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Provided by: sgt-puzzles_6879-1_i386

NAME

        twiddle - tile manipulation puzzle game

SYNOPSIS

        twiddle  [--generate  n]  [--print  wxh  [--with-solutions] [--scale n]
        [--colour]] [game-parameters|game-ID|random-seed]
 
        twiddle --version

DESCRIPTION

Twiddle is a tile-rearrangement puzzle, visually similar to Sixteen sixteen(6)): you are given a grid of square tiles, each containing a number, and your aim is to arrange the numbers into ascending order. In basic Twiddle, your move is to rotate a square group of four tiles about their common centre. (Orientation is not significant in the basic puzzle, although you can select it.) On more advanced settings, you can rotate a larger square group of tiles. I first saw this type of puzzle in the GameCube game "Metroid Prime 2". In the Main Gyro Chamber in that game, there is a puzzle you solve to unlock a door, which is a special case of Twiddle. I developed this game as a generalisation of that puzzle. To play Twiddle, click the mouse in the centre of the square group you wish to rotate. In the basic mode, you rotate a 2x2 square, which means you have to click at a corner point where four tiles meet. In more advanced modes you might be rotating 3x3 or even more at a time; if the size of the square is odd then you simply click in the centre tile of the square you want to rotate. Clicking with the left mouse button rotates the group anticlockwise. Clicking with the right button rotates it clockwise. (All the actions described below are also available.) Twiddle provides several configuration options via the "Custom" option on the "Type" menu: o You can configure the width and height of the puzzle grid. o You can configure the size of square block that rotates at a time. o You can ask for every square in the grid to be distinguishable (the default), or you can ask for a simplified puzzle in which there are groups of identical numbers. In the simplified puzzle your aim is just to arrange all the 1s into the first row, all the 2s into the second row, and so on. o You can configure whether the orientation of tiles matters. If you ask for an orientable puzzle, each tile will have a triangle drawn in it. All the triangles must be pointing upwards to com‐ plete the puzzle. o You can ask for a limited shuffling operation to be performed on the grid. By default, Twiddle will shuffle the grid so much that any arrangement is about as probable as any other. You can over‐ ride this by requesting a precise number of shuffling moves to be performed. Typically your aim is then to determine the pre‐ cise set of shuffling moves and invert them exactly, so that you answer (say) a four-move shuffle with a four-move solution. Note that the more moves you ask for, the more likely it is that solutions shorter than the target length will turn out to be possible. These actions are all available from the "Game" menu and via keyboard shortcuts, in addition to any game-specific actions. (On Mac OS X, to conform with local user interface standards, these actions are situated on the "File" and "Edit" menus instead.) New game ("N", Ctrl+"N") Starts a new game, with a random initial state. Restart game Resets the current game to its initial state. (This can be undone.) Load Loads a saved game from a file on disk. Save Saves the current state of your game to a file on disk. The Load and Save operations should preserve your entire game history (so you can save, reload, and still Undo and Redo things you had done before saving). Print Where supported (currently only on Windows), brings up a dialog allowing you to print an arbitrary number of puzzles randomly generated from the current parameters, optionally including the current puzzle. (Only for puzzles which make sense to print, of course - it’s hard to think of a sensible printable representa‐ tion of Fifteen!) Undo ("U", Ctrl+"Z", Ctrl+"_") Undoes a single move. (You can undo moves back to the start of the session.) Redo ("R", Ctrl+"R") Redoes a previously undone move. Copy Copies the current state of your game to the clipboard in text format, so that you can paste it into (say) an e-mail client or a web message board if you’re discussing the game with someone else. (Not all games support this feature.) Solve Transforms the puzzle instantly into its solved state. For some games (Cube) this feature is not supported at all because it is of no particular use. For other games (such as Pattern), the solved state can be used to give you information, if you can’t see how a solution can exist at all or you want to know where you made a mistake. For still other games (such as Sixteen), automatic solution tells you nothing about how to get to the solution, but it does provide a useful way to get there quickly so that you can experiment with set-piece moves and transforma‐ tions. Some games (such as Solo) are capable of solving a game ID you have typed in from elsewhere. Other games (such as Rectangles) cannot solve a game ID they didn’t invent themself, but when they did invent the game ID they know what the solution is already. Still other games (Pattern) can solve some external game IDs, but only if they aren’t too difficult. The "Solve" command adds the solved state to the end of the undo chain for the puzzle. In other words, if you want to go back to solving it yourself after seeing the answer, you can just press Undo. Quit ("Q", Ctrl+"Q") Closes the application entirely. There are two ways to save a game specification out of a puzzle and recreate it later, or recreate it in somebody else’s copy of the same puzzle. The "Specific" and "Random Seed" options from the "Game" menu (or the "File" menu, on Mac OS X) each show a piece of text (a "game ID") which is sufficient to reconstruct precisely the same game at a later date. You can enter either of these pieces of text back into the program (via the same "Specific" or "Random Seed" menu options) at a later point, and it will recreate the same game. You can also use either one as a command line argument (on Windows or Unix); see below for more detail. The difference between the two forms is that a descriptive game ID is a literal description of the initial state of the game, whereas a random seed is just a piece of arbitrary text which was provided as input to the random number generator used to create the puzzle. This means that: o Descriptive game IDs tend to be longer in many puzzles (although (cube(6)), only need very short descrip‐ tions). So a random seed is often a quicker way to note down the puzzle you’re currently playing, or to tell it to somebody else so they can play the same one as you. o Any text at all is a valid random seed. The automatically gener‐ ated ones are fifteen-digit numbers, but anything will do; you can type in your full name, or a word you just made up, and a valid puzzle will be