TODO: Agent Higgs level autogenerator

Discuss tricky levels, and show off your diabolical creations
Post Reply
A Random Player
Posts: 523
Joined: Mon Jun 03, 2013 4:54 pm

TODO: Agent Higgs level autogenerator

Post by A Random Player »

Been busy with *lots* of homework lately, and interested in musescore, so I don't have time to make this. (I've been thinking about it for quite a while though.)
Someone should make a program that randomly places tiles and particles, then optimally solves them, rejecting if the minimum number of moves is less than a threshold (or if it cannot find a solution within another threshold.) The random placement either starts from scratch, or changes one or two tiles in the previous setup, rejecting if the optimal solution becomes shorter. (Basically a hill-climbing algorithm in that case.)
Andy has stated before that he semi-automated the process when making the in-game levels, so do you all think full automation would make faster, harder, levels?
$1 = 100¢ = (10¢)^2 = ($0.10)^2 = $0.01 = 1¢ [1]
Always check your units or you will have no money!
User avatar
testtubegames
Site Admin
Posts: 1148
Joined: Mon Nov 19, 2012 7:54 pm

Re: TODO: Agent Higgs level autogenerator

Post by testtubegames »

Ah, interesting. Randomly making levels is the easy part, of course. The tough part is getting the game to solve it.

One potential problem is that the current solving-algorithm is pretty computationally intensive. For a suitably hard level (like, erm, some of the 99 move-ers that we've had posted here) it can even lag out my laptop and refuse to work. For more 'normal' levels -- 95% of them that are in the official game, for instance -- the process goes pretty fast. I suppose we could put a computational cap on it... so that if the level is too tough it just says 'screw it!'

That said, given how the code is currently written, and how CPU intensive it is, I'm not sure that I could get it to work on an iPhone or in Flash. I'm toying with moving Agent Higgs to Unity in a future permutation - which would allow the game to play (in addition to Android, say) natively on a PC or Mac. There it should have enough power, for sure.

The question is whether this is something people would want to play around with? Infinite levels at the users fingertips? Or would it be just as well for *me* to make a few hundred levels, check 'em on my computer, and upload them somewhere. (That second option would take much less time. And time, as the saying goes, is space. Or something like that.)

I'm curious to know what you all think about it. Infinite levels? Something you're craving?
User avatar
robly18
Posts: 413
Joined: Tue Jun 04, 2013 2:03 pm

Re: TODO: Agent Higgs level autogenerator

Post by robly18 »

I personally think that for something like Agent Higgs, a random level autogenerator would lead to.. Less than optimal results.
However, it would be a fun thing to toy around with.
I still think that this is a bit like the AI problem thing: humans are much better than computers at figuring these things out, so I say leave it to the humans.
Again, however, would be a fun thing to toy around with if all the humans are busy and not able to make levels.
Convincing people that 0.9999... = 1 since 2012
A Random Player
Posts: 523
Joined: Mon Jun 03, 2013 4:54 pm

Re: TODO: Agent Higgs level autogenerator

Post by A Random Player »

I don't really expect it to be "click this button and play a random level", more like that VR code I had posted a while ago - like just run it to generate one. A computation cap would likely be the only way this would even remotely work - Both in space (amount of processor power to use) and in time (time to check a single level) ;)
$1 = 100¢ = (10¢)^2 = ($0.10)^2 = $0.01 = 1¢ [1]
Always check your units or you will have no money!
User avatar
testtubegames
Site Admin
Posts: 1148
Joined: Mon Nov 19, 2012 7:54 pm

Re: TODO: Agent Higgs level autogenerator

Post by testtubegames »

A Random Player wrote:I don't really expect it to be "click this button and play a random level", more like that VR code I had posted a while ago - like just run it to generate one. A computation cap would likely be the only way this would even remotely work - Both in space (amount of processor power to use) and in time (time to check a single level) ;)
Ah, yeah, then. A button that simply makes random levels? Can do. Maybe I could even add in some settings -- like for each type of tile you can select 'none/some/tons'. That way if you want a level with tons of Taus (and who doesn't), you can get that. I'll add that to the TODO list when I finish those Quarks levels.
A Random Player
Posts: 523
Joined: Mon Jun 03, 2013 4:54 pm

Re: TODO: Agent Higgs level autogenerator

Post by A Random Player »

testtubegames wrote:
A Random Player wrote:I don't really expect it to be "click this button and play a random level", more like that VR code I had posted a while ago - like just run it to generate one. A computation cap would likely be the only way this would even remotely work - Both in space (amount of processor power to use) and in time (time to check a single level) ;)
Ah, yeah, then. A button that simply makes random levels? Can do. Maybe I could even add in some settings -- like for each type of tile you can select 'none/some/tons'. That way if you want a level with tons of Taus (and who doesn't), you can get that. I'll add that to the TODO list when I finish those Quarks levels.
We don't have Taus yet online though :)
$1 = 100¢ = (10¢)^2 = ($0.10)^2 = $0.01 = 1¢ [1]
Always check your units or you will have no money!
User avatar
testtubegames
Site Admin
Posts: 1148
Joined: Mon Nov 19, 2012 7:54 pm

Re: TODO: Agent Higgs level autogenerator

Post by testtubegames »

A Random Player wrote:We don't have Taus yet online though :)
Ah yes, true. Gotta fix that, too!
Post Reply