PROJECT DESCRIPTION

GAME DESCRIPTION

Tic-tac-toe is a two player game (one of them being your computer program). The two players take turns putting marks on a 3x3 board. The player who first gets 3 of his marks in a row (vertically, horizontally, or diagonally) wins the game, and the other loses the game.

Game Rules

1. Initially, your program should ask the user which marks the user prefers ("X" or "O"). The player that gets to play with the "X" marks will play first (we call him player 1) and the player that gets to play with the "O" marks will play second (we call him player 2).

2. Player 1 and 2 take turns making moves. A move (mark row column) should satisfy the following constraints:
   1. Time Limit There is a 1 minute time limit for a player to make his move. (1 min. user time, not CPU time.)
   2. Move preconditions
      1. mark is "X" if it is player 1's turn and "O" if it is player 2's turn.
      2. The position (row, column) on the board is empty.
   3. Move postconditions
      1. After the move, the position (row, column) on the board will be occupied by a mark .
      2. It will be the other player's turn.

3. The game ends when either:
   1. one of the players wins the game, i.e. this player gets three of his marks in a row (vertically, horizontally, or diagonally).
   2. all the positions on the board are occupied. In this case, the game ends in a draw.

PROJECT ASSIGNMENT

1. You should implement a computer program that plays tic-tac-toe following the rules described above.
2. Your program should use:
   • minimax with alpha-beta pruning
   • a game strategy:
     • Use utility and evaluation functions of your choice
     • Use a heuristic of your choice
   The better your game strategy, the better your grade in the project.

   (Finding a good static evaluation function and a good heuristic depends heavily on the experience you have with the game. I recommend you start playing the game and getting the flavor of what a good tic-tac-toe strategy is. Also, research the strategies that other people have used for this and other games. Lots of information can be found in the references listed in your syllabus, the web, and magazine articles.)

3. You can design the program-user interface as you like, but make sure that your program is easy to use (avoid having complicated input codes). Shortly state the interface conventions to the user at the beginning of the game, and display the configuration of the board after each move.
4. Your program should produce only valid moves.
5. Your program should verify that each of the opponent's moves is valid, and should execute them.
6. Your program should detect if the game has come to an end, and if so, it should print a message stating who wan.

REPORT AND DUE DATE

OTHER RESOURCES

If you find a web page with useful information about tic-tac-toe, please let me know and I'll add it to the previous list.