Taren,
Although I haven't worked on it since last fall, I've been working on my solver off and on for over three years! Does yours accept standard game numbers? After working on mine for a few years, I got in touch with some of the hard core people and discovered that most of them use a dictionary of positions reached so that they can avoid continuing when a position is reached for the second time. That avoids endless loops in a very efficient way. Tell me more about your program. For example, does it solve all of the original 32000 games with the exception of the one that's impossible?
-Gary
----- Original Message -----
From: Taren
To: fc-solve-discuss_at_yahoogroups.com
Sent: Friday, June 10, 2005 6:48 PM
Subject: Re: Freecell Solver Programs
I wrote one a while ago (loooong time, like last summer), and the problem I ran into was that you have to make sure not to fall into endless loops. For example, if you have two open columns, the computer might find an infinite-move solution that involves moving card X back and forth between the two open columns, or between both higher-order, opposite-color cards.
Other than that, the hardest part of writing a program is "teaching" it the rules of what may and may not move.
However, the most handy technique I used was assigning each card a numerical value, from 11 (actually 011) to 134- the first two digits being the card value (A=1, 2-10, J=11, Q=12, K=13), and the third being the suit (1, 2, 3, 4). Make sure to keep both evens the same color, and both odds the opposites, such as {Heart, Spade, Diamond, Club} = {1, 2, 3, 4}. That way you can not only save space by using integers, but you can also check for color alternation by doing a simple subtraction. If card 1 minus card 2 is odd, then you have a red/black pair, otherwise they are either red/red or black/black. But I'm sure everyone already knew this.
-Taren
On 6/10/05, Gary Campbell <gary_at_numin8r.us> wrote:
Although I use "FreeCellPro" all the time to play freecell, I'm more
interested in discussing freecell solving programs with people who have
actually written a solver.
Anyone who is interested in exchanging (or monitoring) information on
this subject, please send an email to me.
I would hope that not too many people have written a solver, but that
anyone that has would join this exchange [even past masters, and even
if only to observe].
I would like to discuss programming successes, failures, designs, and
anything else that might help us improve our own programs.
-Gary Campbell
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Received on Fri Jun 10 2005 - 19:09:13 IDT