15 years ago, on January 9, 2011, I published my f...

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[Stefan Oltmann]

15 years ago, on January 9, 2011, I published my first-ever Android app.

I built this little Dots and Boxes game over a weekend, mainly to learn how Android development worked and how to get an app onto Google Play.
My wife made all the cute graphics for it back then. ☺️

I pretty much abandoned it afterwards. Over the years, I only touched it when Google threatened to remove it because of an outdated target SDK. 😅
And until now, it was still using the old Android View system I built it with back in 2011.

Today, I finally gave it some love again.

With DeepSeek V4 Flash helping out, I spent less than half a day turning the old Android app into a proper Compose Multiplatform version.

15 years later, my very first Android project is still alive. And now it can live a little longer. 😄

Source (GPL3): github.com/StefanOltmann/dots-and-boxes
Android: play.google.com/store/apps/details?…
Web: stefan-oltmann.de/dots-and-boxes

P.S.: I absolutely love how a CMP port gives you a Desktop & web version for free. ❤️

[Sargun Vohra]

I've never seen this game before, and I had a nice time picking up the basic strategy

how did you implement the computer opponent? did you do some minimax search or some heuristics?

[Stefan Oltmann]

Really simple. 😄

If it first checks the board to see whether it can close one of the free lines and score a point.

If not, it randomly selects a line and checks whether doing so would give the opponent a chance to close a box. If it would, it tries again. It does this up to 30 times. If it cannot find a suitable line after 30 attempts, it simply selects a random line.

That's the algorithm I used 15 years ago, but I'm sure Opus could figure out something way smarter. 😄

github.com/StefanOltmann/dots-and-boxes/blob/…/GameLogic.kt#…
github.com/StefanOltmann/dots-and-boxes/blob/…/Board.kt#…

[Sargun Vohra]

I just vibe coded a version with a minimax opponent and I'm having a hard time beating it

[Stefan Oltmann]

I accept PRs. 😄

[Stefan Oltmann]

But I'm not sure if people love a game where they're constantly failing. ^^

[Sargun Vohra]

I only started learning this game today, maybe you'll fare better than me against this opponent: code.sargunv.dev/dots-and-boxes