Bug 448081

Summary: Game "Golf" is generating significant numbers of unwinnable games according to the solver
Product: [Applications] kpat Reporter: Christian Peter Nielsen <christian.nielsen.41>
Component: generalAssignee: Stephan Kulow <coolo>
Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME    
Severity: normal CC: aacid, christian.nielsen.41, kde-games-bugs
Priority: NOR    
Version: 21.08.1   
Target Milestone: ---   
Platform: Kubuntu   
OS: Linux   
Latest Commit: Version Fixed In:
Sentry Crash Report:

Description Christian Peter Nielsen 2022-01-07 18:03:14 UTC 
SUMMARY
***
Whilst playing the “Golf” game with the solver operational, it becomes apparent that roughly only one game in every 10 or so is actually winnable.   I know the solver takes the fun out of the game by telling you before you start whether you can win or not, but the ratio of games you can win, to those you can't, seems incredibly low.  Could this be a bug with generating a random game, or is this low ratio of winnable games intentional?
***


STEPS TO REPRODUCE
1.  Open kpat
2.  Select “Golf”
3.  Activate the solver
4.  Hit “New Deal” 
5. Observe the number of “This game cannot be won” versus “This game is winnable”.

OBSERVED RESULT
Significant amount of unwinnable games generated.

EXPECTED RESULT
A better ratio of winnable to unwinnable games.

SOFTWARE/OS VERSIONS

Operating System: Kubuntu 21.10
KDE Plasma Version: 5.22.5
KDE Frameworks Version: 5.86.0
Qt Version: 5.15.2
Kernel Version: 5.13.0-23-generic (64-bit)
Graphics Platform: X11
Comment 1 Stephan Kulow 2022-01-09 12:43:49 UTC 
Well, the games are created randomly and I get rather 6 games to win in 10.
Comment 2 Stephan Kulow 2022-01-09 12:47:42 UTC 
To check if you use the same solver: Ctrl-D your way from game number 1 to 20

1. not to win
2. to win
3. not to win
4. to win
5. to win
6. not to win
7. not to win
8. not to win
9. not to win
10. to win
11. not to win
12. to win
13. not to win
14. not to win
15. to win
16. to win
17. not to win
18. to win
19. to win
20. not to win

So 9 out of to 20 are a little less lukcy than I was without picking numbers, but far better than your 1/10
Comment 3 Christian Peter Nielsen 2022-01-13 18:20:10 UTC 
Hi Stephan.

So I did what you suggested, CTRL+D'd my way through the first 20 games, and my results are significantly different from yours.  I got a total of 3 winnable games in 20.

Games 4, 16 and 19 were marked winnable by the solver, the rest were marked as not winnable.

I really don't know what to do with this...
Comment 4 Christian Peter Nielsen 2022-02-26 10:22:13 UTC 
Any chance I could get an update on this, please?  Clearly there are differences between the games generated by your version, Stephan(In reply to Christian Peter Nielsen from comment #3)
> Hi Stephan.
> 
> So I did what you suggested, CTRL+D'd my way through the first 20 games, and
> my results are significantly different from yours.  I got a total of 3
> winnable games in 20.
> 
> Games 4, 16 and 19 were marked winnable by the solver, the rest were marked
> as not winnable.
> 
> I really don't know what to do with this...

Any chance I could get an update on this, please?  Clearly there are differences between the games generated by your version, Stephan, and mine.  Do you have any ideas what could be causing this to occur?  Thanks!
Comment 5 Christian Peter Nielsen 2022-08-08 14:45:34 UTC 
May I please get an update? This has been open since February and it's still just as bad now!    Thanks!
Comment 6 Stephan Kulow 2022-08-08 15:31:15 UTC 
I don't expect to look into this the next years.
Comment 7 Christian Peter Nielsen 2022-08-08 16:13:26 UTC 
So basically you're just going to ignore the fact that this program is broken, and you're not prepared to fix it, am I right?
Comment 8 Christian Peter Nielsen 2022-08-08 18:54:55 UTC 
Maybe if you're not prepared to fix things when they're wrong (look at how different your results were to mine; whatever is up needs fixing), you should hand over to someone prepared to maintain the package.
Comment 9 Albert Astals Cid 2022-08-08 19:13:24 UTC 
Where is that mythical person that is going to fix this bug?
Comment 10 Stephan Kulow 2023-02-28 19:28:34 UTC 
I'll remove the golf solver and then we're done here.