard
| delusional wrote:
| It's basically a formal version of a classic sokoban game. I
| really like it.
| rmetzler wrote:
| Sokoban was also the association I had.
| padjo wrote:
| Fun!
| billforsternz wrote:
| That was a lot of fun. Easy to figure out what the challenge was.
| Then puzzling, challenging gameplay and a satisfying conclusion
| in, I don't know, 15 minutes or so. Good work, well done, hope
| you do well with this.
| Stormwalker wrote:
| This is not new type of puzzle, the most basic version of is
| defined like this:
|
| The man needs to cross the river with a wolf, goat and a cabbage.
| Wolf would eat goat, goat would eat cabbage, boat has only room
| for two.
|
| Every kid in Russia knows that puzzle, although your
| implementation is quite good.
| kjkisielewicz wrote:
| Damn that was hard.
| StingyJelly wrote:
| I love puzzles and flashing lights. Perfect!
|
| Only counter-intuitive aspect I figured out only after finishing
| the first play was that animals, even dog and bunny, can occupy
| the same spot. But since it's possible to finish the game without
| doing that (except the final move) it's kinda moot point.
| Misterioso wrote:
| 671098
| MrTortoise wrote:
| Great game
|
| I agree i don't think i have seen constraint as a game quite like
| this before
| imglorp wrote:
| This looks like a fun TLA+ exercise.
| SkipperCat wrote:
| What I really liked about this game was the lack of instructions.
| It's like you get two games in one - figuring out how to play and
| then figuring out how to win.
| ada1981 wrote:
| Doesn't work in safari or chrome on my iPhone.
| dgfitz wrote:
| I thought it was just me, glad you posted this.
| ars wrote:
| I tried it on two different browsers and it does exactly nothing.
|
| It's just a diagram showing labels and lines? But nothing moves,
| and I don't see any rabbits or dogs.
|
| I checked developer tools, and there are no messages.
|
| Not really sure what it's supposed to do.
| lurquer wrote:
| You can get into 'irreversible' states unless I'm mistaken. With
| a bunny on house and a dog/bunny on sailboat, the game is stuck.
| (Not a bug... maybe a feature... but you have to start over
| unless I'm mistaken.)
| smrq wrote:
| When I was young, I had a book of mazes-with-rules[1]. This would
| have fit right in! There were definitely mazes that involved
| multiple entrants into the maze, and rules governing whether
| edges were allowed to be taken.
|
| Thanks for unlocking an ancient memory. I'll have to see if I can
| track down my old copy of this book.
|
| [1] https://www.logicmazes.com/super.html
| rozgo wrote:
| Good job!
| JaceLightning wrote:
| It doesn't work. Especially on mobile.
| Smaug123 wrote:
| This is one of the least useful bug reports I have ever seen.
| You could at least have reported your browser and operating
| system.
| zeristor wrote:
| That seems to be a standard bug report to me.
| sharken wrote:
| Must be a very rare browser, it works very well on Brave
| (mobile).
|
| Also, it is always more helpful to state the actual issue.
| eCa wrote:
| Safari on ios. I see no dogs or rabbits. I only realized that
| it was supposed to be interactive by reading the comments
| here.
|
| Edit: Same in Chrome on ios for me.
| sharken wrote:
| Not sure what is going on, works fine on Safari (ios) here.
| plank wrote:
| Solved it on mobile, but no signal that game was finished. On
| Firefox (android) here.
| OJFord wrote:
| Worked fine for me on FF on Android. With third-party
| disabled uBO even.
| shever73 wrote:
| Worked fine in Ecosia on mobile
| niemenmaa wrote:
| Worked well on my Android`s Vanadium browser (chromium based).
| gorgoiler wrote:
| I love it. Fantastic.
|
| Can you think of a way to re formulate the puzzle so that you can
| express the rules without words?
|
| Also, the dog / rabbit dynamic (as used in the classic
| dog/duck/grain river crossing puzzle) made me think that I had to
| chase the rabbits with dog, or that dogs and rabbits couldn't
| share a node. Different animals might be better -- rabbit and
| mouse, perhaps? Or even different coloured rabbits and different
| coloured carrots?
|
| The words thing though -- that's what you should work on next, I
| think. Good puzzles like this are word-free in the puzzle itself
| (Stephen's sausage roll, English country tune).
|
| It would take this puzzle from great to excellent. Good luck.
| More please!
| benj111 wrote:
| >Can you think of a way to re formulate the puzzle so that you
| can express the rules without words?
|
| I'm imagining Haskell with emojis now.
| erk__ wrote:
| Why imagine it? It is already possible :P
|
| https://gist.github.com/Erk-/be3ef032d31734b6f835edd9a9685af.
| ..
| benj111 wrote:
| And I thought I had a sick and twisted mind...
| schoen wrote:
| > Also, the dog / rabbit dynamic (as used in the classic
| dog/duck/grain river crossing puzzle) made me think that I had
| to chase the rabbits with dog, or that dogs and rabbits
| couldn't share a node.
|
| Yes, I assumed first that no two animals could share a node at
| all until I was near the end (and saw that it would be
| necessary), and I still assumed that rabbits and the dog
| couldn't share a node ("the dog will eat the rabbit!") because
| of the river crossing thing, until someone in this very comment
| thread mentioned an unsolvable state that involved getting the
| dog a rabbit on the same node.
| 01100011 wrote:
| > saw that it would be necessary
|
| FYI It's not necessary to solve the puzzle.
|
| Also it seems to have issues on FF/Linux because when I did
| stack a dog and a rabbit I could only then select the dog.
| marcushill wrote:
| It is necessary to stack the rabbits on each other at the
| carrot, no?
| 01100011 wrote:
| Oh haha, yeah I guess so then. Sorry, I missed that.
| megapatch wrote:
| It is common knowledge that rabbits stack rather
| naturally.
| benj111 wrote:
| I did it without stacking until the very end. I wasn't
| sure if you just needed to get 1 rabbit on the carrot, or
| what.
| NickC25 wrote:
| Really enjoyed this. The lack of additional hints and
| instructions made it much more enjoyable than if everything was
| handed to me. More of this, please!
| archon1410 wrote:
| >site not found
|
| looks like there's some problem with the hosting
| MobileVet wrote:
| "I wish this was daily" - my 7 yo son.
|
| Nice work!!
|
| Edited: typo, with -> wish
| b4je7d7wb wrote:
| That was fun to figure out
| log101 wrote:
| I love it!
| max23_ wrote:
| Nice puzzle!
|
| It would be nice to show how many steps were taken to solve it.
| [deleted]
| zeckalpha wrote:
| Reminds me of
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_Bridges_of_Konigsberg
| neeldhara wrote:
| Prompted by a question on Twitter: it turns out that the puzzle
| is also NP-complete:
|
| https://www.neeldhara.blog/posts/dogs-bunny-puzzle/
| ugh123 wrote:
| I wish I could see the icons that the rabbit and dog are standing
| on
| spicybright wrote:
| That was very well made! Are there any more levels?
