Building Premagic Game

by Kardi Teknomo

In this tutorial, we will build a simple premagic game. Through this tutorial, you will learn the following:

• How to use pysimplegui and numpy for a simple matrix game.
• Through the concept of natural matrix, you will learn on how (row, col) coordinate can be converted into one dimensional index and vice versa.
• How to generate the layout programmatically.

What is Premagic Game?

Premagic game is a simple solitaire board game created based on my paper "Premagic and Ideal Flow Matrices". The player would change the value of the cells such that the sum of rows is exactly the same as the sum of columns. The challenge is to win the game in minimum number of cell changes.

Clearly, the game of size N can be solved at maximum $N^{2}-N$ number of cell changes. The player would lose if the number of changes is more than the maximum number of cell change.

Simple solution to win the game is to make symmetric matrix, or constant matrix.

Let us start. First, we importing the necessary modules.

import PySimpleGUI as sg
import numpy as np
import math

Before we enter the development of the game, I need to explain several concepts that will be used in the game development:

1. Natural Matrix
2. Premagic Matrix

Natural Matrix

Natural matrix is a matrix of ordered natural number. There are two ways to create natural matrix:

1. Fill the matrix by columns
2. Fill the matrix by rows

Given an index $i$ (1 to $mR \cdot mC$) and matrix size (i.e. maximum number of rows $mR$ or maximum number of columns $mC$), we can find row and column associated with the index.

The index start from 1 up to $mR \cdot mC$, which is the matrix size.

Natural matrix filled by columns

The formula is as follow:

$ r = r=mod(\left ( i-1 \right ),mR)+1 $

$ c = \left \lceil \frac{i}{mR} \right \rceil $

$ i = mR\cdot \left ( c-1 \right )+r $

The following codes show the natural matrix filled by columns.

# row and col based on index version 1 (index is filled by column)

mR=4 # max row
mC=6 # max col
m=np.zeros((mR,mC),dtype= np.int8)
for idx in range(1,mR*mC+1):
    col=math.ceil(idx/mR)
    row=((idx-1)%mR)+1
    m[row-1,col-1]=idx
print(m)

Natural matrix filled by rows

The formula is as follow:

$ r = \left \lceil \frac{i}{mC} \right \rceil $

$ c = mod(\left ( i-1 \right ),mC)+1 $

$ i = mC\cdot \left ( r-1 \right )+c $

The following codes show the natural matrix filled by rows.

# row and col based on index version 2 (index is filled by row)

mR=4 # max row
mC=6 # max col
m=np.zeros((mR,mC),dtype= np.int8)
for idx in range(1,mR*mC+1):
    row=math.ceil(idx/mC)
    col=((idx-1)%mC)+1
    m[row-1,col-1]=idx
print(m)

Premagic

A matrix is called premagic if and only if the sum of rows is exactly the same of the sum of columns. This paper on "Premagic and Ideal Flow Matrices" shows an easy way to test if a matrix is premagic:

$\textbf{A}\cdot \textbf{j}=\textbf{A}^{T}\cdot \textbf{j}$

def isPremagic(A):
    '''
    return True if matrix A is premagic, that is the sum of rows is exactly equal to
    the sum of columns
    '''
    (N,N1)=A.shape
    j=np.ones((N,1))
    sR=np.dot(A,j)
    sC=np.dot(A.transpose(),j)
    return np.array_equal(sR,sC), sR, sC

# test it
R=np.random.randint(5,size=(5,5))
A=np.dot(R.transpose(),R)  # create symmetric matrix, which is surely premagic (see paper by Teknomo)
isPremagic(A)

Graphical User Interface of the Game

Now we will develop the graphical user interface of the board game.

First Version

First we will generate the layout programmatically. To do so, we create the layout as string, then we use eval() Python function to convert the string into code.

# version 1
def generateBoardLayout(N=2):
    # produce board layout
    s="["
    for row in range(1,N+2):
        s=s+"["
        for col in range(1,N+1):
            idx=(N)*(row-1)+col # index of natural matrix filled by rows
            if row<=N:
                element="sg.InputText('e"+str(idx)+"',size=(6,1),background_color = 'yellow')"
            else: # row = N + 1
                element="sg.InputText('c"+str(col)+"',size=(6,1))"
            if col==N:      # last column
                if row==N+1:  # last column, last row
                    s=s+element+",sg.InputText('sum',size=(6,1))]"
                else:       # last column, not last row
                    s=s+element+",sg.InputText('r"+str(row)+"',size=(6,1))],"
            else:           # not last column
                s=s+element+","
#         if row==N: # last row
    s=s+"]"
    return s
generateBoardLayout(3)

In the code below, we will use the layout function to generate the layout programmatically and then show.

