Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
The connections in puzzles are checked by a list of special conditions. The right il-
lustration for this is the famous puzzle game, the Tower of Hanoi. It consists of three
rods and several disks. For the sake of simplicity, let's consider only three disks; the
disks have different radiuses. By default, all of them are collected in a stack on the
first rod, the largest disk is placed at the bottom, and the smallest one is on the top.
The objective is to transfer them to the third rod; the solution seems very obvious,
but there are some special conditions: for each move, a disk should be placed on a
rod and the player cannot keep it in his hands or at any other place, while another
rule says that an individual disk can be put only on a disk with a bigger radius. Now
you see that it is harder than it seems at first sight. To complete the puzzle, the disks
are moved back and forth, and the player tries to obey the rules. Three disks require
seven moves, while four disks can take as many as 15 moves!
