Rush Hour puzzle solver

This program solves a standard 6 by 6 rush hour board game. The solver is implemented to use a breadth-first search for an efficient solution, After each successful solve the program outputs the solution in the format specified in section file formats section.

Execution

The input to the program is a commnad line argument that can specifies a single board file or a directory that contains board files.

examples
 
    java RushHour testCases/ or java RushHour testCases/testCase01

Rules

• Properties of the red block are specified foremost.
• The red block should be orientated horizontally.

File formats

Board file

The board files are written in block of four lines that represent properties of the vehicles on that game board. The following text is a template of the properties of a single vehicle.

template
 
    color of vehicle
    x-coordinate y-coordinate
    width height
    orientation


example

    RE
    2 2
    2 1
    h

This examples represents a red vehicle with upper leftmost edge at the
coordinates (2,2) and with a width of 2, a height of 1. This vehicle
can only move to the left or the right.

h - represents horizontal movement.
v - represents vertical movement.

Solution file

The solution file basically specifies the movements of the vehicles in the format that below.

template
 
    color of vehicle number of spaces to move direction of movements

example

    RE 1 L

This examples represents a red vehicle being moved one space to the
left.

Color format

Colors are specified in a board file by taking the first two letters of the color, if a color is a shade another colors. The first letter of the shade and color are specified. i.e Dark Blue is specified as DB.

Available colors

Red - RE
Purple - PU
Brown - BR
Maroon - MA
Pink - PI
Orange - OR
Caustic - CA
Soda - SO
Lime - LI
Yellow - YE
Royal - RO
Blue - BL
Cyan - CY
Dark Blue - DB
Dark Green - DG

Coordinate space

The coordinate space is divided by squares of length 1 each, and the coordinate space of a board is formatted such that the upper left corner of the grid is the origin (0, 0). Thus coordinates for each vehicle on a game board specify the coordinates of it's upper leftmost edge in such a coordinate space. i.e The coordinate (0, 0) would mean that the upper leftmost edge of the vehicle is at the origin.