Ranzha
Friendly, Neighbourhoodly
- Joined
- Jul 24, 2009
- Messages
- 2,551
- Location
- Reno, Nevada, United States
- WCA ID
- 2009HARN01
- YouTube
- Visit Channel
Oh wow, I can't believe I didn't notice considering the four-direction arrows =P Silly me.
TNoodle - WCA scrambler replacement
- Thread starter jfly
- Start date
Oh wow, I can't believe I didn't notice considering the four-direction arrows =P Silly me.
cuBerBruce
Veteran
It looks like Clement has done a very nice job improving my 4x4x4 solver for use with TNoodle. He has apparently updated it to try multiple solutions for a given phase (to get average solution length down), reduced memory usage and still have it produce the solutions quickly.
I do have some concerns, though, about if this solver is really a correct random-state solver. With the 4x4x4, there are a couple of issues you need to watch out for in a random-state solver.
First, the puzzle has indistinguishable pieces. Because of this, puzzle states do not have unique inverse states. Thus, I would expect that the program would pick a puzzle state at random, run the solver, then invert the solver's solution to produce a sequence that generates the chosen state when starting from the solved state. The last step of my solver uses only half-turns. Thus, I would tend to expect the scrambles produced to start with some half-turn moves. It seems that some do, while others seem to end with several half-turn moves instead. I find this puzzling.
Secondly, the solver (at least the one I made) doesn't care what orientation the cube has when solved. (The puzzle doesn't have fixed centers that can serve as a reference for the orientation of the cube.) So when the solver is done, the cube might have "red-yellow" (up-front) orientation instead of "white-green" orientation. Simply inverting the solution would produce a scramble assuming "red-yellow" starting orientation instead of the WCA standard "white-green" orientation. I believe this can result in uneven probability distribution among the elements of a symmetry-equivalence class (with some elements having probability zero). Possibly, Clement is dealing with this issue in some way, but I can't immediately tell.
I do have some concerns, though, about if this solver is really a correct random-state solver. With the 4x4x4, there are a couple of issues you need to watch out for in a random-state solver.
First, the puzzle has indistinguishable pieces. Because of this, puzzle states do not have unique inverse states. Thus, I would expect that the program would pick a puzzle state at random, run the solver, then invert the solver's solution to produce a sequence that generates the chosen state when starting from the solved state. The last step of my solver uses only half-turns. Thus, I would tend to expect the scrambles produced to start with some half-turn moves. It seems that some do, while others seem to end with several half-turn moves instead. I find this puzzling.
Secondly, the solver (at least the one I made) doesn't care what orientation the cube has when solved. (The puzzle doesn't have fixed centers that can serve as a reference for the orientation of the cube.) So when the solver is done, the cube might have "red-yellow" (up-front) orientation instead of "white-green" orientation. Simply inverting the solution would produce a scramble assuming "red-yellow" starting orientation instead of the WCA standard "white-green" orientation. I believe this can result in uneven probability distribution among the elements of a symmetry-equivalence class (with some elements having probability zero). Possibly, Clement is dealing with this issue in some way, but I can't immediately tell.
clement
Regular
Thank you, Bruce.
About your first point, I was trying to solve using hex-search (3 orientations + inverse), but I soon realized that because the centers do not form a group, you could not use the inverse position. This has already been fixed in my own repository (https://github.com/clementgallet/FiveStage444) but is not incorporated yet into the main scrambler.
About your second post, you are right. The cube can end up in several orientations, and I didn't take that into account.
Thanks for reviewing.
About your first point, I was trying to solve using hex-search (3 orientations + inverse), but I soon realized that because the centers do not form a group, you could not use the inverse position. This has already been fixed in my own repository (https://github.com/clementgallet/FiveStage444) but is not incorporated yet into the main scrambler.
About your second post, you are right. The cube can end up in several orientations, and I didn't take that into account.
Thanks for reviewing.
cuBerBruce
Veteran
Great, I just wanted to be sure that the scrambler came up with a correct scramble for any chosen state before this was used for official competitions.
I note that I could have written the solver to force the orientation of the solved cube to be fixed. This would have caused some phases to have slightly more moves in the worst case. My solver was a sort of by-product of some work I did to come up with upper bounds on God's number for the 4x4x4. Because of that, I specifically opted for more flexible goal states so as to minimize the worst case number of moves in each phase.
For random state scrambler purposes, it might (but not necessarily) make sense to change the solver to force the orientation of the solved cube. I think this would especially make sense if the scrambler were intended to produce a particular cube orientation as well as a particular position. However, I am guessing what is being implemented is to simply producing a random position, but not a particular cube orientation for that position.
Clement mentioned using 3 orientations. One might wonder, if my solver is not solving to a particular cube orientation, if this would matter at all. Well, yes, it still matters. I'll give an example below using phase 1.
One of the goals of phase 1 is to orient the corners. To orient corners, my solver always places the white/yellow stickers on two opposite faces. It could be the U/D faces, the L/R faces, or the F/B faces. When Clement talks about using 3 orientations, I assume he means that in one case, it will place the red/orange stickers on opposite faces; and in another case, it will place the green/blue stickers on opposite faces. In all cases, the two faces can be any of the three possibilities.
okayama
Veteran
I noticed this scrambler, and wanted to try, but it didn't work.
When I accessed http://tnoodle.tk/scramble, it displayed just
"Loading scramble interface...", and after that nothing happened anymore.
