Re: [Rails-devel] Automatic route calculation

[Aliza P. <ali...@gm...>]

This is something we could implement incrementally:

(1) Have a button that users can click to highlight every bit of track
that their trains can reach from their tokens.  This will be useful
even without route calculation, though it will require Rails to learn
about track, routes, tokens, etc.

The algorithm I'm thinking of would be a simple flood-fill that gets
blocked by foreign tokens if the circles are filled.

As a second stage it could limit itself to the length of the longest
train the company has, though the flood-fill is useful even with
imaginary infinite-length Diesels for showing where tokens can legally
be placed.

(2) Once you have the flood-fill area, then it reduces to a smaller
map that can be worked with the tokenless algorithm described below.

On Tue, Mar 23, 2010 at 8:52 PM, alexti <al...@sh...> wrote:
> Hi Stefan,
>
> I like your idea. It makes sense that artificially complicated track
> layout with lack of station markers in a simpler game may create more
> difficult problem than the realistic scenario in a more complex game will.
>
> If you are volunteering to create such setup for 1870 I can try to build
> similar scenario for 1856 (with couple of diesels, for example). In what
> form can you export such setup? Something simple (for example
> comma-separated tile ids) will do. I won't have time to do it until the
> weekend though...
>
> Alex.
>
> On Tue, 23 Mar 2010 16:35:52 -0600, Stefan Frey <ste...@we...> wrote:
>
>> Alex:
>> Some more comments on a potential test for automatic route calculation:
>>
>> I think there is no need for one of the more "exotic" types (18US, 18C2C,
>> 1844) to create a (reasonable) difficult scenario.
>>
>> It is easy to create a quite involved track layout with maps and tiles
>> of one
>> of titles already implemented in Rails (for this even the partially
>> implemented 1835 or 1870 would work).
>>
>> Then rails could supply:
>>
>> * A map (here I mean the collection) with map hexes and tiles. From my
>> point
>> of view it is still open, how it is converted to the graph you need to
>> run
>> your algorithm.
>>
>> * The trains available to the one company could be easily changed. And
>> we can
>> make things more difficult by requesting scenarios, which are not
>> possible in
>> 1870: For example running a  8, 10 and 12 at once.
>>
>> * I think, that there is no need for tokens so far (either simply assume
>> that
>> there are none (which would allow even more connections than usual) or
>> create
>> a network that is usually available to one company after considering the
>> effects of tokening, if we want to built a more realistic test case).
>>
>> If no other wants to jump in, I would volunteer to create such a network
>> on
>> the 1870 map.
>>
>> Stefan
>>
>>
>>>
>>> >> Perhaps it can be tested? There is no need to have complete support
>>> of
>>> >> such games in Rails to make experiment. We could create a graph
>>> >> representing "difficult case" and run algorithm on it.
>>> >
>>> > Yes, though it could take time to manually build the graph the way
>>> your
>>> > algorithm wants it.
>>> >
>>> >> > Some I would look at would be 18US, 18C2C (for sheer size and the
>>> >>
>>> >> ability
>>> >>
>>> >> > for a company to run lots of large trains), 1844 (which adds
>>> tunnels
>>> >>
>>> >> and
>>> >>
>>> >> > mountains that affect the route score), and 1860.
>>> >>
>>> >> Unfortunately, I don't own any of them :(
>>> >
>>> > The complete rules are available for at least 18US and 1844, and
>>> ps18xx
>>> > includes the map/tiles for all of them.
>>>
>>> Are there some cases you would consider examples of "difficult" ones
>>> that
>>> are available in some kind of format? From some PBEM games perhaps? It
>>> might be relatively easy to convert them into the graph I need. And it's
>>> difficult to get an impression of what realistic end game layout would
>>> be
>>> without playing the game.
>>
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