Overview
Sudoku Koubou (pronounced "koh-boh") is a fun and instuctive game that allows you to play hand-created or computer-generated Sudoku puzzles. It features a very intuitive interface, multiple/customizable board styles, and a detailed generator/tutor setup.
The common strategies for solving Sudoku are explained and used by the program itself to demonstrate their advantages. Generated puzzles range from easy enough for first-timers to difficult challenges for experienced players.
Generate and print puzzles in bulk for your own offline enjoyment - yeah, get outside somewhere and play! Hand-build puzzles with unique birthdates or other numeric surprises for friends. Sudoku Koubou lets you check that your puzzle is solvable, valid, and assigns a difficulty to it so that you know what you're building.
Getting It
This game is completetly free. It performs better than many commercial Sudoku
programs and web sites. No ads. No fees. However, you're always welcome to send
us money to thank us for the work.
Requirements: Windows 2000,XP + .NET 1.1 (
available as a free download from Microsoft )
Download size: 1.5MB as a single windows install file
This game is currently under constant (sporadic?) development. You should check it out, then give us feedback! We're open to anything, and we really do change the program according to what people say. So, contact us whenever.
How Does It Work?
As a generator, Sudoku Koubou seeds a board according to your specifications (or randomly), then solves the board, and then removes numbers according to your settings. It then applies the specified logic modules you've chosen and count the number of moves necessary, even if it must guess and back up. The more complex the logic, and the higher number of moves combine to create very difficult puzzles. Also, the random numbers are seeded from the current time, and have a very low probability of ever generating the same puzzle.
As a solver, Sudoku Koubou is written to try and mimic "human-style" solving of
sudoku puzzles, which means using logic to formulate an educated guess and
moving forward until stuck, then backing up. It employs a full depth-oriented
search of the game moves. When playing, you control all the guesses and move
history.
However, in formulating an educated guess, Sudoku Koubou has certain logic
modules (solving strategies) that enable it to elminate most incorrect answers
on puzzles, so that guessing is only for the hardest puzzles it can find or
generate. You can force it to generate puzzles for which, even with all logic
on, it must guess. You are in control of which strategies it uses for
generating, solving and for giving you hints while playing.
The strategy modules in Sudoku Koubou are always expanding to cover the most
productive and interesting known techniques to solve sudoku puzzles. The game
can explain what the effect of each strategy is on each cell as it is applied.
At the moment, it can solve moderately difficult puzzles without a single
guess, and the hardest requiring just a handful. But since sudoku is
mathematically unbound in it's potential difficulty, you may find a puzzle that
no known solver can solve without a guess!
How Is It Written?
For developers, all the code to this program is available
for download. The code is a good set of examples for some techniques
that many prorammers ask me about. Here's details:
Game platform: MS .NET 1.1
Language: C#
Techniques cover: Custom Serialization, User Controls, GDI+ Graphics, Events
and Delegates, Exception Handling, XML Documentation
Assemblies: 3
Classes: ~20
Total LOC: ~10,000
Installed size on disk: ~1542KB
Running footprint: ~20MB
You're free to use any parts of this code as examples for your own code. Of
course, if you fix a bug for us, the standard rule of sending you fresh-baked
cookies is in effect all the time. Earn yourself a batch now! (There's
a still a few "cookies" left in the code)
Sudoku Koubou is a free open-source game written entirely in C# on .NET. All source code for the every version is made available under terms of GNU GPL.
Sudoku Koubou
Fun Sudoku Puzzles and Construction Workshop Copyleft 2005,2006 Hub|Design
