18 ms·

Show HN: Pipes puzzle (a.k.a. Net) on a hexagonal grid

537 points by gereleth 4y ago

Hello, HN - I wanted to share this puzzle game I made during my vacation. I'm rather fond of the pipes puzzle where your goal is to restore a scrambled network of connections by rotating tiles. It's usually played on a grid of squares and this all started when I decided to make a programmatic solver for that kind of puzzle. Then I realized that with some minor changes the solver could generate new puzzle instances. I thought about what kind of puzzle to make and someone suggested a hexagonal grid. Adapting the generator wasn't too hard but then I had to create a way to play this variant. So I did just that =). I find hexagonal pipes a bit more difficult than the square variant because there's a larger variety of possible tile shapes. For an extra challenge I implemented wrap mode where the board can connect to itself (right to left and top to bottom), so there are no convenient outer walls to start from. The site is made with Svelte Kit, its code is available on github at <https://github.com/gereleth/hexapipes https://github.com/gereleth/hexapipes>. Hope you enjoy playing =).

koshergweilo 4y ago
This would make a great hacking mini game. I got my average of 12 down under a minute so it's definitely engaging.
bloopernova 4y ago
This is fantastic. A true joy to play! I am seconding the suggestion that you make a daily challenge like Wordle, with the feature to share your time and somehow a "masked" solution like Wordle does. I hope NYTimes buys this from you for lots of money! ;)
raydiatian 4y ago
This 40x40 was a bad idea and I know I'm going to regret this.
Waterluvian 4y ago
This is a fantastic game. I’m curious, did you use a special coordinate system for the hexagons or did you just make it work without any sort of coordinate system at all?
- gereleth 4y ago
  I didn't use any special coordinates, just some trigonometry. My code transforms coordinates between (x,y) - for drawing, (row, column) - for finding neighbours and (index into an array of tiles) - for managing state. It sort of grew organically and could probably be cleaned up a lot. The hardest part was making the board repeat for the wrap variant making sure that all tiles have consistent wrap neighbours. I almost deployed a version that worked fine on odd-sized grids and went completely bananas on even-sized grids. The danger of always testing on a 5x5 board)).
mikewarot 4y ago
Right click appears to do nothing... leaving an impossible to solve puzzle, as you've just locked a piece and no amount of left clicking will move it. Very frustrating. Why would you lock a cell?
- chungy 4y ago
  You can right click again to unlock it. It's fairly handy when you're certain it is the only possible orientation and you want to prevent accidental rotations.
stazz1 4y ago
can you turn this into a captcha mechanism pls?
raydiatian 4y ago
I solved a 40x40! 22:33:38.383
- gereleth 4y ago
  Congrats! This is some amazing dedication =).
  - raydiatian 4y ago
    Lol, it was probably more like 3 hours, there was a solid gap where I had to work and exercise and sleep and be social in between.
phaedrus 4y ago
Puzzle 850 (10x10) appears to be unsolvable? After fixing the rest of the tiles, I was left with a scrambled area in the top-middle with 3 loose ends. Even if the affected tiles were all adjacent and shape-compatible (no on both counts), there's no way to pair up 3 ends that doesn't leave one out. My frustration with wasting time (23 hours; I slept on it) on an unsolvable puzzle is somewhat mitigated by the fact the problem taught me this: if you count the free ends and come up with an odd number, you can know immediately that the puzzle isn't solvable, without rotating any tiles. An even number doesn't prove the puzzle is solvable, but an odd number definitely indicates a problem. Edit: Nevermind; there was a 4th loose end I was overlooking. Finding it led to getting unstuck & the puzzle was solvable after all. Unfortunately due to the way the site works, I don't seem to be able to get a new 10x10 puzzle by refreshing the page? So I'm stuck on the unsolvable one. I can imagine saving the progress is a feature, but you should also add a "pass" or "skip" button. Oh - I just realized I can "hack" it by manually changing the number in the URL to something else, e.g. /10/851. Before I realized the puzzle was unsolvable I was also looking for a button to randomize/reset the initial tile positions. I was thinking maybe I wasn't seeing the solution due to my preconceived ideas from already-placed tiles. That wouldn't have helped here, but maybe on a solvable one being able to re-randomize would help a player get unstuck.
- gereleth 4y ago
  Thanks for the feedback. I'm very sure all puzzles on the site are solvable. But a skip button makes total sense when one hits a deadend. I'll work it in when I have the time. With a randomize button do you mean a complete reset to initial state? Or something like keep the locked tiles, reset the rest?
  - andkenneth 4y ago
    +1, a reset button would be great, to go back to initial state entirely. Sometimes you know you've stuffed up the logic on the puzzle and seeing it fresh is the best option. I found myself searching for the button as well.
andkenneth 4y ago
Feels like a much more fun version of minesweeper for me. Same sort of logic with less anxiety so you can start to go very fast.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
Syzygies 4y ago
Wow! What fun. You have to make this a phone/tablet app...
- gereleth 4y ago
  Glad you liked it! I actually play it often on my phone, it's workable when zoomed in. An app would be nicer surely but I don't know how to build those =).
  - moomin 4y ago
    You 100% need to figure that out, because this is _really_ good and there’s money to be made here. Make sure you’re the one who makes it.
- mbusheikin 4y ago
  Well, this seems an appropriate place to plug the phone/tablet app we made with these puzzles, called Noodles 2. It's the same puzzle style, with square, triangle and hex shapes, with some extra mechanics - disappearing pieces, infinite grid (it wraps around). gereleth, great job on the puzzles - I played a few of the bigger hex puzzles and it was real smooth. :) https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.lummoxlabs.noodles2.pro https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.lummoxlabs... https://apps.apple.com/us/app/noodles-2/id1520711405 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/noodles-2/id1520711405
  - nathancahill 4y ago
    That's awesome. Really slick app.
  - gereleth 4y ago
    Nice graphics, I love the soft lines. I have wrapping infinite grid variants too, but disappearing pieces? Intriguing =)).
  - joshcaron 4y ago
    I just found Noodles 2 the other day when searching for a new puzzle game to play. I'm absolutely addicted to it; I've already completed hundreds of levels. Wish there was a way to "lock" a piece in place (like via long press) so I don't accidentally rotate pieces I've solved. Great game!
dematz 4y ago
Fun game and nice site, it feels like to pipes what wordle is to words!
- gereleth 4y ago
  Compared to wordle, what an honour =). The site design actually comes from the default SvelteKit skeleton project. I was focused on the game part so I never changed it.
swayvil 4y ago
My first, a 5x5, in 3:08 It was fun, but on the edge of annoying, which seems appropriate.
- mkoryak 4y ago
  my first 5x5 I couldn't solve in 4 minutes, then I gave up. This puzzle makes me angry.
- WesleyJohnson 4y ago
  2:37 for me, and I'm not terribly good at puzzles. I was getting frustrated and then it just kind of clicked. The color changing is incentivizing. I found it fun in general; might have to do a couple more...
- TOMDM 4y ago
  I finished my first on 1:33, starting from the edge and working in, moving to a different spot when I noticed too much flex was my strategy. Given the authors note in this thread about each puzzle only having one solution probably means I stumbled onto a decent strategy
  - swayvil 4y ago
    Ya, the edge is key. So are hexes that have minimal possible positions. I did my second 5 in 3:08 too. Which is weird.
  - gereleth 4y ago
    This is pretty much how I solve regular puzzles too. I can do most 5x5s in under 20 seconds. Too often did my debugging sessions devolve into puzzle marathons =). Wrap variants are another story as they have no outer edges. Discovering which tile groups give initial clues there is pretty fun too (when the regular puzzles aren't much of a challenge any more).
    - klyrs 4y ago
