Lyfoes Solver

This repository contains a puzzle solver for the Lyfoes game (by IBNPlay, with which I have no connection).

The implementation is in GOLANG but makes no use of any of that languages characteristic capabilities (goroutines, channels). In addition, it is a brute-force method, simply trying random (legal) moves until the problem is solved or a stalemate condition is detected.

Motivation

My initial motivation for writing this program was to get past a difficult puzzle (4-1144) that had no published solution (that I could find). Unwilling to give up, I wrote the original version of this program in an afternoon, although the initial working implementation took about 3 minutes to find a solution (I've improved that to at most a handful of seconds - some puzzles are solved in sub-second time).

Improvements

I've made some effort to eliminate stupid moves (such as moves that simply undo previous moves or that move from a stack of three onto a stack of one, when the reverse would have the same result, but two fewer moves). There are still cases where the program generates less-than-ideal solutions, but I'm currently satisfied with the results as being useful for getting past any particularly tough puzzles.

The available color pallet is likely not enough to cover the most difficult level of puzzles. New colors can be simply added to the colors.go file and the maps that are used to translate to and from text extended.

Note that I used integer-based color definitions in the solver, rather than string-based enum values, simply out of concern that comparing and processing strings would require more CPU time.

Input

The input file is expected to contain a description of the puzzle board using two-character color definitions, with each column separated by a space:

• DG (Dark Green)
• MG (Medium Green)
• LG (Light Green)
• DB (Dark Blue)
• MB (Medium Blue)
• LB (Light Blue)
• DR (Dark Red)
• MR (Medium Red aka bright pink)
• LR (Light Red aka light pink)
• Or (Orange)
• Wh (White)
• Gr (Grey)
• Ye (Yellow)
• Pu (Purple)

An example board:

Wh Ye LG Or LR MR LG DR DB LR Gr LB MG
DB Wh Pu LR Ye Gr MB DB MR DR MB Pu MB
MG MR LG Gr LB Ye Or Wh Or LB DB MR MG
LB Pu DR LG MB Ye DR Wh Gr Pu MG LR Or

Output

The output of the program includes a representation of the solved board and all of the moves (source column, destination column, and color) that resulted in the solution, and the number of iterations it took to solve it. The program also prints the time to each power-of-ten number of iteration attempts as they are encountered, just to give an idea of how fast the program is running through iterations.

Future Enhancements

The board input could use some attention in the areas of validating the input. There is currently no handling for color representations that are invalid or mistyped colors that result in an uneven number of each color.

There are a few cases of "stupid moves" that remain undetected that would make the results shorter (and less frustrating to enter in the game).

Finally, being able to represent the moves in color and even have an animated solution would be fantastic. Unfortunately, I'm not skilled in animation of any sort, so it's unlikely that I'll ever attempt it.