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README.txt
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This code implements the internals of a game of Othello, a two-player boardgame 
where players place tiles on an 8x8 grid.  Rules for Othello are taken from: http://www.centralconnector.com/games/othello.html

My purpose in this exercise was not to write an excellent Othello-solving AI 
algorithm, but rather to write the infrastructure in a clean, extensible way.
To that end, I have designed a system where developers could write their
own algorithms and play them against each other.  I have included a sample
Strategy object with a simple algorithm for playing Othello, as an example
and test case.

There is no UI implemented in the base engine; that functionality would belong
to clients of the package.

There are four major objects in the Othello structure-- Moves, Boards, Games,
and Strategies:  

* Moves are simple container classes that specify an attempted play-- 
  color and position.  (The Pass object is a subclass of Move.)  

* Boards maintain the state of pieces on the grid, and exports methods for 
  checking validity of moves and playing moves.  It handles all the relevant 
  updates after a valid move is played.  

* Strategy objects (which implement the IStrategy interface) evaluate a Board
  object and determine a next move for the specified color.

* The Game object handles logic of actual game play-- adding players, 
  determining whether the game is over, asking the relevant player for
  the next move.  It owns a Board, and two Strategy objects.


Other files in the package:

Constants.hh:  A convenient place for putting some constants.  
TestHelper.hh: A few macros for test programs.
BoardTest.cc: A set of unit tests for the methods of the Board class.
GameTest.cc: A set of unit tests for the methods of the Game class.
Makefile: for building the project
test-output.txt: the output of "make all check" in a cleaned directory

Note:

This project was compiled and run under Mac OS X using GNU Make 3.81 and 
GCC 4.0.1.  It was also compiled under GCC 3.4.6 on Red Hat.  Both test
programs were also run under valgrind 3.1.1 and exhibited no memory leaks.


Possible improvements:

* Functions/refactoring:
   . Logger functionality.  And/or clean up the extraneous debug messages.
   . Move color information out of Constants and into its own class.
   . Add cloning functionality for Board.

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Developed by Tom Giordano, September 2009.