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Sudoku


idavis

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So I have been working on this for some time now, I initially posted this in the Homebrew group. I got some interest, but not much. My goal here is turn this into a cartridge. I still have to work on a splash screen, and also work on the timing code. Right now, it's a simple loop, that I am sure would work much better if I actually used the built in counters.

 

I have some time now, and want to get this completed. So here's my Sudoku game for the 800.

sudoku.zip

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Nice little game! But I don't understand how hints work...

 

Some ideas: what about background music or keyboard control (entering numbers)...

 

F.

 

 

I guess I should have posted up some instructions. It's all joystick based. You move the cursor around, and hold the button down when you want to change the number. If you hit the start button, you will use up a hint. Basically that checks all of your entries and removes the ones that are incorrect. You only have a few hints, and the price for using a hint is 1000 points.

 

I had kept it to just joystick entry, but I could do keyboard. I will look into adding that.

 

Background music is something I am looking at as well. I have a neighbor who is a musician and I have been at him for some time now to get me something original and catchy.

Edited by idavis
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I haven't even looked at the program, but, How do you go about generating the puzzles?

 

there was an infamous case a few years ago of a newspaper columnist generating random sudoku puzzles; he classified them by how hard they were for him to solve, and if he couldn't, he just categorized them as 'super hard'. some of those puzzles were unsolveable. Hopefully you haven't repeated his mistake?

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Well, I spent a long time developing the algorithm for generating the puzzle. There will always be a solution, and there are no holes. Please post an example if you think there are, but I can assure you, each puzzle is solvable. The plan on the splash screen is to make the difficulty level adjustable, and it will remove the number of squares based on the difficulty you pick. I guess to prove that each puzzle is solvable, I need to put in some code to "give up" and display the answer.

 

Here is a writeup I did and posted on here (in the homebrew forum) on how to generate a puzzle. Right now, I mix up a couple of puzzles that were generated on the Atari, but that's just for speed. Once I get the splash screen in, I will give you the opportunity to generate a new puzzle, of course, it could take a minute or so.

 

Here is the writeup I did for the generation of a sudoku puzzle. You should see the 6502 assembler code to do the same. Maybe I will publish that as well.

Isaac

BuildingASudokuPuzzlebyIsaacDavis.txt

Edited by idavis
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you remove numbers but not check if there will be only one solution. this is not a bug...

Since I remove the numbers from a solved puzzle, of course there could be more than one solution, but I have to work with what we have. I am trying to fit this in an 8 or 16K cartridge. If there is more than one solution, and you don't get it right, then look for the other solution. Right now, I remove a fixed number of squares. Eventually, that will be variable based on how hard you want the game. The easier and less squares, the less chance you will have of getting multiple answers.

 

Just look at it this way, there are more than one way to solve other games, same here. At least it is solvable. Part of the game is figuring it out, and doing it in the fastest time.

 

Isaac

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Is it possible to add a few variant options like Sudoku Extreme where you have to have 1-9 in an X from corner to corner also. Not sure if 16x16 grid is possible unless you make Hexadecimal Sudoku. Might be hard to fit it onto the Atari screen also.

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Nice work!

 

The presentation's a little 1979. Give Suduko's typically a pen and paper game, I'm a but surprised it's so blue!

 

The HINT function is confusing, since it instantly wipes out wrong entries...but it happens so fast you don't register which ones went bye bye. This is escepially frustrating if you have one or two numbers you're really struggling with and they just vanish, so you can't even see what you'd entered. I'd suggest one of the following:

 

A more targeted HINT that either checks the answer under your cursor and flags it wrong if it is,

 

Or something similar to what you have now, but which flashes all the wrong answers before it deletes them, so at least you can realize what's happening.

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  • 8 months later...
The presentation's a little 1979. Give Suduko's typically a pen and paper game, I'm a but surprised it's so blue!

