Anonymous wrote on Fri, Apr 15, 2011 08:34 PM UTC:
I'll try to explain as best as I can. This is what I want the computer to do:
Given a Go Away surrounded by one or more pieces, get all the distinct positions the Go Away can produce by screaming.
This is a trivial problem if there are no Basilisks involved, but otherwise it's quite difficult. There are many pushing orders and only a few different resulting positions.
In a worst-case scenario, we may have the Go Away surrounded by both Basilisks and six other pieces. In such a case, there are 8! = 40320 different ways the eight pieces can be pushed, but only a few of those have distinct resulting positions. If we choose to loop through all of the ways, we'll be iterating over tens of thousands of redundant orders! That's not good for efficiency.
I'll try to explain as best as I can. This is what I want the computer to do:
This is a trivial problem if there are no Basilisks involved, but otherwise it's quite difficult. There are many pushing orders and only a few different resulting positions.
In a worst-case scenario, we may have the Go Away surrounded by both Basilisks and six other pieces. In such a case, there are 8! = 40320 different ways the eight pieces can be pushed, but only a few of those have distinct resulting positions. If we choose to loop through all of the ways, we'll be iterating over tens of thousands of redundant orders! That's not good for efficiency.