Computer Utilization as a Balanced Opponent in Dam-Dam-An

Abstract

Dam-dam-an is a traditional game played by two players using a board with the size of 8x8 as a media. Each player gets 16 pieces that can be moved one step forward or leaped over opponent‟s piece. The goal of this game is to eliminate all of our pieces as soon as possible. It is exciting to have a challenging opponent, yet it is difficult to find a skillful one. A way to solve this problem is using intelligent computer. This paper presents the result of our research about the computer utilization as balanced opponent in dam-dam-an game using Alpha-Beta Pruning. Alpha-Beta Pruning is a best-step searching algorithm which works by considering and assessing every possibility while excluding the less useful steps. The implementation is developed using C# programming language based on Windows Runtime. Some features were added to make this game more exciting, particularly intelligence level selection (easy, medium, and hard), human or computer opponent selection, undo function, pausing menu, save-load the game, and setting the turning time. This game was validated by twenty respondents which were categorized based on their skill. Each respondent played against the computer thrice and the results were recorded. The results showed that the number of winning between the computer and each player are almost the same. It shows that the computer opponent may prove itself to be a challenging opponent for human player.