ref: 2534ec5d695a363775f73d62f153f946da01fa69
parent: aa1185f3f584af41770498de7dfe27071374f9bd
author: Simon Tatham <anakin@pobox.com>
date: Mon May 16 14:57:09 EDT 2005
The game IDs for Net (and Netslide) have always been random seeds rather than literal grid descriptions, which has always faintly annoyed me because it makes it impossible to type in a grid from another source. However, Gareth pointed out that short random-seed game descriptions are useful, because you can read one out to someone else without having to master the technology of cross- machine cut and paste, or you can have two people enter the same random seed simultaneously in order to race against each other to complete the same puzzle. So both types of game ID seem to have their uses. Therefore, here's a reorganisation of the whole game ID concept. There are now two types of game ID: one has a parameter string then a hash then a piece of arbitrary random seed text, and the other has a parameter string then a colon then a literal game description. For most games, the latter is identical to the game IDs that were previously valid; for Net and Netslide, old game IDs must be translated into new ones by turning the colon into a hash, and there's a new descriptive game ID format. Random seed IDs are not guaranteed to be portable between software versions (this is a major reason why I added version reporting yesterday). Descriptive game IDs have a longer lifespan. As an added bonus, I've removed the sections of documentation dealing with game parameter encodings not shown in the game ID (Rectangles expansion factor, Solo symmetry and difficulty settings etc), because _all_ parameters must be specified in a random seed ID and therefore users can easily find out the appropriate parameter string for any settings they have configured. [originally from svn r5788]