# Umbrella - Pyraminx Solver



## JustinJ (Nov 21, 2011)

To my knowledge, there weren't any great ways of generating pyraminx algs outside of ksolve or Jaap's solver, neither of which is very user-friendly, so I decided to make one.

Umbrella
Screenshot:






It also kind of functions as a sim, it has keyboard controls, although there's no rotations or timer, so they're more useful for setting up cases quickly or trying algs out.

I know it works in Firefox and Chrome, I haven't tried anything else, but as long as you're using one of those you should be fine.

It gets a little slow when the states get closer to the maximum depth (10,11 moves) but it shouldn't be too bad, especially because I think those states are unlikely to come as part of a speedsolving method.


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## AndyK (Nov 21, 2011)

This is fantastic


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## tim (Nov 21, 2011)

I haven't tried it yet, just a small suggestion: Draw a border around the selected color instead of changing the color. That should make it more clear which color is actually selected (and might even clean up your code).


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## JustinJ (Nov 21, 2011)

AndyK said:


> This is fantastic


 
Thanks 



tim said:


> I haven't tried it yet, just a small suggestion: Draw a border around the selected color instead of changing the color. That should make it more clear which color is actually selected (and might even make clean up your code).


 
That's a very good idea, thanks. I made the change.


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## TheMachanga (Nov 21, 2011)

It works on safari.


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## antoineccantin (Nov 21, 2011)

Nothing happens when I click "show" for the instructions

Firefox

P.S. Javascript is enabled


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## tim (Nov 21, 2011)

Another small thing: Pressing the spacebar scrolls down the page in many browsers. You should prevent that by calling e.preventDefault(). Sorry for not being really helpful only nit-picky.


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## JustinJ (Nov 21, 2011)

antoineccantin said:


> Nothing happens when I click "show" for the instructions
> 
> Firefox
> 
> P.S. Javascript is enabled



That's really weird, it works for me in Firefox :/ if everything else works, the instructions are kind of unnecessary, so you should still be able to use it fine if you want to. Thanks for the heads-up though.



tim said:


> Another small thing: Pressing the spacebar scrolls down the page in many browsers. You should prevent that by calling e.preventDefault(). Sorry for not being really helpful only nit-picky.


No, that's great  I didn't realize it was that easy to stop that from happening, thanks again!


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## antros (Nov 21, 2011)

I can generate "Invalid state specified."
I can not change to any color.
There is no option "irrelevant field".
Not working on Opera.
Thanks for the program


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## DavidWoner (Nov 21, 2011)

Needs an option for blank pieces. Not even blank stickers, just blank pieces. I think all the steps preceding l3e are the ones that need the most development, and being able to ignore l3e while generating algs is essential.

Other than that it is great!


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## JustinJ (Nov 22, 2011)

antros said:


> I can generate "Invalid state specified."


Are you sure you specified a legal state? It needs to be able to be reached by just making turns.


> I can not change to any color.


Yeah, sorry, I'll allow changing the colour scheme when I get a chance, but if you really want it I can just upload a version with a different colour scheme, if you want to let me know the colours you want.


> There is no option "irrelevant field".


I added the option to ignore pieces, you can right click or apply it as a colour.


> Not working on Opera.


I'll look into that, for now you'll just have to use Chrome, Firefox, or Safari :/


> Thanks for the program






DavidWoner said:


> Needs an option for blank pieces. Not even blank stickers, just blank pieces. I think all the steps preceding l3e are the ones that need the most development, and being able to ignore l3e while generating algs is essential.
> 
> Other than that it is great!


I gave it a shot, it's a bit slower for non-complete states, but that's mostly balanced out by the fact that the non-complete states take fewer moves.

Also, it's only for edges right now, I'll do centers too soon.

Let me know if there's anything else that would make it better that I haven't mentioned here.

Also, is anyone else having the same problem as Antoine in Firefox?



TheMachanga said:


> It works on safari.



Thanks.


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## mrCage (Nov 22, 2011)

Idea. You may or may not consider a flash version. Maybe it's too much work, but will get rid of browser incompatibilities 

Per


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## tim (Nov 22, 2011)

mrCage said:


> Idea. You may or may not consider a flash version. Maybe it's too much work, but will get rid of browser incompatibilities


 
Better idea: Use jQuery or any other library which handles those browser incompatibilities for you.

btw. triangles can entirely be drawn by using HTML+CSS (no need for canvas).


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## Erik (Nov 22, 2011)

*bookmarked* its very user friendly and quite fast too! This was really something that was missing. Good job JustinJ!


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## luke1984 (Nov 22, 2011)

Thanks! It works perfectly on Dolphin browser for Android tablets.


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## mrCage (Dec 1, 2011)

As the poster said later:


[URL="http://www.russellheimlich.com/blog/"]Russell Heimlich[/URL] responded on _February 9th, 2011_:
Ha, you’re right! I never noticed that. I wish the CSS spec was more specific about border styles. They can be all over the place across browsers.
I guess it works in most browsers. I haven't tried.

Per


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## JustinJ (Dec 2, 2011)

So I tried to make it a little prettier, and you can get suboptimal solutions now, if you want.

Here's a link and a screenshot:





It's still not quite where I want it, but it's getting there.


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## Tim Major (Dec 2, 2011)

wat wat wat :OOOOOOOOO

I generated maybe 50-60 algs (3 out of 4 sets) for a method that I learnt roughly 20 algs on, and now I've forgotten them all. Generating algs was ridiculously painful. There was a program Odder used and gave me, but I couldn't get it to work.

Edit: works in chrome, (which you already knew), the picture is a little gross, a bit annoying to visualize. Can you make look like this? Much easier to visualize. http://www.jaapsch.net/puzzles/javascript/pyraminj.htm

Edit: I just tried it as a sim, it's awesome. I could never get the hang of jjsim for pyra and it glitched sometimes. Has qq made a sim like this? (qsim for pyra)


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## IanTheCuber (Dec 4, 2011)

On my computer it shows up as a blank page, even after refreshing it.


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## Tim Major (Dec 4, 2011)

IanTheCuber said:


> On my computer it shows up as a blank page, even after refreshing it.


 
Doesn't help, specify what your computer is running.


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## JustinJ (Dec 4, 2011)

IanTheCuber said:


> On my computer it shows up as a blank page, even after refreshing it.


 
What browser are you using? I'm only certain it works with the latest versions of Chrome and Firefox.


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