The 8-Puzzle-Solver is an artificially intelligent puzzle solver based on 8-tiled version of the sliding puzzle. The way that this works is that a user may input 1 of 3 algorithms that will be used to solve an arbitrary puzzle of length 9.
- BFS - Breadth First Search algorithm: Uses a queue
- BSTFS - Best First Search algorithm: Uses a priority queue rather than a simple queue
- A* - A Star algorithm: Typically an effiecent, optimal, and complete algorithm
- Manhattan Distance: Distance between two points
- Tiles out of Place: Simply the number of tiles out of place in as a means of heurisitics for our AI
Proper inputs for the puzzle must consist of 9 characters--no more; no less. Each must be a different character in the form of [1-8] where a - must be inserted as well to denote the empty space. Only one of each character may be used per puzzle.
The code will fail according to the following reasons:
- The puzzle encoding was either greater or less than length of 9. For example
"4213-57866"(❌) is too long and"4213-578"(❌) is too short."4213-5786"(✅) is correct, however. - The puzzle encoding contained an unrecongized character. For example
"4213-a786"(❌) is not allowed. Digits"1-8"(✅) are correct while digits"1"(❌) and"9"(❌) are incorrect. The only other character other than the previously mentioned are"-"(✅)
If any of these errors occurs the program will either fail silently or simply take the time of the total remainder of the universe to calculate a puzzle that cannot be solved. 🌎
An executable can be found in a .tar.gz or .zip file in the releases tab of this repo. Otherwise, it may compiled from source.