Zillions of Games
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Zillions of Games is a universal, expandable computer gaming engine, which runs on Windows PCs and allows users to create nearly any imaginable board games in the Zillions format. After coding the rules to define a new game, the system's artificial intelligence can automatically play one or more players. Zillions games are programmed using ZRF - a domain-specific, LISP-like language.
Zillions of Games is shipped together with a lot of popular board games such as Alquerque, Fox and geese, Go, Gomoku, Jungle, Halma, Nim, Nine Men's Morris, Reversi, Tafl and Tic-tac-toe. The package includes many checkers variants, for example Chinese, Russian and Turkish checkers. Besides standard FIDE chess, Zillions of Games contains many national chess variants such as Shogi, Xiangqi, Janggi as well as a number of popular chess variants like Ultima, Extinction chess, Losing Chess, Shatranj, Berolina Chess, Grand Chess and others. It also include some puzzles, for example 15-Puzzle, Towers of Hanoi, eight queens, and a variety of Solitaires.
However, vastly more games have been created by hobbyists and board game enthusiasts. A total of over 1000 freeware board games (with approximately 5000 variants total) have been written to date in the Zillions language. This includes classic, popular games as well as many newly-invented games. Although the vast majority of the entries, to date, are two-dimensional, the program also supports three-dimensional games to a limited extent. Some of these games are educational and can be used in school classes to teach mathematics (especially geometry) and other subjects. Zillions Development claims that the power of playful learning is significantly underestimated by some educators.
Zillions of Games plays some games very strongly such as Blobs, Nine Men's Morris, Nim and Checkers. It is also respectably good in chess and most chess variants. Generally, it is rated at approximately 1900-2000 in ELO rating systems for chess and most chess variants (for comparison, Grandmaster level is above 2500).
Note that the Zillions game engine itself is not freeware although a free demo version with reduced functionality is available.
See also
External links
- Zillions of Games (http://www.zillions-of-games.com/)
- Zillions Index (http://www.chessvariants.org/index/zillionsindex.html) - list of chess variants, which can be played with Zillions of Games
- Atlantis Games (http://karl.kiwi.gen.nz/) : Karl Scherer's home page with his 400 freeware games.
- Symmetrical Chess Collection (http://www.symmetryperfect.com/shots)
- Zillions of Games feedback (http://www.frontiernet.net/~alcove/chess/zogfeedback.html) by Adrian King and Joao Neto