Practice Problem - Design Connect 4

[kanmaytacker]

What?

Connect4 game is also known as Four Up, Plot Four, Find Four, Captain’s Mistress, Four in a Row, Drop Four, and Gravitrips in the Soviet Union.

It is a two-player connection board game, in which the players choose a color and then take turns dropping colored discs into a seven-column, six-row vertically suspended grid.

There could be human and bot players.

The pieces fall straight down, occupying the lowest available space within the column.

The objective of the game is to be the first to form a horizontal, vertical, or diagonal line of four of one’s own discs. Connect Four is a solved game.

The first player can always win by playing the right moves.

Try the game out here

Why?
Common question in design and machine coding interviews.

How?

1. Establish a concrete set of requirements
2. Identify the entities and their attributes and relationships.
3. Identify the use cases. Optional - Use case diagram
4. Create a class diagram
5. [Optional] - Implement one of the behaviours like making a move or deciding the winner.
6. [Research] - How to implement moving behaviour for a bot?
   • A popular choice is the min-max algorithm. Another reference
   • Another one is the Apha-Beta algorithm