HsTZAAR

HsTZAAR is a computer program to play TZAAR, a 2-player abstract strategy game designed by Kris Burm and the final game in the GIPF project. HsTZAAR is written in Haskell and allows for local play against a computer AI; it also provides a good interface for programmers to implement diferent AI strategies.

This program was based on the htzaar implementation by Tom Hawkins. In 2010, I started experimenting with classical AI techniques for TZAAR and implemented them on-top of htzaar; since the later package is no longer updated, I decided to start HsTZAAR.

The main improvements are:

• a better GUI using gtk2hs for widgets and cairo for high-quality 2D board rendering;
• a better AI using minimax and alpha-beta prunning;
• selectable skill AI: level 0 searches a single move ahead (half a turn); level 1 searches two moves (full turn), etc.
• start with random piece positions (default) or the fixed configuration;
• play white or black;
• save and load games in a human-readable XML format.

Although the minimax search is not very deep, the AI is already a good opponent at level 1.

Requirements

HsTZAAR requires a resonably recent GHC compiler (version 7 or newer) plus the gtk2hs, cairo and glade libraries. It was tested on an Ubuntu GNU/Linux system, and should compile and run fine on other Linuxes. I also verified that it compiles under Mac OS X (snow leopard) and Windows XP.

Download

Source code

You can download the source package from HackageDB site (alternatively use this local copy). To compile and install use the following shell commands (where x.y is the package version):

tar xvzf hstzaar-x.y.tar.gz
cd hstzaar-x.y
runhaskell Setup.hs configure
runhaskell Setup.hs build
runhaskell Setup.hs install

You can also download and install in one step using the Cabal install tool:

cabal install hstzaar

Cabal installs in your home directory by default; you can do a global install with the --global flag. In that case both the binary and an XML file with GUI data will be installed in a system wide locations (e.g. /usr/local/bin and /usr/local/share/hstzaar).

Binaries

For the benefit of users who don't want to install Haskell development tools, I have prepared a Windows 32-bit installer: hstzaar-0.9-setup.exe.

Feedback

Please contact me you enjoy this game or if you have some suggestion. I'm particularly interested in remarks on how the AI plays and suggestions on how to make better.

External links

• The hstzaar package at Hackage.
• The GIPF Project page
• TZAAR at BoardGameGeek
• Video of Kris Burm explaining the rules of TZAAR