| xani_ wrote:
| Looks like a bit expanded goat, wolf, cabbage puzzle
| etothepii wrote:
| This seems a bit like an extended version towers of Hanoi.
| leto_ii wrote:
| My two cents:
|
| 1. Like other people I found the UX a bit confusing (figuring out
| that two animals can occupy the same spot, picking which one of
| them to move etc.)
|
| 2. This one seems hard for a first level, if it's addressed to a
| general audience. Even figuring out that some edges are directed
| is not obvious if you don't know about graphs in advance. You
| should build a tutorial for non-HN people.
|
| 3. Are there other levels?
|
| 4. Lights are flashing way too fast at the end. A text message
| would also be nice.
|
| Otherwise a great job! Playable and fun once you get into it.
| Would totally play again :D
| ALittleLight wrote:
| I love it. I suggest making it so the dog and rabbits can't
| occupy the same space. I solved it this way afraid I would lose
| if I let a dog dog on the same node as the rabbit (just seems
| like they wouldn't get along). Then, I had to restart to see if
| they would and was a little disappointed to find they did.
|
| Do you have an automated solver or a way to procedurally generate
| games? You could produce one a day and get the next wordle going.
| yusungsim wrote:
| 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!
| 7thaccount wrote:
| 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.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| Fun. Can't wait to see this in code interviews.
| usgroup wrote:
| Feels like calculating forcing chess moves. I.e forced mates are
| conditional on where pieces can go and where the pieces actually
| are.
| ronty88 wrote:
| Took 30 seconds to figure out what to do and then a minute to
| solve it. This was really good. Like many have pointed out, it
| takes a few seconds to figure out what is where and remember what
| symbol is under the animal but if this was a quick prototype,
| it's really good. Thanks for sharing it with us "Land of Lisp"
| guy.
| tlyleung wrote:
| Nice puzzle! It would be nice to indicate whether the transition
| with two conditions is an "or" or "and".
| isthisthingon99 wrote:
| Fun game, but after the seizure, do I not get another board???
| cortic wrote:
| Just a static image, no animals or anything to click on, tried on
| Chrome 83 (no add-ons) and FF 88 (uBlock, disabled).
| fardo wrote:
| Older analogues exists, but not exactly in this form.
|
| Two puzzles from Logical Adventure of the Zoombinis are very
| close, though.
|
| The first is Captain Cajun's ferryboat, which you can see at
| https://youtu.be/_JlMcs_2xes. The constraint is that all
| zoombinis you seat on the boat must share at least one trait with
| at least one of their neighbors. It doesn't really impose spatial
| dependencies of movement like your puzzle does though.
|
| For one that does, but by taking on a cartesian grid, you can
| look to Bubblewonder abyss https://youtu.be/vx1yFKVdq9o, which on
| its hardest difficulty adds many, many rules to moving between
| nodes based on traits, plus re-use toggles (so if a node is
| visited twice, it goes two different places, "capture" triggers
| of glowing colored particles that holds one Zoombini captive, and
| a "release" button that lets it go.
| [deleted]
| richardw wrote:
| Looks excellent!
|
| Not sure if it's an issue on iPhone or my IQ, but I can't figure
| out what the rules are. I highlight an animal but can't move it
| on what seems a bidirectional edge (no nodes light up). But
| sometimes can. I assume that should work always but it's not for
| me.
|
| Also initially assumed I had to keep them separate, but comments
| here said no.
| pajko wrote:
| Seems like it's a bit buggy. Got a bunny stuck on a flower,
| unable to move it. Moved the second bunny to the same place and
| that made it unstuck.
| 7thaccount wrote:
| I'd guess that's just how the puzzle works.
| shanleyenator wrote:
| That was a fun puzzle. I like that it was intuitive and you could
| figure out how to play without a stupid tutorial. Well done
| cobzilla wrote:
| I really like the whole concept and execution!
|
| I like the lack of instructions, it makes it fun to explore the
| rules. In fact, unique rules per game might be interesting to
| discover.
|
| The UI is perfect, keep it simple and focused on play. Though, I
| agree with other comments that the final flashing lights should
| be slower.
|
| A move count and leader board for time to complete and fewest
| moves to complete would make this social-ish.
|
| Maybe hints for harder puzzles?
|
| I could see this going a long way, so many variations to explore!
| [deleted]
| addajones wrote:
| Loved your puzzle, it was really fun. It took me a bit but I was
| able to solve it. :)
| twayt wrote:
| Game is stuck when rabbits and dog are on ship
| rsstack wrote:
| It isn't stuck, you lost :) Refresh the page to try again.
| twayt wrote:
| Something about "losing" a puzzle doesn't feel right.
| rsstack wrote:
| Same as putting the wrong letter in a crossword or making 6
| wrong guesses in Wordle. Sometimes puzzles have to be
| started from scratch.
| CSMastermind wrote:
| The "and" condition (must have someone on the flower and the
| bone) confused me because I thought it was an OR condition. Took
| me a few tries to realize what the constraints were.
|
| I'd like to see these be autogenerated, that seems like a fun
| problem to solve.
| sixdimensional wrote:
| This seems to be a kind of Petri net[1] almost.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petri_net
| pengaru wrote:
| That was a fun few minutes of my life I don't want back, great
| puzzle concept built around dependency hell!
| sp332 wrote:
| I like the puzzle! Too much flashing at the end there, either
| tone it down or put an epilepsy warning on it.
| tempestn wrote:
| I had the same thought. Just made me wonder, are there browser
| extensions, or maybe even full OS overlays for people with
| epilepsy that will automatically filter out any potentially
| problematic flashing?
|
| Edit: Unsurprisingly it appears I'm not the first to have
| thought of this, at least:
| https://tlo.mit.edu/technologies/making-screens-safe-those-p...
| patrulek wrote:
| I had to read comments to find out its interactive...
| Temporary_31337 wrote:
| Having programming background, especially grinding the fizz buzz
| algos for fangs prep definitely helps with this puzzle.
| lr4444lr wrote:
| Very enjoyable and well done, but not "new". This effectively the
| same as push maze, with non contiguous rule sets.
| redanddead wrote:
| This is HN and almost nobody is talking about how this was coded.
|
| The snapping is great. The tweening is great. I guess this is
| uses draggable? It could have gone wrong a thousand ways but its
| a great success in terms of usability (I'm on mobile)
|
| in terms of the puzzle itself I found it a bit confusing, but I'm
| sure you'll figure it out. it takes real initiative to just code
| a thing and try things out
| drcode wrote:
| Framer Motion
| TrianguloY wrote:
| On Firefox for android when you solve it (dog at the top, both
| rabbits at the bottom left) nothing happens. Other than that it's
| really nice!
