Mancala-console

The board game of Mancala is implemented in a command line interface. Supports human interface, min-max algorithm, and alpha-beta pruning.

Installation

Clone the repository to your local machine:

git clone https://github.com/lunathanael/Klondike.git

The project was developed using C++11 and compiled using Make. Compile using the commands below:

make
make release

Strength

The Alpha Beta engine can outperform most human opponents. Results for Perft-test of depth 10:

Usage

The syntax for the available functions can be found in the headers. To start a game:

GAMESTATE gamestate;
start_game(&gamestate);

The game loop function requires a reference to the two engines and optional parameters.

int game_loop(
  GAMESTATE* gamestate, 
  int (*player_a)(GAMESTATE* gs, int),
  int (*player_b)(GAMESTATE* gs, int), 
  bool print_output = false, 
  int opt_A = -1, 
  int opt_B = -1
  );

Console Commands

quit - exits the console loop and closes the application.\

newgame - starts a new game.\

perft x - runs a perft test with depth x.\

d - displays the current board state.\

help - displays a help menu for the hole locations.\

game - starts a game with engines given and optional parameters.\

Example

game eng1 eng2 print_output opt1 opt2
game 3 3 1 16 16

Engine indexes:

...
enum ENGINES
{
  HUMAN_PLAYER = 0, RANDOM_PLAYER = 1, MIN_MAX_PLAYER = 2, ALPHA_BETA_PLAYER = 3
}
...

simulate - simulates a number of games with given parameters.

simulate eng1 eng2 number_of_games opt1 opt2
simulate 3 3 100 16 16

board - parses a board string.

board 4 4 4 4 4 4 0 4 4 4 4 4 4 0 0

For human moves, input the index number of the hole selected. For help on indexing, reference the help command.

Options

The rules for the game are defined in the defs.h header file, most settings can be changed without issue.

#define NUMBER_OF_HOUSES_PER_SIDE 6
#define NUMBER_OF_PLAYERS 2
#define STARTING_SEEDS_PER_HOUSE 4
static constexpr int ALLOW_CAPTURES = 1;
static constexpr int CAPTURE_BOTH = 1;
static constexpr int CAPTURE_ON_ONE_CYCLE = 0; // wtf?
static constexpr int ALLOW_RELAY_SOWING = 0;
static constexpr int ALLOW_MULTIPLE_LAPS = 1;
 
static constexpr int NUMBER_OF_TOTAL_HOUSES = (2 * NUMBER_OF_HOUSES_PER_SIDE);
static constexpr int NUMBER_OF_TOTAL_HOLES = (NUMBER_OF_TOTAL_HOUSES + NUMBER_OF_PLAYERS);
static constexpr int TOTAL_SEEDS_COUNT = (NUMBER_OF_TOTAL_HOUSES * STARTING_SEEDS_PER_HOUSE);
 
static constexpr int PLAYER_TO_STORE_INDEX[2] = { 6, 13 };
static constexpr int A_HOLE_RANGE[6] = { 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5};
static constexpr int B_HOLE_RANGE[6] = { 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12 };
...

Contributing

Pull requests are welcome. For major changes, please open an issue first to discuss what you would like to change.

License

MIT