HsTZAAR
-------
HsTZAAR is a computer program to play TZAAR, a 2-player abstract strategy
game designed by Kris Burm and the last game in the GIPF project.
HsTZAAR is written in Haskell and allows for local play against a computer AI;
it also provides a good interface for programmers to implement diferent
AI strategies.
This program was based on the htzaar implementation by Tom Hawkins.
In 2010, I started experimenting with classical AI techniques for TZAAR
and implemented them on-top of htzaar; since the later package is longer
updated, I decided to start HsTZAAR.
The main improvements so far are:
* a better GUI using gtk2hs for widgets and cairo for high-quality
2D board rendering.
* a better AI using minimax and alpha-beta prunning; it now plays at
a challenging level (at least for a beginner like myself).
Requirements
------------
HsTZAAR requires a resonably recent GHC compiler (version 6.10.x or newer)
plus the gtk2hs, cairo and glade libraries. It is developed in Ubuntu
GNU/Linux system, and should compile and run fine on other Linuxes.
I also verified that it compiles under Mac OS X (snow leopard) and should
probabily do under Windows as well (but this was not tested).
Compilation
-----------
Using the Haskell Cabal tool (fetches the package and any dependencies,
builds and installs):
$ cabal install hstzaar
Alternatively, you can do the build manually from the source tarball:
$ tar xvzf hstzaar-x.y.tar.gz
$ cd hstzaar-x.y
$ runhaskell Setup.hs configure
$ runhaskell Setup.hs build
$ runhaskell Setup.hs install
AI strategies
--------------
HsTZAAR implements a few AI strategies.
lame: selects a random valid move
greedy: selects the local best move by the static evaluation function
plyN: simple minimaxing to N-ply
dynN: greedy strategy for early game, then minimaxing N-ply for later game
All of the above will select a winning move or a move to prevent the
adversary from winning (if such moves are avaliable).
Note that higher ply values can increase memory consumption dramatically
and do *not* necessarily play better! The default greedy strategy plays
well enough to challenge a beginner such as myself and run under 150Mb
resident space.
Usage
-----
Executing the binary starts the GUI interface for playing against an AI;
some extra options are controlled by command line arguments:
hstzaar [OPTION..] [AI AI] where OPTIONS are
-s SEED --seed=SEED random number seed
-n N --matches=N number of matches (for AI tournaments)
-T --tests run QuickCheck tests
Examples:
1) Run a tournament between the greedy and ply2 strategies:
10 matches (5 random boards, each strategy plays first white
then black, fixing the random seed for repeatebility):
$ hstzaar -s0 -n10 greedy ply2
2) Run QuickCheck correctness tests (see source code for details on these):
$ hstzaar --tests
Pedro Vasconcelos, 2010
pbv@dcc.fc.up.pt