generated from it. This provides a way for two or more people to race to complete the same puzzle: you think of a random seed, then everybody types it in at the same time, and nobody has an advantage due to having seen the gener‐ ated puzzle before anybody else. o It is often possible to convert puzzles from other sources (such as "nonograms" or "sudoku" from newspapers) into descriptive game IDs suitable for use with these programs. o Random seeds are not guaranteed to produce the same result if you use them with a different version of the puzzle program. This is because the generation algorithm might have been improved or modified in later versions of the code, and will therefore produce a different result when given the same sequence of random numbers. Use a descriptive game ID if you aren’t sure that it will be used on the same version of the pro‐ gram as yours. (Use the "About" menu option to find out the version number of the program. Programs with the same version number running on different platforms should still be random-seed compatible.) A descriptive game ID starts with a piece of text which encodes the parameters of the current game (such as grid size). Then there is a colon, and after that is the description of the game’s initial state. A random seed starts with a similar string of parameters, but then it contains a hash sign followed by arbitrary data. If you enter a descriptive game ID, the program will not be able to show you the random seed which generated it, since it wasn’t generated from a random seed. If you enter a random seed, however, the program will be able to show you the descriptive game ID derived from that ran‐ dom seed. Note that the game parameter strings are not always identical between the two forms. For some games, there will be parameter data provided with the random seed which is not included in the descriptive game ID. This is because that parameter information is only relevant when gener‐ ating puzzle grids, and is not important when playing them. Thus, for (solo(6)) is not mentioned in the descriptive game ID. These additional parameters are also not set permanently if you type in a game ID. For example, suppose you have Solo set to "Advanced" diffi‐ culty level, and then a friend wants your help with a "Trivial" puzzle; so the friend reads out a random seed specifying "Trivial" difficulty, and you type it in. The program will generate you the same "Trivial" grid which your friend was having trouble with, but once you have fin‐ ished playing it, when you ask for a new game it will automatically go back to the "Advanced" difficulty which it was previously set on. The "Type" menu, if present, may contain a list of preset game set‐ tings. Selecting one of these will start a new random game with the parameters specified. The "Type" menu may also contain a "Custom" option which allows you to fine-tune game parameters. The parameters available are specific to each game and are described in the following sections. (This section does not apply to the Mac OS X version.) The games in this collection deliberately do not ever save information on to the computer they run on: they have no high score tables and no saved preferences. (This is because I expect at least some people to play them at work, and those people will probably appreciate leaving as little evidence as possible!) However, if you do want to arrange for one of these games to default to a particular set of parameters, you can specify them on the command line. The easiest way to do this is to set up the parameters you want using the "Type" menu (see above), and then to select "Random Seed" from the "Game" or "File" menu (see above). The text in the "Game ID" box will be composed of two parts, separated by a hash. The first of these parts represents the game parameters (the size of the playing area, for exam‐ ple, and anything else you set using the "Type" menu). If you run the game with just that parameter text on the command line, it will start up with the settings you specified. cube(6)), select "Octahedron" from the "Type" menu, and then go to the game ID selection, you will see a string of the form "o2x2#338686542711620". Take only the part before the hash ("o2x2"), and start Cube with that text on the command line: "cube o2x2". If you copy the entire game ID on to the command line, the game will start up in the specific game that was described. This is occasionally a more convenient way to start a particular game ID than by pasting it into the game ID selection box. (You could also retrieve the encoded game parameters using the "Specific" menu option instead of "Random Seed", but if you do then some options, such as the difficulty level in Solo, will be missing. See above for more details on this.) (This section only applies to the Unix port.) In addition to specifying game parameters on the command line (see above), you can also specify various options: --generate n If this option is specified, instead of a puzzle being dis‐ played, a number of descriptive game IDs will be invented and printed on standard output. This is useful for gaining access to the game generation algorithms without necessarily using the frontend. If game parameters are specified on the command-line, they will be used to generate the game IDs; otherwise a default set of parameters will be used. The most common use of this option is in conjunction with --print, in which case its behaviour is slightly different; see below. --print wxh If this option is specified, instead of a puzzle being dis‐ played, a printed representation of one or more unsolved puzzles is sent to standard output, in PostScript format. On each page of puzzles, there will be w across and h down. If there are more puzzles than wxh, more than one page will be printed. If --generate has also been specified, the invented game IDs will be used to generate the printed output. Otherwise, a list of game IDs is expected on standard input (which can be descrip‐ tive or random seeds; see above), in the same format produced by --generate. For example: net --generate 12 --print 2x3 7x7w | lpr will generate two pages of printed Net puzzles (each of which will have a 7x7 wrapping grid), and pipe the output to the lpr command, which on many systems will send them to an actual printer. There are various other options which affect printing; see below. --version Prints version information about the game, and then quits. The following options are only meaningful if --print is also specified: --with-solutions The set of pages filled with unsolved puzzles will be followed by the solutions to those puzzles. --scale n Adjusts how big each puzzle is when printed. Larger numbers make puzzles bigger; the default is 1.0. --colour Puzzles will be printed in colour, rather than in black and white (if supported by the puzzle). Full documentation in /usr/share/doc/sgt-puzzles/puzzles.txt.gz.