WaterWorld download

The TeachLogic Project

What is WaterWorld?

Waterworld is a variant on the ever-popular game Minesweeper, with two differences:

It is played on a triangular grid,
It distinguishes between guessing the contents of a location, versus asserting that you know the contents ¹

Although the game is fun to play in it's own right, we use it to illustrate how playing the game is really just an application of logic—in particular, inference rules, as explained in TeachLogic's Base module.

Requirements

WaterWorld runs on top of PLT Scheme (DrScheme), and therefore runs on Windows (95 and up), Mac OS X, or Unix running the X window system.

Download Instructions

Download and install DrScheme if you don't already have it on your computer. (It's a large program ² but an easy install.)
Download waterworld.plt, saving it to your disk.
Run DrScheme, and from the File menu, select Install .plt file…, specifying the file you just saved.
You may delete the file ww.plt downloaded in step 2 at your leisure.
Run the game by starting up DrScheme and evaluating the expression (require (lib "waterworld.ss" "waterworld")).
(You can make a platform-independent launcher by selecting Scheme > Create Executable….)

You are free to browse and edit the source; let us know if you have a contribution!

Game Rules

Synopsis: left-click on a location to indicate that it's safe (water), and right-click (or control-click) to indicate unsafe (pirate). At the same time, holding down the shift key to indicates an assertion, otherwise your move is considered a guess.

There are several possible outcomes to a move; WaterWorld will always continue the game, even though some of those outcomes are mistakes where normally a game would end:

You made an assertion that was correct: good for you!
You made an assertion when it's possible that you could be wrong: . You lose. The computer will offer to show you a counterexample, but allow you continue anyway. (Note that even if your assertion happened to be the right answer, it's still a mistake—there's a difference between knowing that you're guessing, and claiming to be sure when you're really not.)
You make a guess, but really it was possible to make an assertion (either about the location you guessed at, or some other location). While this isn't as bad as a wrong assertion, it's still needleslly endangering your crew: you lose (but can continue playing). Note that it doesn't matter if your guess was correct (by dumb luck) or not.
If you guess (wrong or right), but there were no possible assertions to make anywhere on the board, that's okay—you're scolded if your guess happened to be wrong, but hey, that could happen even to the best of players. For example, the very first move of the game ³. is of this sort (If we were using this game for a probability class instead of a logic class, then we might worry more about discriminating about which guesses are better than others.)

¹ Another slight difference is that in traditional Minesweeper, flagging a location as dangerous has no actual meaning—it is just a note to yourself. This isn't so in Waterworld: when you mark a WaterWorld location as dangerous, you'll lose if it's actually safe. (back to text)

² Note that installing DrScheme to run Waterworld is a bit like visiting the Louvre just to get a postcard of the Mona Lisa: sure it suffices, but it also provides other opportunities. You can use DrScheme to learn how to program and to write sophisticated programs. (back to text)

³ Well, remember to watch for corner cases: If you've set the total number of pirates to be zero, then even your first move should be an assertion. (back to text)

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