Backgammon, by Horațiu!

Open-source cross-platform reimagination of one of the oldest backgammon games for Windows, built with MonoGame and .NET 10.

Features

• Standard backgammon rules — 24-point board, 15 pieces per player, bar and bearing-off areas
• Single-player vs AI — play against a computer-controlled opponent
• Animated piece movement — smooth sprite-based animation for every move
• Drag-and-drop interaction — click to pick up a piece, then click a valid destination to place it
• Legal-move highlighting — valid target columns are highlighted after selecting a piece
• Dice rolling — roll dice when no moves are available by clicking the centre dice area
• Undo — revert the last move at any time
• Reset — start a fresh game from the opening position
• Context-sensitive cursor — cursor changes to reflect the current interaction state (pointer, pick up, grab, open hand, dice)

Gameplay

You play as white (moving from high-numbered to low-numbered columns). The AI plays as brown (moving in the opposite direction).

Each turn:

1. Dice are rolled automatically at the start of your turn.
2. Click a white piece to select it. Legal destinations are highlighted.
3. Click a highlighted column to move the piece there.
4. Repeat until all dice values are used (or no moves remain).
5. If you have no legal moves you can click the dice to pass.

Pieces sent to the bar must re-enter from the opponent's home board before any other moves are made. Once all 15 of your pieces have moved past column 0 you can begin bearing off.

The first player to bear off all 15 pieces wins.

AI

The computer opponent uses a minimax search with a transposition table (memoisation) to evaluate full move sequences. The position evaluator accounts for:

• Pip count — distance remaining to bear off
• Point control — bonuses for owning anchors, home-board points, and outer points
• Primes — bonus for consecutive owned points (4-, 5-, and 6-primes)
• Blot threats — penalties for exposed single pieces within direct or combined dice reach of the opponent
• Bar pieces — penalties for pieces on the bar and bonuses for putting the opponent on the bar

All weights and thresholds are adjusted automatically based on the current game phase:

Phase	Condition
Racing	AI leads by more than 15 pips
Blocking	Pip difference between −15 and +40
Back game	AI trails by more than 40 pips

Installation

Flatpak

Prebuilt releases

Download the latest packaged build from the GitHub releases page.

Running From Source

Requirements

• .NET 10 SDK
• MonoGame content build tools (dotnet-mgcb) — required to rebuild game assets
• TrueType core fonts — required for font rendering on Linux (fonts-freefont-ttf or equivalent)

All NuGet dependencies (MonoGame, NuciXNA) are restored automatically by dotnet restore.

On Ubuntu the CI workflow installs the missing tools with:

dotnet tool install --global dotnet-mgcb
sudo apt-get install -y fonts-freefont-ttf

Build

dotnet build

Run

dotnet run --project BackgammonByHoratiu

Test

dotnet test

Release

The repository includes release.sh, which delegates to the upstream deployment script used by the project maintainer.

bash ./release.sh 1.0.0

This script downloads and executes an external release helper from https://raw.githubusercontent.com/hmlendea/deployment-scripts/master/release/dotnet/10.0.sh.

Note: Piping into bash is an intensely controversial topic. Please review any external scripts before running them in your environment!

Project Structure

BackgammonByHoratiu/
├── Entities/              # Pure data models (Table, Player, Piece, GameSnapshot, Dice)
├── GameLogic/
│   ├── GameManagers/      # Rules engine (GameManager) and AI coordinator (AiGameManager)
│   └── AI/
│       ├── BackgammonAi.cs          # Move planner and execution queue
│       ├── BoardLayout.cs           # Board constants (columns, home-board ranges)
│       ├── Evaluation/              # Position scoring (PositionEvaluator, AiWeights, ThreatCalculator)
│       └── Search/                  # Minimax search with transposition table (MoveSearcher)
├── Gui/
│   ├── Screens/           # SplashScreen and GameplayScreen
│   └── Controls/          # GuiGameBoard, GuiButton, FramerateCounter
├── Settings/              # Constants and configuration (GameDefines, GraphicsSettings, AudioSettings)
├── Program.cs             # Entry point
└── GameWindow.cs          # MonoGame window and screen-manager setup

BackgammonByHoratiu.UnitTests/
├── Entities/              # Unit tests for Table, Player, Piece
└── GameLogic/             # Unit tests for game managers, AI evaluator, and search

Dependencies

Package	Purpose
MonoGame.Framework.DesktopGL	Cross-platform 2D rendering, input, and audio
MonoGame.Content.Builder.Task	Asset pipeline (fonts, textures, sprites)
NuciXNA.Graphics	Sprite and animation abstraction
NuciXNA.Gui	Screen and control framework
NuciXNA.Input	Keyboard and mouse input abstraction
NuciXNA.Primitives	Geometric types (Point2D, Size2D, …)
NuciXNA.DataAccess	Content loading utilities
NuciDAL	Data-access base library

Contributing

Contributions are welcome.

Please:

• keep changes cross-platform
• keep pull requests focused and consistent with existing style
• update documentation when behaviour changes
• add or update tests for new behaviour

Links

• Latest release
• FlatHub release
• FlatHub repository

License

Licensed under the GNU General Public License v3.0 or later. See LICENSE for details.