[NA]Help betatesting assignment?[/NA]

[SkyHog]

I am writing a Sudoku game for my programming class. I don't think I can release the code, unfortunately, because there are portions of the program written by my teacher, and I have no idea what license they are written under (probably none, but still, I don't wanna deal with any problems this close to the end of the semester). The majority of the program, sans GUI, was written by me. I think I have everything working the way I should.

Anyone wanna try to break the game for me? Abuse it, do what you will. I cannot, unfortunately, change the GUI, that must stay the same, but functionality should be all me.

Known Issues:
- Clicking Solve and then Check causes some answers to show incorrect. That is the teacher's fault. He acknowledges this by saying "That's because there are multiple solutions to some puzzles, and the game only checks for the one solution it thought of." Good stuff.
- Clicking solve on an unsolveable problem hangs program (will be fixed)

The game is a JAR. It should run on Windows XP, and other operating systems as well, provided they have a JVM, but I have only tested it on Windows XP. I will try Linux later when I have access to my laptop.

Thanks (btw, this is my first attempt at a JAR file. If this works the way I think it does, Pilot FreeStuff is going to be written in Java instead to solve the problem of operating system incompatibility of the version I'm working on now).

Nice....jars cannot be attached.
http://www.ridetheskies.com/sudokugame.zip -- Windows XP
http://www.ridetheskies.com/SudokuGameLinux.tar -- Linux

 

[wbarnhill]

Is it supposed to just sit there if it can't figure a solution?

Methinks I confused it.

May need to catch in case there is no solution and handle that scenario.

I cleared it out, and in the first row, put 1 2 3 in the first 3 squares.

heh. Yep, unresponsive eating up 50% of CPU.

 

[SkyHog]

hmmm....lemme see what I did wrong.

dang. First response is a pretty big bug. Sucks....the odd thing is that I had no control over that method, but I suspect the teacher wrote it that way to see if we'd fix it. Thanks!

edit: Nope - works as designed (believe it or not). Teacher doesn't want us to do anything that changes the original methods, and I cannot rewrite the methods. Bug has to stay, unfortunately. He also confirms that it works that way, and next semester he will make sure it doesn't do it again.

 

[AuntPeggy]

Will test during odd moments of the day on XP. Unfortunately cannot test on Vista for you as the drive has gone toes up.

- Aunt Peggy

 

[SkyHog]

Will test during odd moments of the day on XP. Unfortunately cannot test on Vista for you as the drive has gone toes up.

- Aunt Peggy

I am fairly sure that this will not run on Vista. I have not tested it, but I am pretty sure its a no go.

Thanks for helping with XP!

 

[AuntPeggy]

Should run fine on Vista. The stuff I'm currently testing does fine and it is a combination of C++ and Java.

I've been telling my hardware guy that the drive with Vista on it is flaky, but as is required of anybody in development he always says it works fine on his equipment. Friday, it went Snap, Crackle, Pop before turning my monitor screen black. The drive won't get fixed/replaced this (holiday) week, so my Vista testing is stopped.

- Aunt Peggy

 

[AuntPeggy]

I have attached a correct solution that was rejected by your program.

Is there any way for you to validate a correct answer that was not anticipated by your instructor?

Or can you make sure that puzzles with multiple solutions are not shown?

False negatives are definitely not up to professional standards.

- Aunt Peggy

P.S. Don't take my negative feedback personally. I think you are doing great.

 

[SkyHog]

I will see what I can do with my professor on Wednesday. I suspect I have to stick with the problems he left in there.

No prob with negative feedback, it helps.

 

[Areeda]

OK first of all I'm not a Java guy and don't play sudoku.

How do you start the jar file? I must be missing something.

