Archived from groups: rec.games.roguelike.nethack (More info?)
I thought I had posted this to the recent Sokoban thread, but it seems
that I was mistaken. No matter, this gives me the chance to start a
thread on the issue.
My idea is a simple way to make the Sokoban quest dungeon more
interesting without adding large numbers of additional puzzles. It
should be possible using the current level builder, though a
modification to allow more random placements might help it greatly. In
this post, "sokoban," without a capital letter, refers to the game in
general, which exists outside of Nethack. Sokoban, with a capital
letter, is the Nethack dungeon branch itself.
People in the other thread were complaining about the low number of
puzzles, how they had them all memorized by now. Others responded that
if there were more puzzles it would be just a matter of time before
they were memorized too. Personally, I think each additional puzzle
adds marginally more difficulty than the last, but I recognize the
underlying idea behind both these arguments: that we're trying to
reward general sokoban play more than rote memorization. Though
memorization gives players who cannot/don't want to learn to solve
sokoban puzzles another way to get the reward.
One interesting attribute of sokoban puzzles is that they are never
made harder or impossible by removing boxes.* Also, the difficulty in
a sokoban puzzle tends to arise from a small number of "key" boxes --
if it's possible to solve a box right away, then it always in the
player's best interest to do so.** But there are certain boxes that
make removing others harder. Thus, removing a box from the puzzle
that's near the goal area and ready to be solved from the start has a
negligable effect on difficulty, but removing one of those "bottleneck"
boxes can make the puzzle substantially easier, or at least different.
Thus, I propose this adding additional sokoban puzzles to the game,
based on real-life puzzles. These puzzles should ideally be very
difficult, but we won't be using them unchanged. Instead, we'd use the
random positioning keyword in the level builder to "remove" bottleneck
boulders from the level upon generation. More accurately, we'd not
include those specific boulders in the level template, but instead
place them randomly among the bottleneck locations when the level is
generated.
This method would not be immune to memorization, but again that's not
necessarily a bad thing. It would give the game a lot more play value
out of a single puzzle, with only a small amount of extra work.
Whattdyathink?
- John H.
* This is only true if one removes one "goal" space for each box
removed, but that's okay here, we'd just include fewer pits in front of
the exit.
** There are some "real-world" sokoban puzzles for which this may not
be true, puzzles that rely on moving boxes off of goal spaces. These
do not apply here, since solved boulders in Nethack Sokoban "vanish"
from the playfield.
I thought I had posted this to the recent Sokoban thread, but it seems
that I was mistaken. No matter, this gives me the chance to start a
thread on the issue.
My idea is a simple way to make the Sokoban quest dungeon more
interesting without adding large numbers of additional puzzles. It
should be possible using the current level builder, though a
modification to allow more random placements might help it greatly. In
this post, "sokoban," without a capital letter, refers to the game in
general, which exists outside of Nethack. Sokoban, with a capital
letter, is the Nethack dungeon branch itself.
People in the other thread were complaining about the low number of
puzzles, how they had them all memorized by now. Others responded that
if there were more puzzles it would be just a matter of time before
they were memorized too. Personally, I think each additional puzzle
adds marginally more difficulty than the last, but I recognize the
underlying idea behind both these arguments: that we're trying to
reward general sokoban play more than rote memorization. Though
memorization gives players who cannot/don't want to learn to solve
sokoban puzzles another way to get the reward.
One interesting attribute of sokoban puzzles is that they are never
made harder or impossible by removing boxes.* Also, the difficulty in
a sokoban puzzle tends to arise from a small number of "key" boxes --
if it's possible to solve a box right away, then it always in the
player's best interest to do so.** But there are certain boxes that
make removing others harder. Thus, removing a box from the puzzle
that's near the goal area and ready to be solved from the start has a
negligable effect on difficulty, but removing one of those "bottleneck"
boxes can make the puzzle substantially easier, or at least different.
Thus, I propose this adding additional sokoban puzzles to the game,
based on real-life puzzles. These puzzles should ideally be very
difficult, but we won't be using them unchanged. Instead, we'd use the
random positioning keyword in the level builder to "remove" bottleneck
boulders from the level upon generation. More accurately, we'd not
include those specific boulders in the level template, but instead
place them randomly among the bottleneck locations when the level is
generated.
This method would not be immune to memorization, but again that's not
necessarily a bad thing. It would give the game a lot more play value
out of a single puzzle, with only a small amount of extra work.
Whattdyathink?
- John H.
* This is only true if one removes one "goal" space for each box
removed, but that's okay here, we'd just include fewer pits in front of
the exit.
** There are some "real-world" sokoban puzzles for which this may not
be true, puzzles that rely on moving boxes off of goal spaces. These
do not apply here, since solved boulders in Nethack Sokoban "vanish"
from the playfield.
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