Amazons

Amazons is a game played on a 10x10 chessboard with four black queens, four white queens, and a large supply of pawns to be used as "arrows". As in the Nim games we have studied, the winner is the last player to be able to move.

Project

The project will consist of building a program that plays a reasonable game of Amazons.

• Your program should employ alpha-beta negamax search (or better) using a transposition table.
• Iterative deepening should be used, with transposition table values subsituting for heuristic values when possible during move ordering.
• Teams containing a graduate student will have the additional responsibility of having some sort of specialized opening play (such as an opening book or specialized opening heuristics), and at least one other special feature, for example: automated opening book learning, thinking on opponents' time, specialized endgame play, advanced search strategies, machine learning techniques.
• In order to compete in the tournament, your program must be able to play automatically on Michael Buro's internet game server. If your program cannot do this, it must have some other reasonable means of entering and displaying moves and board positions.
• I must be able to compile and run your program on a box in the Linux Lab.
• You must have a project webpage containing a description of your player and other writeup materials. While you are not required to make the source or binary of your player available via the web, you are highly encouraged to do so.

Grading

You will not be graded in any way on the tournament performance of your program. Indeed, you are not required to enter the end-of-class tournament, although you are encouraged to do so: please let me know if you do not wish to participate. The grading criteria are that the project must meet requirements, consist of reasonable code, and have a reasonable scientific writeup.

Useful Links

• The U. Alberta Amazons page contains rules as well as useful links and references.
• Michael Buro's Generic Game Server architecture will be the focal point for connections. His amsbot is a very strong Amazons player.

Projects should be submitted by e-mail to <cs510games@cs.pdx.edu>. The words "cs510games final project" should appear somewhere in the subject line. The project submission should be an e-mail containing the URL of your writeup, and source code if not present on your web page. Please follow all accepted coding and software engineering practices for your programming language. Remember, if I can't understand your submission, I can't give you credit for it.

I'd like you to work on this assignment in two-person teams. If you work with anyone outside your team, you must credit them in your submission.