web reimplementation of Sigmar's Garden
https://bits.ondrovo.com/sigmar/
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131 lines
5.3 KiB
131 lines
5.3 KiB
Sigmar's Garden
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===============
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This project implements the Sigmar's Garden mini-game from Zachronics' [Opus Magnum][om]
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in HTML5, JavaScript, and SVG.
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**Play on-line at [https://bits.ondrovo.com/sigmar](https://bits.ondrovo.com/sigmar).**
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The game is fully client-side and static, you can simply download it and open locally as well.
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Game rules
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----------
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There are 55 marbles on the board, composed as follows:
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- 8 pieces of the four Elements: Air, Water, Fire, and Earth (total of 32)
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- 4 pieces of Salt
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- 5 metals and 1 Gold
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- 5 pieces of Mercury
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- 4 pairs of Vitae and Mors
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Your goal is to clear the board. For a marble to be removed, it must be combined with
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another suitable marble. Further, it must have *three or more contiguous free tiles*
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around it.
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**Reaction rules:**
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- Vitae reacts only with Mors
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- Elements react with the same element kind, or with Salt
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- Salt reacts with Elements or with itself
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- Metals react with Mercury, but they unlock one by one, from the most common Lead to Gold.
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- Gold is removed by itself as the last metal
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**The metals sequence is as follows:**
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1. Lead + Mercury
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2. Tin + Mercury
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3. Iron + Mercury
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4. Copper + Mercury
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5. Silver + Mercury
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6. Gold
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Here is a diagram from the original game *(hosted on [Steam Community][ruleslink])*
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![Rules sheet][rulespic]
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User Interface Explanation
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--------------------------
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The user interface contains a few buttons and toggles:
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- *Randomize* - start a new game with a random shape and marble placement
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- *Try Again* - reset the current game to its initial arrangement
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- *Undo* - reverts one game action (reaction of two marbles). There is no limit on how many
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steps you can undo.
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The bottom left corner contains settings:
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- *Effects* - enable graphic effects that look pretty but perform poorly on mobile phones or
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browsers without hardware acceleration.
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- *Dim Blocked* - highlight marbles that can be played by dimming the others. This makes the game
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much harder, but is more realistic.
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- *Sloppy Gen* - allow sloppy board filling. Use if building the board takes too long on
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your computer. May result in uglier and/or easier boards.
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Settings
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--------
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The game saves its persistent settings in your browser's [localStorage][localStorage].
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Settings can be manipulated through the GUI, through some GET parameters, and via JavaScript API
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in dev tools. The function of interest is called `game.setCfg({key: value, ...})`.
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Here's the settings object. Please refer to the source code, as this is internal API and may be extended
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or changed without updating this reference. Search for `SettingsStorage`.
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```
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{
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log: 'info', // default log level
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allowTemplateAugmenting: false, // sloppy mode
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retryTemplate: 30, // retry attempts within one template
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attemptTemplates: 50, // number of templates to try on failure
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svgEffects: false, // fancy mode
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dimBlocked: true, // highlight active marbles
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}
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```
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GET Arguments
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-------------
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The game can be parametrised by GET arguments you add to the URL.
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This can be used for bookmarks or to share a particular board.
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- `debug=1/0` - enable debug, or disable debug and trace logging levels
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- `trace=1/0` - toggle trace logging level
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- `log=level` - select logging level: trace, debug, info, warn, error
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- `seed=123` - set random seed, must be numeric. Share the current board by copying the URL
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- `rnd=1` - don't put the seed in URL, so you can randomize by pressing Refresh (F5)
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- `template=star` - set board template (shape in which the marbles are arranged).
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See the source code for a list of templates. The currently used template is also printed
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to the debug console for convenience. Can be combined with 'rnd' or 'seed'.
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Note that some templates are hard to fill, so the engine can give up and switch to
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a different random template.
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Algorithm Quirks
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----------------
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Every board must be solvable, otherwise it wouldn't be much of a game. Generating a valid board
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turned out quite a bit more challenging than I thought. My algorithm is based in some heuristics
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and good deal of luck.
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To make things more fun, besides the marble matching rules, the board must be laid out in one of
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several pre-defined shapes of exactly 55 tiles. The algorithm can sometimes get itself into a dead
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end while placing marbles on the board. I experimented with backtracking, but the current version
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simply retries the whole thing with a different random seed. There are configurable retry limits
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as a failsafe. If the given template fails many consecutive times, the algorithm opts to switch to
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a different template. Some templates are harder than others, and some random seeds just seem to
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have a problem.
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A workaround I added is called Sloppy Mode. When the algorithm can't place a marble, it may choose
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to add a new tile to the template, trying to keep the overall shape as tidy as possible. This may
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hurt game difficulty, but is generally much faster than retrying over and over.
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If you're curious about the inner workings, open dev tools and enable debug logging with the `debug=1`
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GET parameter.
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[localStorage]: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Window/localStorage
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[rulespic]: https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/913534190478688278/601AEF665F446DF75AF787D8E102B255F3E905A1/
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[ruleslink]: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1243498813
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[om]: http://www.zachtronics.com/opus-magnum/
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