      > Too often did my debugging sessions devolve into puzzle marathons =). This is why I suck at game development. Congratulations for getting it out the door!
emadehsan 4y ago
Captivating! So, while generating the puzzle, you are essentially creating a random Spanning Tree for the given nodes (hexagon) arrangement? Then you randomize each pipe piece's direction within a hexagon? What algorithm are you using for it Spanning Tree? I have been working on Maze Generation[0] and found randomized Prim's, Kruskal's to be useful for Spanning Tree creation but the good old Depth First Search increases the difficulty of solving a Maze. [0] https://github.com/emadehsan/maze/blob/main/media/hexagonal.PNG https://github.com/emadehsan/maze/blob/main/media/hexagonal....
- gereleth 4y ago
  Well the way I wrote my pipes solver was to keep a set of possible orientations of every tile and gradually remove impossible options by using border conditions and some heuristics like avoiding islands and loops. And when this doesn't turn up any new info I resort to depth-first search. The generator basically does the same but every tile starts out with a full set of possible orientations - every rotation of every tile shape (there are 62 I think). I remove some orientations due to border conditions, then pick a random possible orientation for some tile and so on till the board is filled. There usually is some backtracking involved. This isn't terribly efficient and can get stuck for quite long when generating large puzzles. I actually want to look into adapting maze generation algorithms for creating these puzzles, so thanks for the link, I'll check it out.
  - emadehsan 4y ago
    I see. Amazing work you have done! This game is enticing.
  - emadehsan 4y ago
    My understanding is that since the game mentions: "Rotate the tiles so that all pipes are connected with no loops." These is exactly what a Spanning Tree is. So, any spanning tree generation algorithm would do. You just generate a random ST each time and cut this tree where the hexagon borders intersect with it (to get pipe pieces) and randomize their orientation. These algorithms are not going to disappoint you in terms of performance. I made tutorials on the topic as well. Might help me clear my point: https://youtu.be/d5yzKkG1n1U?t=36 https://youtu.be/d5yzKkG1n1U?t=36 Apologies for spamming. Sorry, if I'm suggesting premature optimization.
forty 4y ago
Is there always a single possible solution ? (I did a bunch of small ones and always found a solution pretty quickly)
- emadehsan 4y ago
  if the pipes are cut from a Spanning Tree connecting all the hexagons (like the one you witness once you have solved), then yes, for those give pipe pieces, there should be only one solution.
  - jjnoakes 4y ago
    Is this true? I can almost imagine one puzzle that can create two different spanning trees. Maybe I ought to draw it up to verify. Spanning trees may be required but not sufficient for a unique solution.
    - emadehsan 4y ago
      You are right. It is possible that branches (pipes) cut from one Spanning Tree might be re-arrangeable into a different Spanning Tree.
- gereleth 4y ago
  All puzzles on the site have a unique solution At least my solver thinks so)). Configurations with multiple solutions are possible, but I weeded those out when generating.
evan_ 4y ago
What are the green/red lines that appear when you click the junction between two hexes? (really fun game btw, I will have to return to this later. I'm looking forward to sharing this with my 8 year old who's fascinated with logic puzzles.)
- gereleth 4y ago
  Those are edge marks, they let you mark some edges as "definitely a wall" or "definitely a connection". It sometimes helps in harder puzzles).
bilekas 4y ago
This is quite fun actually.. nice work!
bunsenhoneydew 4y ago
Love it! I first played the version of this with squares on a Palm Pilot and that was a long time ago. I was even looking for that version for my iPhone the other day but was drowning in other random games (and little network tools) until I gave up. It shouldn’t take much effort to turn it into a PWA, so then people can use it just like an app. I already saved it to my Home Screen and would certainly play this as a daily puzzle, just like Wordle. Keep up the great work.
- matsemann 4y ago
  This one? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32170592 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32170592
harpersealtako 4y ago
Solved my first 5x5 in 1:54. At first I thought it would be really difficult but then I found a hex which could only go one way (a corner hex with V shape) and then from there the adjacent pipes could only orient one way. There were a few times where I had to think down a tree of possibilities (if this hex goes like this, then this hex can't possibly fit here because of a previously solved hex, therefore it must go like this instead), but never more than one or two steps. All in all it's a very satisfying puzzle format.
pyrolistical 4y ago
Its annoying having to tap so many times, especially when certain pieces have few valid orientations.
- gereleth 4y ago
  You can check out "Orient / Lock" control mode in the settings. It lets you orient a tile in one tap but needs precision about where you tap. I mostly use this mode but it takes some getting used to, so I didn't make it the default.
  - kps 4y ago
    I think my ideal controls for this would be key presses (configurable) while hovering. Current bests are 5×5: 00:22.056, 7×7: 01:01.394. Edit: also, a control to randomize the orientation of all unlocked tiles would be nice.
loganc2342 4y ago
I have a minor nitpick to share. I’d like it if there was an option to hide the timer, because being under time pressure to solve a puzzle can stress me out. Overall, it’s a fun puzzle, though!
- gereleth 4y ago
  Thanks for sharing, I'll add that option (on the weekend most likely).
- boosteri 4y ago
  I'd like an opposite option.. where the timer runs out :-) maybe with a neat graphics of water flowing from the bulb starting point(s)
  - joeframbach 4y ago
    You would enjoy Ant Run, which I played for hours on end in the late 90s. https://www.dosgames.com/game/ant-run https://www.dosgames.com/game/ant-run. There is a browser-based emulator available here.
    - krallja 4y ago
      I knew this game as Pipe Dream / Pipe Mania!
adenozine 4y ago
40x40???? Wow, that would take me several hours if not a workday or more. Goodness lord
yesthisiswes 4y ago
Awesome puzzle. Great job!
mdavis6890 4y ago
Great game! I humbly suggest that you flesh out the rules just a bit more. I struggled to figure out if pipes were allowed to run out of bounds, whether they all had to be connected into a single network, and the significance of the bulb-ended ones. I'm not totally dense and could make some guesses, but this still made the puzzle less than approachable for me at first. Basically I just guessed at these things, tried to see if I could solve one, and once I did and saw my complete solution all was clear. But why not state these things up front? Or maybe that's part of the puzzle? :-) My first solve took 9min, then 3, then 1.5min for my third.
- seanalltogether 4y ago
  This was exactly the same for me. I wasn't sure if all pipes had to be water tight or not. Once I understood what the actual constraints were I could solve the next ones quicker.
- gereleth 4y ago
  Fair enough, I'll think how to word all this.
  - hombre_fatal 4y ago
    a pic of a before and after puzzle would answer these questions intuitively as well.
  - mdavis6890 4y ago
    - All sections must be connected into a single, contiguous network. - The whole network is contained in the grid, and no pipes may run outside the grid. - Bulb-shaped pipes with a single connection are terminations (dead-ends).
    - mdavis6890 4y ago
      I'll agree with other commenters that actually just showing a complete solution is better. Or both!
  - 4y ago
michannne 4y ago
Solved in 1:39, very fun game and great implementation! I'm not much a fan of pipes games but have played similar concepts such as Infinite Energy on mobile. This is a good job for such a quickly developed project
ranman 4y ago
Why are the SVG tiles specified to 599.99999999 instead of 600 or something? I think a SVGO optimizations run would reduce the size of the assets a tad.
- Etheryte 4y ago
  I would guess that the assets were made in Inkscape or comparable software where you work visually and don't actually look at the generated code.
- gereleth 4y ago
  There aren't really any assets though. I just create the svgs dynamically. Maybe I need to place some strategic `Math.round` calls here and there, never thought of this =).
