SokEvo is a Sokoban puzzle creator. It uses evolution by
(un)natural selection to produce difficult puzzles using little more
than random numbers.
The evolver starts with a random population (or set) of template
puzzles.
A puzzle is chosen at random and mutated, creating a new
template.
The new template is converted into a puzzle using a generator,
which determines how many box pushes are required to solve
it – its fitness.
If the resulting puzzle is better than any others in the
population, it will be retained and displace the worst existing
puzzle / template.
The mutation and selection continues, gradually increasing the
difficulty of the puzzles by forcing them to have longer
solutions.
Typically creating a new set will result in a completely different
outcome, as the evolution of the puzzles will take a different
path.
Getting started
Once the program has been downloaded, installed and is running, it
acts as a web server – i.e. you need to use your web
browser to access it. It does not provide any output
in a window nor command-line console.
The program runs in the background until you use your web browser
to access it and shut it down (unless you kill the process
directly). Type
http://localhost:2015
in the address bar of your web browser to access and control the
SokEvo server process.
Although moderately complex puzzles can appear quite quickly (within
a few minutes), in order to give the evolver time to produce the
best puzzles you should be prepared to wait before taking one of the
top puzzles from the population / set. Typically this could
mean letting it run for as much as 30 hours.
Download
SokEvo is available for Linux and MS Windows ('95, '98, NT, 2000,
XP). It is based on the
Simple DirectMedia Layer (SDL)
and SDL_net libraries.
