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Connect Four Game

A Python implementation of Connect Four featuring multiple AI players with different strategies, from basic to advanced, and a tournament system to evaluate their performance.

Features

  • Customizable board size (default: 14x12)
  • Multiple AI player implementations
  • Colorized console output
  • Move animation support
  • Tournament system for AI evaluation
  • Timeout protection for player moves
  • Alpha-beta pruning and MCTS implementations

AI Players

The game includes several AI player implementations with varying levels of sophistication:

  • RandomPlayer: Makes random valid moves
  • SimplePlayer: Looks for winning moves and blocking moves
  • LousyPlayer: Intentionally makes suboptimal moves for testing

Getting Started

Prerequisites

pip install -r requirements.txt

Basic Usage

from connect_four import ConnectFour, RandomPlayer, MCTSPlayer

# Create players
player1 = RandomPlayer("X")
player2 = MCTSPlayer("O")

# Initialize game
game = ConnectFour(player1, player2, columns=14, rows=12, delay=1.0, animate=True)

# Play a single game
winner = game.play_game()

Running a Tournament

from connect_four import Tournament

# Define strategies to compete
strategies = [RandomPlayer, SimplePlayer, MCTSPlayer, MinMaxPlayer]

# Create and run tournament
tournament = Tournament(strategies, games_per_match=10)
tournament.run_tournament(display_games=False)
tournament.display_results()

Game Class Structure

Main Classes

  • GameState: Represents the current state of the game
  • Player: Abstract base class for implementing new players
  • ConnectFour: Main game engine
  • Tournament: Handles multiple games between different players

Player Implementation

To create a new AI player, extend the Player class:

class MyPlayer(Player):
    def __init__(self, symbol: str):
        super().__init__(symbol)

    def get_move(self, state: GameState) -> int:
        # Implement your move logic here
        # Must return a valid column number (0-6)
        pass

Advanced Features

Move Animation

The game supports animated piece dropping with configurable delay:

game = ConnectFour(player1, player2, delay=0.5, animate=True)

Timeout Protection

Players have a 1-second timeout for making moves to prevent infinite loops:

with time_limit(1):
    move = player.get_move(state)

Board Evaluation

Advanced players use sophisticated board evaluation techniques:

  • Center control preference
  • Threat detection
  • Pattern recognition
  • Positional scoring

Tournament System

The tournament system provides:

  • Round-robin matches between all players
  • Configurable games per match
  • Win/loss/tie tracking
  • Points system (3 for win, 1 for tie)
  • Performance statistics
  • Formatted results table

Contributing

To add a new AI player:

  1. Create a new class extending Player
  2. Implement the get_move method
  3. Add your player to the tournament in __main__

License

This project is open source and available under the MIT License.