BF's Draughts for iOS

[borysf]

Hi everyone,

I'd like to announce that I have made a bunch of great improvements to my game since the last time I was writing about it on this forum.
It's freely available and have no limitations so, unlike the other similar apps, you don't need to buy game types, AI or whatever - the app is just a result of my hobby and I wanted it to be as much beautiful, usable and playable as possible.

The main features are:

1. Variety of built-in game rules which now includes:
- English draughts / American checkers,
- Brasilian (little Polish),
- International (big Polish),
- Spanish,
- Portuguese,
- German,
- Russian,
- Italian,
- Czech,
- Thai (including 180-degrees queen's turns!),
- Turkish,
- Kamikaze (Anti-checkers / Poddavki)

2. Strong AI
You can play with four different AI players with different skills. The hardest level keeps good balance between strength and AI response time.

3. Training mode
In the training mode your AI opponent becomes your teacher. It will suggest moves, point capturable pieces and the ones that are in danger, perform live game analysis to display warnings and praises.

4. Two players mode
You can play with your friend on one device or with anyone over the Internet.

5. Configurable
You can configure almost everything: game appearance including colors and backgrounds.
You can even create your own rules by changing the rules' settings, which are really highly configurable!

6. Stability and performance improvements
I have rewritten the moves finding algorithm having the performance close to my heart. Now the AI thinks much faster and is more reliable and always try to play unique game

Link to the App Store: https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/bfs-dra ... 1046584129

I'm looking forward for any feedback

If you like it, please rate it and leave a comment in the App Store - positive ratings will keep the game visible in the App Store and will motivate me to continue my work on it. Thanks!

[Ed Gilbert]

Hi Borys,

I was surprised that you didn't list English checkers as one of the supported games, but I went to your web site and see that it is listed there. I installed the app on an iPhone and gave it a try.

The graphics are nice. The default board with red and white pieces on green/off-white board looks good.

Move entry is ok. But when a move is forced, simply touching the piece to move should be sufficient to make the move. Many moves are forced in checkers, and this would make the play feel more natural.

I'm a mediocre player at best -- probably most club players would beat me without difficulty. For my first game I set the difficulty to 'hard'. After 6 or 7 moves, BF Draughts made a terrible move giving me an immediate 2 for 1 shot! That's not what I expected from 'hard'. However, about 15 moves later I made a careless error stepping into a 3 for 1 shot :-( I conceded that game.

I started another game at the highest level 'expert'. There were no obvious blunders by BF Draughts as in the first game, but the positional play was not very strong. I managed to get the first king, then gained a piece advantage by putting BF Draughts into a tailhook with my king. After that it was easy to exchange pieces to get to a 3 kings vs 2 kings endgame. BF Draughts doesn't defend very well in endgames. It should at least try to avoid exchanges when it is losing in material, but it made no effort to do that. As I was getting close to finishing the win, BF Draughts incorrectly claimed a draw! It was down 3 kings to 2 and about to lose, and there was no repetition of positions. In English checkers, unlike some other variants, 3 kings against 2 is a win for the strong side.

-- Ed

[borysf]

Hi Ed,

Indeed I forgot to list the English draughts (I just edited my first post).

Thank you for your feedback. I suppose that game decided a draw because currently a draw is when no legal moves are possible to perform or both players have performed 20 king moves in a row (in total). I am aware that this should be done better and maybe there are some different rules of draws that I don't know.

Anyway... only one feedback on world's draughts forum This just makes me pretty sure that I wasted hundreds of hours working on this game...

[Ed Gilbert]

I suppose that game decided a draw because currently a draw is when no legal moves are possible to perform or both players have performed 20 king moves in a row (in total).

Bf Draughts is declaring a draw after 10 successive king moves by each side. Here are the rules for a draw in English checkers from the WCDF:

Definition of a Draw
The game is drawn if at any stage both players agree on such a result (). A game shall also be declared drawn where:
At any stage of the game, a player can demonstrate to the satisfaction of the referee that with their next move they would create the same position for the third time during the game.
At any stage of the game, a player can demonstrate to the satisfaction of the referee that both the following conditions hold:
Neither player has advanced an uncrowned man towards the king-row during their own previous 40 moves.
No pieces have been removed from the board during their own previous 40 moves.

[Krzysztof Grzelak]

Myślę że nie zmarnowałeś setki godzin robiąc ten program. Zawsze to jest wielka frajda i przyjemność podczas robienia takiego programu,a w szczególności podwyższyłeś Swoje umiejętność programisty. Jak Ja bym umiał tyle co Ty, to byłbym bardzo zadowolony.

Krzysztof.