Tetgame Blue Room
Tetgame is now a working single-machine 3D prototype growing from the Trigame universe. The 2D game remains the welcoming training ground; Tetgame is becoming the more advanced spatial realm.
Overview
Where Tetgame stands now.
Tetgame began as the planned 3D extension of Trigame. It has now moved beyond the visual-sample stage into a functional prototype. The current page records the intended development stages so we can proceed in baby steps without losing the larger plan.
Role of Trigame
The 2D game remains the approachable introduction, training ground, Green Room system, and established world.
Role of Tetgame
Tetgame becomes the advanced 3D realm: more spatial, more sculptural, and more demanding.
Current Method
Develop in small, testable steps: one rule, one interface improvement, or one page at a time.
Current Prototype Play
The functionality now present in the single-machine version.
Geometry
Players place translucent tetrahedrons face-to-face. Gaps caused by real tetrahedral geometry are accepted rather than forced away.
Tokens and paths
Tokens claim sockets. Same-player tokens capture adjacent paths, and long mostly-straight chains can auto-fill through that player’s tet-owned paths.
Subs and tets
Captured paths can claim sub-tetrahedral regions. Capturing all required subs claims the full tet for scoring.
Remove
Remove is limited: it is disabled on a locked board, allowed only as the first action of a turn, blocks tets with tokens, and blocks tokens in captured paths.
Tet Rabbot Warren
The first personality sketchbook for the new 3D fluffle.
These twelve rabbots are not just portraits. They are intended behavior notes for future Tetgame AI: each one should eventually feel different at the board, while still leaving players room to guess where the inspiration came from.
Aquila Talon
Sees the board from far above. Patient, exacting, and fond of long-range plans that make the final capture look inevitable.
Sky commanderMorrigan Black
A sly collector of loose chances. She watches for careless moves, then turns one forgotten socket into a whole chain of trouble.
Trickster tacticianGrim Pharaoh
Never hurries. Grim circles weak structures and waits for someone else to make the position ripe for harvest.
Patient scavengerEcho Echo
Learns by imitation, then exaggerates the lesson. Echo copies successful patterns until the opponent realizes the joke is on them.
Mimic learnerScuttle Bay
Noisy, opportunistic, and shameless around easy points. Scuttle loves swooping into open space and stealing nearly-finished work.
Beach banditBuzz Stinger
Builds small, useful cells everywhere. Buzz favors tidy structure, quick links, and sudden swarms of connected paths.
Hive builderHamilton Marteau
Thinks from the side. Hamilton pressures awkward angles, studies two fronts at once, and turns the board into deep water.
Wide-angle hunterGlacier Borealis
Black-and-white grace in cold water. Glacier rides the flow, looks peaceful at first, then darts through the bow wake of a mistake.
Ice dancerFang
A cave fighter with a scarred brown face and no interest in looking friendly. Fang dives straight into dangerous places and comes back with teeth showing.
Ambush bruiserOctavius Indigo
Elegant, strange, and terrifyingly calm. Octavius sets tiny beautiful warnings around the board, and by the time they glow, escape may already be gone.
Poison puzzleSpectrum Pistolero
Small, brilliant, and violently quick. Spectrum does not grind out polite advantages; it fires at a weak point and tries to crack the whole position open.
Flash strikerSilver Kahuna
Surfs the shape of the whole position. Silver is relaxed until the tide turns, then suddenly every route seems to flow his way.
Tidal strategistDevelopment Roadmap
Stages intended for Tetgame as it grows from prototype to shared play.
Stage 1: Functional single-machine prototype
Core play is now substantially present: placement, tokens, paths, subs, captured tets, overlap, board lock, scoring, and Remove.
Stage 1½: Stabilize and document
Help, index notes, and edge-case testing are underway while the rules remain fresh.
Stage 2: Save and load game state
Client save/load works, and server APIs now save, list, and load Tetgame state files from the Blue Room.
Stage 3: Tetgame Green Room
Create, join, enter, list, and close shared Tetgame instances, following the spirit of Trigame’s Green Room.
Stage 4: Spectator mode
Allow watchers to view games, use the camera controls, read the game record, and chat without making moves.
Stage 5: Rabbot experiments
Use the new Tet Rabbot Warren as the personality map, then add preferences for captures, overlap, defense, risk, and spatial strategy.
Stage 6: Coliseum and tournaments
Once shared play and saved results are stable, adapt the Coliseum model for exhibitions, rounds, finals, and spectator links.
Current Prototype
A current screenshot of the playable Tetgame page.
The screenshot can be updated over time at images/tetgame.jpg. This keeps the index page light while still showing current progress.
Saved Tetgames
Recent server-saved games from the Blue Room.
Use the Load button inside tetgame.php and paste a saved game_id to continue a game.
Original Babylon Sample
The earlier visual reference is kept for comparison.
This older sample remains useful as a lighting, color, and geometry reference while the main playable work continues in tetgame.php.
Immediate Next Steps
Short-term work before shared games.
1. Help page
Create a clear, cellphone-safe explanation of the current rules, controls, scoring, board lock, and Remove limits.
