How to make CoC puzzle with Unicode characters?

General
#1

Hi

I’m trying to make my first CoC game that involves a string that’s been converted to unicode, had the numbers changed and then converted back. However, when i’m pasting in the answer to the first test i’m getting some of the dreaded unicode boxes with numbers inside. Any ideas how to resolve this or whether it will just work if i submit it?

Thanks

Contribution Guidelines
#2

If you wish to use unicode as puzzle input or output, a big NO!

Not all programming languages (e.g. C) has built-in support of these encodings. It is unfair. The standard IN and OUT do not know all these unicode encodings and can easily mess up.

If you wish to use unicode in the puzzle statement only for viewing in the browser, that is to some extend doable. As long as users’ browser encoding supports your encoding they can view it correctly.

3 Likes
#3

You can always submit it with state in “Private”. This way it’s a draft that is not visible to anybody but you.
Also, use ASCII instead.

#4

I tried setting the range to 128 (Mozilla docs say “The first 128 Unicode code points are a direct match of the ASCII character encoding”) but that’s doing the same thing as well.

I’m just using Javascript String.fromCharCode(int) and String.charCodeAt(i).

#5

Try to stay in the range 40-127 and it should be fine.

#6

Or even better between 32…126, so that you can use also a space :slight_smile:

#7

Maybe, instead of the specific case of Unicode, you could present the puzzle as a generalized cryptographic challenge: encode/change/decode?

#8

That’s what I meant actually, the range " " - “~”, but for some reason I gave the octal code of " " and the evil influence of Python made me write 127 instead of 126 :sweat_smile:

#9

Ok, i’ll try to narrow the range some more, thanks