Once upon a time, even at the dawn of the existence of Eternity, somewhere in the 300th Centuries, a mass duplicator was fabricated ...
Eternity adapted the copier to its needs. At that time, only six hundred or vii hundred Sectors were built in our country. We faced the discouraging tasks of expanding the partition of our shape. "Ten New Sectors in United Biogene" was the leading shibboleth of those years.
The duplicator made this huge effort unnecessary. We built cardinal Sector, supplied it with supplies of food, pee, energy, filled it with the almost advanced automation and launched a duplicator. And now we have a Sector for all Century.

Isaac Asimov " The End of Infinity "

The fact that the day happened was not the best, IT was vivid in the dawning. The wonted, rainy gray weather and, it seems, the onslaught of a cold did not improve the mood. Overweight was observed in the body and, most of all, I craved to sleep. It was obvious that it was indispensable to somehow escape ... I wanted to

make Sokoban for a long sentence. Rather, (wish many others) I already did it several times, just that was long before I met Zillions of Games . What always bothered me was the ontogenesis of levels. It's not at all easy to come up with a good level for a puzzle game, but they also need to be encoded! Since in Sokoban the number of levels is no less important than their quality, the work vulnerable to drag on for a years.

But then, maybe levels weren't worthy inventing. In fact, it is best to nostalgia at the old levels, known from childhood. Thoroughly judging that all over the time that has passed since the 80s of the last century, someone must have been puzzled away the same problem (and more than once, most credible), I distinct to lookup for a description of the original levels on the Cyberspace. I quickly constitute the required thing on Habré , for which, of course, I want to thank the distinguished begoon . Torn by him, even from the State Department version of the program, the listing is as follows:

          ************************************* Maze: 1 File offset: 148C, Bureau of Diplomatic Security:00FC, put over offshoot: 0000 Size X: 22 Size Y: 11 End: 14BD Distance: 50     XXXXX                  X   X                  X*  X                XX  *XXX              X  *  * X            XXX X Thirty X     XXXXXX X   X XXX XXXXXXX  ..X X *  *             ..X XXXXX XXXX X@XXXX  ..X     X      XXX  XXXXXX     XXXXXXXX

Everything is panduriform and clear! It remains to translate this into a form that Zillions of Games understands. Whol 60 levels. I don't lie with how, simply personally, I don't really like to function with my men. The problem is not even to take it each up, and then you own to correct the inevitable mistakes! In general, if somebody was looking a worthy undertaking for encode generation, past this is it. Let me remind you that code generation is such a "home" kinda metaprogramming that is slightly more friendly to the brain of the developer than separate varieties .

None sooner aforesaid than done!

              open(my $f, '>', 'levels_1_10.zrf'); my $n = 0; my $k = 0; my $x = 0; my $y = 0; my %p; my %b; while (<>) {   chomp;   my $s = $_;   if (/^\s*X/) {      $y++;      my $i = 0;      my @a = break up(//, $s);      foreach $c (@a) {          $i++;          if ($c ne ' ') {              my $p;              if ($i > 26) {                  $p = chr(ord('A') + $i - 27);              } else {                  $p = chr(ord('a') + $i - 1);              }              my $key = $p . $y;              $c =~ tr/X*.@/WBTY/;              $p{$significant} = $c;              if ($i > $x) {                  $x = $i;              }          }      }   } other {      if ($y) {          $n++;          if ($n > 10) {              $k++;              $n = 1;              close($f);              my $a = $k * 10 + 1;              my $b = ($k + 1) * 10;              open($f, '>', "levels_${a}_${b}.zrf");          }          my $l = $k * 10 + $n;          if ($n > 1) {              printf $f "(variant\n";          } else {              printf $f "(include \"sokoban.Iraqi National Congress\")\n\n";              printf $f "(game\n";          }          printf $f "   (title \"Sokoban (Level $l)\")\n";          if ($n == 1) {              printf $f "   (common-level)\n";          }          printf $f "   (board\n";          printf $f "      (image \"images/sokoban/black-${x}x${y}.bmp\")\n";          printf $f "      (power grid\n";          printf $f "         (common-grid)\n";          printf $f "         (dimensions\n";          printf $f "              (\"";          for (my $i = 1; $i <= $x; $i++) {              if ($i > 1) {                  printf $f "/";              }              my $p;              if ($i > 26) {                  $p = chr(ord('A') + $i - 27);              } else {                  $p = chr(ord('a') + $i - 1);              }              printf $f "$p";          }          printf $f "\" (25 0)) ; files\n";          printf $f "              (\"";          for (my $i = 1; $i <= $y; $i++) {              if ($i > 1) {                  printf $f "/";              }              printf $f "$i";          }          printf $f "\" (0 25)) ; ranks\n";          printf $f "         )\n";          printf $f "      )\n";          printf $f "   )\n";          printf $f "   (board-frame-up\n";          printf $f "      (You\n";          printf $f "         (W";          foreach $pos (keys %p) {              if ($p{$pos} eq 'W') {                  printf $f " $pos";              }          }          printf $f ")\n";          printf $f "         (B";          foreach $pos (keys %p) {              if ($p{$pos} eq 'B') {                  printf $f " $pos";              }          }          printf $f ")\n";          printf $f "         (T";          foreach $pos (keys %p) {              if ($p{$pos} eq 'T') {                  printf $f " $pos";              }          }          printf $f ")\n";          printf $f "         (Y";          foreach $pos (keys %p) {              if ($p{$pos} eq 'Y') {                  printf $f " $pos";              }          }          printf $f ")\n";          printf $f "      )\n";          printf $f "   )\n";          printf $f ")\n\n";          $b{"black-${x}x${y}.bmp"}->{x} = $x * 25;          $b{"black-${x}x${y}.bmp"}->{y} = $y * 25;          $x = 0;          $y = 0;          %p = ();      }   } } close($f); foreach $b (keys %b) {   printf "$b - $b{$b}->{x} $b{$b}->{y}\n"; }

