MultiPuzzle

MultiPuzzle is a little game that runs on the Workbench screen (or any other public screen). The purpose is to sort a number of bricks so that they form a picture. The number of bricks and the picture used may be set by the user.

This was one of the first games I wrote in C for Amiga. The inspiration was of course the 15-puzzle that came with Mac OS back in those days. One problem I had back then, being a high school student not yet having studied much algebra, was how to figure out if a random shuffle of the bricks could possibly be brought to the configuration of the solution. A classmate of mine, Andreas Rietz, taught me about odd and even permutations, and that solved the problem! In later versions, however, I chose not to use this technique for two reasons. I wanted the number of bricks to be variable, and found it easier to just simulate a large number of moves starting from the desired configuration. This guaranteed that the reached configuration was in the same permutation class, and also that the initialization had a deterministic running-time (with the shuffle-then-test algorithm, the initialization could potentially run forever). In addition to this, after intensive studies of the Amiga Rom Kernel Reference Manuals during a well-deserved vacation to Gran Canaria with my parents, I figured out how to use a custom picture as motive for the puzzle instead of the preprogrammed motive I had used up to that point (a technique I later found useful in several other projects). Soon after, I released the first public version of the game, which to this date has not changed much.

Major features are variable number of bricks, loading of motives using Datatypes, support for locale.library, font sensitivity, documentation in AmigaGuide format, and easy installation.