http://www.wargear.net/boards/view/Finite+State+Machine

I've been curious for a while if the wargear factories are Turing complete.  That is could they be used to compute any arbitrary calculation.   When the Educational theme was chosen I decided to use that opportunity to implement something along those lines.  I believe that the Finite State Machine I have made shows that (assuming no limits to # of territories/factories), you could make a universal Turing machine with just wargear factories:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_completeness

The color scheme came from this article about Hollywood's recent obsession with Teal vs. Orange, and I thought it looked futuristic:
http://theabyssgazes.blogspot.com/2010/03/teal-and-orange-hollywood-please-stop.html

I first made a test board with just the state transitions to see if it could be done.  Basically for each arrow, you need to have factories that include that arrow, plus:

first create factory destination for no bits
then every single bit factory removes the zero bit setting & adds destination
for each combination of 2 bits remove it's 2 1-bit destinations and adds itself, 
3 bits, etc

That worked, but just transitioning around a state table was not a game.   I created an area in the middle of the map where the current state of each player would affect things.   Originally the player started with random squares owned in the center grid, and the state would affect which direction all those squares would copy themselves.  This was less fun than I had hoped, so I switched to the snake game.  I had to figure out how to get the snake to move and die:

Based on the current state, move the head in the correct direction.
For each cell, Factories with just wall as member have -1 to head in that wall.   That removes each players old head, as well as killing enemy heads that run into your tail.
For eliminations for collision with own wall - for head movement factories, also cancel that movement with -1 if head & wall owned.


Of course I didn't want to create all these factories by hand, because it would take a long time
and be error prone, so I had python code to do it.  You can see it all here if you like:

https://sites.google.com/a/prestopnik.com/wgame/map/finite-state-machine/source-code

Ozyman wrote:

The color scheme came from this article about Hollywood's recent obsession with Teal vs. Orange, and I thought it looked futuristic:

http://theabyssgazes.blogspot.com/2010/03/teal-and-orange-hollywood-please-stop.html

Funny...except then I think about Transformers 2...then I think about how Michael Bay ruined the Transformers franchise with movies 2 and 3...then I think about him doing the next Ninja Turtles movie...with Megan Fox in it...then I'm sad and feel blue (not Teal!).

PS I read the rest of your post too...and haven't quite consumed it all, but nice write up!

Yeah, it was kind of an ironic choice, since the article is so negative about teal vs. orange and how overused it is.

I forgot to mention that I also tried something new with this map that I don't think I've seen done before (beside all the state transition stuff).    I wanted a scenario where players start with random bits in their FSM, but I wanted to make sure it was only their own bits (i.e. no enemy owned territories).  What I did was make a set of territories in an unused part of the middle of the map with no transparency to the board image, so you can't see the territories.  I had those start random.   Then I created 3 sets of factories for every one of the randomly assigned territories.  First set sets a bit in the Orange transition table if the random territory is on (These also have orange bit bucket as a member so they only trigger on Orange's turn).  Second is the same idea but for Teal.   Third set of factories just have themselves as members and turn themselves off, so that they only affect things the first turn.

This technique can be used to have a bit more control over how an area starts, but still have it random.  There are some limitations - mainly in that players cannot be able to interact between these territories or it can screw things up (i.e. suppose player 1 on their first turn takes a territory that a factory on the player 2 turn will give to player 2).   But under the right circumstances (maybe starting territories just start with 1, so you can't attack?  Or there is some separation between the randomly assigned areas) I think it could be used as an alternative to the 'keep alive' factories (e.g. Darkness Falls).  You could have the main board start as neutral capitals (with capital capture on).  You could have off board territories assigned randomly, and factories to copy those assignments from the random initials, to the capital territories on board.  In a limited sense, this gives you the 'random capitals', we have been asking for.