Re: [spoon-discuss] Junk

[Daniel Lepage <dpl33@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Wednesday, December 24, 2003, at 03:03 AM, Glotmorf wrote:
> > Each square of the Grid has a Height. Each square can also either be
> > Open or Filled.
> >
> > If a square of Height one becomes Empty, its height becomes zero.
> > If a square's Height is ever zero, it immediately becomes Open.
> >
> > A Mound is a set of squares such that every square in the set is
> > Rectilinearly connected to every other square in the set, every square
> > in the set has Height greater than zero, and every square that's
> > rectilinearly connected to a square in the set but not in the set has
> > Height zero. [[i.e., a pile of junk squares surrounded by non-junk]]
> >
> > If every square in a Mound is Open, that Mound Collapses - every 
> > square
> > in it becomes Filled and has its height decreased by one, and all
> > JunkBots in these squares are destroyed.
>
> I have a problem with this part.
>
> "Open" is not defined well.  You have "Open" as the state a
> square takes on when its height becomes zero.  With this as
> the sole possible definition, I gather that when a Filled
> square becomes Open it means its height becomes zero.
>
> "Filled" doesn't seem to be defined at all, except to be the
> state of a square that's not Open.  Which means a square is
> Filled regardless of its height, as further demonstrated by
> the fact that all the starting non-zero-height squares,
> ranging in height from 1 to 7, are declared Filled.
>
> However, "If every square in a Mound is Open, that Mound Collapses - 
> every square
> in it becomes Filled and has its height decreased by one, and all
> JunkBots in these squares are destroyed."  But if the squares
> in the mound were all Open, that means their height was zero
> at the time, so either (a) there is no mound, since there is
> no set of contiguous non-zero-height squares, or (b) the
> height of all the squares becomes -1.
>
> Further, no provision seems to be made in the act of changing
> an adjacent square from Filled to Open for varying height --
> it costs the same energy to make a 7-height square Open as it
> does a 1-height square.  Is this logical?  If so, why have
> height at all?


I never define 'Open' as meaning 'has height zero'. If a square has no 
Junk in it, it must be open, but a square that is Open need not have 
height zero. Open simply means that it can be moved into - there might 
be seven units of Junk piled above it, but there's a tunnel at your 
level, so you can go in.

'Filled' then means 'Not Open' - there's Junk filling the ground level.

The Junk is very tightly packed - if you tunnel under a square, but the 
junk is still attached to other squares that aren't tunneled, it won't 
collapse. Even a single pillar of Junk can support an arbitrarily large 
Mound. But if every support is mined away, then the Mound's just 
floating there, one unit above everyone's height. Obviously Junk cannot 
do this, so the Mound collapses immediately, landing one unit below it.

Changing an adjacent square to Open just means you dug the junk out on 
the bottom level, so there's no penalty for doing it to a higher pile 
(except that somebody else might knock down one of the remaining 
supports and bury you).

--
Wonko

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