Challenge 5: Predator Aye!

Today's Challenge represents the intricate dance between circling predators and dodging prey. It is essentially a two-player game, but thankfully we at the Blue Planet have the connections and clout necessary to drain the BBC budget and have developed a rudimentary base-level AI Opponent, which each of you will be playing against.

The Challenge involves a hexagonal Grid. The two players (you and the artificial opponent) will take turns to move around the Grid, colouring in hexagons you have already visited. You are not allowed to visit a hexagon space that is already coloured in. And the Challenge will end when either you or the AI is surrounded by coloured-in spaces only, and thus has nowhere left to move. Your goal is to get the AI boxed in so that it loses in the smallest number of moves. Or, if you cannot achieve a win, to last as many moves as possible before the AI boxes you in, and you lose.


When you join the Member Group "Predator Aye!' you'll a grid with starting points marked, and a Trigger. For instance:



Here the orange hexagon is where you start; the blue hexagon is where the AI begins. (Note that the starting points may be different in the actual Challenge.)

You get to take the first turn. You'll do this by copying the above image into Paint or some other image editing program, colouring in another hexagon adjacent to your starting point, then uploading the image and posting it in your Challenge thread. Like so:



You don't need to put any arrows in your uploads - we're just using it here to show the direction our example player has chosen to move.

After you upload your move, you should post the Trigger you were given with the original Grid. This will then tell you what the AI's next move is.
For instance, your Trigger may post and become this:



This is how the AI will select a predetermined 'reaction' to whatever moves you make. Because the player in our example moved up and to the left, the AI will now make the third move listed.

So you need to go back to the last image you uploaded, and colour in the AI's move. Then make your own next move, colour that in as well, and upload an updated image with the next set of moves:



Once again, the arrows are for demonstration purposes only - all you need to do is keep track of which hexagon you moved to last, so that you can make sure your next move is to an adjacent space.

After you post that image, you'll use the appropriate Trigger (in this case, EXAMPLETRIGGERFOUR) to discover the AI's next move. And then repeat the process over and over, always uploading a Grid that shows the AI's next move and your response, then Triggering the AI's next move, and so on.




And though we've done our best to limit its likelihood, sometimes the AI may try to make an impossible move - to go outside the Grid, or into a space that has already been coloured in. If this happens, you should instead move them to a different space by working clockwise from their attempted (impossible) move until you hit an empty space.

So for instance if the next move the AI asked you to make for it, from the above image, was to move up and to the right. This would be an impossible move, for there is no hexagonal space in that direction. So moving clockwise around their current position, you'd try to move them directly to the right instead... except that there's no hexagonal space there either. So you move clockwise again, moving them down and to the right - a space that does exist and is not yet coloured in, so that becomes the AI's next move.


Eventually you will reach a point where one or both players have limited room to maneuver:



In this instance, let us say that the AI wishes to move directly to the left. This will turn out to be a game-losing move for them, because the player can then move directly to the right, like so:



The AI's current location (marked by the end of their arrow) is now entirely surrounded by spaces that are already coloured in. Thus it can make no more moves, and the player has won the Challenge. After uploading that image, they can count the Challenge as completed, and their score will be recorded as: 'Player wins, in 7 moves'.

If the player's starting points and moves had been the blue ones in this example, then the last move would have been made by the orange AI. The player would need to upload that last image showing how they have been blocked in, with no move left to make. Then the Challenge wold be considered complete, and their score recorded as: 'Player loses, after 6 moves'.

Note that a player win in 18 moves, which is the maximum, would still be considered a better result than any loss by the player. And that in the event of a tie where multiple players get the same win/loss/moves result, we'll break the tie in favour of whoever completed the Challenge faster - so it's in your best interest to move quickly when you can.


We can't tell you what exactly you're competing for here, as I'm not even sure that the Cornley Crew has decided that yet? But it's sure to be something vital, where every player's results will be important.