Bricks Kata 🧱

Your goal is to win with your opponent by making him unable to move.

Rules

• Board is defined as NxN square
• Players take turns
• Game is initialized with random blocks
• You can place 2x1 bricks (vertically or horizontally)
• You cannot place brick on other brick
• Player which makes illegal move automatically loses the game
• Time for making a move is limited

How to implement an algorithm?

First you have to choose algorithm template you want to use.

Base class	Description
UserAlgorithm	Decide how to store state by your own.
UserArrayMapAlgorithm	Uses two-dimensional array to store current map.
UserBlocksListAlgorithm	Uses set of taken positions to store current map.

Both UserArrayMapAlgorithm and UserBlocksListAlgorithm are designed to be easy to use. They take care of keeping application state for you. Ale you have to to is to return on what positions you want to place your brick.

class MyBricksAlgorithm : UserArrayMapAlgorithm() {

    override suspend fun move(map: Array<Array<MapField>>): Brick {
        return DuoBrick.unsafe(
            Block(1, 1),
            Block(2, 1)
        )
    }

}

Note that these are coroutines methods, so you can take advantage of all the coroutines goodness.

Maximum time is limited (depending on specific game setting), so make sure you return something, otherwise you will automatically lose entire game.

Tests

There are simple algorithms in test directory, which you can use to benchmark your own solution or to get some inspiration. If you manage to beat them all you will be ready to compete online.

Online competition

The host have to run a server with bricks on it and provide you an ip address. Then you can just join specific lobby, by running BricksWebClient in you main method.

fun main() = runBlocking {
    BricksWebClient("bricks-api.kcybulski.me")
        .register(MyBricksAlgorithm())
}

When joining you have to provide server address and your algorithm instance. You will be asked to enter lobby you want to join as well as api key. All your and your opponent's moves will be logged on your machines.

Tricks & tips

• Implement as simple algorithm as you can think of and improve it
• Learn what are your opponent's strategies
• Implement some kind of fallback in case your move is running out of time
• Catch exceptions to be sure that they won't crash your entire algorithm
• Play with other structures by using UserAlgorithm interface directly

Have fun! 🐻