Tower of Hanoi - T-SQL Game

Github Repository with T-SQL Code for Microsoft SQL Server for playing popular game: 'Tower of Hanoi' in your favorite editor.

About the game

Tower of Hanoi is puzzle game consisting of three rods and number of rings (disks) of different size (diameters). Rings are slide into any rod. Game begins with all rings stacked on one rod, ordered by descending size - from smallest on top, to biggest at the bottom. The purpose of the game is to move the entire stack of rings from first to last rod, ordered by decreasing size. Two simple rules apply:

1. only one ring can be moved at the time
2. bigger ring can not be stacked on smaller ring
3. each move consists of taking upper most ring and placing it on the other rod (on top of another stacked rings or on empty rod)

T-SQL Procedures for the game

Game has two simple procedures. The initialization of the table for the background information store is created with dbo.INIT_Hanoi procedure. And the play procedure for moving and stacking the rings around the rods, done with dbo.PLAY_Hanoi.

Three T-SQL files are available:

1. Tower_Hanoi.sql - the script to the actual game
2. Play_Game.sql - the sample gameplay
3. AutoSolve.sql - the SQLCMD gameplay for autosolving the game and watching the output in command-line.

Playing the game

After running the content of Tower_Hanoi.sql file (creating two procedures dbo.INIT_Hanoi and dbo.Play_Hanoi ), start the game with:

EXEC dbo.INIT_Hanoi
   @rings = 4

And continue playing the game:

EXEC dbo.PLAY_Hanoi
     @from = 1
    ,@to = 2;
GO

EXEC dbo.PLAY_Hanoi
     @from = 1
    ,@to = 3;
GO

Opening the game in Azure Data Studio or in SSMS, the outlook do the game should be:

Game prevents you to make illegal moves and resets when you restack all the rings onto a different rod (last rod).

Actual Gameplay using Azure Data Studio (ADS):

Autosolver using SQL Server SQLCMD

Solving Tower of Hanoi game can be done by using SQL Server command line with a single procedure dbo.AutoSolver, available in AutoSolve.sql file.

Execute the content of the AutoSolve.sql file in SSMS or ADS. Once the procedure is persisent, run the SQLCMD. On your client machine, open CMD and navigate to your MSSQLServer folder (e.g.: C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL15.MSSQLSERVER) and run the following CMD command (please note, I am using a named instance, hence -S switch):

sqlcmd -S .\MSSQLSERVER2019 -q "EXEC TowerHanoi.dbo.AutoSolver @rings = 4"

AutoSolver can be run also from SSMS or ADS:

USE TowerHanoi;
GO

EXEC dbo.AutoSolver 
   @rings = 4

In both ways, it will stop once finished.

Forking or cloning the repository

To work in GitHub, go to https://github.com/tomaztk/Tower_of_Hanoi_sql_game and fork the repository. Work in your own fork and when you are ready to submit to make a change or publish your sample for the first time, submit a pull request into the master branch of this repository.

You can also clone the repository. Note: further changes should be fetched manually.

git clone -n https://github.com/tomaztk/Tower_of_Hanoi_sql_game

Code of Conduct

Collaboration on this code is welcome and so are any additional questions or comments.

License

Code is licensed under the MIT license.

ToDO

1. Prettify T-SQL code
2. Implementing procedures in Power BI or SSRS :-)