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Slitherlink Art

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Advances in Computer Games (ACG 2023)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNCS,volume 14528))

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Abstract

Slitherlink is a pure deduction puzzle that produces simple closed paths in a square grid when solved. This paper presents a simple method for automatically generating Slitherlink challenges whose solutions describe artistic shapes selected by the designer, and its successful implementation in a Java program. The process is assessed through several examples in terms of their artistic merit and quality as puzzles.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    I use the term “players” rather than “solvers” throughout, in order to avoid confusion with automated problem solvers.

  2. 2.

    https://www.nikoli.co.jp/en/puzzles/.

  3. 3.

    The grid size is defined by a cellSize parameter as a percentage of the maximum image dimension, i.e. cellSize=5% gives a grid with 20 cells horizontally or vertically.

References

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Acknowledgements

Thanks for Stephen Tavener for pointing out the Picture Link examples [10] and Néstor Romeral Andrés for suggesting the picture-to-picture variation. This work was partly funded by the European Research Council (ERC CoG #771292).

The Java program implemented for this study is available at:

http://www.cambolbro.com/research/Slitherlink_Art_1.0.jar

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Advanced Computing Sciences, Maastricht University, Paul-Henri Spaaklaan 1, 6229 EN, Maastricht, The Netherlands

    Cameron Browne

Authors
  1. Cameron Browne
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Correspondence to Cameron Browne .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Siegen, Siegen, Germany

    Michael Hartisch

  2. Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, Nomi, Ishikawa, Japan

    Chu-Hsuan Hsueh

  3. University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, Canada

    Jonathan Schaeffer

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© 2024 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG

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Browne, C. (2024). Slitherlink Art. In: Hartisch, M., Hsueh, CH., Schaeffer, J. (eds) Advances in Computer Games. ACG 2023. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 14528. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-54968-7_14

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-54968-7_14

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-031-54967-0

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-031-54968-7

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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