Computational Model for Sri Lankan Board Game Nerenchi

Abstract

People play games for entertainment or to show the superiority of strength and which was co-existed with humans since the start of mankind. A board game is a game that involves counters or pieces moved or placed on a pre-marked surface or "board", according to a set of rules. Unlike the other games these games are played to show the intellectual superiority without being concerned over serious logistics and resources. Nerenchi is one of the oldest board game which has been discovered in Sri Lanka (c. AD 10). Nerenchi board has diagonal lines joining the corners and horizontal and vertical lines joining the midst of three concentric squares. Nerenchi has mainly two phases. In the first phase, pieces have to be laid on the board. In this phase, 22 pieces must be placed from the 11 pieces each player has. When three pieces are placed in a straight line horizontally, vertically or diagonally, player is rewarded with a bonus chance called ‘nerenchi’. When either the number of pieces on the board reaches 22 or one player placed all his/her 11 pieces on the board, second phase of the game begins where the players can move and capture each other’s pieces when the player rewarded with a nerenchi. Behaviour of each of these phases is governed by set of simple rules. The Nerenchi game has been implemented through the web based architecture. Computational model for game Nerenchi has been implemented with 2 matrices to control the user errors and set of rules governed. It is undertaken by using Mathematical models. 3x9 and 4x6 matrices which holds the status of positions, optimizes the resources in attaining this goal. In addition to the above Human-Computer version has been implemented through the Prolog based search algorithms. The system has been successfully tested in a laboratory environment