My laptop is Mac OS X 10.7 (Lion), and I tried several browsers like
Safari, Chrome, Firefox, but all of them are NG.
I also tried to download the jar file from https://github.com/cubing/tnoodle/downloads
and executed "java -jar TNoodle-0.6.9.jar". Then it displayed
If I explicitly accessed http://tnoodle.tk/scramble/Big Competition.pdf?FMC Round 1=333*fmc or
http://tnoodle.tk/scramble/My Comp.pdf?3x3 Round 1=333*5*2&3x3 Round 2=333*5 ,
appropriate scrambles were given.
Does anyone know why?
When I accessed http://tnoodle.tk/scramble, it displayed just
"Loading scramble interface...", and after that nothing happened anymore.
My laptop is Mac OS X 10.7 (Lion), and I tried several browsers like
Safari, Chrome, Firefox, but all of them are NG.
I also tried to download the jar file from https://github.com/cubing/tnoodle/downloads
and executed "java -jar TNoodle-0.6.9.jar". Then it displayed
and opened a browser, but the same happened as above. The version of java is
If I explicitly accessed http://tnoodle.tk/scramble/Big Competition.pdf?FMC Round 1=333*fmc or
http://tnoodle.tk/scramble/My Comp.pdf?3x3 Round 1=333*5*2&3x3 Round 2=333*5 ,
appropriate scrambles were given.
Does anyone know why?
jfly
Regular
This sounds like a bug with our javascript/html ui. Are you getting any error messages? Could you try again in Chrome, but with the developer toolbar (ctrl+shift+j to open)?
Mollerz
Swag Overlord
Just to let you know there are moves such as 3U 3D' next to each other in the 6x6 scrambler and this is not meant to be allowed, you should probably fix that. I believe 4x4 is fine.
kinch2002
Premium Member
Not sure if this has been mentioned already but at N8W8 this weekend there were 6x6 scrambles with things like 3U 3D'
EDIT: So badly ninja'd there
EDIT: So badly ninja'd there
jfly
Regular
Thanks, this has actually been fixed already, but we haven't uploaded a new version yet. See https://github.com/cubing/tnoodle/issues/59 for details.
cubernya
Premium Member
TNoodle was used to generate scrambles for that?...
okayama
Veteran
In console tab, there were some messages.
When I accessed http://tnoodle.tk/scramble, I got:
When I executed "java -jar TNoodle-0.6.9.jar", I got:
EDIT: Line 1404 of mootools-more-1.4.0.1.js is:
Seems garbled characters for me.
Last edited:
vcuber13
Veteran
it was used at TOS a couple weeks ago
cubernya
Premium Member
Since when is TNoodle the WCA scrambler? I don't really understand why people are using this instead of WCA scramblers when it's not official yet
jazzthief81
Premium Member
We have used TNoodle to generate the scrambles at N8W8 Summer 2012.
Jeremy, Clément, Chen, Lucas, Shelley and all the others that have worked on it: thank you very much for this excellent contribution to the community. This saves us delegates almost a whole evening's worth of work.
There are a few things I'd like to point out.
One of the scrambles for 6x6x6 contained the following move sequences: 3L' 3R and later on 3L2 3R2. Another scramble contained the following sequence: 3B' 3F. This doesn't do anything except rotate the puzzle.
We also saw the following move sequences occur on 6x6x6 scrambles: 3D 3U2 and 3L 3R. These could be written down as one move instead of two moves and still achieve the same effect.
Another minor thing is that for multiple blindfolded, you can change the default number of scrambles to 30 and it would still fit on 6 pages.
Jeremy, Clément, Chen, Lucas, Shelley and all the others that have worked on it: thank you very much for this excellent contribution to the community. This saves us delegates almost a whole evening's worth of work.
There are a few things I'd like to point out.
One of the scrambles for 6x6x6 contained the following move sequences: 3L' 3R and later on 3L2 3R2. Another scramble contained the following sequence: 3B' 3F. This doesn't do anything except rotate the puzzle.
We also saw the following move sequences occur on 6x6x6 scrambles: 3D 3U2 and 3L 3R. These could be written down as one move instead of two moves and still achieve the same effect.
Another minor thing is that for multiple blindfolded, you can change the default number of scrambles to 30 and it would still fit on 6 pages.
masterofthebass
Premium Member
jfly
Regular
Sorry for the long delay here, but is this working for you now? The latest version of tnoodle (0.7.1) is available here https://github.com/cubing/tnoodle/downloads.
okayama
Veteran
Great, I accessed http://tnoodle.tk/ by Chrome and it worked fine.
cubernya
Premium Member
Bump. Is there any update on the status of this becoming the WCA scrambler? Is it happening in 2013?
Lucas Garron
Premium Member
Yes, the current regulations have been sent to the Board. They wil hopefully be adopted with TNoodle as a new official scrambler on January 1. (With the old scramblers deprecated, but possibly still allowed.)
Jimmy Liu
Regular
What's wrong with my TNoodle?
I put TNoodle-WCA-0.8.4.jar in a file called TNoodle, it should open a page on my browser but ended up with generating another two files as the picture shown below.
I am sure that I have downloaded the newest Java which may not be the reason.
I put TNoodle-WCA-0.8.4.jar in a file called TNoodle, it should open a page on my browser but ended up with generating another two files as the picture shown below.
I am sure that I have downloaded the newest Java which may not be the reason.
