Emanuele Feronato

Talking about Sudoku game, Game development and Php.

This is an old project for a class held in 2005.

At that time, Sodoku game was very popular in Italy, and I saw quite a lot of Flash games based upon it.

If you don’t know what is a Sudoku, Wikipedia says is a logic-based number-placement puzzle. The objective is to fill a 9×9 grid so that each column, each row, and each of the nine 3×3 boxes (also called blocks or regions) contains the digits from 1 to 9 only one time each. The puzzle setter provides a partially completed grid.

The script consists in a set of functions that emulate the “human way” to solve a Sudoku game, with trials and errors, using backtracking.

The only thing you need to know is how I represent the Sudoku table inside the script.

It’s an array (line 193) with 81 values representing positions from 0 to 80. The value at n-th position is the one you will find on the table at row floor(n/9) and column n%9.

A value from 1 to 9 represents a know number of a Sudoku table, while a zero represents an unknown one.

For this reason, an array filled only with zeros like the one in the script will generate a new, full Sudoku.

This is the script:

";
	for($x=0;$x<=8;$x++){
		$html .= "";
		for($y=0;$y<=8;$y++){
			$html.= "".$sudoku[$x*9+$y]."";
		}
		$html .= "";
	}
	$html .= "";
	return $html;
}

function is_correct_row($row,$sudoku){
	for($x=0;$x<=8;$x++){
		$row_temp[$x] = $sudoku[$row*9+$x];
	}
	return count(array_diff(array(1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9),$row_temp)) == 0;
}

	

function is_correct_col($col,$sudoku){
	for($x=0;$x<=8;$x++){
		$col_temp[$x] = $sudoku[$col+$x*9];
	}
	return count(array_diff(array(1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9),$col_temp)) == 0;
}

function is_correct_block($block,$sudoku){
	for($x=0;$x<=8;$x++){
		$block_temp[$x] = $sudoku[floor($block/3)*27+$x%3+9*floor($x/3)+3*($block%3)];
	}
	return count(array_diff(array(1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9),$block_temp)) == 0;
}

function is_solved_sudoku($sudoku){
	for($x=0;$x<=8;$x++){
		if(!is_correct_block($x,$sudoku) or !is_correct_row($x,$sudoku) or !is_correct_col($x,$sudoku)){
			return false;
			break;
		}
	}
	return true;
}

function determine_possible_values($cell,$sudoku){
	$possible = array();
	for($x=1;$x<=9;$x++){
		if(is_possible_number($cell,$x,$sudoku)){
			array_unshift($possible,$x);
		} 
	}
	return $possible;
}

function determine_random_possible_value($possible,$cell){
	return $possible[$cell][rand(0,count($possible[$cell])-1)];
}

function scan_sudoku_for_unique($sudoku){
	for($x=0;$x<=80;$x++){
		if($sudoku[$x] == 0){
			$possible[$x] = determine_possible_values($x,$sudoku);
			if(count($possible[$x])==0){
				return(false);
				break;
			}
		}
	}
	return($possible);
}

function remove_attempt($attempt_array,$number){
	$new_array = array();
	for($x=0;$x";
	for($x=0;$x<=8;$x++){
		$html .= "";
		for($y=0;$y<=8;$y++){
			$values = "";
			for($z=0;$z<=count($possible[$x*9+$y]);$z++){
				$values .= $possible[$x*9+$y][$z];
			}
			$html.= "$values";
		}
		$html .= "";
	}
	$html .= "";
	return $html;
}	

function next_random($possible){
	$max = 9;
	for($x=0;$x<=80;$x++){
		if ((count($possible[$x])<=$max) and (count($possible[$x])>0)){
			$max = count($possible[$x]);
			$min_choices = $x;
		}
	}
	return $min_choices;
}
	
 
function solve($sudoku){
	$start = microtime();
	$saved = array();	
	$saved_sud = array();
	while(!is_solved_sudoku($sudoku)){
		$x+=1;
		$next_move = scan_sudoku_for_unique($sudoku);
		if($next_move == false){
			$next_move = array_pop($saved);
			$sudoku = array_pop($saved_sud);
		}
		$what_to_try = next_random($next_move);	
		$attempt = determine_random_possible_value($next_move,$what_to_try);
		if(count($next_move[$what_to_try])>1){					
			$next_move[$what_to_try] = remove_attempt($next_move[$what_to_try],$attempt);
			array_push($saved,$next_move);
			array_push($saved_sud,$sudoku);
		}
		$sudoku[$what_to_try] = $attempt;	
	}
	$end = microtime();
	$ms_start = explode(" ",$start);
	$ms_end = explode(" ",$end);
	$total_time = round(($ms_end[1] - $ms_start[1] + $ms_end[0] - $ms_start[0]),2);
	echo "completed in $x steps in $total_time seconds";
	echo print_sudoku($sudoku);
}

$sudoku = array(0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0);

solve($sudoku);
?>

And this is an example of a new sudoku generated with the script:

Refresh the iframe to create another one.

This script too is quite easy to port in AS3, if you convert it I’ll post it on the blog.

I should have an old AS2 conversion too somewhere in my hard disks…