| hazzamanic wrote:
| could be that you have dark reader extension enabled?
| TrianguloY wrote:
| Exactly. That's it. I suspected it later while reading other
| comments, checked on chrome and they flashed as expected. Too
| late to edit the post unfortunately.
| eequah9L wrote:
| Worked for me. All the fields flashed started and kept flashing
| different colors.
| soheil wrote:
| Took me 4 minutes to solve it. A few issues:
|
| - It's not clear that you can drag the characters.
|
| - Tried to scroll and thought something was wrong when it wasn't
| working.
|
| - Looks like you can also drag the main map image at least on
| Firefox which makes it slightly more confusing for those without
| much experience with React or programming in general.
|
| - The rabbits looked scared or sad I thought the puzzle had
| something to do with that, it doesn't.
| grzes wrote:
| only one level? c'mon this is great!
| nmg wrote:
| Yes you did. One of these a day, please. I really like the hand-
| drawn / doodled style.. it disarmed me, which was good because
| solving this required me to be patient and to unwire my brain a
| little
| jonnycomputer wrote:
| Inspired by resource allocation graphs?
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| I was clueless and gave up.
| TGRush wrote:
| This should have a mild epilepsy warning.
| nailer wrote:
| I thought the dog would eat the bunny if they occupied the same
| space (and that stopping the dog eating the bunny was the point).
| 63 wrote:
| Some neat concepts here. Aside from the mostly cosmetic qol
| issues other commenters mention, I also wonder if the game will
| get repetitive. It's hard to tell with only the one level but I
| imagine there might be some recurring patterns that the player
| will pick up on after playing for a bit
| olibhel wrote:
| Kudos on the puzzle; very easy to understand what needs to be
| done/achieved to solve it.
|
| You could change the page title from "React App" to something
| more appropriate.
| posed wrote:
| Reminds of the game "We were here together", where you and your
| partner have to be at certain position doing some coordinated
| actions to solve the puzzle and advance to the next stage.
| jeffrallen wrote:
| I love it. Post more!
| luvz2code wrote:
| Really cool game and idea. Please build more.
| seba_dos1 wrote:
| Please make that blinking after winning less... epileptic.
| shever73 wrote:
| Very cool little game. More levels please!
| drcode wrote:
| Working on it
| fruntonm wrote:
| aerovistae wrote:
| I have to say the fact that I was able to figure out how the
| puzzle worked - what I was meant to do - with no instructions in
| about 60 seconds is a good sign.
|
| I'm also immediately kind of addicted to this....I really like
| it.
|
| The one thing that annoys me is that I can't see what a symbol is
| if the dog/bunny is on it because it's covered up. It's hard to
| remember when there's so many. Some transparency or slight design
| adjustment would fix this easily.
| somedude895 wrote:
| I didn't understand the conditions at first. I think it would
| be good to have visual feedback on what the issue is when
| trying to make a forbidden move, e.g. trying to move through
| "somebody at Carrot", the condition and the Carrot field should
| be highlighted together.
| lloeki wrote:
| Having a knack for these, I found these "lack" of hints
| (understanding goal, covered tiles, no precondition failed)
| to be part of the game, and making deduction/memory work for
| it. There was just enough for me to understand it.
|
| Had these hints been there I'd have been bored rather
| quickly.
| galangalalgol wrote:
| Only thing I didn't know at first was that I assumed
| multiple conditions were or instead of and. Also, people
| are talking about flashing lights? I get to the completion
| criteria with the dog on the bone and the rabbits on the
| carrot and the game doesn't end. I can keep playing, no
| lights. Is there more?
| threecoins wrote:
| You need to have both rabbits on carrots
| galangalalgol wrote:
| Bah, was using darkreader, hurray flash lights!
| bentcorner wrote:
| It was not obvious to me until the very end that you can
| have overlapping animals, my gut instinct is to treat
| this similar to a "wolf/lamb/cabbage" kind of puzzle and
| keep the dog and rabbits separate.
| galangalalgol wrote:
| There is only one carrot, they are both on it.
| lloeki wrote:
| > I assumed multiple conditions were or instead of and
|
| Same, so I tried, and it was very obvious that it didn't
| work, so, and. Discovering that was, to me, part of the
| whole experience that makes it rewarding.
| furyofantares wrote:
| If you have a knack for them, you can probably just avoid
| making illegal moves and not worry about it.
|
| Reinforcing the rules of the puzzle when you try to violate
| one is a good idea.
| qwertox wrote:
| I agree. It's similar to how Doom was initially whereas now
| every game is filled with explanations.
| hyperhopper wrote:
| But there is a difference between a subtle hint and the
| MegaMan/navi style "hey listen! Here are several
| paragraphs to read"
|
| Play through portal with developer commentary, that's a
| masterpiece on how to use hints well without players even
| realizing.
|
| Things like how hallways are structured, where light is
| shining, etc.
| menesss wrote:
| Wait, which MegaMan game has a verbose tutorial?
| MattRix wrote:
| That might be because most modern games are much more
| complicated than Doom. It's also possible that modern
| game designers don't want people to abandon the game
| before having a chance to really get what the core of it
| is about.
|
| Don't get me wrong, there is still a place for games with
| mystery and obscure mechanics etc, but it doesn't make
| sense for most games to be like that. It's just an
| unnecessary way to keep away players that would otherwise
| love the game.
| drdec wrote:
| I think that it is also that there are more resources for
| in-game help on modern hardware.
| MattRix wrote:
| There are games where figuring out what to do is the goal,
| but this game has an good enough design that it really
| doesn't have to be one of those. Many older games use that
| kind of obscure design as a crutch to appear more
| interesting and difficult than they really were.
| Beltiras wrote:
| I second the UX of clearer way of showing the icon the player
| pieces are on. I don't know if transparency is the way to go.
| Maybe the shape of the node can differ.
| benj111 wrote:
| Colour coding?
| eequah9L wrote:
| > The one thing that annoys me is that I can't see what a
| symbol is
|
| In a similar vein, when both dog and bunny are on one field, I
| can't choose which one to pick up.
| baq wrote:
| If you're fast enough you can pick up one, drop somewhere and
| pick up the other when the first one is animating back.
| 83457 wrote:
| This is the way. Moving also reveals the location they are
| on, if obscured.
| alexvoda wrote:
| Didn't realize that was possible. I thought they were never
| supposed to meet and solved as such.
| 7thaccount wrote:
| Took me about 2 minutes to figure out how to successfully move
| and quite a few more to fully solve it. A lot of fun!
| etrautmann wrote:
| I love this - also had a hard time with remembering covered
| icons. Perhaps a tiny offset of the dog/bunny, or even a size
| difference would help.
| dalbasal wrote:
| Yes. I didn't get it. Hated it. Then got it. Completed it. Now
| I love it. Sign of a good puzzle... though the
| frustration/challenge balance is on a knife's edge with this
| game.
|
| Overall, yeah. It has the feel of a clever, loveable game...
| how it comes together.
|
| Great work. I love these postings. Very artistic.
