Lights Out / News: Recent posts

Recent Changes
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The following new features/bug fixes have been added to this
version of Lights Out!
* The ability to switch themes mid-game
* "Best Score" info replaced with "Moves to Solve"
which indicates the least number of moves to solve
the current puzzle.
* Better window and dialog placement

Special Thanks
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Special thanks go out to David Guichard for his generous donation
of some really slick algorithms and code for determining how to
solve any puzzle. His code will be used in future versions to
set difficulty levels, enhance Editor Mode, devise a new scoring
system, provide 'Solve' functionality to have the computer show
the solution to the current puzzle and potentially much more.... read more

Thanks to David Guichard's Lights Out Java applet (http://www.whitman.edu/offices_departments/mathematics/lights_out/) and thanks to David for being such a swell guy for letting us use his code, there has been so much accomplished today.

David's code provides algorithms for determining whether any Lights Out puzzle is solveable, how many moves are required to solve it *and* the actual moves themselves. This is done with some pretty complicated (at least for me) matrix arithmetic and I am very grateful to David for letting us use it.... read more

I hope to release the second beta in the next week. Probably the most obvious change in beta2 will be the ability to change themes in the middle of a puzzle without having to start over. This has been an annoyance for quite some time and I'm glad to get it out of the way. I'll probably clean up some of the themes included in the release (mental note: get rid of the ones that look like crap) and some other GUI housekeeping items.... read more

CVS is up and running and we now have a new devloper on the job. I've already started opening bug reports and feature requests - some of which I'm already working on. Hopefully I'll get arourn to updating the project homepage with more detailed information about the project and the game itself (screenshots!).