Bridj-It 2.0 (a.k.a. GALE, BIRD CAGE and BRIDG-IT)

History
Bridj-It is a two-player dot-connecting game, originally invented by Professor David Gale and played with coloured pencils and paper. In 1951, a GALE playing machine called BIRD CAGE was invented by Prof. Claude Shannon. The first BIRD CAGE used electrical circuits, switches and small light bulbs and a subsequent version used a simple analogue computer. A similar machine was built in 1958 by two engineers, W.A. Davidson and V.C. Laferty who knew nothing of the earlier machines built by Shannon.

In 1960, HASBRO marketed the game as BRIDG-IT, a board game with raised dots and plastic bridges.

I first wrote a computer version of the game in Excel using macros, in 1993, and in 1995 I re-wrote it in C for the Apple Mac II series (Classic OS).

This version was written in PHP in December 2007.

Rules
Each player takes turns connecting any adjacent pair of dots, either horizontally or vertically.

One player plays from left to right, while the other player plays from top to bottom. The player who first makes a continuous line from one side of the board to the other is the winner.

Sounds simple, eh? - Just try it, and see!

In this game, you will be playing left to right on the green dots, while the computer plays top to bottom on the red dots. You may connect any available pair of dots. To connect a pair of dots, just click in the space between them.

You cannot bridge across an opponent's line. In other words, you cannot connect a pair of dots that have been blocked by the opponent.

You must use logic and strategy to beat the computer, whilst the computer uses only mathematics to calculate its moves. It does not employ any kind of tactics, neither does it "look ahead" for the best moves, but you'd be forgiven for thinking it does.

This project was designed to demonstrate the dynamic capabilities of PHP.

Click here to play

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