The Towers of Hanoi is a puzzle invented in the late 1800's around a temple legend. The puzzle involves 3 posts (pegs) and a number of discs. These discs start stacked on the first pole in descending order with the largest disc on the bottom and the smallest on the top. To solve this puzzle, one must move all the discs from the first pole to the third pole. The only limitations of this puzzle are that you may only move one disc at a time, and you cannot stack a disc onto a disc that is larger than itself. This project uses an user interface, utilizing stacks, that allows a user to create and solve the Tower of Hanoi puzzle.
The user interface was developed in Visual Studio using Windows Forms.
The GUI is structured with:
- A Button and a NumericUpDown control in the top left hand corner that allows the user to change the number of discs and start a new game. The default number of discs is 3, but the user may choose to play a game with up to 11 discs.
- A Label in the top center that help keep track of the number of moves made.
- A Button and a NumericUpDown control with a corresponding Label in the top right hand corner. The button triggers the program algorithm to solve the puzzle automatically. The NumericUpDown control changes the delay between steps in milliseconds.
- In the middle, there are three FlowLayoutPanels. These columns represent the poles/pegs for the discs to slide onto. The discs Labels that are created dynamically.
- The Buttons below the FlowLayoutPanels allow the user to move discs between each of the panels. Note that Move Left in the first panel allows discs to be moved from panel one to panel three and Move Right on the third panel allows discs to be moved from panel three to panel one.
The user should be able to win the game with a message indicating whether or not they won in an optimal number of moves. If the user chooses to "Solve" the puzzle, all actions on the UI will be blocked until the computer is done solving the problem.
This program should be cloned to your local machine and be ran with Microsoft Visual Studio.