Pointy Stone is a free Windows computer program that plays the popular game of Othello, (also known as Reversi,) and follows all the standard rules. It plays well enough to provide a challenge for any human player. However, the 2 ply skill level will be quite tough for those new to serious Othello... when you find that it really isn't too tough to beat, then you'll know you've become a good player. On first start up Pointy defaults to easy (1 ply).
About Version 3.45 and 3.40: pversions.txtFeature overview:
- Strong AI that uses learned Patterns to evaluate the board.- Internet Play via a direct connection to friend. Read more about Internet Play
- Opening book to add common openings and an element of randomness to games.
- Fast Searches ( 1100 KiloNodes/sec Midgame, 2600 KiloNodes/sec Endgame on an AMD 1.4 ghz)
- Many difficulty levels
- Save/Load games
- Import/Export transcripts of any type
- Various options including save/restore game state, and info display on Pointy's thinking
(Click for the full-size screenshot.)
Download
Do you think you have what it takes to beat Pointy Stone at his own game? Click below to find out.Download (500 KB): Full Pointy Stone 3.45
Files:
| Pointy.exe | The main program. (All the graphics are also in the .exe) |
| book.pnt | The opening book. |
| pointy.txt | Text about the program... same as info on this web page. |
| openings.txt | This allows Pointy Stone to display the names of common openings. |
| patterns.jef | The precomputed pattern values that Pointy uses to help evaluate the position. |
If Pointy seems to be always beating you, in addition to changing the difficulty level, you can go to the Brain and select RandomMax (or Greedy). The 3 brains have different styles of play.
( I found the openings.txt names from various sources on the internet ... The ones from Robert Gatliff seem pretty standard... I don't guarantee the accuracy of the others. )
Note: There is a possibility I'll release the Pointy 3 source. I've recently cleaned it up some. But I noticed that there are now a lot of strong othello programs that are open source (see links), so I haven't felt the need to finish checking the code and put together a source release.
Comments & Suggestions & Bug Reports are welcome. Mail me.
Requirements:
At least 26 MB free memory for the transposition table, and various move tables,
and evaluation
tables .
A Pentium II 300 Mhz or faster is recommended if you want Pointy to move
quickly in all difficulty modes except 12 ply & timed, but lower difficulty levels should run
quickly on any modern computer. Pointy is given no special priority, so running
other programs at the same time will take CPU time away from him and result in
slower thinking.