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| I also like that you can make a few mistakes and still solve
| it.
| perihelions wrote:
| Are there even any dead states?
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| Yes. From beginning: Dog right, dog right, dog up.
| runxel wrote:
| And you have to reload the page then...
|
| Should have been a "back" button or smth!
| starkd wrote:
| Not sure what I am missing. But all the possible moves lead
| to dead states.
|
| That being said, not sure what the transition labels mean.
| "Somebody at bone", "Somebody at carrot" or "nobody at
| bone" means nothing to me. I suspect there's another game
| that I don't know about that would provide the context.
| tomerv wrote:
| The path with that label is blocked unless the condition
| is fulfilled. I don't think it relies on any prior
| knowledge (at least nothing specific I can think of)
| starkd wrote:
| ahhh ok. It is a precondition. That helps!
| Jtsummers wrote:
| It's entirely self-contained. "Bone" is a node in the
| graph, put either a bunny or dog on the bone and that
| "somebody at bone" path will be enabled because its
| condition will be enabled.
| [deleted]
| 7thaccount wrote:
| Oh yeah, I had to reset once lol. It has to do with getting
| a couple of characters stuck in the arrow trap without
| being able to get someone on a tree to escape...I think
| hamburglar wrote:
| I Kobayashi Maru'd it by setting the animals' absolute positions
| in css.
| shimonabi wrote:
| Maybe just give a hint that you have to DRAG the animals.
|
| The symbols are very hard to make out when the animals are on
| them. If this is intentional, then cover them entirely.
| wodenokoto wrote:
| That was fun. Where is the next level?
| going_ham wrote:
| This puzzle is so cool because it revolves around casual graphs
| in classical planning problem! One can use heuristics based
| search to come up with optimal solutions. I really like this
| innovative approach to the design.
|
| However, one edge from house to tree wasn't clear at first
| because, I thought of it as logical or while it was about logical
| and. Other than that, pretty awesome work!!
|
| Edit:: Scrolling down the comments someone seems to already
| implemented a graph search. That is pretty quick:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32885309
| quantumfan1738 wrote:
| I didn't have a problem with that edge.
| jonnycomputer wrote:
| Yeah the edge with two conditions was a little confusing;
|
| (1) and
|
| (2) or
|
| (3) At bone to go up, at flower to go down [or the converse?]
|
| Was able to figure it out through experimentation, but the
| signage doesn't make it obvious.
| convolvatron wrote:
| some kind of visual gate or a schematic-toggle-switch kind of
| thing would help
| 7thaccount wrote:
| I'd love to see the formulation for this problem written out in
| proper form that can be fed to a solver like MiniZinc or CPLEX
| or whatever type of solver can handle it.
| 7thaccount wrote:
| It looks like Hakan K (has a super cool website where he
| solves all kinds of optimization problems for fun) was able
| to solve it using the Picat language in a very small amount
| of code with a solution (not sure if optimal):
|
| http://hakank.org/picat/dogbunny_puzzle.pi
|
| His website is a treasure trove for these kinds of problems
| and worth studying.
| hakank wrote:
| The solution is 26 steps and that should be the optimal
| solution.
| 7thaccount wrote:
| Awesome! Thanks for popping up and clarifying.
|
| For those of us that are not experts, how is this sort of
| problem generally classified? I've seen others on here
| say classical planning, but I wasn't sure if that is
| correct.
| hakank wrote:
| I would (also) say that this is a classic planning
| problem. It's deterministic, observable, static, and
| discrete.
| 7thaccount wrote:
| I appreciate the clarification here. It helps. Thanks!
| 7thaccount wrote:
| If this is by Conrad Barski (the Land of Lisp author), I wonder
| if early versions were done in Lisp and translated to JavaScript
| or whatever is needed for the web. Just curious how the
| development went.
| drcode wrote:
| I have a puzzle generator in zig (tuned to be super fast at
| brute force graph generation)
|
| The front end is boring JavaScript, because I use react relay a
| lot on other projects, which is not clojurescript compatible
| neonate wrote:
| What are the main things that cause a JS program to be
| compatible (or not) with clojurescript?
| mtlmtlmtlmtl wrote:
| Maybe Clojurescript?
| techzerd wrote:
| Fun puzzle. Nice flashing lights as a reward
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| rumblings wrote:
| interesting game
| beoberha wrote:
| Very nice! Really enjoyed figuring it out :)
| eporomaa wrote:
| I got all the rabbits and the dog to one node and then I could
| not move anywhere.
| chirau wrote:
| I am completely lost. How do you play this?
| schoen wrote:
| Drag animals from one node onto another.
|
| Some edges are one-way (marked with an arrow).
|
| Some edges are only open when an animal is (or is not) on a
| certain space, as indicated by the text on that edge.
|
| More than one animal may share a node at the same time.
| eps wrote:
| I am on an iPad and there are no animals anywhere on the
| screen.
| Kaibeezy wrote:
| Surely figuring out the rules for oneself is an essential
| part of the puzzle?
| soared wrote:
| This feels very very similar to learning how to complete sliding
| puzzles for the first time! Recreating that feeling of moving
| around pieces to eventually understand the logic is great!
|
| Also feels similar to the problem of getting a fox, a chicken,
| and a sack of grain across a bridge.
| quadcore wrote:
| I liked the fact it didnt count steps and has no score. More
| casual that way.
|
| Idea: rabbit grab an object (e.g. a key) and needs it to reach a
| cell.
| mmastrac wrote:
| That feels very
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adventure_(1980_video_game) like
| twayt wrote:
| Doesn't work on mobile was confused at first
| serf wrote:
| I figured it was conrad barski the moment i saw the art. I like
| that style.
| maneesh wrote:
| This was so fun!
|
| Make one new puzzle a day like Wordle and I'll get addicted for
| sure :)
| gpderetta wrote:
| Very nice. But is there only one kevel or I just haven't figured
| out how to move to the next after completing it?
| 7thaccount wrote:
| I'm assuming the author just made the one level. Iirc Conrad
| Barski is a medical doctor that made the famous Land of Lisp
| book for teaching Lisp programming. A pretty creative person. I
| assume the fun for them was in creating this and getting
| feedback and not necessarily coming up with 50 levels.
| MrTortoise wrote:
| my 10yo and my 8yo loved this
| jesse__ wrote:
| Loved this! I don't have any feedback that hasn't already been
| mentioned, but I would like to chime in that I'd definitely play
| more levels if you build them!!
| raldi wrote:
| My daughter is indignant about your inconsistent use of rabbit vs
| bunny.
