It’s been a while since I last did any game development, think I was about 12 when I made my last game, and to be honest I have no idea what on earth prompted me to stop doing this because it’s a blast.

Yesterday I took part in IPSC 2009 and was the one solving problem H, which was a game of 10 wolves under your control hunting a flock of 60 sheep. Each turn you could make ten moves and the game’s servers then made ten moves of sheep (I think). It was very fun to play and we managed to win the easy round by catching ten sheep, but ran out of time to eat all sixty.

Fast forward a few hours and it’s the middle of the night with the internets down. I couldn’t work on Twitulater so I decided to make a game of Wolf Hunt because I needed a sample app for the lecture this Saturday anyway.

I had a blast making the game, but it was quickly apparent that one wolf alone isn’t enough to catch the sheep because they keep running away. The solution to this problem turned out to be simple – I invented the Quantum Wolf Hunt.

The way this solved the problem is that it introduces other wolves onto the gaming board to spook the sheep. However there is a twist – no ability to make a coordinated attack because each wolf is hunting their own sheep on a different quantum plane and depending on connection speeds and server load, the other wolves’ motion could be non-linear.

Haven’t managed to test this in practice, but that’s why I’m putting it out a week in advance. To iron out any kinks.

Have fun guys

Tags: intrigues, life