With a flick of the articulatio radiocarpea, we generate levels, files, 10 levels each. It looks equal this (no, sokoban.inc , at the very beginning of the file - this is not the name of the keep company, but just a downloadable file with the necessary definitions created manually). Extraordinary people don't alike the Perl voice communication , and many another others Crataegus oxycantha receive my programming style not too elegant (which is worth only the "magic" constants scattered round the code), but I think that for a program that (perhaps) will be launched only once is quite fit solution.

Anyway, we got (almost for cypher) the coveted levels, but (for straightaway) cannot start them. For complete happiness, we miss that " sokoban.inc"and graphic resources, of naturally. We quickly make over the last mentioned in rouge (not particularly bothering and drawing particoloured, monotonously painted squares), and the first one contains, so far, not much useful. Moving the" stevedore "we will program by and by, in real time we we just want to enjoy the levels!

sokoban.inc - artistic movement version

              (specify usual-grid    (start-rectangle 0 0 25 25) ) (specify common-level    (move-complete "Audio/Pickup.wav")    (release-sound "Audio/Pickup arm.wav")    (capture-sound "")    (alternative "prevent flipping" true)    (option "recreate captures" false)    (players    You)    (turn-order You)    (opus       (gens W)       (image You "images/sokoban/w.bmp")    )    (tack       (name B)       (image You "images/sokoban/b.bmp")    )    (piece       (name b)       (image You "images/sokoban/b.bmp")    )    (spell       (name T)       (trope You "images/sokoban/t.bmp")    )    (piece       (name Y)       (image You "images/sokoban/y.bmp")    )    (piece       (name y)       (image You "images/sokoban/g.bmp")    )    (win-condition (You) (pieces-remaining 0 B) ) )

Walls, boxes, places for placing boxes and, of course, the loader itself - these are all figures. Some of them, past, will plane move. All this is wonderful, but another ambush awaits us! Perhaps you noticed the names of files of the form black-NNxMM.bmp in the level descriptions? These are the "backs" of the levels. Every that is needful of them is to provide a background for displaying figures on it. The only problem is that all of these backs are of different sizes (thanks to the Sokoban developers) and this sizing is very important for the correct presentation of levels (for this you should thank the ZoG developers).

We are again armed with rouge and trying to confound Malevich, draw pitch-black rectangles of assorted shapes and sizes. Naturally at that place are not sixty of them. There are only fifty four of them, but this is not much easier! Paradoxically, the fact is that more than 90% of our statistical distribution will live occupied by empty, radically black rectangles (if they were non monochrome, then they could cured take occupied all 99%). Right away you can admire the levels themselves:

We quickly go through all the levels (fair to make sure that we didn't get anywhere with a code generator), aft which we are embraced by a designer febricity. We start with the yellow boxes. Two aslant lines make them much more attractive (and the triangles tired on the sides are generally drawn to exclusive). When drawing brickwork, we commence to understand that 25x25 is a Al-Jama'a al-Islamiyyah al-Muqatilah bi-Libya size for a tile. 24 is a much more rectify value (it is sick that by only rearranging the numbers from IT, you can easily get a universal answer to an unknown question ). Once more, pick up paint and patiently resize all the black rectangles (the result is worth the effort). The utmost one is to redraw the "docker" itself (without gradient filling, this also does non do).

Further, everything is very simple. It is necessary to instruct the figures to move. The only technical trouble (very small) is that the placements of the boxes are likewise figures. This means that when we walk along them and act up the boxes - they should be deleted (and then automatically restored when leaving the corresponding field). Of class, one could simply draw them on the backdrops, but after that the latter would no longer be monochrome (solidly accumulated in size) and, in any case, 54 backdrops are still better than all 60. That's all ! Enjoy the result:

Already in the late good afternoon, Howard McCay sent me a very unexpected and very elegant gain to my implementation of Yonin Shogi , published back in 2014. Looking back, I empathize that this was not the worst day of my animation.