A simple Rubik's Cube simulator and solver built in Python with Pygame for visual rendering and controls.
- Two-dimensional visualisation of a 3x3 Rubik's cube
- Keyboard controls for face turns and rotations.
- Generation of animated solutions based on the layer-by-layer method.
To work on or run this project, start by creating a virtual environment:
$ virtualenv venv
Activate the virtual environment by running:
$ source venv/bin/activate
Install the dependencies inside the virtual environment
$ pip install -r requirements.txt
Launch the main graphical user interface
$ python3 -m src.main
This folder contains the majority of the core logic for representing the Cube and the solver.
gui.py- The Gui class which acts as the interface between the Cube class and Pygame.cube.py- The Cube class which encapsulates all the main logic for representing a Rubik's Cube.history_cube.py- A subclass of Cube that has methods to record all moves applied.solver.py- The solving functions that generate solutions given an instance of a Cube.move.py- A simple Move dataclass to encapsulate information about specific moves.pieces.py- Simple Edge and Corner dataclasses to encapsulate information about pieces.colour.py- A simple Colour type definition to wrap around RGB colour tuples.
This folder contains any logic regarding scramble generation and scramble parsing.
generator.py- A simple scramble generation function that randomly selects moves to produce a scramble.parser.py- A set of parsing functions to convert between moves of str type and Move type.
This folder contains a set of statistical analysis functions to analyse the solver.
statistics.py- A simple Statistics class that generates scrambles and solutions while recording movecounts in a spreadsheet.
This folders contains the tests which can be run using python3 -m pytest.
test_cube.py- A set of tests to ensure data invariants for the cube are maintained and to test the solving functions.
This program uses a relatively simplistic representation of the Rubik's Cube. We simply consider the cube to be an array of 6 2-dimensional arrays, each representing a face of the cube. Each element of these 2-dimensional arrays then represents a sticker on the cube.
A single face turn then can be implemented by:
- Rotating all elements of the given face by 90 degrees
- Cycling all the rows/columns that intersect with the given face on all adjacent faces
The program implements a simplified variant of the LBL beginner's method. This method closely approximates how a normal beginner solver would solve a cube, although without the aid of human intuition. This approach to solving a cube is substantially less move optimal compared to more sophisticated computer-based algorithms, but was chosen due to ease of implementation and relatively low computation cost.