Hazard map suggestion: lasers

[mawif]

This is the video game trope where spikes/fire/carnivorous plants/lasers shoot out of the environment in some pattern, and the player has to dodge them. Rather than any of those things though, it's hazard sauce that appears on the board for just a single turn, at regular intervals, in some predictable pattern. (I called this "lasers", but I guess "hoses" or similar is a better analogy? Anyway.)

Here's two proposed ways of doing it; there are certainly others.

Idea 1: Security grid

Every n turns, hazard sauce appears on the board in a fixed pattern. The pattern could be alternate rows/columns, a grid, a checker board, concentric circles etc, but is fixed for whole game. Optionally you could rotate patterns on a per-game basis.

This is really easy to simulate for players doing look-ahead, because both the pattern and n are fixed for the whole game, but I think most code bases could introduce the concept of "every n turns (starting at n-1) make sure my next move doesn't put my head where the sauce will appear". More advanced strategies include "can I force an opponent to put their head where the sauce will appear".

Idea 2: Random lasers

Every n turns, some number of cells on the edges of the board fill with hazard sauce. These are origin points for lasers/hoses/whatever analogy we're using that shoot on turn n+1, filling the row or column orthogonal to the edge the origin cell is on with hazard sauce. The sauce is gone on turn n+2.

. . . . . . . . . . .      . . . . x . . . . . .
x . . . . . . . . . .      x x x x x x x x x x x
. . . . . . . . . . .      . . . . x . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . .      . . . . x . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . x      x x x x x x x x x x x
. . . . . . . . . . x      x x x x x x x x x x x
. . . . . . . . . . .      . . . . x . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . .      . . . . x . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . .      . . . . x . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . .      . . . . x . . . . . .
. . . . x . . . . . .      . . . . x . . . . . .
  Turn n                          Turn n+1

You'd probably want to avoid having blocks of sauce with both dimensions > 2, or there's no way for unlucky snakes caught in that block to dodge. Or you could just ban adjacent origin cells altogether.

Similar to the security grid, this should be straight forward to account for for most folks, since the origins and hazards appear on consecutive turns, so you can still code for this if your snake is stateless. (Origin cells could have a different, lower health penalty on the turn they appear if unlucky head placement leading to a health penalty isn't desirable.) It's much harder to account for when doing look-head, since it's got a high branching factor, so feels like it would lead to periodic chaos as everyone dodges the beams. Forcing opponents into the sauce becomes a luck-of-the-draw thing, but there's some thinking to be done about how to capitalise on the period disruption of everyone's plans.

Variations:

• Origin cells appear anywhere on the board, and then "fire" in all four directions
• Number of origin cells increases as the game goes on, royale-style