• Welcome to the Speedsolving.com, home of the web's largest puzzle community!
    You are currently viewing our forum as a guest which gives you limited access to join discussions and access our other features.

    Registration is fast, simple and absolutely free so please, join our community of 40,000+ people from around the world today!

    If you are already a member, simply login to hide this message and begin participating in the community!

[Member Intro] Hello and Help!

Sub1Hour

Member
Joined
Jun 4, 2018
Messages
1,873
Location
Utah
WCA
2018BECK05
YouTube
Visit Channel
Ok, my bad I was solving with any color adjacent to any other color if that makes sense. :oops: Honestly just assumed you could do that but that would be a totally different event.

Facepalm, should have read the whole post...
Aha, so I do have WB on level 1 still, I think


I'm gonna go do some solves real quick
 

Dylan Swarts

Member
Joined
Jun 10, 2018
Messages
330
Location
South Africa
WCA
2017SWAR03
YouTube
Visit Channel
I definitely think there needs to be a few calculations done to determine how many moves a puzzle must require to be solved. If it does not meet this requirement, rescramble. But I can believe this might not be possible this early into developement.
 

ProStar

Member
Joined
Oct 27, 2019
Messages
6,253
Location
An uncolonized sector of the planet Mars
WCA
2020MAHO01
SS Competition Results
I am a little confused what the solved state is for level 2.
View attachment 12601View attachment 12602
Is this solved for level 2?

The dark colors are correct, but the middle layer needs to be alternating pink and green(with the green part of the checkerboard being closer to the dark green). Check the OP

I definitely think there needs to be a few calculations done to determine how many moves a puzzle must require to be solved. If it does not meet this requirement, rescramble. But I can believe this might not be possible this early into developement.

I agree, that way it doesn't take one move to solve. Without a limit, it will make best times pure luck and no skill
 

Pawel

Member
Joined
Jun 17, 2020
Messages
54
View attachment 12599
This is called a Tuttminx and it has the same soccer ball shape that the Rotoball has. The hexagonal faces would be the only moving parts and the pentagonal faces would be the axes of rotation. I don't think it would be possible to mod a Tuttminx into a Rotoball but if you want something as a sort of reference. Some faces would have to rotate over others but I'm 100% sure that a physical Rotoball would be something that is possible to engineer.

I looked at the youtube video of Tuttminx and you are right, there are similarities, although mechanically Tuttminx looks more complicated since it's hexagons are sliced into smaller pieces. I think the intention of the inventor was to stay closer to Rubik's Cube concept, were in my case it was a simple curiosity if it would be difficult or easy to solve a "soccer ball" puzzle. (Curiosity for which I only need simple 72-degree rotations 1 local axis of the pentagons "grabbing" adjacent hexagons... Not terribly difficult if you are versed in 3d modeling and have some game programming experience. So if anything it should be simpler to execute as a concept. The real question for me is there a market for this that would be worth the trouble... It is so easy to make a small fortune if you start with a large one :) However, I do appreciate the fact that unlike my previous game Spheroku, this could be made into a physical device.

The dark colors are correct, but the middle layer needs to be alternating pink and green(with the green part of the checkerboard being closer to the dark green). Check the OP



I agree, that way it doesn't take one move to solve. Without a limit, it will make best times pure luck and no skill

With tournaments where people play against each other, each player would get the same scramble, so there would be no need to worry about how many moves it takes. I was thinking about implementing a dual scoring strategy -- Shorter time wins, wherever there is a tie, whoever made fewer moves is the winner. If both time and the number of moves are the same, there would be a rematch... What do you think?
 

Nmile7300

Member
Joined
Jul 23, 2019
Messages
1,030
Location
Arizona
WCA
2019MILE04
YouTube
Visit Channel
With tournaments where people play against each other, each player would get the same scramble, so there would be no need to worry about how many moves it takes. I was thinking about implementing a dual scoring strategy -- Shorter time wins, wherever there is a tie, whoever made fewer moves is the winner. If both time and the number of moves are the same, there would be a rematch... What do you think?
I still think there should be a 1 or two move limit, at least when playing by yourself.
 

ProStar

Member
Joined
Oct 27, 2019
Messages
6,253
Location
An uncolonized sector of the planet Mars
WCA
2020MAHO01
SS Competition Results
With tournaments where people play against each other, each player would get the same scramble, so there would be no need to worry about how many moves it takes. I was thinking about implementing a dual scoring strategy -- Shorter time wins, wherever there is a tie, whoever made fewer moves is the winner. If both time and the number of moves are the same, there would be a rematch... What do you think?

I'd recommend it being structured like a traditional Rubik's cube competition: each competitor gets 5 solves(same 5 scrambles for each competitor), then they drop the best and worst solves and average the middle three. Take times to the hundredths place(xx.xx), so there will be ties almost never. Focusing on movecount will sacrifice speed and make it into a FMC Duel type event, although that could be fun
 

Pawel

Member
Joined
Jun 17, 2020
Messages
54
I still think there should be a 1 or two move limit, at least when playing by yourself.

