Hartmut Braun
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PentoPlus (Java)

Description

PentoPlus is an interactive polyomino solver and analyzer.

The piece editor allows to define the set of pieces that are used for the game. A piece may have any shape: single square, domino, triomino, tetromino, pentomino, hexomino, and so forth.

Identical (duplicate) pieces are allowed in a game.

The user may view all unique orientations of the pieces.

When playing the game, each piece is tried in all rotation and reflection configurations.

The board editor allows to modify the initially rectangular board to generate play areas of any shape by defining allowed (white) and forbidden (black) squares. This makes it easy to specify, for example, parallelograms, crosses or perforated patterns within a rectangle, like in a crossword puzzle.

The user can choose from a set of predefined games whose number of solutions is often known. PentoPlus provides references for most games.

PentoPlus offers two search algorithms:
  • Knuth’s Algorithm X (Dancing Links). Very fast.
  • Classical backtracking. Simulates naïve human behaviour. Slow, intuitive and highly instructive.
The user may control the game in a number of ways:
  • Next step
  • Next solution
  • All solutions
PentoPlus delivers a unique set of solutions for a game. Duplicates are recognized and eliminated, though not necessarily at the earliest possible stage. A duplicate may arise from piece symmetry (rotation and reflection), board symmetry (rotation) or piece identity.

You find more details in the User Guide.

Download

PentoPlus is a Java application developed on Windows 10 using NetBeans.
The .jar file includes the source code.
Generated: 01.01.1601 01:00:00