A high-performance hexagonal tic-tac-toe game engine implemented in Python, featuring a React-based visualizer.

• Board: A hexagonal grid with a configurable radius (default: 50).
• Turn Pattern: To mitigate first-player advantage, the game follows a 1-2-2-2... pattern:
  • Player 1 makes 1 move on the first turn.
  • Every subsequent turn, the active player makes 2 moves.
• Winning Condition: The first player to align 6 marks in a straight line (along any of the 3 hexagonal axes) wins.

The board uses the Axial Coordinate System $(q, r)$.

• $q$ is the column index.
• $r$ is the row index.
• The third coordinate $s = -(q + r)$ is implicitly handled for win detection.
• A cell is valid if $|q| < R$, $|r| < R$, and $|q + r| < R$.

The engine uses Bitboards for extremely fast state management and win detection. Win checking is performed using bitwise shifts, allowing thousands of games to be simulated per second.

• Python 3.13+
• uv (recommended for dependency management)

# Install dependencies
uv sync

pytest

To measure the engine's performance:

python benchmark.py

The project includes a React visualizer located in the visualizer/ directory.

cd visualizer
npm install
npm run dev

• game.py: Core bitboard-based game engine.
• test_game.py / test_history.py: Comprehensive test suites.
• benchmark.py: Performance measurement script.
• visualizer/: React/Vite/SVG frontend for game playback.
• export_game.py: Utility to export game data for the visualizer.