 

I tried to create a title screen fits blue-style of Isaac's game long time ago. I can also prepare a new ingame board design with the same style (blue theme, white fonts, small rectangles in background) but is seems that a game is not developed any more :(. If someone would like to get the design I'm open for an cooperation (obviously the title can be changed into correct one).

 

post-12107-1229340206_thumb.png

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The presentation's a little 1979. Give Suduko's typically a pen and paper game, I'm a but surprised it's so blue!

 

I tried to create a title screen fits blue-style of Isaac's game long time ago. I can also prepare a new ingame board design with the same style (blue theme, white fonts, small rectangles in background) but is seems that a game is not developed any more :(. If someone would like to get the design I'm open for an cooperation (obviously the title can be changed into correct one).

 

post-12107-1229340206_thumb.png

Nice title screen, though I have a tip for you: Why not create the top and bottom bars using GTIA mode? That would make the transition smoother.

I'm also adding my older design of a sudoku layout :)

post-6830-1229348100_thumb.png

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Hey guys, funny that I would see this post at the top of the list again. I have about a week free from school, I have returned to college, and was relooking at all my code and thinking about working on a quick splash screen with the menu options I need:

 

Difficulty: Beginner, Easy, Medium, Hard, Expert

 

Atari Generated Puzzle or scrambled pre-made puzzle

 

Kaz, I really like your screen, and Pseudografx, I like that look, but for now with my limited assembler experience, and I was trying to make sure this all fit in a 8K cart, I am going to stick with what I have. I mean, the fact that an 800 can generate a sudoku puzzle is a pretty amazing feat in my opinion, and I want to leave that option in the cart. I am going to try working on a few things this week and see what I can come up with.

Isaac

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Hey guys, funny that I would see this post at the top of the list again. I have about a week free from school, I have returned to college, and was relooking at all my code and thinking about working on a quick splash screen with the menu options I need: Difficulty: Beginner, Easy, Medium, Hard, Expert

 

Hi Isaac, glad to hear you haven't abandoned the project! My questions: is it possible to make 2 versions of your games: a) fits 8KB cart, b) file version with extended gfx. I think you shouldn't be conscious, your assembler programming abilities are good enough, you only need to use different gfx mode, DLI and use standard procedures for G2F picture and RMT music ;).

 

BTW: why is your game planned for 8KB carts only? Can't it be a 16KB?

 

Actually I have a folder full of such fake screenshots :)

 

Sorry for offtopic: Zdenek, I really like your ingame graphics for "Speed Up" and "Beyond the Evil" games (simple, but impressive). Is it possible to send me gfx sources? I'm thinking about game with this types of perspective and would like to take a look in details for your gfx. That's okey if you can't share it.

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Kaz,

I don't see why it couldn't be a 16K cart. My only concern right now is the amount of time I have to work on this. I guess 8K was just a goal I had in mind. I have always been amazed that Star Raiders was done in 8K, and I guess I set that as a goal. I will have to get a little better at programming in assembler to have anything that looks like the screen shots you guys have come up with. What I am using right now is a graphics mode where I can just drop in the numbers to the screen location that I calculate based on where the cursor is. I would just have to work on my graphics skills (a lot).

 

I modified it last night to actually generate a puzzle. One of the issues is that to generate a puzzle can be real quick, or take some time depending on random luck. Believe it or not, it's not that easy to generate a "correct" sudoku puzzle, and since there is an element of randomness, it can just take clock cycles to get the right combination. I have to come up with some kind of screen animation that you can watch when the puzzle is generating. I am working on something, but want to keep this to a minimum, since I want to spend most of the cpu time on getting the puzzle generated and not some display.

 

The good part is that we have a working game right now, you just can't change the difficulty. But that should be fixed soon. It might not be the prettiest at the moment, but it will work.

 

I think right now, for this version, I am going to do this on my own from start to finish. My initial goal and inspiration was to make a game and have it on a cartridge. I have been wanting to do that since I was 12, and am now 40. Once I get it all buttoned up as a cart, then maybe we can work on another version with fancier graphics.

Isaac

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