Competition

Build an AI to play Flood It.

Algorithm

Used a heuristic based on Dijkstra’s algorithm for the majority of the board. Switched to a brute force for the end.

Result

Dead last. The scoring was based on both fewest moves and shortest amount of time. In the competition, we got 1st place for moves but last place for time because we spent too much of it in the brute force stage. Tweaking a single constant (percent solved using brute force) would have brought us into first place.

My Responsibilities

Worked as part of a team of 5. Each of us was responsible for writing a handful of solvers using various algorithms so we could benchmark them against each other. I came up with and wrote the heuristic algorithm we ended up using, and I also helped with writing the brute force solver.

Additional Links

Source Code: Google Code