| zacharycohn wrote:
| I'd love to see a "this is how many moves it took you" score when
| you win.
| jansan wrote:
| Another small improvement: It says "React App" in the tab, which
| should probably be "Dogs and Bunnys" or similar.
| pacifika wrote:
| It's good and I enjoyed it a lot! the mental problem solving is
| similar to https://trainyard.ca/ so I don't think it's a new type
| of puzzle but a new variant on the unlocking gating puzzle.
|
| Or maybe even sokoban
| abrax3141 wrote:
| Fun implementation. It's isomorphic to a wide range of problems
| that have been used for centuries that are all isomorphic to
| constrained state search. The fact that the graph is explicit
| here makes the problem way easier. (One you may be familiar with
| that seems very similar is the parking problem where by sliding
| around the cars they (un)block one another. None of this is to
| take away from the fun setting and implementation. Just that it's
| not a new type of problem, although it seems to be a fun new
| instance of a common type of problem.
| swyx wrote:
| is there a branch of mathematics that formally models this
| isomorphic forms of this stuff? topology? or just plain old
| graph theory
| jacobolus wrote:
| The graph drawn here is different from the graph of states: the
| latter has the cube of the number of these graph nodes, and
| several edges per node, and would be difficult to draw clearly
| on a flat paper.
| abrax3141 wrote:
| The state I'm referring to is is the whole puzzle state. It's
| a confusing term in this case.
| jacobolus wrote:
| Yes, and as I said, the number of puzzle states is the
| number of nodes in the pictured graph, cubed. There is some
| relation between the two graphs, but they aren't the same,
| and the pictured graph doesn't necessarily show too clearly
| how to navigate around between different regions of the
| graph of game states.
| [deleted]
| MattRix wrote:
| I would argue that the visual presentation and interface is a
| big part of what makes a puzzle, and changes how it is
| perceived, and therefore it is a new type of puzzle.
| abrax3141 wrote:
| Fair enough. Depends how you arrange your ontology. But then
| anything is a new type of problem, so the claim becomes
| meaningless.
| ptato wrote:
| When you're solving the sliding cars puzzle as a person
| you're not thinking of graphs. The experience of solving
| OP's puzzle is entirely different from the one you mention.
| In theory you could stop, write down the underlying graph
| representation and solve it that way I suppose. Does anyone
| do that though?
| abrax3141 wrote:
| You're correct. (As I mentioned, having the explicit
| graph makes it easier, and as another person mentioned,
| this makes it an essentially different problem.) I wasn't
| meaning to say that it's identical. Just the closest
| thing I could think of offhand. When I was in grad school
| working on problem solving we used to make up new
| problems every day. Every little change changes the
| problem's affordances, but if you define a problem type
| by the method of solution, all of this class are
| isomorphic (along that dimension). Again, none of this is
| to take away from the fun design of this problem.
| abrax3141 wrote:
| Code Master is another that, again isn't identical to
| this OP's, but has the explicit constrained ATN.
| https://www.codewizardshq.com/coding-games-for-kids/
| barrkel wrote:
| I think your ontology encompasses too much to be useful in
| classifying games. All single player games without a random
| element can be modeled as graph search problems with
| varying degrees of cycles permitted.
| abrax3141 wrote:
| Although I agree (mostly- there may be some further
| structure in my ontology, but not worth arguing about-
| I'll buy your characterization), I think that this is
| exactly what makes it useful.
| dalbasal wrote:
| Woah! Woah! Easy now. We don't need lumpers and splitters
| shedding blood here.
|
| d
| abrax3141 wrote:
| But are we really lumpers and splitters? And is it blood
| or plasma? And are we actually shedding it? And who are
| we anyway?
| drcode wrote:
| (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 @lisperati
| for updates.
| max_ wrote:
| Where you inspired by Alcuin numbers[0]?
|
| [0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZCVAGb1ee8A
| jeppebemad wrote:
| Fun! Though I managed to break the game by placing all on the
| boat :)
| lake_vincent wrote:
| _Don 't rock the boat, baby! Don't tip the boat over!_
| hyperhopper wrote:
| Break? That's just a failure condition as per rules, working
| as intended
| aerovistae wrote:
| Just needs a reset button then. Having to refresh the page
| is a bit silly.
| Shounak wrote:
| Another quick reward effect you could do to avoid flashing
| colors is to make the animals jump up and down, as if they're
| happy to get their food
| soheil wrote:
| I liked the insanely rapidly flashing colors.
| marcodiego wrote:
| Rapidly flashing colors may be dangerous for people with
| epilepsy.
| layer8 wrote:
| Just FYI, the page doesn't work on iPad/iOS 14.x Safari, no
| animals to be seen, just the static graph.
| linux2647 wrote:
| Works fine on an iPhone
| Wistar wrote:
| Works on my iPad Air 2 on iOS 15.6.1 and Chrome.
| thanatos519 wrote:
| That was fun but I didn't see any reward effect at all.
| mimimi31 wrote:
| I didn't see one either until I turned off my dark mode
| browser extension. If you also use an extension that modifies
| stylesheets, you might want to try disabling it for this
| site.
| mikehotel wrote:
| Did you get both rabbits to the carrot?
| httpete wrote:
| There is a tiny bug, when you release and click fast you can
| drop anywhere.
| zhenyakovalyov wrote:
| thank you!
| disantlor wrote:
| I thought there was no solution because I thought the arrow
| pointing on the line from the flower meant you could only go
| that direction from the flower, but the solution relies on
| someone behind able to move backwards from the flower.
|
| Granted there is the blue feedback if you are on the flower,
| but it's confusing when you are trying to plan ahead.
|
| edit: Fun puzzle though!
| SamBam wrote:
| Funnily enough I understood all the rules, but _still_ was
| mentally blocked for a while because I just didn 't even
| consider moving back from the flower as a possibility. I
| guess there was something about that arrow that was very
| enticing.
| Operyl wrote:
| Oh. I solved it by following the arrows, didn't know I could
| go the other way.
| nuancebydefault wrote:
| I followed the arrows too. Took me 15 mins or so to solve.
| I think the former comment meant that he thought that once
| you are on a node that is in front of an arrow, you have to
| follow that arrow, but that is not its meaning obviously.
| deltasquared wrote:
| Thanks for your wonderful books. You have been an inspiration.
| anu7df wrote:
| Thank you.. As fun as it was to solve the simple puzzle,
| nothing will replace the joy I felt when I showed it to my 8
| year old daughter to see her solve it in 2 minutes flat with no
| instruction at all. Thank you for making it possible. I had to
| ask her to persist for a bit as she didn't exactly see what had
| to be done. She knew what had to be done once she accidentally
| swiped and saw to rabbit get dragged along. May be an animation
| showing what is possible will help here.
| hluska wrote:
| I'm 45 years old and have been staring at it for a very long
| time without a clue. First off, you've raised a wonderful 8
| year old and deserve congratulations.
