Zillions of Games

Zillions of Games is the first expandable gaming environment which allows users to create or download new board games in the Zillions format (only available on Windows). After coding the rules of a new game, the system's artificial intelligence system will automatically be able to play against you.

More than 800 freeware board games (classical ones and new ones) have been written in the Zillions language. The authors all work for free and anybody can contribute games. On the Zillions download page the games are grouped into the three categories 'Puzzles', 'Chess Games' and 'Other Games'. Some of them simulate three-dimensional games (e.g. Rubik's Cube).

Quite a few of these games are very educational and can be used in school classes to teach mathematics and other subjects (e.g. the "games" 'Jugs' and 'Turing Machine' ). Zillions claims that the power of playful learning is underestimated by some educators.

ZRF programming language

Zillions games are programmed in ZRF - a special purpose microlanguage[?]. Adrian King, while generally impressed by the language, criticised it by noting a number of issues he had with the language, including:

• The documentation has inconsistent terminology, eg "move generation block."
• It lacks integer variables, having only boolean variables.
• Programmers cannot declare variables of type position, piece, direction, etc.
• It lacks a "case" statement, similar to that in C..
• It lacks a debugger.

External links

• Zillions of Games (http://www.zillions-of-games.com/) -- official site
• Atlantis Games (http://karl.kiwi.gen.nz/)
• Zillions of Games feedback (http://www.frontiernet.net/~alcove/chess/zogfeedback.html) by Adrian King and Joao Neto