We aren’t alone! The Color Expansion School of Domains develops other playing program. They’ve declared war between our programs, and we accepted the challenge.
Recently, the third program joined the tournament: Java Color Expansion. It hasn't been tested yet vs. ABCE, so we can't say anything about its strength, but it seems to be really fast.
Programs connect to the server via TCP/IP. Download the server on Domain School's download page. They released the new, Official Tournament Server which uses "fair play" algorithm: each game is repeated with swapped players' places. This might eliminate the randomness of selecting board.
Because of bugs making our client think for the opponent not for himself, the results of first and second battles were not good for us. If you've read Domain School's reports about battles, you know that our client could not ever finish the game correctly.
| ABCE | SoD |
|---|---|
| 120 | 105 |
| 125 | 100 |
| 122 | 103 |
| 119 | 106 |
| 164 | 61 |
| 142 | 83 |
| 124 | 101 |
| 86 | 139 |
| 87 | 138 |
| 112* | 110* |
| ------ | ------ |
| 1201 | 1046 |
*ABCE hung when the score was 115/92; All possible cells were added to SoD's score.
ABCE: Alpha Better Color Expansion 1.7.1, depth 9.
SoD: School of Domains Color Expansion, default depth. (it can't be changed without code mods.)
Server: School of Domains server, version 1c. (It is not the SoD's Official Tournament Server, but we'll set up new battle with this server soon.)
(The time used by both programs for thinking is nearly the same.)
First attempt to start the game caused SoD to crash, 2nd attempt - ABCE hangs.
Results are from the 3rd attempt.