Source: Dumbo Octopus
Part 1: Simulate a grid of numbers such that on each tick: advance all numbers by 1, any number that increases over 9 will ‘flash’ and add 1 to all neighbors (recursively, but each cell can only flash once) and then reset to 0. Count the number of flashes in the first 100 ticks.
DIRECT SIMULATION.
NEIGHBORS = [
(-1, -1), (-1, 0), (-1, 1),
(0, -1), (0, 0), (0, 1),
(1, -1), (1, 0), (1, 1),
]
@dataclass
class Cavern:
'''Simulation for https://adventofcode.com/2021/day/11.'''
width: int
height: int
data: MutableMapping[Tuple[int, int], int]
@staticmethod
def from_file(file: TextIO):
'''Load a simulation from a file-like object.'''
data = {
(x, y): int(value)
for x, line in enumerate(file)
for y, value in enumerate(line.strip())
}
width = max(x + 1 for (x, _) in data)
height = max(y + 1 for (_, y) in data)
return Cavern(width, height, data)
def step(self):
'''Advance the simulation 1 step, return the number of flashes.'''
flashpoint = 0
# First advance everyone 1
for (x, y) in self.data:
self.data[x, y] += 1
# Repeatedly find any 9s, but only trigger each one once (advanced)
advanced = set()
while True:
# Find the set of points that haven't been advanced and should
to_advance = {
(x, y)
for (x, y) in self.data
if (x, y) not in advanced and self.data[x, y] > 9
}
# If we didn't, we're done
if not to_advance:
break
# If we did, increment each neighbor
for (x, y) in to_advance:
flashpoint += 1
for (xd, yd) in NEIGHBORS:
if (x + xd, y + yd) not in self.data:
continue
self.data[x + xd, y + yd] += 1
advanced.add((x, y))
# Once we're out of the loop, set all points that actually advanced (hit 9) to 0
for (x, y) in advanced:
self.data[x, y] = 0
return flashpoint
def __str__(self):
return '\n'.join(
''.join(str(self.data[x, y]) for y in range(self.height))
for x in range(self.width)
) + '\n'
I particularly enjoy that step function. It seems pretty clean to me, using one set of values we’ve already advanced and calculating a new set of values to_advance so that we don’t duplicate.
And it makes for pretty clean code!
def part1(file: typer.FileText):
cavern = Cavern.from_file(file)
flashpoint = 0
for i in range(100):
flashpoint += cavern.step()
print(flashpoint)
How many flashes?
$ python3 octopus-flashinator.py part1 input.txt
1679
Part 2: Find the first frame where all of the points flash at the same time.
Neat. I already have this information, since we count and return how many flashes there are each frame. We’re looking for a frame when the number of flashes is equal to the number of cells (width * height):
def part2(file: typer.FileText):
cavern = Cavern.from_file(file)
generation = 0
while True:
generation += 1
flashpoint = cavern.step()
if flashpoint == cavern.width * cavern.height:
break
print(generation)
More than 100?
$ python3 octopus-flashinator.py part2 input.txt
519
Of course!
Animation station
Okay, this one is just begging for an animation, no?
def animate(file: typer.FileText, generations: int, filename: Path):
from PIL import Image # type: ignore
SCALE = 8
cavern = Cavern.from_file(file)
frames = []
def add_frame():
image = Image.new('RGB', (cavern.width, cavern.height), (0, 0, 0))
pixels = image.load()
for x in range(cavern.width):
for y in range(cavern.height):
value = int(255 * cavern.data[x, y] / 10)
pixels[x, y] = (value, value, value)
frames.append(image.resize((cavern.width * SCALE, cavern.height * SCALE), Image.NEAREST))
add_frame()
for _ in range(generations):
cavern.step()
add_frame()
frames[0].save(filename, save_all=True, loop=0, duration=40, append_images=frames[1:])
Running it for 600 shows exactly what the problem describes: increasing synchronization eventually settling in a steady state (watch it for a bit, it loops):
