Instructions for Cube.exe Program written by Tim Wylie Date: 2005 Initial notes --------------- This program was not really intended for mass use, so it's a little querky. Menu items can be entered in lower or upper cases and don't have to have spaces between them, but they can. For each move the cube is redrawn. Only U, D, L, R, F, B can be entered, so to do R' you'd have to enter R R R(r r r or rrr work as well). A Level is the number of moves, so looking for a solution at level 4 means you're finding a solution that only takes 4 moves. Sequences can also only use U, D, L, R, F, and B, but sequences must be entered in all caps and have a space between each turn. This was just to make the code quick and easy. The side colors are based off of how I solve the cube and later I might add in options to change them. The spot also has the letter corresponding to which side it's from to help follow pieces as well. A quick note to say that a solution of X number of moves is unique to that number of moves, and higher number searches prune out those possibilities. For instance. If from a solved state you applied F R to a cube, then searching at level two would return R' F' as the solution, but if you searched at level three or higher it would never find a solution because the program will only look for solutions that are unique. And it would not find something like R' F' L L L L, because that is just stupid and redundant solutions like that are pruned out of the search as well. Main Menu ---------- Move: (U)p, (D)own, (L)eft, (R)ight, (F)ront, (B)ack Options: (S)olve, (*)Sequence, (Q)uit Moves: U - Moves the U face a quarter turn clockwise. D - Moves the D face a quarter turn clockwise. L - Moves the L face a quarter turn clockwise. R - Moves the R face a quarter turn clockwise. F - Moves the F face a quarter turn clockwise. B - Moves the B face a quarter turn clockwise. Options: S - Find a solution to the current state of the cube. Takes you to the solving menu * - Enter a sequence to run on the current cube. Takes you to the sequence menu Q - Quits the program. Solving Menu ------------- Options: (L)evel (E)xtended (P)rogressive (C)omplete (A)ll (Q)uit Options: L - Prompts you to enter a number for the level (number of moves) that you want to look for a solution at. This option only uses the six clockwise quarter turns U, D, L, R, F, B, so if the solution was R' it would be level 3 equal to R R R. E - Prompts you to enter a number for the level (number of moves) htat you want to look for a solution at. This option is set by default and uses 18 moves in the search. U, U', U2, D, D', D2, L, L', L2, R, R', R2, F, F', F2, B, B', B2. This is almost always the option that you want. P - This options starts at one move. It searches the current level and tells you if a solution was found or not for that level then asks if you want it to search the next level. This option uses the extended level search. C - This sets whether you are looking for a solution to the complete cube or just to Roux's third step which is a 2x3 block on each side and the top four corners solved. It is set to solve for the entire cube by default. A - This sets whether you are searching for all possible solutions at a level or just the first one that is found. This doesn't happen a lot. Example: If the scramble was U D L R, it would return L' R' U' D', L' R' D' U', R' L' U' D', and R' L' D' U'. Symetrical things like this pop up a lot when doing corners. It is set to only return the first solution found by default. Q - Takes you back to the main menu. Sequence Menu -------------- Asks you to enter the number of times to try to the sequence. It will run it until either it gets back to the solved position or until it has run it the number of times specified. You can tell it to run it x number of more times ad infinum. Whenever it returns to a solved cube it will tell you the total number of times that it ran the sequence before it was solved again.