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2024-10-20

Flare-On 11: Frog

Frog is the opening challenge of Flare-On 11 (2024): a small Python game where you steer a frog to a statue. The catch — there's no actual path from start to finish. Since you have the source, there are two ways through.

The Frog game: a frog on a grid, blocked from reaching the statue
No path from the frog to the statue

Option 1: build a path

The maze blocks are defined near the end of the program. Delete a few from the list and you open a corridor the frog can hop through.

def BuildBlocks():
    blockset = [
        Block(3, 2, False),
        Block(4, 2, False),
        Block(5, 2, False),
        # remove some of these to clear a path
        ...
    ]

Option 2: skip the game entirely

The flag lives in GenerateFlagText(), which only gets called once the player reaches the statue:

if player.x == victory_tile.x and player.y == victory_tile.y:
    victory_mode = True
    flag_text = GenerateFlagText(player.x, player.y)

There's nothing stopping you from calling it directly with the victory tile's coordinates — no hopping required:

flag_text = GenerateFlagText(int(victory_tile.x), int(victory_tile.y))

The lesson that carries through the rest of Flare-On: when you control the runtime, the "intended" path is optional. Find the function that produces the answer and call it on your terms.