If I open it from a browser or say start sudoku.jar from an XP command prompt I get "Could not find Main Class"

If I try java -jar sudoku.jar I get:

C:\temp>java -version
java version "1.4.2_13"
Java(TM) 2 Runtime Environment, Standard Edition (build 1.4.2_13-b06)
Java HotSpot(TM) Client VM (build 1.4.2_13-b06, mixed mode)

C:\temp>java -jar sudokugame.jar
Exception in thread "main" java.lang.UnsupportedClassVersionError: Sudoku (Unsupported major.minor version 49.0)
at java.lang.ClassLoader.defineClass0(Native Method)
at java.lang.ClassLoader.defineClass(Unknown Source)
at java.security.SecureClassLoader.defineClass(Unknown Source)
at java.net.URLClassLoader.defineClass(Unknown Source)
at java.net.URLClassLoader.access$100(Unknown Source)
at java.net.URLClassLoader$1.run(Unknown Source)
at java.security.AccessController.doPrivileged(Native Method)
at java.net.URLClassLoader.findClass(Unknown Source)
at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClass(Unknown Source)
at sun.misc.Launcher$AppClassLoader.loadClass(Unknown Source)
at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClass(Unknown Source)
at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClassInternal(Unknown Source)

 

[SkyHog]

OK first of all I'm not a Java guy and don't play sudoku.

How do you start the jar file? I must be missing something.

If I open it from a browser or say start sudoku.jar from an XP command prompt I get "Could not find Main Class"

If I try java -jar sudoku.jar I get:

It might be because I wrote it using Java 1.5, and it appears you're using Java 1.4.2.

I'll have to look and see.

 

[Areeda]

It might be because I wrote it using Java 1.5, and it appears you're using Java 1.4.2.

I'll have to look and see.

That did it. I've heard java is a write once debug everywhere language.

It solved an automatic puzzle and the one today in the LA Times. It is pretty fast.

A couple of thoughts:

I don't get the color coding after a check, what do the red and green numbers mean?

When I was entering the puzzle, the code checked for illegal entries. Couldn't you use the same algorithm plus a check that there was a number in each box to verify the solution, instead of matching it against a single solution? I doubt your instructor would penalize you for making the code work.

Perhaps you can think of a limit on the number of iterations before the code gives up with I don't know a graphic of a white flag waving instead of hanging.

If you wanted to make it easier to enter the puzzle how about bold lines around each 3x3 like they do in the newspaper.

Joe

 

[SkyHog]

That did it. I've heard java is a write once debug everywhere language.

It solved an automatic puzzle and the one today in the LA Times. It is pretty fast.

A couple of thoughts:

I don't get the color coding after a check, what do the red and green numbers mean?

When I was entering the puzzle, the code checked for illegal entries. Couldn't you use the algorithm plus a check that there was a number in each box to verify the solution, instead of matching it against a single solution? I doubt your instructor would penalize you for making the code work.

Perhaps you can think of a limit on the number of iterations before the code gives up with I don't know a graphic of a white flag waving instead of hanging.

If you wanted to make it easier to enter the puzzle how about bold lines around each 3x3 like they do in the newspaper.

Joe

I like the ideas. I can't add the bold lines though, that was specifically mentioned in class as "changing the GUI" which is against the rules of the project.

I am working on changing the hanging solve thing. I actually think its hanging because I'm getting it stuck in an infinite loop somewhere else, and I'm trying to find it.

The Red and Green depict incorrect (red) and correct (green). This is another thing I can't change due to the strict limitations put on the rules for the assignment.

But I really like the idea of not matching it against a single solution. I'll see what I can hash out.

 

[Areeda]

OK, I've run it a bunch of times with automatically generated puzzles and haven't got it to hang yet.

Another problem with the solution checker is if you leave a cell blank (delete one from the automatic solution) it does not flag it as an error.

Joe

 

[SkyHog]

OK, I've run it a bunch of times with automatically generated puzzles and haven't got it to hang yet.

Another problem with the solution checker is if you leave a cell blank (delete one from the automatic solution) it does not flag it as an error.

Joe

Thanks. I added a check to pop up a little window to mention that "Not all fields contain values."