Checkers/draughts using minimax in C#

Question

Hello, I have homework in **c#**. I have to make a game (such as checkers, chess or something else, but not tic tac toe - and I choose checkers/draughts) with using **minimax** and **alphabeta**, but I don't even know how to start :( **And I have a tight deadline**. I worked with c# a little bit at school, but I'm not a programmer. Now I'm trying to make an array, that will be represent a board and positions of its pieces. What is better? If the information about positions of pieces and their values will be saved with the board or if these informations will be saved for each piece separately. And how to make the best array for this. Basically what i need is an advice how to start, how to represent the game state - the basic structure of the program etc. If anybody can help me, please, write me. Thanks for any help. Washa

Answer 1

Hint: use a 2 dimensional array to represent your game board:

int[,] board = new int[8, 8];

Answer 2

The standard method for storing the board state is to use bitboards.

public class Board
{
  private UInt64 m_RedPieces = 0x0000000000559955; // Initial position;
  private UInt64 m_BlackPieces = 0x9955990000000000; // Initial position;
}

The cool thing about bitboards aside from the fact that they are super fast is that it makes generating legal successor positions much easier. It is still hard mind you, but with bitboards you can reduce the move geneneration to a series of bit operations (shifts, ANDs, ORs, XORs, etc.).

I am sure there are a lot of resources already out there on the internet that have the formulas for working with the bitboards.