The 4x4 board option is almost complete with exception to updating the rules-based patterns for CpuPlayer class and adding the Limelight UI elements. It seems to be working fine in stdin/stdout. The only problem I'm running into is testing the Negamax player on a 4x4 board. The first move just takes way too long! A 3x3 board has about 9! or 362,880 possible moves. A 4x4 board, however, has 16! or 2.09227899 × 10^13 possible moves. I helped it out by moving first as a human, so it really has 1,307,674,368,000 possible moves which is about 3,603,600 times more possible moves than the 3x3 board.
I'm running the Negamax player on a 4x4 board and for the first time since I upgraded to this MacBook Pro, I'm hearing the fans spin. This computer is working hard to compute those trillion moves. It's been about 5 minutes so far and it still hasn't made its first move. I'm going run it over night just to find out how long it takes to make the first move.
Update: it took Negamax player 4106.039 seconds or roughly 68 minutes to make the first move.
Choose player type for 'O' (enter 'h' for human or 'e' for easy cpu, 'm' for medium cpu or 'u' for unbeatable cpu) h
Choose player type for 'X' (enter 'h' for human or 'e' for easy cpu, 'm' for medium cpu or 'u' for unbeatable cpu) u
Choose board type (enter '3' for 3x3 or '4' for 4x4) 4
| | |
---+---+---+---
| | |
---+---+---+---
| | |
---+---+---+---
| | |
Enter your move, player 'O': 0
O | | |
---+---+---+---
| | |
---+---+---+---
| | |
---+---+---+---
| | |
Player 'X' is making a move
Tomorrow, I plan to finish up the story and work on the mock-up story afterwards. I'll post an update on how long it took Negamax player to make its first move.