  - ranman 4y ago
    Yeah so if you can math.round or math.floor them a bit the paths are a lot cleaner - if you're dynamically creating them anyway though then I don't know that it gains you much performance. It might gain some performance on render for larger maps? Not sure. Didn't get a chance to look at your source.
    - gereleth 4y ago
      The file to look at would be this Tile component: https://github.com/gereleth/hexapipes/blob/main/src/lib/puzzle/Tile.svelte https://github.com/gereleth/hexapipes/blob/main/src/lib/puzz... My svg handling was very much "learn as I go". An earlier version even had circles instead of hexagons because they're simpler to do. There's a cool playthrough video of that version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vlpPr485NUY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vlpPr485NUY
OisinMoran 4y ago
This is super fun! Just played a few and my best on the 5×5 was 0:42. Thanks for sharing! Love your description too—would love to see a more in-depth write up if you get the time! It's so fun when you can flip from solving something to generating it. I'm also a fan of solving games with code and have made an Upwords bot that plays perfectly but realized I could use it to try to find better "hyperparameters" for the game (like how many points certain bonuses are) by getting it to play itself and having some metric of what a better game would be. Though as you can probably tell from the lack of a link I have yet to do that part.
- usmannk 4y ago
  my first 5x5 try was 0:58. I was actually very surprised when it came together as it felt like i was just randomly fitting pipes to their nearest neighbors.
  - OisinMoran 4y ago
    Yes, much like falling asleep, falling in love, or going bankrupt this was quite the "slowly, then all at once" type of affair.
furyofantares 4y ago
Very cool! I suggest adding a daily puzzle with a share result (day number and how long it took to solve) like all the games in the wordleverse do. My spouse and I would enjoy doing one daily and sending our results to each other.
- gereleth 4y ago
  Good idea! I'm already thinking of how to implement... I really need another vacation or two, lol
  - bfelbo 4y ago
    Hehe. If you’d like, you could add it to Rune which adds daily challenges incl. daily leaderboards with 1 line of code: https://github.com/rune/rune-games-sdk#daily-challenges-optional https://github.com/rune/rune-games-sdk#daily-challenges-opti... Full disclosure: I’m CTO at Rune, but I genuinely think it might be fun and easy for you to do. Here’s a similar popular game on Rune: https://app.rune.ai/untangle-H-vghwxUfO https://app.rune.ai/untangle-H-vghwxUfO
hutch120 4y ago
Fun game! Can I suggest adding a licence file to Github so people know what they can do with the repo.
ryukoposting 4y ago
Fun game! This will make a great fidget when I don't have much to do at work.
gweinberg 4y ago
Kevin Stone's BrainBashers has a similar puzzle except with squares instead of hexes. https://www.brainbashers.com/network.asp https://www.brainbashers.com/network.asp
Pakdef 4y ago
Nice.. it could be helpful if you could right click to turn the pieces in the other direction.
TheDudeMan 4y ago
Very nice! Maybe right-click should rotate the other direction. Edit: Oh, now I see that right-click locks the tile. Yeah, that's a nice function, too.
- gereleth 4y ago
  You can change control mode in the settings. The default is rotate/lock, but there's a rotate/rotate as well. And... another tricky one for orienting a tile in one click.
ALittleLight 4y ago
I struggled with the first 5x5 taking about 8 minutes, then 2.5 minutes, then less than one minute. I'm still not even sure what principle I'm using to solve these but it is enjoyable. It's mainly just rotating until I hit the right color and looking for the next 3+ joint to rotate.
- yarg 4y ago
  It's a bit like sudoku; start with the elements for which there's only one choice, and rotate into place. Often this will lead to more tiles with only one viable configuration. (At very least you'll reduce the search space.)
  - culi 4y ago
    I used to play this exact game on a mobile app. One great feature was the ability to click and hold to "lock" certain pieces into place. Like you pointed out, there's certain pieces (on the edges) that only have one possible configuration My 5x5 is record is 28s on my 5th game. The strategy is actually really simple once you get going: run through and identify all the "lockable" (only one possible configuration) tiles and then run through the consequences of those configuration and keep repeating
    - ALittleLight 4y ago
      You can lock with a right click.
neilv 4y ago
Neat. The multiple colors for groups is another innovation beyond SGT's Net. You might consider implementing the traditional 3 mouse button controls (rotate left, mark correct, rotate right). If you can keep the Firefox context menu from popping up. Maybe there's a way to support wrapping, and help the player understand which edge wraps to which? Maybe affecting the shape? Related: 5 days ago "Simon Tatham's Portable Puzzle Collection (greenend.org.uk)": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32170592 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32170592
- gereleth 4y ago
  Mm, middle button, why didn't I think of it. My wrap puzzles show an infinite tiled grid, so there shouldn't be questions about which edge wraps where. There are no edges, tiles just start repeating after a while. Maybe I didn't understand your question about wrapping?
  - culi 4y ago
    A "click and hold" to lock a tile into place would also be great and mobile accessible
    - kbenson 4y ago
      It already does that on mobile. It allows marking edges as connecting or not, and locking tiles with a long press.
      - stevage 4y ago
        I found the edge marking on mobile to just be a random source of confusion. Kept doing it by accident.
        gereleth 4y ago
        Sorry about this. I sometimes place them accidentally too. I have an idea of placing them with some kind of gesture - like touch and drag between tiles. That wouldn't interfere with tapping to rotate tiles. But on the other hand, I'm usually zoomed in on mobile and I use touch and drag to move around. Interfering with that would be bad too. I'm open to ideas for better controls.
brent_noorda 4y ago
Some of the tiles become darker and then cannot be turned. What's that about?
- POiNTx 4y ago
  Probably to lock a tile if you're sure it's in the correct orientation.
texaslonghorn5 4y ago
Fun! After finishing and clicking on one of the bigger sizes, I couldn't go back to Hackernews because of how it handled redirecting (I think).
marssaxman 4y ago
Thanks! This is fun. I've worked my way up to 20x20 so far.
thaumasiotes 4y ago
Right-clicking locks a piece, but it also brings up a context menu that I need to get rid of. It would be nice if that didn't happen.
- gereleth 4y ago
  Are you on a Mac? I thought I got rid of this but I haven't tested on those.
  - thaumasiotes 4y ago
    No, Windows 10.
    - gereleth 4y ago
      I see, thanks for reporting. This contextmenu issue is sure showing me the ugly side of frontend development :/
technothrasher 4y ago
I liked it, but I've got a funny thing about being timed. It stresses me out and makes a game that should be relaxing completely unenjoyable. I've heard others say the same to me often, so I know I'm not alone. Although there are clearly plenty of other folks who do like the added pressure of a timer. If you had a mode that completely turned off any times, I'd actually keep playing.
- teolandon 4y ago
  It's not like the timer is counting down and the game ends when the timer runs out. The timer is going up. There's no pressure, you can ignore it (or even write a script that hides it client side).
  - technothrasher 4y ago
    > you can ignore it No can do. Psychology is a funny thing. > or even write a script that hides it client side Sure, or just update the code and host it myself. I was just making a casual comment, which the author is free to casually ignore.
    - effingwewt 4y ago
      Oh come tf on, you can quite easily just view source and hide the timer, GP even was nice enough to make his code nice and tidy with easy to recognize names. Just ctrl-f timer. It's not like you are having to rewrite his game. Your edge-case psychological issue should be worth GP rewriting his game, when you couldn't be bothered to change some CSS in two seconds.
      - stevage 4y ago
        It's not an edge case. Perfectly reasonable suggestion for the author.
        effingwewt 4y ago
z9znz 4y ago
Well done! It was intially intimidating, but it quickly became clear that the limited options made it almost a no-brainer to solve.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
nabakin 4y ago
Make a daily one where everyone has the same game for the day and you can share your scores and my entire friend group would play along with the other ones we do like Wordle and NYT Mini Crossword. Let me know if you add this!
- alexb_ 4y ago
  Agree, this is what can really push it. A daily 5x5 w/ easily shareable scores is the way you can bring this to a lot of people.
  - bravura 4y ago
    Or, a daily 5x5, 7x7, etc. for the true addicts
- bfelbo 4y ago
  @OP, you could consider adding it to Rune which adds daily challenges incl. daily leaderboards with 1 line of code: https://github.com/rune/rune-games-sdk#daily-challenges-optional https://github.com/rune/rune-games-sdk#daily-challenges-opti... Full disclosure: I’m CTO at Rune, but I genuinely think it might be fun and easy for you to do. Here’s a similar popular game on Rune: https://app.rune.ai/untangle-H-vghwxUfO https://app.rune.ai/untangle-H-vghwxUfO
- yencabulator 4y ago
  Plumble?
- endlessvoid94 4y ago
  Absolutely. I haven't been pulled into a puzzle like this in awhile. I'd pay a very modest amount for an app
  - kasbah 4y ago
    You might enjoy an existing app called Infinity Loop. It's a similar puzzle game using the traditional square puzzle-piece shape.
madcow2011 4y ago
I like these! They're tough, but fair. Great job!
egypturnash 4y ago
Right/control click does not work on a Mac. On Safari and Firefox, they both bring up the contextual menu; on Chrome it just highlights the hex.
- gereleth 4y ago
  Oops, thanks for reporting. I'll try to find someone with a Mac to debug this.
culi 4y ago
Nice I was addicted to this exact game on a mobile app many years ago. Thanks so much for making the source code available! Gonna be fun to dig into it Edit: found the app, https://apps.apple.com/us/app/noodles/id967624193 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/noodles/id967624193 Looks like they have a sequal to it and it includes a triangle grid!
- sogen 4y ago
  The app is from the same creator
vesche 4y ago
Very fun, although I don't really feel like it takes much skill. Seems to be a chill puzzle experience and doesn't scratch the same brain itch as something like a Rubik's cube or Loopover (https://loopover.xyz/ https://loopover.xyz/). I did the 20x20 in 32:31.596 and now feel like I can close this tab :P
- gereleth 4y ago
  This loopover thing is hard... I unscrambled two lines and was quickly running out of movement freedom. =) You can try the wrap variant for an extra challenge.
totalview 4y ago
Thought I was clever, until I saw the grid size went to 40…
Sophistifunk 4y ago
This is rad.
alexb_ 4y ago
Any chance for a dark mode?
- gereleth 4y ago
  On the backlog it goes). Can't promise I'll get to it in a timely manner but thanks for the suggestion.
top-flight 4y ago
Cool game. Can you provide an example of what a solution looks like?
- CSMastermind 4y ago
  Here's an example of a 7x7 one that hopefully doesn't spoil too many people's games: https://i.imgur.com/EkA7he4.png https://i.imgur.com/EkA7he4.png
msoucy 4y ago
Me: "Oh I'm pretty good at Net, this should be easy" Two hours later I finally finish the 40x40. Thank you and I hate you. I've infected my friends with this. Also, since we're bragging about scores: 39s for the 5x5 wrapping, but I'll definitely be coming back to this.
- matsemann 4y ago
  Yeah, it was quite different. Half the strategies for grid-net doesn't work, and my pattern matching is off. Same for Loopy/Slitherlink. It's the same game, but changing shapes vastly changes the game. Very fascinating and refreshing.
  - gereleth 4y ago
    I remember being pretty mad at how a straight piece isn't immediately solved after you fix one wall. Like how can it still have wiggle room?! =)) All general principles still apply though, so experience with Net certainly helps here.
    - matsemann 4y ago
      Exactly the same I was thinking off! Normally a straight piece will propagate and lock all other straight pieces either into it or parallel with it. But yeah, still gain some information, while the neighbor straight isn't locked at all times, it's at least constrained. So very cool to play the same game I already like, but with some new twists. :) Edit: I like how I can mark known edges. So many digital puzzle games make it hard to mark the same stuff I would on a paper.
- twaldecker 4y ago
  Also did a 40x40 in two and a half hour
- gereleth 4y ago
  Wow, did you really start with a 40x40? I only solved like two of them ever. It's pretty time consuming). And good time on the wrap! Small wrap boards can actually be harder than larger ones because there's less chance of finding some seed tiles to start from.
jojohack 4y ago
Nice job! This reminds me a bit of a space puzzle game I made a while back ( the premise of which is to rotate the hexagon tiles to create a pathway from the player character to the orb in each level ) https://www.gorch.com/games/spacehex/ https://www.gorch.com/games/spacehex/
- gereleth 4y ago
  Fun puzzle! I played a few levels and I can see some similarities. Did you handcraft the levels? They don't look algorithmically generated.
scrame 4y ago
This is great, got sucked almost immediately.
somdax 4y ago
Only played a few levels, but I loved it!
balozi 4y ago
Very good. Well done. Now go forth and monetize before I do.
noisy_boy 4y ago
Is this available on Android? If no, anything similar?
bsmithers 4y ago
Love the game. Couple of nits on the site: - changing puzzle size seems to break the back button - scroll behaviour is a bit strange (Pixel 5, Chrome, if it helps)
- gereleth 4y ago
  Thanks for reporting, I'll look into this.
noisy_boy 4y ago
Nice to see that shift-click rotates anti-clockwise - excellent semantics.
Fnoord 4y ago
I love it! I loved this game I used to play one on Android (square version). Told the dev I would even pay for it. It got very popular and then after a while it started to get ads. At that point I uninstalled it. PS: Make a start button instead of starting on load. Also the other game had a hypnotic looping music. Which could be put off.
ndr 4y ago
It looks great. It'd be cool to be able to zoom in-out on the 40x40.
- gereleth 4y ago
  Browser zoom kinda works. But yeah, adding better zoom/pan is in my backlog. You sure are brave to take on a 40x40 =)
greasyphalanges 4y ago
Do all solutions require you to have end nodes be connected to a single graph or there exists a puzzle where the solution has disjoint graphs? I'd also specify that no hanging pipes are allowed / utilize all pipes, although that part becomes obvious pretty quickly.
- gereleth 4y ago
  They all need to be connected into a single network. No hanging connections, no loops, no disjoint parts.
corruptio 4y ago
Whelp this just ate up a night's worth of sleep... scripted something to automate finding the play area, pipe orientation and click the solution. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kIpyQRBuwt0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kIpyQRBuwt0 Really bad code here: https://github.com/justecorruptio/hexapipes https://github.com/justecorruptio/hexapipes
- gereleth 4y ago
  Haha, way to go, this is awesome. Did it solve it all without human input? Can it do wraps? Sorry about your sleep schedule).
  - corruptio 4y ago
    Yup, it finds the play area and starts clicking. I haven' tried the wrapped version yet, but i think the nonwrap is funner. Also I wouldn't mind a 50x50 .....
ChrisLomont 4y ago
Very nice puzzle game
francislavoie 4y ago
Reminds me of this game, Entanglement, that I used to play a bunch ~10 years ago. It showed up as a "Chrome App" (when that used to be a thing back then, lol, Google killed those off). Interesting scoring system. https://entanglement.gopherwoodstudios.com/en-US-index.html https://entanglement.gopherwoodstudios.com/en-US-index.html
tromp 4y ago
After playing for a bit, I started to wish for a way to mark cells as done. Then I soon realized it was already implemented, as a right click. Unfortunately, right clicking on my Apple Magic Mouse is notoriously unreliable, so instead I developed an interesting new approach to solving. I force myself to fix each cell as I scan the board from top to bottom, left to right. I thus have to visualize how my choices unfold downward, in search of clues, or ideally proofs, for how best to proceed. This manner of play reminds me a bit of the "reading" one does in the game of Go to explore variations before placing one's stone. I hope other people find this more constrained version of interest as well...

537 points by gereleth 4y ago

koshergweilo 4y ago

This would make a great hacking mini game. I got my average of 12 down under a minute so it's definitely engaging.

bloopernova 4y ago

This is fantastic. A true joy to play! I am seconding the suggestion that you make a daily challenge like Wordle, with the feature to share your time and somehow a "masked" solution like Wordle does. I hope NYTimes buys this from you for lots of money! ;)

raydiatian 4y ago

This 40x40 was a bad idea and I know I'm going to regret this.

Waterluvian 4y ago

This is a fantastic game. I’m curious, did you use a special coordinate system for the hexagons or did you just make it work without any sort of coordinate system at all?

gereleth 4y ago
I didn't use any special coordinates, just some trigonometry. My code transforms coordinates between (x,y) - for drawing, (row, column) - for finding neighbours and (index into an array of tiles) - for managing state. It sort of grew organically and could probably be cleaned up a lot. The hardest part was making the board repeat for the wrap variant making sure that all tiles have consistent wrap neighbours. I almost deployed a version that worked fine on odd-sized grids and went completely bananas on even-sized grids. The danger of always testing on a 5x5 board)).

mikewarot 4y ago

Right click appears to do nothing... leaving an impossible to solve puzzle, as you've just locked a piece and no amount of left clicking will move it. Very frustrating. Why would you lock a cell?

chungy 4y ago
You can right click again to unlock it. It's fairly handy when you're certain it is the only possible orientation and you want to prevent accidental rotations.

stazz1 4y ago

can you turn this into a captcha mechanism pls?

raydiatian 4y ago

I solved a 40x40! 22:33:38.383

gereleth 4y ago
Congrats! This is some amazing dedication =).
- raydiatian 4y ago
  Lol, it was probably more like 3 hours, there was a solid gap where I had to work and exercise and sleep and be social in between.

phaedrus 4y ago

Puzzle 850 (10x10) appears to be unsolvable? After fixing the rest of the tiles, I was left with a scrambled area in the top-middle with 3 loose ends. Even if the affected tiles were all adjacent and shape-compatible (no on both counts), there's no way to pair up 3 ends that doesn't leave one out. My frustration with wasting time (23 hours; I slept on it) on an unsolvable puzzle is somewhat mitigated by the fact the problem taught me this: if you count the free ends and come up with an odd number, you can know immediately that the puzzle isn't solvable, without rotating any tiles. An even number doesn't prove the puzzle is solvable, but an odd number definitely indicates a problem. Edit: Nevermind; there was a 4th loose end I was overlooking. Finding it led to getting unstuck & the puzzle was solvable after all. Unfortunately due to the way the site works, I don't seem to be able to get a new 10x10 puzzle by refreshing the page? So I'm stuck on the unsolvable one. I can imagine saving the progress is a feature, but you should also add a "pass" or "skip" button. Oh - I just realized I can "hack" it by manually changing the number in the URL to something else, e.g. /10/851. Before I realized the puzzle was unsolvable I was also looking for a button to randomize/reset the initial tile positions. I was thinking maybe I wasn't seeing the solution due to my preconceived ideas from already-placed tiles. That wouldn't have helped here, but maybe on a solvable one being able to re-randomize would help a player get unstuck.

gereleth 4y ago
Thanks for the feedback. I'm very sure all puzzles on the site are solvable. But a skip button makes total sense when one hits a deadend. I'll work it in when I have the time. With a randomize button do you mean a complete reset to initial state? Or something like keep the locked tiles, reset the rest?
- andkenneth 4y ago
  +1, a reset button would be great, to go back to initial state entirely. Sometimes you know you've stuffed up the logic on the puzzle and seeing it fresh is the best option. I found myself searching for the button as well.

andkenneth 4y ago

Feels like a much more fun version of minesweeper for me. Same sort of logic with less anxiety so you can start to go very fast.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

Syzygies 4y ago

Wow! What fun. You have to make this a phone/tablet app...

gereleth 4y ago
Glad you liked it! I actually play it often on my phone, it's workable when zoomed in. An app would be nicer surely but I don't know how to build those =).
- moomin 4y ago
  You 100% need to figure that out, because this is _really_ good and there’s money to be made here. Make sure you’re the one who makes it.
mbusheikin 4y ago
Well, this seems an appropriate place to plug the phone/tablet app we made with these puzzles, called Noodles 2. It's the same puzzle style, with square, triangle and hex shapes, with some extra mechanics - disappearing pieces, infinite grid (it wraps around). gereleth, great job on the puzzles - I played a few of the bigger hex puzzles and it was real smooth. :) https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.lummoxlabs.noodles2.pro https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.lummoxlabs... https://apps.apple.com/us/app/noodles-2/id1520711405 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/noodles-2/id1520711405
- nathancahill 4y ago
  That's awesome. Really slick app.
- gereleth 4y ago
  Nice graphics, I love the soft lines. I have wrapping infinite grid variants too, but disappearing pieces? Intriguing =)).
- joshcaron 4y ago
  I just found Noodles 2 the other day when searching for a new puzzle game to play. I'm absolutely addicted to it; I've already completed hundreds of levels. Wish there was a way to "lock" a piece in place (like via long press) so I don't accidentally rotate pieces I've solved. Great game!

dematz 4y ago

Fun game and nice site, it feels like to pipes what wordle is to words!

gereleth 4y ago
Compared to wordle, what an honour =). The site design actually comes from the default SvelteKit skeleton project. I was focused on the game part so I never changed it.

swayvil 4y ago

My first, a 5x5, in 3:08 It was fun, but on the edge of annoying, which seems appropriate.

mkoryak 4y ago
my first 5x5 I couldn't solve in 4 minutes, then I gave up. This puzzle makes me angry.
WesleyJohnson 4y ago
2:37 for me, and I'm not terribly good at puzzles. I was getting frustrated and then it just kind of clicked. The color changing is incentivizing. I found it fun in general; might have to do a couple more...
TOMDM 4y ago
I finished my first on 1:33, starting from the edge and working in, moving to a different spot when I noticed too much flex was my strategy. Given the authors note in this thread about each puzzle only having one solution probably means I stumbled onto a decent strategy
- swayvil 4y ago
  Ya, the edge is key. So are hexes that have minimal possible positions. I did my second 5 in 3:08 too. Which is weird.
- gereleth 4y ago
  This is pretty much how I solve regular puzzles too. I can do most 5x5s in under 20 seconds. Too often did my debugging sessions devolve into puzzle marathons =). Wrap variants are another story as they have no outer edges. Discovering which tile groups give initial clues there is pretty fun too (when the regular puzzles aren't much of a challenge any more).
  - klyrs 4y ago
    > Too often did my debugging sessions devolve into puzzle marathons =). This is why I suck at game development. Congratulations for getting it out the door!

