[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)