Connect Four

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credit for this assignment: Finn Voichick and Dennis Cosgrove

Motivation

Minimax is an important concept in game theory and search.

Negamax is a variant which relies on

While this technique is applicable to Chess (as Deep Blue employed to defeat Kasparov), we choose Connect Four as our context since it has a simpler game mechanic.

While the core part of searches like Minimax may be easy to parallelize, critical aspects such as alpha-beta pruning are more challenging.

Background

Video

Tutorial

Solving Connect Four

Wikipedia

Minimax

Negamax

The Core Questions

  • What are the tasks?
  • What is the data?
  • Is the data mutable?
  • If so, how is it shared?

Code To Use

connectfour.core

interface Board

isDone()
getWinner()
getCurrentPlayer()
getTurnsPlayed()
createNextBoard(int column)

java.util

class Optional<T>

Code To Implement

Negamax

class: ConnectFour.java Java.png
methods: negamaxKernel
selectNextColumn
package: connectfour.studio
source folder: student/src/main/java

method: private static double negamaxKernel(Board board, ToDoubleFunction<Board> heuristic, IntPredicate searchAtDepth, int currentDepth) Parallel.svg (parallel implementation required)

method: public static Optional<Integer> selectNextColumn(Board board, ToDoubleFunction<Board> heuristic, IntPredicate searchAtDepth) Parallel.svg (parallel implementation required)

Win or Lose Heuristic

class: WinOrLoseHeuristic.java Java.png
methods: applyAsDouble
package: connectfour.studio
source folder: student/src/main/java

method: public double applyAsDouble(Board board) Sequential.svg (sequential implementation only)

Evaluate the current state of the Board. You should return a negative number if you have lost. You should return less negative numbers for losses that occur later.

OpenEndedHeuristic (Optional)

class: OpenEndedHeuristic.java Java.png
methods: applyAsDouble
package: connectfour.challenge
source folder: student/src/main/java

method: public double applyAsDouble(Board board) Sequential.svg (sequential implementation only)

Testing Your Solution

Correctness

class: ConnectFourTestSuite.java Junit.png
package: connnectfour.studio
source folder: testing/src/test/java

Visualization

class: ConnectFourViz.java VIZ
package: connnectfour.viz.game
source folder: student/src//java

ConnectFourViz.png