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		Zillions of Games, a commercial general game playing Windows program developed by Jeff Mallett and Mark Lefler to play abstract strategy board games with perfect information and up to 32 players, first released in 1998. Zillions of Games 2, released in 2003, comes with 100 new features, able to enforce maximal capturing rules as used in some versions of Checkers, and is packed with 350 board games, puzzles, and variants [1], including chess and 60 chess variants. Zillions further supports randomness in games through a special, computer-controlled "random player" that chooses its moves randomly, which allows to simulate dice games.
Zillions of Games 2.0 Start Screen [2]

Zillions Rules Language

The game rules are specified by the Zillons rules language, persistant in ASCII readable Zillion rules files with the extension zrf ^[3], based on Lisp like S-expressions:

(game
  (title "...") 
  (players ...) ; up to 32
  (turn-order ... )
  (board .... )
  (piece ... ; up to 32
    (moves ...)
  ) 
  (board-setup ...)
  (draw-condition ...)
  (win-condition ...)
 )
)
(game ...)

Besides defining how pieces move, Zillions can define how pieces may be dropped. All piece and board graphics referred in the rule files, are required in Windows BMP format.

Selected Games

Chess & Variants

• Chess
• Chinese Chess
• Crazyhouse
• Knightmate
• Losing Chess
• Shatranj
• Shogi

Board Games

• Arimaa
• Breakthrough
• Checkers
• Clobber
• Go
• Hex
• Kalah
• Lines of Action
• Reversi
• Nine Men’s Morris

Puzzles

• Eight Queens Problem
• Knight's Tour

See also

• Game Description Language
• Games

Publications

• Jeff Mallett (2003). ZRF Language References. pdf
• Ingo Althöfer (2003). Computer-Aided Game Inventing. Friedrich Schiller University of Jena, pdf
• Ingo Althöfer (2004). Improved game play by multiple computer hints. Theoretical Computer Science, Vol. 313, No. 3

Forum Posts

• moderation:question about allowed discussions by Uri Blass, CCC, June 26, 2004
  Re: Zillions of Games is fantastic by Ingo Althöfer, CCC, June 26, 2004 ^{[4] [5]}
• Zillions of Games and WinBoard by Harm Geert Muller, CCC, December 11, 2007

External Links

• Zillions of Games - Unlimited Board Games & Puzzles
  Zillions of Games - How Many Games?
  Zillions of Games - Free Games for Download
  Zillions of Games - 2358 Free Games for Download
• Zillions of Games - Wikipedia
• Zillions of Games from Chessvariants.org
• 600 Zillions Games by Karl Scherer
• WinBoard Adapter for Zillions of Games by Andreas Kaufmann
• Galton Game by Ingo Althöfer

References

1. ^ Zillions of Games - How Many Games?
2. ^ Zillions of Games - Wikipedia
3. ^ Jeff Mallett (2003). ZRF Language References. pdf
4. ^ Nina Hagen from Wikipedia
5. ^ BEZZENBERGER Rechtsanwälte - Kanzlei für gewerblichen Rechtsschutz, Urheber- und Medienrecht

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