Mancala-console

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

Compiling

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);

Commands

The commands for the console_loop:

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

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

Engine indexes:

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.

Contributing

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

Please make sure to update tests as appropriate.

License

MIT