WinDama - Algerian / Spanish Checkers

WinDama is an open-source WPF application and reusable C# engine for Algerian / Spanish checkers. It combines a playable interface, centralized rules, AI search, benchmarking, opening books, tournaments, dataset export, and research on bitboards and FPGA acceleration.

Why WinDama?

WinDama is designed as:

• a complete playable checkers application;
• an educational board-game AI platform;
• a reusable C# rules and search engine;
• a benchmark environment for search and evaluation;
• a research platform for bitboards and FPGA move generation.

Highlights

• Mandatory capture, longest multicaptures, and flying Damas
• Human vs AI, Human vs Human, and AI vs AI
• Iterative-deepening alpha-beta and real-time analysis
• Transposition tables, quiescence, killer, and history heuristics
• Benchmarks, evaluator tuning, profile tournaments, and datasets
• Opening books, game databases, and 101 passing NUnit tests

Screenshots

See the complete screenshot gallery.

Download

Download the Windows x64 preview from GitHub Releases, extract the ZIP, and run WinDama.exe.

The self-contained package normally requires no separate .NET installation.

Current baseline

• Version: 1.0.1-preview
• Engine: Core engine 2026.07
• Validation: 101 passed, 0 failed
• Framework: .NET 10.0 Windows / WPF
• License: MIT

Engine architecture

WinDama separates the WPF interface from the reusable engine.

WPF application
      |
      v
WinDama.Core
      |
      +-- Move generation and rules
      +-- Search and evaluation
      +-- Opening books and datasets
      |
      v
WinDama.Tests

MainWindow
    |
    v
GameController
    |
    +-- MoveGenerator
    +-- MoveExecutor
    +-- SearchEngine
    +-- Evaluation
    +-- OpeningBook

Further documentation:

• Engine Architecture
• Move Generation and Rules
• AI Search and Evaluation
• Bitboard Design
• FPGA Research

Main capabilities

Game and interface

• Responsive 8x8 board, notation, and legal-move highlighting
• Last-move highlighting, undo/redo, editor, and analysis controls
• Persistent settings and engine-status display

Rules, AI, and tools

• Mandatory and maximal captures with flying-Dama rules
• Fixed-depth, timed, and game-clock search
• Opening books and configurable handcrafted or linear evaluators
• Tactical benchmarks, tournaments, and JSONL/CSV/JSON export

Project structure

WinDama1.0/        WPF interface
WinDama.Core/      Rules, search, and reusable tools
WinDama.Tests/     NUnit validation suite
OpeningBooks/      Bundled opening books
TestPositions/     Tactical JSON positions
EvaluationWeights/ Evaluation profiles
docs/              Technical documentation
scripts/           Build and release scripts

Build and test

Requirements: Visual Studio Community 2026 with the .NET desktop development workload, or the .NET 10 SDK for command-line builds.

dotnet restore WinDama.sln
dotnet build WinDama.sln -c Release
dotnet test .\WinDama.Tests\WinDama.Tests.csproj -c Release

Expected result: 101 passed, 0 failed.

Publish Windows x64:

.\scripts\Publish-Release-x64.ps1

Use -SelfContained to create a self-contained package.

Research directions and publications

WinDama supports work on rule-based move generation, bitboards, maximal multicaptures, Boolean legality models, FPGA acceleration, evaluation learning, and tactical benchmarking.

Publications, preprints, datasets, and reproducible experiments will be listed here when publicly available.

Roadmap

• Extend tactical and endgame tests
• Add searchable game history and portable notation
• Implement and validate WinDama.Core.Bitboards
• Add exact move-set and perft comparisons
• Prototype Boolean and FPGA-oriented move generation
• Continue evaluation-learning experiments

Open-source project

This repository continues the earlier Algerian Spanish Checkers project on SourceForge.

Contributions are welcome. Read CONTRIBUTING.md before opening a pull request. See SECURITY.md, RELEASE_NOTES.md, and CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md.