Cosmic Express level solver

This is a program to solve levels of the game "Cosmic Express" by brute force, randomly attempting every possible path through the level until it finds one that works.

I wrote this because I love the game, and found every level deliciously frustrating but ultimately solveable. Until I got to the last one, Nova 7. Try as I might, I couldn't get past that one. And since Cosmic Express is still a newish game, no walkthroughs were available online. Since I was basically trying to manually brute-force the game, I decided to make a computer do it for me. :)

Usage

./cesolver.js [--non-interactive|-I] MAPFILE

• You must provide the path to the mapfile at the command-line. This is the file that describes the level to solve.
• By default, the program displays the solving attempts in progress via curses (well, actually blessed, a curses-like NPM library). ** To deactivate the curses display, use the flag --non-interactive or -I ** In non-interactive mode, the program will print an update every 1,000,000 steps, and print the solution once it's found. (It also runs faster.)

Mapfile syntax

The mapfile is a plain text file holding an ASCII representation of the Cosmic Express level. The map must be rectangular; that is, each line of the text file must be the same length. If you're dealing with a level that doesn't have a square floor, you'll need to pad it out into a rectangle using # walls.

• Terrain:
  • Empty cell: .
  • Wall/Obstacle: #
  • Track crossing: +
  • Wormholes: *
• Aliens & Houses for them:
  • Green alien: G
  • Green house: g
  • Orange alien: O (capital letter o)
  • Orange house: o
  • Purple alien: P
  • Purple house: p
  • Wildcard house: ?
• Entrance and exit:
  • Entrance: A
  • Exit: Z
• More than one train car
  • First car: A
  • Following cars: a
  • You only need to represent passenger cars, not the leading "engine car" that comes in front of them. So for a level with two passenger cars, you'd put this at the start of the map: aA

For levels with multiple train cars, you should recess the exit into the wall of the level, like so:

##..
Z...
##..
aA..
##..

Limitations

• Only supports up to 3 cars
• Only supports one pair of warps
• Doesn't support [SPOILER]
• Doesn't support that thing where when the train goes between two aliens at the same time they bump against each other and neither one gets into the car.