Four in a Row

This game happens to be the first real program that I wrote in Java. At the time, the virtual machines that were in the browsers were interpreted, with the Just-In-time compilers that are common today just starting to appear. When I looked over my code I could clearly see the C++ background that I came from. This particular game was chosen as I though it would be simple enough to do yet was complex enough to cover all the aspects of java programming that I would encounter.

In 2010, to experiment with upcoming HTML5, I rewrote the game in JavaScript but did not implement the animation and there were a number of bugs in the AI implementation. These have been added/fixed so this version of the game can be considered an improvement over the original.

The goal of this game is to create a row, column, or diagonal of connected chips of your color with a length of four or more. Each turn you drop a chip down one of the chutes (number of chutes and rows in each chute are selectable) with your opponent doing likewise. The first player to get four in a row wins.