emadehsan 4y ago

Captivating! So, while generating the puzzle, you are essentially creating a random Spanning Tree for the given nodes (hexagon) arrangement? Then you randomize each pipe piece's direction within a hexagon? What algorithm are you using for it Spanning Tree? I have been working on Maze Generation[0] and found randomized Prim's, Kruskal's to be useful for Spanning Tree creation but the good old Depth First Search increases the difficulty of solving a Maze. [0] https://github.com/emadehsan/maze/blob/main/media/hexagonal.PNG https://github.com/emadehsan/maze/blob/main/media/hexagonal....

gereleth 4y ago
Well the way I wrote my pipes solver was to keep a set of possible orientations of every tile and gradually remove impossible options by using border conditions and some heuristics like avoiding islands and loops. And when this doesn't turn up any new info I resort to depth-first search. The generator basically does the same but every tile starts out with a full set of possible orientations - every rotation of every tile shape (there are 62 I think). I remove some orientations due to border conditions, then pick a random possible orientation for some tile and so on till the board is filled. There usually is some backtracking involved. This isn't terribly efficient and can get stuck for quite long when generating large puzzles. I actually want to look into adapting maze generation algorithms for creating these puzzles, so thanks for the link, I'll check it out.
- emadehsan 4y ago
  I see. Amazing work you have done! This game is enticing.
- emadehsan 4y ago
  My understanding is that since the game mentions: "Rotate the tiles so that all pipes are connected with no loops." These is exactly what a Spanning Tree is. So, any spanning tree generation algorithm would do. You just generate a random ST each time and cut this tree where the hexagon borders intersect with it (to get pipe pieces) and randomize their orientation. These algorithms are not going to disappoint you in terms of performance. I made tutorials on the topic as well. Might help me clear my point: https://youtu.be/d5yzKkG1n1U?t=36 https://youtu.be/d5yzKkG1n1U?t=36 Apologies for spamming. Sorry, if I'm suggesting premature optimization.

forty 4y ago

Is there always a single possible solution ? (I did a bunch of small ones and always found a solution pretty quickly)

emadehsan 4y ago
if the pipes are cut from a Spanning Tree connecting all the hexagons (like the one you witness once you have solved), then yes, for those give pipe pieces, there should be only one solution.
- jjnoakes 4y ago
  Is this true? I can almost imagine one puzzle that can create two different spanning trees. Maybe I ought to draw it up to verify. Spanning trees may be required but not sufficient for a unique solution.
  - emadehsan 4y ago
    You are right. It is possible that branches (pipes) cut from one Spanning Tree might be re-arrangeable into a different Spanning Tree.
gereleth 4y ago
All puzzles on the site have a unique solution At least my solver thinks so)). Configurations with multiple solutions are possible, but I weeded those out when generating.

evan_ 4y ago

What are the green/red lines that appear when you click the junction between two hexes? (really fun game btw, I will have to return to this later. I'm looking forward to sharing this with my 8 year old who's fascinated with logic puzzles.)

gereleth 4y ago
Those are edge marks, they let you mark some edges as "definitely a wall" or "definitely a connection". It sometimes helps in harder puzzles).

bilekas 4y ago

This is quite fun actually.. nice work!

bunsenhoneydew 4y ago

Love it! I first played the version of this with squares on a Palm Pilot and that was a long time ago. I was even looking for that version for my iPhone the other day but was drowning in other random games (and little network tools) until I gave up. It shouldn’t take much effort to turn it into a PWA, so then people can use it just like an app. I already saved it to my Home Screen and would certainly play this as a daily puzzle, just like Wordle. Keep up the great work.

matsemann 4y ago
This one? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32170592 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32170592

harpersealtako 4y ago

Solved my first 5x5 in 1:54. At first I thought it would be really difficult but then I found a hex which could only go one way (a corner hex with V shape) and then from there the adjacent pipes could only orient one way. There were a few times where I had to think down a tree of possibilities (if this hex goes like this, then this hex can't possibly fit here because of a previously solved hex, therefore it must go like this instead), but never more than one or two steps. All in all it's a very satisfying puzzle format.

pyrolistical 4y ago

Its annoying having to tap so many times, especially when certain pieces have few valid orientations.

gereleth 4y ago
You can check out "Orient / Lock" control mode in the settings. It lets you orient a tile in one tap but needs precision about where you tap. I mostly use this mode but it takes some getting used to, so I didn't make it the default.
- kps 4y ago
  I think my ideal controls for this would be key presses (configurable) while hovering. Current bests are 5×5: 00:22.056, 7×7: 01:01.394. Edit: also, a control to randomize the orientation of all unlocked tiles would be nice.

loganc2342 4y ago

I have a minor nitpick to share. I’d like it if there was an option to hide the timer, because being under time pressure to solve a puzzle can stress me out. Overall, it’s a fun puzzle, though!

gereleth 4y ago
Thanks for sharing, I'll add that option (on the weekend most likely).
boosteri 4y ago
I'd like an opposite option.. where the timer runs out :-) maybe with a neat graphics of water flowing from the bulb starting point(s)
- joeframbach 4y ago
  You would enjoy Ant Run, which I played for hours on end in the late 90s. https://www.dosgames.com/game/ant-run https://www.dosgames.com/game/ant-run. There is a browser-based emulator available here.
  - krallja 4y ago
    I knew this game as Pipe Dream / Pipe Mania!

adenozine 4y ago

40x40???? Wow, that would take me several hours if not a workday or more. Goodness lord

yesthisiswes 4y ago

Awesome puzzle. Great job!

mdavis6890 4y ago

Great game! I humbly suggest that you flesh out the rules just a bit more. I struggled to figure out if pipes were allowed to run out of bounds, whether they all had to be connected into a single network, and the significance of the bulb-ended ones. I'm not totally dense and could make some guesses, but this still made the puzzle less than approachable for me at first. Basically I just guessed at these things, tried to see if I could solve one, and once I did and saw my complete solution all was clear. But why not state these things up front? Or maybe that's part of the puzzle? :-) My first solve took 9min, then 3, then 1.5min for my third.

seanalltogether 4y ago
This was exactly the same for me. I wasn't sure if all pipes had to be water tight or not. Once I understood what the actual constraints were I could solve the next ones quicker.
gereleth 4y ago
Fair enough, I'll think how to word all this.
- hombre_fatal 4y ago
  a pic of a before and after puzzle would answer these questions intuitively as well.
- mdavis6890 4y ago
  - All sections must be connected into a single, contiguous network. - The whole network is contained in the grid, and no pipes may run outside the grid. - Bulb-shaped pipes with a single connection are terminations (dead-ends).
  - mdavis6890 4y ago
    I'll agree with other commenters that actually just showing a complete solution is better. Or both!
- 4y ago

michannne 4y ago

Solved in 1:39, very fun game and great implementation! I'm not much a fan of pipes games but have played similar concepts such as Infinite Energy on mobile. This is a good job for such a quickly developed project

ranman 4y ago

Why are the SVG tiles specified to 599.99999999 instead of 600 or something? I think a SVGO optimizations run would reduce the size of the assets a tad.