|
| Second, is she available for lessons?? :)
| impoppy wrote:
| adv0r wrote:
| 36 y/o, same here
| runnerup wrote:
| 34 year old, probably took me 8 minutes
| stormdennis wrote:
| She's a genius[1]. Took me an age to figure out what the
| rules were and then a fair while to actually get it done.
|
| [1]Well compared to me anyway
| anu7df wrote:
| Haha. Thanks for saying that internet stranger! Compared to
| me as well. It took me quite a bit longer to solve it too,
| even after i figured the rules.. so I guess kids are just
| good at adapting to the pretend-laws-world-problem-
| solving..
| baq wrote:
| Actually, that's how children learn best: by breaking
| shit^W^Wperturbing the environment and observing changes.
|
| This instance of the puzzle is also easy enough to actually
| solve this way. Wouldn't work nearly as well with 25 nodes,
| 5 rabbits and 3 dogs...
| soheil wrote:
| Availability bias, keep in mind for kids her age cartoon
| animals and games like this are their full time job.
| ISL wrote:
| I inferred rules that turned out not to be true:
|
| 1) I thought that, obviously, rabbits and dogs couldn't
| occupy the same space, lest the dog attack the rabbit,
| causing a lose-condition
|
| 2) I assumed that only one animal could occupy a node.
|
| The game, until the last move, is winnable with those extra
| rules.
| fsckboy wrote:
| > _I thought that, obviously, rabbits and dogs couldn 't
| occupy the same space_
|
| farmer, fox, chicken, and grain, and only three of them
| can fit in the rowboat
|
| foxes eat chickens and chickens eat grain would be a nice
| type of constraint OP could add to the puzzles
| gcanyon wrote:
| I didn't necessarily think of those as _rules_ , but I
| nevertheless solved the puzzle (until the end) without
| contradicting them. I only noticed maybe halfway to the
| solution that there is only one carrot, so obviously the
| rabbits have to pile up to solve it.
| SamBam wrote:
| Rabbit and dog never need to occupy the same space.
|
| But yes, I never thought about rule 2 until I got the dog
| and one rabbit in place and hadn't won.
| kotenshu wrote:
| Your daughter is awesome.
| UmbertoNoEco wrote:
| SamPatt wrote:
| My 9 year old got it in about 3 minutes, but only after I
| told him to slow down and read everything on the page.
|
| He started with furious swiping right off the bat. I started
| by reading everything and thinking through moves in my head
| without even trying to swipe.
|
| I think we ended up solving it in about the same amount of
| time. Interesting that the rapid iteration method and the
| measured thoughtful method yielded similar results.
| jrumbut wrote:
| I'm surprised you could infer what was possible just by
| looking at it. For me, the hints at how the rules worked
| weren't sufficient. I think lighting up the signs if the
| conditions are met and perhaps having something on the free
| move edges to make it clear they can be moved on freely
| would be super helpful.
|
| I effectively solved the question of "wtf is this?" and the
| puzzle at the same time.
|
| But after that I really wanted to play again!
| SamPatt wrote:
| I thought it was an image at first, and was trying to
| mentally move the pieces on the board. After the state
| got too complicated I happened to tap on one of the
| pieces and realized it was interactive.
|
| I've played kinda similar things before, such as Baba is
| You.
|
| Yeah I'd love to see more of these. Now I wanna make one
| myself.
| rendall wrote:
| That was fun. GG!
| analog31 wrote:
| It didn't work for me on my computer, but I grasped the concept
| well enough to see that it would be quite enjoyable. Since the
| purpose of the MVP is to get people interested, I call it a
| success.
| saberience wrote:
| Too confusing to understand what to do here.
| sergiotapia wrote:
| Basically click and drag the animals. The "paths" have
| conditionals that must be met by having any animal on the
| symbol to "unlock" the road.
| raydiatian wrote:
| Sweet excited for the abstract nightmares tonight where I'm
| asking myself about the deeper intrinsic connection between
| rabbits and trees and dogs and how it's all a DAG and what do
| DAGs and dogs have in common besides three letters with a vowel
| in between
|
| Really stoked
| xtiansimon wrote:
| Reminds me a little of Game About Squares
| http://gameaboutsquares.com/
| simultsop wrote:
| Since he could use lights, giving accessible paths green
| highlight and red to the opposite, would save players some time
| and become intuitive, or destinations bg become red/green, had
| fun
| mudrockbestgirl wrote:
| I'm convinced there is only one way to solve this: Write a
| program to unroll the constrained state transition diagram into
| an unconditional state transition diagram and find the shortest
| path. The unrolled version would still be pretty small so you can
| just iterate over it.
| marcodiego wrote:
| This can be easily solved by a class of algorithms called
| "search algorithms". Most famous ones are "Breadth-first
| search" and "Depth-first search". They have many variations
| like "Depth limited depth-first search" and "Iterative
| deepening depth-first search". If you include heuristics, then
| you have other variations like "A _" and "Iterative deepening
| A_". These are pretty well known and relatively easy to
| implement.
| jaredsohn wrote:
| Hacker news change the star into italics. The variations are
| called 'A*' and 'iterative deepening A*' (Need a backslach
| prior to the star to show it properly)
| fwip wrote:
| It was easy to solve in like, 2 minutes.
| sooyoo wrote:
| sterlind wrote:
| In other words, BFS over the state space of the puzzle,
| skipping previously-visited states?
|
| You don't actually gain anything by unrolling everything ahead
| of time; it'd actually be worse because you'd store all the
| memory and wouldn't stop when you get to the solution. And you
| can't really factor the state space into subproblems.
|
| Anyway, for this puzzle BFS would work, but classical planning
| in general gets astronomically exponential fast. It's a
| neglected field, not yet thawed from the last AI winter.
| tgv wrote:
| You'd have to do that for VxVxV, because there are three
| different objects (although there's some symmetry). Solving a
| puzzle is often described as path finding.
| mudrockbestgirl wrote:
| The vast majority of states is not reachable, so you can roll
| out the full tree from the starting state and it's going to
| be very small. Even the super-naive approach of unrolling the
| full state space is only 6^7 which is a big waste because
| connections are very sparse but even that's not big, it just
| wouldn't scale to larger problems.
| lxe wrote:
| This was great.
| pfoof wrote:
| I really enjoyed it, took me time to realize that I can put two
| pawns at one place.
|
| Maybe some mobile release soon?
| socialismisok wrote:
| I thought I had to keep the dog and rabbits separate, which
| really stumped me for a bit.
|
| It would be neat if the conditional statements emphasized and
| deemphasized based on whether their condition was currently met.
