[Coco] Jeweled game done

[Roger Taylor]

At 08:12 PM 5/8/2008, you wrote:
>Roger,
>
>My thought on this being a newbie here is that if
>there was a way to have each gem have a certain path
>that it had to follow in order for the board to be
>completed. Lets say your board was 10x10. you lay the
>gems out scrambled and as the player starts to get
>ride of the gems he must be careful to do it in the
>order that each jems movement data requires it to be
>moved. So say a circle from position 2,3 would have to
>be moved to 2,4 and so on in order to complete the
>board. If one gem is moved out of its pre determined
>order then the player becomes trapped and must restart
>the board and try again. I don't think this would be
>too difficult to code (there i go again thinking).

You're describing the results of the algorithm, which is already how 
it works in the real game.  How Bejeweled scrambles a bunch of gems 
so that future collapses (but no new jewels raining down to fill the 
holes) result in future set-up moves that lead to new collapses, is a 
mystery to me at this time.  At Time(n) the board will have so many 
gems and so many possible swaps that lead to collapses.  I think the 
random puzzle must be built in reverse (lowest rows first) since the 
last moves made must be known first.