Brian Bock

ENPM661

Fall 2020

This program solves any 8 puzzle. To run this program, run "main.py". This must be in the same directory as "actions.py", "board_switcher.py", "plot_path.py", "printboard.py", and "verbose.py". Everything was written in Python3. I've tested this for a variety of puzzles on my laptop (2018 Macbook Pro), and it solved every puzzle (or tested all possible boards, for an illegal/unsolvable start) in less than 2 minutes. When it finishes solving, it will print out each board from start to goal. The moves used are also written to a new file ("NodesPath.txt").

If you'd like to toggle more print statements (Verbose mode), open "verbose.py" and change 'verbose=True' in line 4. This additional output will make the program much more informative, but will take considerably longer to complete. For speed, keep 'verbose=False'

If you'd like to change the puzzle, open "main.py". You can edit the goal puzzle or the start puzzle.

The text file outputs are created the first time the program is run. The program appends to these files as it goes. Be sure to delete each text file from previous runs before starting.

This project is accesible on Github at https://github.com/BrianBock/ENPM661_Project1

Libraries used: numpy, math, datetime, collections