| Yajirobe wrote:
| How do I interact with the website? It's just a static image
| for me
| elrobinto wrote:
| On mobile Firefox for me after a while I worked out it was
| drag and drop on the characters
| mathieuh wrote:
| I'm on iPhone but it's just tap-and-drag for me
| [deleted]
| taberiand wrote:
| I made the same assumption and didn't even try putting the dog
| and rabbits together, but I completed the puzzle (at least I'm
| pretty sure I didn't overlap them, there was a lot of back and
| forth)
| kxjabzjej wrote:
| I find it amusing that this is driven by the particular
| visualisations of the characters. I.e. if it were a chicken
| and a rabbit would you have also made this assumption?
| krallja wrote:
| I didn't even realize two animals could be on the same node
| _at all_ until I needed to get both rabbits to the carrot.
| justsomehnguy wrote:
| For me it's a variant of a classical "move a wolf, goat and
| cabbage across the river", where you can't have some of
| them on the boat together, because it would be eaten.
| LeoPanthera wrote:
| I did keep them separate, but still solved it.
| Buttons840 wrote:
| 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.
| rexf wrote:
| Yeah, this was fun to solve.
|
| Re: 2, it seems intentional when two occupy the same space, 1
| of them gets priority and has to be moved first? Ideally, you
| could pick which 1 of the 2 you could move, but removing this
| choice makes the puzzle harder.
|
| Re: 3, I don't like the flashing lights/colors at all. Putting
| a "You win" or "Congrats" <div> somewhere prominent on the page
| is probably enough. Flashing colors is very painful on the
| eyes.
| 83457 wrote:
| The return to location animation helps here. Drag one animal
| and the one underneath is available to drag. Probably not
| very accessible but actually a fun, possibly unintentional,
| mechanic. Can also drag to see location icon underneath.
| txtsd wrote:
| If you try pulling from different directions, you can pull
| the one that you feel is lower.
| redanddead wrote:
| maybe OP could hire an animator to make a 3 second loop of a
| happy rabbit eating a carrot and a dog chewing on a bone,
| anything other than the flashing lights
| arketyp wrote:
| I like the flashing colors. It reflects the cathartic pain in
| reaching a goal and it encourages the impulse to move on.
| jacobolus wrote:
| 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.
| kotenshu wrote:
| I disagree with this completely. The level of difficulty is
| just enough to get the brain properly churning with a
| manageable level of frustration without being completely
| impossible.
| jacobolus wrote:
| You didn't disagree with anything I said...
|
| I never said this isn't a fun tricky-but-not-too-tricky
| one-off puzzle for out-of-practice adult puzzle solvers.
| (It has one key trick that someone who doesn't do very many
| puzzles might take a while to figure out.) I only said it
| was pretty easy for me personally.
|
| I further claimed that if you want to train complete
| novices (I am thinking of my 6 year old here, or his less
| experienced 6-year-old friends) to solve very hard variants
| of this puzzle, you should start with easy puzzles and
| introduce one new trick at a time. If your goal is not to
| train novices to solve hard puzzles, then feel free to
| disregard this advice.
|
| There are some fun harder tricks that you can throw into
| this genre of puzzle (not included in this particular
| example) that if you tried presenting to my 6 year old
| would completely stump him. But after working his way up
| methodically he could be taught to notice and solve them.
| zeven7 wrote:
| I'm curious, are there any particular tricks you used for
| this puzzle? I basically just used reasoning and trial and
| error, but wonder what methods may have helped me solve it
| quicker.
| jacobolus wrote:
| It's helpful to me to "chunk" puzzles into specific sub-
| objectives. I split this one conceptually into a "top area"
| (house, bone, boat) and a "bottom area" (tree, flower,
| well, carrot).
|
| The tricky part of this puzzle is getting the rabbits down
| from house to tree. In order to move anyone from the top
| area to bottom area, you need to have someone in the bottom
| area shuffling back and forth, and also someone else in the
| top area.
|
| Specifically, you need to get one rabbit to the bone (dog
| must be at carrot) then move the dog back to the flower so
| the other rabbit can go down to the tree. Once one rabbit
| is in the bottom area the dog can move to the top area to
| help get the other rabbit down.
|
| Took me about 2 minutes to figure out what to do, and then
| another few minutes of dragging stuff around to execute.
| But again, I have been doing a lot of puzzles with my kid
| recently, so this kind of thing is top of mind.
| txtsd wrote:
| My epileptic partner could not handle the flashing colors
| defrost wrote:
| >> It took me too long to realize characters could occupy the
| same space
|
| I solved it in under 15 minutes or so (multitasling and I
| didn't time myself) .. and at no point did I even attempt to
| have two characters on the same space or pass through each
| other .. other than the final goal of two bunnies on the
| carrot.
|
| Clearly:
|
| * I'm to dumb to have tried !!
|
| * It can be solved with with a "only ever one character on an
| intermediate non goal tile" .. although that is probably a
| slighty longer fiddlyier way of doing things.
| Buttons840 wrote:
| I was the same. I only realized they could occupy the same
| space at the end. It was kind of a fun realization, so the
| author might keep it that way. Although maybe use an easier
| puzzle to teach people this fact about the game.
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| 2. Make a daily one with a countdown to tomorrows one.
|
| 3. Profit.
| benj111 wrote:
| I've never come across 2 indexing. Is it meant to avoid off by
| one errors? Pointer arithmetic might be interesting though.
| rmetzler wrote:
| 1 is already done, isn't it?
| benj111 wrote:
| I don't know, it hasn't being listed, neither has 0.
| peterkelly wrote:
| 0. Be Conrad Barski
|
| 1. Create http://www.dogbunnypuzzle.com/ and post to HN
| drcode wrote:
| Lol
| benj111 wrote:
| Surely it should properly be:
|
| -1. be Conrad Barski 0. Create
| http://www.dogbunnypuzzle.com/ 1. post to HN
| j-pb wrote:
| Petri nets: the game
|
| Nice one!
| fferen wrote:
| 1. The animal icons didn't show up for me until I refreshed the
| page a few times. (Edge, Windows 10)
|
| 2. Would help to say "Somebody at bone AND Somebody at flower". I
| first interpreted it as OR and thought it was broken when it
| wouldn't let me move.
| foobarbecue wrote:
| Fun! UI complaint: the animals block the objects so you can't
| easily see what they're on, which is annoying. Maybe shrink the
| animals a bit more, use a 3d effect, or add an option to make
| them partially transparent. Or just make them sit next to the obj
| instead of actually on top.
|
| Edit: also, I expected OR rather than AND on the double
| constraint
| whycombinetor wrote:
| I found a state with no legal moves within my first handful of
| moves - everything on sailboat is irrecoverable. Cool game!
| marcodiego wrote:
| Interesting puzzle. I teach search algorithms, so it was somewhat
| quick for me to solve. We now need a way "randomly" generate the
| initial state.
| nxpnsv wrote:
| I enjoyed it :D
| neximo64 wrote:
| It's got too many rules for a puzzle imo. It does take an overly
| long time to figure out how it works.
