laharah/mancala-terminal

a simple terminal version of mancala built as an exercise

Mancala-Terminal

a simple terminal version of mancala built as a coding exercise

python 3 only

to play simply download the repo, open it and type:

python -m mancala

requires a terminal that supports unicode output, may not work on windows

tests can be run with pytest

Currently the game has a crude and poorly optimized bot to play against.

TODO:

• improve bot
  • critical bug, see TODO file for info!!
  • speed/space optimizations, lots of room for improvement here
    • combine bot mem_cache and after_move memoization into single transposition table (with best move?)
    • futility pruning in alpha-beta (not easily implemented with advanced estimation heuristic)
    • enhanced transposition cutoffs (examine child nodes for cutoffs before recursing)
    • endgame databases, too slow to compute at current speeds.
  • 'solve' the game?
  • train a ML replacement for bot if realtime solving infeasible?
  • go nuclear (rewrite bot into c extension)
• implement fallback to ascii for non utf-8 compliant terminals
• refactor rule logic into game module for better separation of concerns