Game Design
Our system needed to satisfy the following criteria
Before coding we needed to determine how the game would operate. First we created a flow diagram to assist us in implementing the various functions our system needed. From the flow diagram we determined that we would implement the algorithm using a finite state machine.
Another feature of the flow diagram is that it aided us in creating dedicated functions and flags for each state.
The Minimax algorithm we used is a recursive AI algorithm for choosing the next move based on the position of the game pieces. The algorithm’s position evaluation determines how good each possible move is and attempts to minimize the possible maximum (worst-case) outcome. As the search depth increases, the better the AI’s decision becomes at the cost of computational time.
The evaluation function that the Minimax algorithm uses is a simple heuristic function. It search the current game state for all combinations of four pieces in a row. Then the evaluation functions search those combinations for four in a rows, three in a rows, and two in a rows and assign weights to them according to those matches being the AI's or human's. This function makes the AI play defensively. If we wanted the AI to play more aggressive we would change the weights of each type of number of pieces in a row.