| bastijn wrote:
| Took me less than 60 seconds. I'd say it's a perfect little
| puzzle. Next one you encounter you know the rules.
|
| I'd argue 2048 is harder to learn and that was a popular game.
| neximo64 wrote:
| I actually thought 60 seconds was a bit too long. An easy to
| understand puzzle is probably more intuitive and < 15-20 secs
| from start/enough not to notice it took time.
| tgv wrote:
| It's a puzzle for people with a CS degree. You need to
| recognize state transitions and conditions. Other people
| will take much longer.
| pbronez wrote:
| Fun! Would enjoy more of this. Thoughts:
|
| - good difficulty level. Needed to do a lot of doubling back to
| solve it.
|
| - Rules we're easy to figure out for the most part. It would help
| to add more visual cues about (dis)allowed paths. Ie, given the
| node occupancy right now, which paths are valid?
|
| - it took me a minute to figure out that valid destination nodes
| highlighted when I started dragging an animal. Maybe make the
| invalid nodes red too.
|
| - I assumed that animals couldn't share nodes. I didn't try that
| for a bit, which slowed me down a lot. Wasn't clear how to chose
| the "bottom" animal on a node. I also assumed that even if the
| rabbits were allowed to share a node, a dog and a rabbit could
| NOT share a node because the dog would eat the rabbit.
|
| - overall a nice example of complexity emerging from a simple
| rules, which is what you need for a puzzle.
|
| - it's annoying that you can't see the node label for occupied
| nodes
|
| - obvious stats to track include overall time to solve and moves
| to solve.
| smdyc1 wrote:
| Really enjoyed this. If this was a premium mobile game with more
| levels increasing in difficulty, I'd buy it for sure. Others have
| covered minor feedback like character icons overlapping on the
| same space, the flashing lights at the end, etc. So i won't. But
| overall, this is exciting!
| zenmaster10665 wrote:
| Yeah this is fun and simple. Nice work!!
| uptownfunk wrote:
| I may be a bit thick but can someone explain this to me? I can't
| seem to solve it despite trying for quite a while.
| blakesley wrote:
| Love it! I refer to these kinds of puzzles as "state mazes", but
| maybe that's not quite the right term. Many variations are
| explored in "logic maze" books like Mad Mazes
| (https://smile.amazon.com/Mad-Mazes-Intriguing-Twisters-
| Puzzl...). Most of them use simpler mechanics and look more like
| mazes, but some toward the end start looking like your puzzle.
| twothamendment wrote:
| I shared it with my wife because she likes puzzles. It took her
| about a minute to figure out how the game worked. Once she knew
| what to do she how do play - she was done in under a minute and
| said it was fun.
|
| Nice work! Any feedback I would give is in other comments.
| inopinatus wrote:
| Fun, but alas not new: conditional movement of entities through a
| graph towards a win-state configuration is a decades-old staple
| of game puzzles. For someone with the relevant experience, less
| than 90s to clear.
|
| I did like the presentation, however! I think it has potential
| for a series of escalating difficulty.
| super256 wrote:
| bot41 wrote:
| FF throws an insecure warning so I can't check it out
| zapt02 wrote:
| Cool puzzle and nice art. Too much flashing at the end. Concept
| reminds me of the indie game Baba is you:
| https://hempuli.com/baba/
| mgdlbp wrote:
| Hmm, the style of the OP and that landing page reminded me of
| another web game I saw a few years ago with a philosophical
| theme, maybe a game jam entry? Kind of bothering me that I
| can't recall the name.
|
| It was an abstract simulation of the course of a human life:
| units of "time" spawned regularly in the middle of a black
| screen. These gravitated towards the cursor and had to be
| guided to text spaced around the screen: _play_ , _grow_ ,
| _work_ , etc., which all needed to be regularly tended to, with
| more and more "responsibilities" appearing as time went on.
|
| Some day there'll be an AI search engine for 'tip-of-my-tongue'
| media. But what will have grown faster? The ability to
| catalogue things in the world, or the depth of obscurity of
| things that can be catalogued?
|
| Edit: got it, remembered the dev's domain:
| https://faedine.com/games/spendyourtime/
| rvanlaar wrote:
| Thanks for sharing. That was a fun game.
| alex-gdv wrote:
| that was a fun puzzle, are you planning on making more?
| sbf501 wrote:
| It's a state machine, so it is probably easier for programmers to
| solve than non-programmers. It's basically a debugging puzzle. :)
| How about a bigger one? Or a random generator?
| jonah wrote:
| It took a while, but I got it!
|
| It's like the Wolf, goat and cabbage problem
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolf,_goat_and_cabbage_problem
| benj111 wrote:
| You mean the fox, chicken and grain problem?
|
| I wonder if this just gets localised to typical staple, typical
| predator and its prey?
|
| I guess cabbage and wolf is eastern Europe / Germany?
| praptak wrote:
| Wolf-goat-cabbage is definitely the version which is popular
| in Poland.
| benj111 wrote:
| Coyote, turkey and corn? Lion, cow and millet? Redback
| spider (or any native fauna really), kangaroo, can of
| fosters? I don't know how the Japanese would do it. I was
| going to go with fish, but the puzzle would need
| reformulating for that.
| gspr wrote:
| Norway has wolf, sheep and various things the sheep eat (I've
| seen variants cabbage and bales of grass). We also have a
| variation where everyone shifts down a step and there's a
| missionary "above" the wolf.
| jonah wrote:
| Ah yes, "the river crossing problem"!
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/River_crossing_puzzle
| chocolatemario wrote:
| The light show at the end gave me a chuckle. Pretty fun little
| puzzle.
| [deleted]
| mkaszkowiak wrote:
| Very fun puzzle! As for my suggestions:
|
| - consider writing key rules on the page. I've had an incorrect
| assumption that the dog and the bunny cannot occupy the same
| square.
|
| - displaying a restart button would be useful once there are no
| legal moves left (for ex. all characters stuck at the yacht)
| eyelidlessness wrote:
| It took me a moment to understand what the constraints meant,
| which says more about how tired I am than it says about the
| design, which is great! I don't want to minimize the cleverness
| of the puzzle design, but I think it's a visualization of a
| finite state machine. Not a novel challenge but a clever way to
| display it for sure.
| csande17 wrote:
| The one aspect that took me a bit to figure out was whether, to
| move between the house and the tree, you needed someone on BOTH
| the bone and the flower or just one of them. (It turned out to
| be both.)
| nvln wrote:
| Took me a while to figure it out as I assumed the labels on the
| lines to be dynamic.
|
| But once I got it, it was super fun to play. I wonder if you can
| algorithmically generate these puzzles and have human's curate
| them based on factors (joy, difficulty, visual appeal etc).
|
| Thanks for sharing. :)
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2022-09-18 23:00 UTC)