My programming skills may not be good enough for this... It might take me a lot of time to figure this out. The way I set up the initial state is to pick 5 random faces (from 20) make it one color, pick another 5 random faces (from remaining 15) for the other color. this leaves 10 white faces left. This is basically level 1. With level 2 I pick an additional 5 of the remaining 10 so you have 5 of each 4 colors randomly spaced on the sphere. The ads that there would be almost completed puzzles are very low in this scenario. For tournaments, the software would send the same random numbers to participants.
 

Nmile7300

Member
Joined
Jul 23, 2019
Messages
1,030
Location
Arizona
WCA
2019MILE04
YouTube
Visit Channel
My programming skills may not be good enough for this... It might take me a lot of time to figure this out. The way I set up the initial state is to pick 5 random faces (from 20) make it one color, pick another 5 random faces (from remaining 15) for the other color. this leaves 10 white faces left. This is basically level 1. With level 2 I pick an additional 5 of the remaining 10 so you have 5 of each 4 colors randomly spaced on the sphere. The ads that there would be almost completed puzzles are very low in this scenario. For tournaments, the software would send the same random numbers to participants.
No problem, it's just a suggestion. Maybe someone on this forum who has coded Rubik's cube solvers before could help you. :)
 

Pawel

Member
Joined
Jun 17, 2020
Messages
54
I'd recommend it being structured like a traditional Rubik's cube competition: each competitor gets 5 solves(same 5 scrambles for each competitor), then they drop the best and worst solves and average the middle three. Take times to the hundredths place(xx.xx), so there will be ties almost never. Focusing on movecount will sacrifice speed and make it into a FMC Duel type event, although that could be fun

If I implement Skillz platform there could be individual tournaments as well as larger events with multiple participants. I would imagine for those events it would make sense to use the rules that are widely used. It certainly is possible. the way the Skillz e-sport platform works is that they handle the tournaments. Their platform also allows playing real money tournaments and there are people who make living playing those games.

I tried to have sudoku and spheroku, versions of Skillz, but since they required me to do another update because Apple made some changes in iOS platform, I took the games out of the app store for now. (And here I am, back thinking about it again -- I suppose I am meeting Einstein's definition of insanity;) -- making the same experiment over and over and expecting different results)
 

ProStar

Member
Joined
Oct 27, 2019
Messages
6,253
Location
An uncolonized sector of the planet Mars
WCA
2020MAHO01
SS Competition Results
I like this puzzle! although, I wish you could make it into a physical puzzle cuz physical control over the puzzle is just better in my opinion.

From what we know, Pawel is a mobile game developer and also has an interest in puzzles, so he doesn't have experience or the means to make this into a physical puzzle. However, due to the many suggestions of making into a physical puzzle, he has decided to at least look into making a physical version

10.50 on level 2 I got a green "center" skip and then 2 moves on adjacent faces for the green "midges" and only 1 pink "midge" needed to be inserted :D:eek:o_O
 
Last edited:

Pawel

Member
Joined
Jun 17, 2020
Messages
54
From what we know, Pawel is a mobile game developer and also has an interest in puzzles, so he doesn't have experience or the means to make this into a physical puzzle. However, due to the many suggestions of making into a physical puzzle, he has decided to at least look into making a physical version

10.50 on level 2 I got a green "center" skip and then 2 moves on adjacent faces for the green "midges" and only 1 pink "midge" needed to be inserted :D:eek:o_O


Edit: Whoops double post, I feel the content was different enough though

"Where is a will there is a way"... So I will take a look at the physical puzzle. I even have a partially assembled 3d printer, that I did not have any need to finish assembling, so once I do the programming I will tinker with the mechanics of a physical device. Of course, this all depends on the real-world interest in the puzzle. The last thing I want is to lose a lot of money on manufacturing and sit on inventories that don't move... At least with an app, you don't need to worry about this aspect.

So market research before production No Southpark-like business model: "STAGE1- steal underwear, STAGE2 - ?, STAGE3 - profit"

I like this puzzle! although, I wish you could make it into a physical puzzle cuz physical control over the puzzle is just better in my opinion.

A physical one would be nice... Now when we know that there are solutions for the more complex settings.

I still think there should be a 1 or two move limit, at least when playing by yourself.


I suppose there could be an alternative way to do the initial setup rather than using "random" placement of colors -- The game could start with 15 to 20 random rotations from a solved puzzle instead -- This way most likely it would at minimum take the same number of moves to solve it and this number would be known to the app. With the way I have it now, there would need to be a huge number of calculations for every possibility... I will check and see if this approach works and gives a better initial set up.

I was trying to avoid this because of the problem I run into with too many rotations... It seems that there is a bug with a slite drift of the tiles as you keep making moves... I am not sure if this is because of the precision of the Unity game engine calculating the rotations, the issues with Euclidean angles vs Quanterions that I've read about, or my 3d model's imprecision... I will need to investigate it further.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Top