Page History

...

Milestone 2 Due: Friday 22 April 2011 at 9:59:59 am 

Tip: Out of Memory Error 

    Try the following:  Go to Edit/Preferences/Micellaneous/JVMs and add the -Xss64M option to the "JVM Args for Interactions JVM" line to increase th amount of memory used.

The Sudoku Game

Sudoku is a 9x9 grid-based puzzle in which the goal is to place numbers from 1 to 9 in the grid squares taking into account specific constraints. The 9 x 9 puzzle grid can be seen as divided into 9 sub-grids of size 3x3. The 3 main conditions in the classic version of Sudoku state are that each square in the grid contains a number from 1 to 9 and a number cannot be repeated:

...

• An empty board is fully determined by a single value, it's "order", which for a 9x9 board is 3.
• The board is viewable in terms of rows, columns and blocks.
  • Each row, column and block has exactly order2 cells, e.g. for order = 3, each row, column and block has 9 cells.
  • Each board has exactly order2 rows, columns and blocks.
• Each cell is a member of exactly one row, one column and one block.
  • No rows share the same cell.   Likewise, no columns or blocks share cells.  This forces the square matrix layout  of rows, columns, and order^2 sub-matrix of blocks if one were to display the rows, columns and blocks where each cell is only shown once.
• The rules of Sudoku stipluate that the value in any given cell has very specific constraints:
  • Wiki MarkupThe valid values are {{1...order{}}}{{{}{^}²{^}}} (inclusive), e.g. for order=2, the allowed values are \ [1, 2, 3, 4\]
  •  Any valid value in a cell cannot appear in another cell in the row, column or block to which that cell belongs.   Conversely, each row, column or block must contain every valid value exactly once.

...

Note:  Your Sudoku solver should be able to solve a completely blank puzzle (all dashes, not empty)!

Programming Tips

Updating the View

At the end of the reduceBoard and solve methods, be sure to add the line

...

 final int[] x = new int[]{0};

final ICell[] aCell = new ICell[]{ new Cell() }; 

Wiki Markup An anonymous inner class can thus access these variables by using the array syntax:   {{x\[0\]}} and {{aCell\[0\]}} An anonymous inner class can thus access these variables by using the array syntax:   x[0] and aCell[0]

You may find that in order to keep track of several properties as you loop through cells and cell sets, that you may need to create multiple one-element array values.

...

 Your code must work for ANY order puzzle!   (To within machine limits, of course.) 

Testing Procedures

...

The supplied code contains a simple test routine that gives you examples on how to instantiate a {{GameModel}}, {\[Board}} and test them.

It is reasonable to test your code by the following process:

...