New version created from Jhex

[OHex]

Are you all still there? You've been very quiet.

Kevin Walker has kindly agreed to release the source code for Jhex (and
Jtwixt) under an OpenSource license, and I have created a project on
SourceForge with the sources he gave me, modified for the purpose.

At this point, the project is just up to the level of function that I
had previously released without source as OJhex. The names have been
changed; this is partly to step out of Kevin's way in case he wants to
continue development of his own code base, and partly to avoid any
blame for my mistakes attaching to the innocent.

My improvements are: you can "pin" the grid labels so they don't move
on a swap or rotate, and there's an importer for game records from the
Six program.

I'm calling the current release 0.2-alpha to reflect the fact that it
hasn't been used or reviewed by anyone but me so far. Please do
review, and send me comments. If anyone makes their own improvements to
the program, I would sure appreciate a patch file and description of
the changes.

BROWSE AND DOWNLOAD INFO:

The project at SourceForge: http://sf.net/projects/twixhex/

The source package: (GameRecorder):
http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=169938&package_id=199167&release_id=440190

The hex recorder (what you would usually want):
http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=169938&package_id=198840&release_id=440192

The twixt recorder (if you are interested in that game):
http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=169938&package_id=198841&release_id=440193

Let me know what you think:

++ kevin

[Tom Cooper]

>Are you all still there? You've been very quiet.

I suspect everyone's been lured away by muslims.

I just thought of a (fairly obvious) variant of hex (or of that
triangular version). The difference is that the move order is
changed from BWBWBWBW... to BWWBWBBWWBBWBWWBW... where the sequence
is given by the odd-even parity of the sum of the binary digits of
the natural numbers thus:

Natural number Sum of Digits Parity Player
0 0 E B
1 1 O W
10 1 O W
11 2 E B
100 1 O W
101 2 E B
110 2 E B
111 3 O W
1000 1 O W

I believe this sequence has lots of nice properties which should lead
to very fair games. I suspect they would be much harder to analyse
than the corresponding (unrestricted) alternating games, which seem
to give a huge advantage to the first player.

The first three board sizes are won by the first, second and second player
respectively, but even 4x4 seems a little difficult to analyse.

[na_w...@o2.pl]

seems quite interesting. i remember Halsor has proposed sth similar
on the Hex Tournament in Wroclaw but it was a bit more simple
BWWBBWWBBWW... anyway after i played few games i can say the
strategy is far more different than in ordinary hex. the
construction of most simple figures - ladder, bridge - can confirm
that... if u never played Halsors variant of hex just try to figure
out how the figures in it looks like. if u played u already know;]

[Carl Mäsak]

Tom (>):

> I just thought of a (fairly obvious) variant of hex

Nice one. I took the liberty of adding a description to Hexwiki.

<http://hexwiki.org/index.php?title=Cooper%27s_Hex>

Feel free to move the page if you've thought of another name for the variant.

++ turing