Etheryte 4y ago
I would guess that the assets were made in Inkscape or comparable software where you work visually and don't actually look at the generated code.
gereleth 4y ago
There aren't really any assets though. I just create the svgs dynamically. Maybe I need to place some strategic `Math.round` calls here and there, never thought of this =).
- ranman 4y ago
  Yeah so if you can math.round or math.floor them a bit the paths are a lot cleaner - if you're dynamically creating them anyway though then I don't know that it gains you much performance. It might gain some performance on render for larger maps? Not sure. Didn't get a chance to look at your source.
  - gereleth 4y ago
    The file to look at would be this Tile component: https://github.com/gereleth/hexapipes/blob/main/src/lib/puzzle/Tile.svelte https://github.com/gereleth/hexapipes/blob/main/src/lib/puzz... My svg handling was very much "learn as I go". An earlier version even had circles instead of hexagons because they're simpler to do. There's a cool playthrough video of that version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vlpPr485NUY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vlpPr485NUY

OisinMoran 4y ago

This is super fun! Just played a few and my best on the 5×5 was 0:42. Thanks for sharing! Love your description too—would love to see a more in-depth write up if you get the time! It's so fun when you can flip from solving something to generating it. I'm also a fan of solving games with code and have made an Upwords bot that plays perfectly but realized I could use it to try to find better "hyperparameters" for the game (like how many points certain bonuses are) by getting it to play itself and having some metric of what a better game would be. Though as you can probably tell from the lack of a link I have yet to do that part.

usmannk 4y ago
my first 5x5 try was 0:58. I was actually very surprised when it came together as it felt like i was just randomly fitting pipes to their nearest neighbors.
- OisinMoran 4y ago
  Yes, much like falling asleep, falling in love, or going bankrupt this was quite the "slowly, then all at once" type of affair.

furyofantares 4y ago

Very cool! I suggest adding a daily puzzle with a share result (day number and how long it took to solve) like all the games in the wordleverse do. My spouse and I would enjoy doing one daily and sending our results to each other.

gereleth 4y ago
Good idea! I'm already thinking of how to implement... I really need another vacation or two, lol
- bfelbo 4y ago
  Hehe. If you’d like, you could add it to Rune which adds daily challenges incl. daily leaderboards with 1 line of code: https://github.com/rune/rune-games-sdk#daily-challenges-optional https://github.com/rune/rune-games-sdk#daily-challenges-opti... Full disclosure: I’m CTO at Rune, but I genuinely think it might be fun and easy for you to do. Here’s a similar popular game on Rune: https://app.rune.ai/untangle-H-vghwxUfO https://app.rune.ai/untangle-H-vghwxUfO

hutch120 4y ago

Fun game! Can I suggest adding a licence file to Github so people know what they can do with the repo.

ryukoposting 4y ago

Fun game! This will make a great fidget when I don't have much to do at work.

gweinberg 4y ago

Kevin Stone's BrainBashers has a similar puzzle except with squares instead of hexes. https://www.brainbashers.com/network.asp https://www.brainbashers.com/network.asp

Pakdef 4y ago

Nice.. it could be helpful if you could right click to turn the pieces in the other direction.

TheDudeMan 4y ago

Very nice! Maybe right-click should rotate the other direction. Edit: Oh, now I see that right-click locks the tile. Yeah, that's a nice function, too.

gereleth 4y ago
You can change control mode in the settings. The default is rotate/lock, but there's a rotate/rotate as well. And... another tricky one for orienting a tile in one click.

ALittleLight 4y ago

I struggled with the first 5x5 taking about 8 minutes, then 2.5 minutes, then less than one minute. I'm still not even sure what principle I'm using to solve these but it is enjoyable. It's mainly just rotating until I hit the right color and looking for the next 3+ joint to rotate.

yarg 4y ago
It's a bit like sudoku; start with the elements for which there's only one choice, and rotate into place. Often this will lead to more tiles with only one viable configuration. (At very least you'll reduce the search space.)
- culi 4y ago
  I used to play this exact game on a mobile app. One great feature was the ability to click and hold to "lock" certain pieces into place. Like you pointed out, there's certain pieces (on the edges) that only have one possible configuration My 5x5 is record is 28s on my 5th game. The strategy is actually really simple once you get going: run through and identify all the "lockable" (only one possible configuration) tiles and then run through the consequences of those configuration and keep repeating
  - ALittleLight 4y ago
    You can lock with a right click.

neilv 4y ago

Neat. The multiple colors for groups is another innovation beyond SGT's Net. You might consider implementing the traditional 3 mouse button controls (rotate left, mark correct, rotate right). If you can keep the Firefox context menu from popping up. Maybe there's a way to support wrapping, and help the player understand which edge wraps to which? Maybe affecting the shape? Related: 5 days ago "Simon Tatham's Portable Puzzle Collection (greenend.org.uk)": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32170592 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32170592

gereleth 4y ago
Mm, middle button, why didn't I think of it. My wrap puzzles show an infinite tiled grid, so there shouldn't be questions about which edge wraps where. There are no edges, tiles just start repeating after a while. Maybe I didn't understand your question about wrapping?
- culi 4y ago
  A "click and hold" to lock a tile into place would also be great and mobile accessible
  - kbenson 4y ago
    It already does that on mobile. It allows marking edges as connecting or not, and locking tiles with a long press.
    - stevage 4y ago
      I found the edge marking on mobile to just be a random source of confusion. Kept doing it by accident.
      - gereleth 4y ago
        Sorry about this. I sometimes place them accidentally too. I have an idea of placing them with some kind of gesture - like touch and drag between tiles. That wouldn't interfere with tapping to rotate tiles. But on the other hand, I'm usually zoomed in on mobile and I use touch and drag to move around. Interfering with that would be bad too. I'm open to ideas for better controls.

brent_noorda 4y ago

Some of the tiles become darker and then cannot be turned. What's that about?

POiNTx 4y ago
Probably to lock a tile if you're sure it's in the correct orientation.

texaslonghorn5 4y ago

Fun! After finishing and clicking on one of the bigger sizes, I couldn't go back to Hackernews because of how it handled redirecting (I think).

marssaxman 4y ago

Thanks! This is fun. I've worked my way up to 20x20 so far.

thaumasiotes 4y ago

Right-clicking locks a piece, but it also brings up a context menu that I need to get rid of. It would be nice if that didn't happen.

gereleth 4y ago
Are you on a Mac? I thought I got rid of this but I haven't tested on those.
- thaumasiotes 4y ago
  No, Windows 10.
  - gereleth 4y ago
    I see, thanks for reporting. This contextmenu issue is sure showing me the ugly side of frontend development :/

technothrasher 4y ago

I liked it, but I've got a funny thing about being timed. It stresses me out and makes a game that should be relaxing completely unenjoyable. I've heard others say the same to me often, so I know I'm not alone. Although there are clearly plenty of other folks who do like the added pressure of a timer. If you had a mode that completely turned off any times, I'd actually keep playing.

teolandon 4y ago
It's not like the timer is counting down and the game ends when the timer runs out. The timer is going up. There's no pressure, you can ignore it (or even write a script that hides it client side).
- technothrasher 4y ago
  > you can ignore it No can do. Psychology is a funny thing. > or even write a script that hides it client side Sure, or just update the code and host it myself. I was just making a casual comment, which the author is free to casually ignore.
  - effingwewt 4y ago
    Oh come tf on, you can quite easily just view source and hide the timer, GP even was nice enough to make his code nice and tidy with easy to recognize names. Just ctrl-f timer. It's not like you are having to rewrite his game. Your edge-case psychological issue should be worth GP rewriting his game, when you couldn't be bothered to change some CSS in two seconds.
    - stevage 4y ago
      It's not an edge case. Perfectly reasonable suggestion for the author.
      - effingwewt 4y ago

z9znz 4y ago

Well done! It was intially intimidating, but it quickly became clear that the limited options made it almost a no-brainer to solve.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

nabakin 4y ago

Make a daily one where everyone has the same game for the day and you can share your scores and my entire friend group would play along with the other ones we do like Wordle and NYT Mini Crossword. Let me know if you add this!

