[Kde-games-devel] The Oware Wizard

[michaelcollins at ivorycity.com]

Hello,

I've recently released my Oware game, The Oware Wizard, under the GPL and
I'm interested in distributing it along with KDE-Games.

Here's the The Oware Wizard url:
http://oware.ivorycity.com

If you haven't played Oware before, let me tell you a little about it.
Many people consider Oware to be the most popular mathematical strategy
game in the world. It's thousands of years old and played mostly in
Africa, Europe, and South America. There are many incarnations of this
game and it goes by many names including Mancala, Ayo, and Awale.

The gameplay is quite simple and involves distributing "seeds" around 12
cups on the board. The object is to capture as many seeds as possible
using your best strategy. The strategy can get very sophisticated as
players become more skilled - you learn to force your opponent to make
unfavorable moves so you can capture more seeds.

I wrote the AI for The Oware Wizard as a computer science graduate student
and decided to build a fully featured (and fun) graphical interface to
finish it off.

The AI is really astounding and extremely efficient. I've never heard of
anyone who's beaten the computer above Level 11 (Level 14 is the arbitrary
maximum though it could go even higher, CPU permitting). The AI also
includes some heuristic modifications to make the it even smarter.

If you check out the screen shots, I think you'll plainly see that The
Oware Wizard has a very attractive interface. It displays a picture of a
famous African sand dune and features a menacing "Wizard" opponent who
takes the form of a ceremonial mask.

Please consider adding The Oware Wizard to the KDE-Games distribution. I
think it would be a unique and welcome addition to the already very
high-quality KDE-Games package.

Questions/Comments would be most appreciated.
Thank you for your consideration.

Best,
Michael Collins