[casual_games] Sudoku

[adam]

The basic algorithms for these logic puzzles are all the same - you start from a completed grid / table and use the inverse of the deductive rules that players use, and you remove one number / letter at a time until you have made a sufficiently hard / interesting puzzle.

Depth is usually scored as a combination of how many pieces you removed and how 'hard' were the inverse rules you used. Thinking up the inverses can be non-trivial, and of course intimate understanding of each game is needed.

We've relatively quickly made generators for many of the different puzzle types - but we are a puzzles company with lots of obsessive players internally to test them on, so YMMV in deducing the more advanced ops.

Adam
(from PDA, so please forgive  typos)

-----Original Message-----
From: "James Baker - WDDG/Inferno" <james at WDDG.com>
To: "IGDA Casual Games SIG Mailing List" <casual_games at igda.org>
Sent: 24/07/06 16:09
Subject: [casual_games] Sudoku

I've got some questions about Sudoku.
 
Is Sudoku (the name and/or the game) copywrited or owned by anyone?  I
see a new Sudoku game about every other day... and I'm just waiting for
one of our clients to ask for a version.  And is there a public
algorithm to generate the puzzles, or are developers buying them from
some place?
 
Thanks!
 
James