alexb_ 4y ago
Agree, this is what can really push it. A daily 5x5 w/ easily shareable scores is the way you can bring this to a lot of people.
- bravura 4y ago
  Or, a daily 5x5, 7x7, etc. for the true addicts
bfelbo 4y ago
@OP, you could consider adding it to Rune which adds daily challenges incl. daily leaderboards with 1 line of code: https://github.com/rune/rune-games-sdk#daily-challenges-optional https://github.com/rune/rune-games-sdk#daily-challenges-opti... Full disclosure: I’m CTO at Rune, but I genuinely think it might be fun and easy for you to do. Here’s a similar popular game on Rune: https://app.rune.ai/untangle-H-vghwxUfO https://app.rune.ai/untangle-H-vghwxUfO
yencabulator 4y ago
Plumble?
endlessvoid94 4y ago
Absolutely. I haven't been pulled into a puzzle like this in awhile. I'd pay a very modest amount for an app
- kasbah 4y ago
  You might enjoy an existing app called Infinity Loop. It's a similar puzzle game using the traditional square puzzle-piece shape.

madcow2011 4y ago

I like these! They're tough, but fair. Great job!

egypturnash 4y ago

Right/control click does not work on a Mac. On Safari and Firefox, they both bring up the contextual menu; on Chrome it just highlights the hex.

gereleth 4y ago
Oops, thanks for reporting. I'll try to find someone with a Mac to debug this.

culi 4y ago

Nice I was addicted to this exact game on a mobile app many years ago. Thanks so much for making the source code available! Gonna be fun to dig into it Edit: found the app, https://apps.apple.com/us/app/noodles/id967624193 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/noodles/id967624193 Looks like they have a sequal to it and it includes a triangle grid!

sogen 4y ago
The app is from the same creator

vesche 4y ago

Very fun, although I don't really feel like it takes much skill. Seems to be a chill puzzle experience and doesn't scratch the same brain itch as something like a Rubik's cube or Loopover (https://loopover.xyz/ https://loopover.xyz/). I did the 20x20 in 32:31.596 and now feel like I can close this tab :P

gereleth 4y ago
This loopover thing is hard... I unscrambled two lines and was quickly running out of movement freedom. =) You can try the wrap variant for an extra challenge.

totalview 4y ago

Thought I was clever, until I saw the grid size went to 40…

Sophistifunk 4y ago

This is rad.

alexb_ 4y ago

Any chance for a dark mode?

gereleth 4y ago
On the backlog it goes). Can't promise I'll get to it in a timely manner but thanks for the suggestion.

top-flight 4y ago

Cool game. Can you provide an example of what a solution looks like?

CSMastermind 4y ago
Here's an example of a 7x7 one that hopefully doesn't spoil too many people's games: https://i.imgur.com/EkA7he4.png https://i.imgur.com/EkA7he4.png

msoucy 4y ago

Me: "Oh I'm pretty good at Net, this should be easy" Two hours later I finally finish the 40x40. Thank you and I hate you. I've infected my friends with this. Also, since we're bragging about scores: 39s for the 5x5 wrapping, but I'll definitely be coming back to this.

matsemann 4y ago
Yeah, it was quite different. Half the strategies for grid-net doesn't work, and my pattern matching is off. Same for Loopy/Slitherlink. It's the same game, but changing shapes vastly changes the game. Very fascinating and refreshing.
- gereleth 4y ago
  I remember being pretty mad at how a straight piece isn't immediately solved after you fix one wall. Like how can it still have wiggle room?! =)) All general principles still apply though, so experience with Net certainly helps here.
  - matsemann 4y ago
    Exactly the same I was thinking off! Normally a straight piece will propagate and lock all other straight pieces either into it or parallel with it. But yeah, still gain some information, while the neighbor straight isn't locked at all times, it's at least constrained. So very cool to play the same game I already like, but with some new twists. :) Edit: I like how I can mark known edges. So many digital puzzle games make it hard to mark the same stuff I would on a paper.
twaldecker 4y ago
Also did a 40x40 in two and a half hour
gereleth 4y ago
Wow, did you really start with a 40x40? I only solved like two of them ever. It's pretty time consuming). And good time on the wrap! Small wrap boards can actually be harder than larger ones because there's less chance of finding some seed tiles to start from.

jojohack 4y ago

Nice job! This reminds me a bit of a space puzzle game I made a while back ( the premise of which is to rotate the hexagon tiles to create a pathway from the player character to the orb in each level ) https://www.gorch.com/games/spacehex/ https://www.gorch.com/games/spacehex/

gereleth 4y ago
Fun puzzle! I played a few levels and I can see some similarities. Did you handcraft the levels? They don't look algorithmically generated.

scrame 4y ago

This is great, got sucked almost immediately.

somdax 4y ago

Only played a few levels, but I loved it!

balozi 4y ago

Very good. Well done. Now go forth and monetize before I do.

noisy_boy 4y ago

Is this available on Android? If no, anything similar?

bsmithers 4y ago

Love the game. Couple of nits on the site: - changing puzzle size seems to break the back button - scroll behaviour is a bit strange (Pixel 5, Chrome, if it helps)

gereleth 4y ago
Thanks for reporting, I'll look into this.

noisy_boy 4y ago

Nice to see that shift-click rotates anti-clockwise - excellent semantics.

Fnoord 4y ago

I love it! I loved this game I used to play one on Android (square version). Told the dev I would even pay for it. It got very popular and then after a while it started to get ads. At that point I uninstalled it. PS: Make a start button instead of starting on load. Also the other game had a hypnotic looping music. Which could be put off.

ndr 4y ago

It looks great. It'd be cool to be able to zoom in-out on the 40x40.

gereleth 4y ago
Browser zoom kinda works. But yeah, adding better zoom/pan is in my backlog. You sure are brave to take on a 40x40 =)

greasyphalanges 4y ago

Do all solutions require you to have end nodes be connected to a single graph or there exists a puzzle where the solution has disjoint graphs? I'd also specify that no hanging pipes are allowed / utilize all pipes, although that part becomes obvious pretty quickly.

gereleth 4y ago
They all need to be connected into a single network. No hanging connections, no loops, no disjoint parts.

corruptio 4y ago

Whelp this just ate up a night's worth of sleep... scripted something to automate finding the play area, pipe orientation and click the solution. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kIpyQRBuwt0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kIpyQRBuwt0 Really bad code here: https://github.com/justecorruptio/hexapipes https://github.com/justecorruptio/hexapipes

gereleth 4y ago
Haha, way to go, this is awesome. Did it solve it all without human input? Can it do wraps? Sorry about your sleep schedule).
- corruptio 4y ago
  Yup, it finds the play area and starts clicking. I haven' tried the wrapped version yet, but i think the nonwrap is funner. Also I wouldn't mind a 50x50 .....

ChrisLomont 4y ago

Very nice puzzle game

francislavoie 4y ago

Reminds me of this game, Entanglement, that I used to play a bunch ~10 years ago. It showed up as a "Chrome App" (when that used to be a thing back then, lol, Google killed those off). Interesting scoring system. https://entanglement.gopherwoodstudios.com/en-US-index.html https://entanglement.gopherwoodstudios.com/en-US-index.html

tromp 4y ago

After playing for a bit, I started to wish for a way to mark cells as done. Then I soon realized it was already implemented, as a right click. Unfortunately, right clicking on my Apple Magic Mouse is notoriously unreliable, so instead I developed an interesting new approach to solving. I force myself to fix each cell as I scan the board from top to bottom, left to right. I thus have to visualize how my choices unfold downward, in search of clues, or ideally proofs, for how best to proceed. This manner of play reminds me a bit of the "reading" one does in the game of Go to explore variations before placing one's stone. I hope other people find this more constrained version of interest as well...