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By chance I did notice a certain game occured over and over again, the exactly same configuration of the placement of the tiles.

This made me wonder, is there a set amount of tile configurations to be played or is the placement random?

Another question would then be, is it possible to solve every puzzle?

Since you can replay any puzzle as many time you want I started to try to solve those I failed instead of generating a new one... and as far as I can tell all at least seems to be solveable although some of them being extremely picky in which order tiles are paired. Of course I am unsure since I have not spent so much time on each puzzle that I have managed to solve every single one I have played, but those I have given time have all been solved.

The picture attached shows the configuration that appears every now and then when generating a new puzzle.

C24DA017-7B06-4028-A1EE-DC9314453C6D.jpeg (1.78 MB)

I am assuming the generation is seeded by some value aimed to be "random", and that seed fails to be random enough.

For example, some games might be counting frames until you press a button, and use that as a seed, and if you hold button before starting it may use the same value or something. I don't know the exact nature of issue with Shanghai though.

I love Shanghai, and was playing quite a lot of the Master System version several years ago. I did eventually begin to notice some repeated layouts, which also made me wonder if there are just a set number of pre-planned layouts that it's selecting from a lookup table.

After that, I moved on to Shanghai 2: Dragon's Eye on the Genesis/Mega Drive, and noticed that it has options to select either a solvable layout or a truly randomized layout with the chance that it will be unsolvable.

If the Master System version were to generate a random-yet-solvable layout, I think we might notice a more time-consuming process before the game was ready to play.

Author	Message
Legerdemain Joined: 02 Feb 2005 Posts: 8	Question regarding Shanghai on the Master System Posted: Wed Feb 21, 2024 10:04 am Last edited by Legerdemain on Wed Feb 21, 2024 3:20 pm; edited 1 time in total
Legerdemain Joined: 02 Feb 2005 Posts: 8	By chance I did notice a certain game occured over and over again, the exactly same configuration of the placement of the tiles. This made me wonder, is there a set amount of tile configurations to be played or is the placement random? Another question would then be, is it possible to solve every puzzle? Since you can replay any puzzle as many time you want I started to try to solve those I failed instead of generating a new one... and as far as I can tell all at least seems to be solveable although some of them being extremely picky in which order tiles are paired. Of course I am unsure since I have not spent so much time on each puzzle that I have managed to solve every single one I have played, but those I have given time have all been solved. The picture attached shows the configuration that appears every now and then when generating a new puzzle. C24DA017-7B06-4028-A1EE-DC9314453C6D.jpeg (1.78 MB)

Bock Site Admin Joined: 08 Jul 2001 Posts: 8653 Location: Paris, France	Posted: Wed Feb 21, 2024 1:40 pm
	I am assuming the generation is seeded by some value aimed to be "random", and that seed fails to be random enough. For example, some games might be counting frames until you press a button, and use that as a seed, and if you hold button before starting it may use the same value or something. I don't know the exact nature of issue with Shanghai though.

Centrale Joined: 06 Apr 2015 Posts: 89	Posted: Wed Feb 21, 2024 6:16 pm
Centrale Joined: 06 Apr 2015 Posts: 89	I love Shanghai, and was playing quite a lot of the Master System version several years ago. I did eventually begin to notice some repeated layouts, which also made me wonder if there are just a set number of pre-planned layouts that it's selecting from a lookup table. After that, I moved on to Shanghai 2: Dragon's Eye on the Genesis/Mega Drive, and noticed that it has options to select either a solvable layout or a truly randomized layout with the chance that it will be unsolvable. If the Master System version were to generate a random-yet-solvable layout, I think we might notice a more time-consuming process before the game was ready to play.

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