Day 5: Starting the engine.

Well, this post will be like thinking loud.

• First I will need a method play for the engine. It will need a board as a parameter. This method will return an integer that will have the position where it should play.
• Then it should see what possible moves are (all where the state is 0). For this I will create a method getPossibleMoves, and will have the board as the only parameter.
• Finally the engine will select one position randomly and play it. So I will create another method makeMove with the array of possible moves.
• the mainloop of the game should receive the move and send it to the board that should have a setMove method with the integer of the position and the "color" integer.

First, the creation of the play method. It should receive the board.

public int play(Board board){ int move; ArrayList<integer> posibleMoves=new ArrayList<>(); posibleMoves=this.getPossibleMoves(board.getMainBoard()); }

Let's start with the method getPossibleMoves, this method will return an array of integers. Those integers should be the different positions. This method will be in the Actors class, because it will be taken both from the engine and from the human player.

  public ArrayList<integer> getPossibleMoves(ArrayList<integer> mainBoard){ //This method returns all the possible places to put a stone ArrayList<integer> posibleMoves=new ArrayList<>(); for(int i=0;i<mainBoard.size();i++){ //If the position have a 0, then add i to the array. if(mainBoard.get(i)==0){ posibleMoves.add(i); } } return posibleMoves; }

Well, now I have all the possible moves and the machine have to pick one and return the number. For now it will be a random number.

  public int makeMove(ArrayList<integer> posibleMoves){ //From all the posible moves, it have to chose one int move; Random rand=new Random(); move=rand.nextInt(posibleMoves.size()); return move; }

 Now in the board a setMove method is needed. It will take an integer with the position and the color and put the stone in the board

public void setMove(int move,int color){ this.mainBoard.set(move, color); }

And now, the mainLoop's method startGame:


public void startGame(){ int engineColor=1; //color of the engine int boardSize=9; //in the future there will be an input int selectedMove; Engine engine=new Engine(); Board board=new Board(boardSize); Console console=new Console(); console.showBoard(board,boardSize); selectedMove=engine.play(board); board.setMove(selectedMove, engineColor); console.showBoard(board, boardSize); }

And here we are:

9x9:

19x19: