A bot-tacular evening!

What’s new in today’s devlog

Finally I have implemented a working bot within Onlinja - it’s configurable, and damn it plays well!

The reason it can be so competitive is because it uses a deep-search minimax algorithm, always assuming you make the best move and making the best move itself (with some randomness sparkled on top). Also, it reacts to awards, where more benefit created for itself through several moves, even if 2 distinct move sequences create same amount of value in points, is valued higher for the bot. This helps create insane accuracy, exploitation of game features and more!

Note: there’s an easter egg hidden somewhere in plain sight, try to find it!

Next steps

Aside from the bot, I made the game capable of receiving different controller settings. A controller is the setting of who controls your opponent, current available settings being HUMAN, BOT and SERVER (for future implementation).

As the next step I’m planning to make a local one-phone mode to share like a physical board across 2 people.

Also, a pre-game tutorial awaits.

I’d very much love to implement more whacky gamemodes, that would include powerups, more configuration, different piece setups and more. But I am not sure how much time that would cost me.

Conclusion

With the first ship of Onlinja coming closer everyday, I am trying to make the user experience as polished as can be. I really hope everyone playing will enjoy this game as much as I do!