# fist version
def premagicGame(N=2):
    sg.ChangeLookAndFeel('SystemDefault')
    layout=generateBoardLayout(N)
    window = sg.Window("Premagic Game", eval(layout), 
                           finalize=True,
                           grab_anywhere=False,
                           return_keyboard_events=True, 
                           use_default_focus=False, location=(50, 50))
    while True:
        event, value = window.read()
        if event == sg.WIN_CLOSED:    
            break
                

        # for debugging event and value
        print('Event {}'.format(event))
        print('Value {}'.format(value))
    window.close() 

premagicGame(N=3)

The result of the first version layout would be shown below.

Second Version

In the second version of layout, we will change the layout to accept event (by setting enable_events=True) and we add key such that we can call them uniquely later.

The following layout is copy of first version layout, add enable_events=True in the entry input text and then add key to all elements.

• text input for data entry would start the key with txtE
• text input for sum of row would start the key with txtR
• text input for sum of column would start the key with txtC
• text input for sum of all would have key='txtAll'

# version 2
def generateBoardLayout(N=2):
    # produce board layout
    s="["
    for row in range(1,N+2):
        s=s+"["
        for col in range(1,N+1):
            idx=(N)*(row-1)+col # index of natural matrix filled by rows
            if row<=N:
                element="sg.InputText('',key='txtE"+str(idx)+"',size=(6,1),background_color='yellow',enable_events=True)"
            else: # row = N + 1
                element="sg.InputText('',key='txtC"+str(col)+"',size=(6,1))"
            if col==N:      # last column
                if row==N+1:  # last column, last row
                    s=s+element+",sg.InputText('',key='txtAll',size=(6,1))]"
                else:       # last column, not last row
                    s=s+element+",sg.InputText('',key='txtR"+str(row)+"',size=(6,1))],"
            else:           # not last column
                s=s+element+","
#         if row==N: # last row
    s=s+"]"
    return s
generateBoardLayout(5)

In the second version of the game program, we copy the first version of the game above and then add more code to initialize and in the while loop section.

# second version
def premagicGame(N=2):
    sg.ChangeLookAndFeel('SystemDefault')
    layout=generateBoardLayout(N)
    window = sg.Window("Premagic Game", eval(layout), 
                           finalize=True,
                           grab_anywhere=False,
                           return_keyboard_events=True, 
                           use_default_focus=False, location=(50, 50))
    # initialize
    A=np.random.randint(low=0, high=9, size=(N,N))   # create random matrix N by N
    for idx in range(1,N*N+1):
        row=math.ceil(idx/N)                         # row of natural matrix
        col=((idx-1)%N)+1                            # col of natural matrix
        window['txtE'+str(idx)].update(A[row-1,col-1]) # fill textEntry with element of A
    retVal,sR,sC=isPremagic(A)                       # isPremagic, sum of row, sum of column
    sumAll=np.sum(sC)                                # sum of all
    for row in range(1,N+1):                         # fill up the sum of row
        window['txtR'+str(row)].update(int(sR[row-1][0]))
    for col in range(1,N+1):                         # fill up the sum of column
        window['txtC'+str(col)].update(int(sC[col-1][0]))
    window['txtAll'].update(int(sumAll))             # fill up the sum of all
    
    count=0
    maxCount=N*N-N
    while True:
        event, value = window.read()
        if event == sg.WIN_CLOSED:    
            break
                
        if event[:4]=="txtE": #text Entry
            try:
                val=value[event]           # get the text value of the entry 
                idx=int(event.split("txtE",1)[1]) # get the index from the key of the entry
                row=math.ceil(idx/N)       # get row of the entry
                col=((idx-1)%N)+1          # get col of the entry
                window[event].update(val)  # update value of entry
                A[row-1,col-1]=val               # update the matrix
                
                # update sum of rows, sum of columns, and total
                retVal,sR,sC=isPremagic(A)
                sumAll=np.sum(sC)
                for row in range(1,N+1):
                    window['txtR'+str(row)].update(int(sR[row-1][0]))
                for col in range(1,N+1):
                    window['txtC'+str(col)].update(int(sC[col-1][0]))
                window['txtAll'].update(int(sumAll))
                count=count+1              # update number of changes by player
                window.TKroot.title(str(maxCount-count)+" more steps") # remind player
                
                # check if reach correct answer of premagic
                if retVal:
                    sg.popup("You have won in " + str(count) + " changes")
                    break
                # the game must be able to be solved in less than max number of changes
                if count>maxCount:
                    sg.popup("You loss. You changed the cells " + str(count) + " times. The maximum change is "+str(maxCount))
                    break
            except Exception as e:
#                 print('error=',e)
                pass
        # for debugging event and value
#         print('Event {}'.format(event))
#         print('Value {}'.format(value))
    window.close() 

premagicGame(N=5)

The result of the second version would be similar to the picture below.

That's all. Enjoy the game and extend the game with your own additional optional features.

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Copyright © 2021-2023 Kardi Teknomo

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