I was now struck by the urge to try to do the same, and to help with the testing (& because it felt like a cool and fun thing to do) I decided to build myself a Thud board & the necessary pieces. I had noticed years ago that some people on boardgamegeek (iirc) had tried to construct rules for Thud. The book lays out some basic rules and features of the game, but leaves out a lot. The story didn’t grip me all that much the first time around, but now I’ve grown to appreciate it quite a bit more.Īnyhoo, the book features a fictitious boardgame called Thud. You can also load a saved game, or a custom game.I’m a huge fan of Terry Pratchett’s Discworld novels, and have recently been leafing through his book, Thud!, again.

In the File menu, you can save your current game for later use. Be careful, values above the default value of 3 may very well hang the game). The Settings menu allows you to customize useful settings, most notably the AI reflection depth. A dwarf opening move, on the default depth setting, takes about 30 seconds to compute on decent hardware. To let the AI play the next move, simply press space - and be patient. Due to the high branching factor, writing an efficient AI for Thud is much more difficult than for chess, and it will sometimes seem dumb it's a fun challenge for a beginner though. Clicking anywhere else cancels the move.Ī basic AI is implemented. If you're playing a troll, and can capture one out of several dwarves, they are highlighted in yellow to let you choose your victim. When hovering one of the pieces of the currently moving side, possible moves are highlighted.

The currently playing side is displayed in the top-left corner (the green rounded rectangle on the picture below). How to play The boardĮach dwarf is pictured with a D, each troll with a T, and non-usable squares are greyed out. The application is standalone, and stores a single configuration file alongside the jar file. You'll need a JRE install, at least Java 8, which you can download here. You'll find some instructions on how to lauch the jar here. The application is packaged as a multiplatform jar (Java ARchive). Trevor Truran created the complete rules of the game. Thud is a game mentioned in Terry Pratchett's 34th Discworld novel, Thud!. A Java implementation of Terry Pratchett's Discworld chesslike game, Thud! The game

Terry pratchett thud board game