Learning Opportunities

This puzzle can be solved using the following concepts. Practice using these concepts and improve your skills.

Statement

This is a port of the arcade game Ataxx.
Contribution originally made by struct.

Rules

The game is played on a 7x7 board.
The board is chosen from one of the 596 possible configurations.
The game goes on until both players can no longer move or a player has no more pieces.

Board coordinates

Columns are labeled a through g from left to right.
Rows are labeled 1 throught 7 from bottom to top.
Coordinates are written as a column followed by a row. For example, a1 is the bottom-left corner of the board and g7 is the top-right corner.

Legal actions

Player 0 always goes first.
Players take turns performing one of the two available actions, Spawn and Jump.
Spawn: A player may spawn a piece on an empty square adjacent (vertically, horizonally or diagonally) to one of their existing pieces.
Jump: A player may move one of their pieces to an empty square that is two squares away in any direction (vertically, horizontally or diagonally).
After a Spawn or Jump action, all adjacent opponent pieces are converted to the color of the player who moved.

Output

A player must output either:
- the coordinates of the square for a Spawn (e.g. b7), or
- the coordinates of the source and the destination squares for a Jump (e.g. a7c7).
If the coordinates are outside the board, the game ends and the other player wins.
If the coordinates are inside the board but the target square is occupied or a wall, the game ends and the other player wins.

Expert Rules

The game ends in a draw if it reaches 300 turns, or if the same position occurs three times (the same board configuration and the same player to move).

Victory Conditions

Capture all of your opponent's pieces.
Have more pieces than your opponent when the game ends.

Loss Conditions

You have no pieces.
You do not respond in time or you output an unrecognized command.

Game Protocol

Initial input

First line: id: your player ID (0 or 1).

Input for one game turn

7 lines: A string line of 7 characters representing one horizontal row of the grid, from bottom to top. .: empty square, 0: player 0's piece, 1: player 1's piece, #: wall.
Next line: A string lastAction for the last action made by the opponent. null if it is the first turn, pass if the opponent passed. Multiple actions are separated by ;.
Next line: An integer actionsCount for the number of legal actions for this turn.
Next actionsCount lines: A string action representing a legal action.

Output for one game turn

A single line containing either:

the coordinates where you want to jump from and to, e.g. a7c7, or
the coordinates where you want to spawn a piece, e.g. b7, or
random.

You can also print a message after the action, e.g. a7c7 message.

Constraints

Response time first turn is ≤ 1000 ms.
Response time per turn is ≤ 100 ms.

Join

A higher resolution is required to access the IDE