Hello !

I will finally enter the contest if I have time enough to finish my game.

Siam is a board game, in the spirit of chess or checkers. (but very different, actually ! ^^)



It is a 2 player game : elephant VS rhino. You play on a board of 5*5 squares and each player have 5 pieces.
At the beginning there are only 3 rocs in the middle of the board. The goal is to push one of the rocs out of the board.
There are specific power relations between the pieces :
(indeed, an animal (elephant or rhino) can push only in its direction. So the direction of pieces is very important.)
* an animal can push only one roc.
* two animals in the same direction add their force. (they can push 2 rocs for example)
* two animals face to face can't move. It cancels.
For more informations, see the rules :
http://regle.jeuxsoc.fr/siam__rg.pdf

This topic was the first lap of the TI-Concours 2012 in the TI 68k categorize.
I hadn't time enough to programm an AI, though, but the game works pretty well and is very nice to play with a friend !
Here's a screen :


So, this contest is a good pretext to think about such an AI ! I have already made several tests and had some results.. But it won't be feasible on TI 68k as I do, because it would take too much time in calculations..
On Nspire, it is different obviously !

I already have to adapt the TI 68k version to a Nspire one, and it's not easy..
I tried first with Lua, but there are some complications, if I want to use the Basic code..
So I want to make it entirely in Basic !
- A Basic game ? On Nspire ? Even today with C/ASM and Lua possibilities ? U mad ??

Yes ! I will use the geometry application for some graphics...
Moreover, I can thereby enter the Nspire Basic categorize !

EDIT :

Does sound crazy, but hopefully you can make it a great game. 

I too am under the impression that nSpire BASIC is to slow and limited for such applications. However, my information only comes from what others have said, as I have never used it myself. Personally I think this would be a great Lua project. If you are able to pull it off in nSpire BASIC though, you have my respect. Good luck whatever route you decide to take!

Thanks

Yes, fortunately there are Request/Text functions..
But no "Pause" function and the worse : no GetKey() function ! (And don't talk about graphic functions..)

But I have found a way to make the game play not too bad.. ^^

Am I allowed to share some screens before the end of the contest ?

I have finished the adaptation of the game so it is already playable.

Now let's think about the AI ! 
Actually I've already done a big part today ! But this is pretty hard, and it's not finished yet.. 

Here is a screen of what I have managed to do with the geometry application ! 

I've managed to finish in time !

AI works well even if some improvements remain, as always..

this does look rather impressive =D
i've never seen such a graphically-intensive game in nSpire basic. did they update what you could do in basic since the original?