Calculating module for a game...

Anon

Hi.

I'm coding a game in PHP to enhance my programming abilities. The idea of a game is to build lines of five or more blocks of the same color, which will then disappear. The board is at this point 10x10 places in size.
There are five colors, plus one multicolored (can be any of the five, depending on the situation) and one which serves as obstacle and cannot be removed.

The problem now is that I'd have to find an effective method to calculate the rows of unique color. If we assume that the playfield is in an array or something similar in the form of:
1111111111
1111111111
1111111111
1111111111
1111111111
1111111111
1111111111
1111111111
1111111111
1111111111

where each number marks one place, either free or occupied by a block of definitive color (1 for blue, 2 for red, etc.) what would be the best way to find the rows of five or more?

The idea of the game is not mine, BTW, but I'm trying to code a version that would work in a browser, just to see if it can be done. But here's where I'm stuck.

Thanks,
A.

Anon

Not sure what you mean. Give an example of
'lines of five or more blocks of the same colour'
Do you mean only horizontal lines, or lines in any direction?

Nojer2

Anon

Lines in any direction, horizontal, vertical or diagonal. For example if the field looked like this:
000000000
000000000
010000000
001000000
000100000
000010000
000001000
000000000
000000000
000000000

How could I calculate which blocks to remove (ie. turn back to zeros again and redraw the field)?

Anon

Well if you are going to be dropping pieces down in a tetris like style you really only need to check in a set area around that piece( 4 squares in every direction). This might change a bit if you create a line of more then 5 but there are ways to account for that.

I wrote a simple connect 4 game using java a while back and had the same problem how to check for wins. I ended up starting from 3 to the left of the piece and then checking each space till I was 3 to the right. I was checking to see if it was the same color as the current player, if it was a added on to a counter other wise I reset the counter, if the counter was ever greater to or equal to 4 then that player won. If the left to right check didn't turn anything up I did upper left to lower right, then upper right to lower left and finally top to bottem.

I built in constraints so that if you you were against a wall or near on it would only check as far in that direction as there was real playing field.

I don't have the code anymore I don't think but if you want more info on the loops I used I can try to recreate the logic.

Anon

That sounds pretty much like what I was thinking, except, I though about starting from the piece itself and count to all directions. Which I now see is not efficient... 🙂 I'll have to try that.

If you would find the code somewhere, that would be really helpful. I'll try to come up with something also. Thanks a lot and have a nice easter.