2. Warren personality pass
Turn the new Tet Rabbot Warren into clearer behavior notes for future play style, voice tone, and tournament flavor.
3. Edge-case test pass
Test overlap, long chains, full tet capture, board lock, common-face restoration after Remove, and score totals.
4. Shared-game preparation
Keep the saved-state format stable while preparing the Green Room style create, join, enter, and close flow.
Comparative Complexity of Trigame and Tetgame
How the expanding board and local capture rules compare with familiar classic games.
Trigame and Tetgame combine two distinct layers of complexity: a finite local problem and an expanding global problem. A single tile or tet may be treated as a closed combinatorial puzzle with fixed internal structure, while the game as a whole behaves like an open recursive network in which each placement can create additional future placements.
In the discussion that informed this summary, the internal logic of a single Trigame tile was described as having approximately 39,916,800 possible permutations. That figure refers only to the bounded logic of one tile or one local sub-problem. The wider game becomes far more complex because each tile placement opens additional sockets, allowing the board to continue expanding outward rather than remaining confined to a fixed grid.
Tetgame follows the same general idea, but moves the logic into a tetrahedral field. A single tet has sockets, paths, sub-territories, and full-tet ownership. This means Tetgame is not only an expanding placement game, but also a layered capture game in which center sockets, corner sockets, automatic path fills, subs, and whole-tet captures can all affect the score.
Finite Tile or Tet, Divergent Game
| Layer | Type | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Single Trigame Tile | Closed / Finite | A bounded combinatorial puzzle governed by fixed internal elements and a finite state space. |
| Single Tetgame Tet | Closed / Finite | A bounded 3D local puzzle with sockets, paths, four sub-territories, and possible full-tet ownership. |
| Whole Trigame | Recursive / Expanding | A growing 2D network of tile placements in which each move can reshape the future board and enlarge the move tree. |
| Whole Tetgame | Recursive / Expanding / Layered | A growing tetrahedral network in which players manage expansion, blocking, token placement, path capture, sub capture, and full-tet capture. |
In Trigame, the game was described as gaining a net of 6 new sockets per tile placement when one socket is consumed and seven new ones are opened. Under that model, the number of available future placements grows rather than shrinks, making the overall game tree increasingly wide and deep as play continues.
In Tetgame, a simple tree-like estimate gives approximately 5T + 6 unique token sockets, where T is the number of tets. A one-tet board has 11 sockets. Each additional face-to-face tet shares part of its structure with the existing board, but still adds new sockets, new paths, and new capture opportunities. A 9-tet position may therefore contain about 51 token sockets, along with many possible path, sub, and full-tet consequences.
Comparison with Checkers, Chess, Go, Trigame, and Tetgame
| Game | Board Bounds | Termination | Complexity Character |
|---|---|---|---|
| Checkers | Fixed 8×8 board; 32 dark squares in play | Yes | Large but finite; smaller than Chess or Go in standard estimates, with roughly 5 × 1020 reachable positions in classic solving analyses, and solved as a draw under perfect play. |
| Chess | Fixed 8×8 board | Yes | Extremely large but finite game tree; often represented by the Shannon estimate of about 10120. |
| Go | Fixed 19×19 board | Yes | Vast positional and game-tree complexity, often estimated around 10360 for 19×19 Go. |
| Trigame | Expanding 2D field | Not fixed by board size alone | Locally finite but globally divergent: complexity grows through recursive placement and expansion. |
| Tetgame | Expanding tetrahedral field | Not fixed by board size alone | Locally finite, globally expanding, and tactically layered: each move may affect tet growth, blocking, tokens, paths, subs, and full-tet ownership. |
Illustrative Scale Estimates
The discussion also proposed rough comparison points suggesting that:
- after about 14 turns, the branching complexity of a Trigame session could exceed the classical Chess estimate;
- after about 38 turns, it could exceed the classical Go estimate;
- by about 40 turns, the number of possible continuations would already be astronomically large.
These figures should be read as illustrative comparisons, not as formal proofs, but they communicate an important point: Trigame does not merely have a large number of possible positions; it also has a growth mechanism that can continue enlarging the space of possible play.
Tetgame adds another wrinkle. A single turn may contain two actions, and each action may create consequences: a tet may open new faces, a token may capture paths, two corner tokens may auto-fill an edge socket, a center socket may unlock sub-capture possibilities, and a set of subs may lead to a full-tet capture. This makes the practical branching of a Tetgame turn larger than it first appears.
Why This Matters for AI
In bounded games such as Chess, strong engines can rely heavily on deep search because the board is fixed. In Go, Monte Carlo Tree Search and neural evaluation work well because, although the state space is vast, the board is still finite. Trigame and Tetgame place a different burden on intelligence: the challenge is not only to calculate well, but to manage the growth of the board itself.
Trigame naturally favors
- heuristic pruning,
- pattern recognition,
- socket prioritization,
- growth control,
- and interference with an opponent's future options.
Tetgame also favors
- tet ownership planning,
- center-socket timing,
- corner blocking,
- path and auto-token awareness,
- sub-capture sequencing,
- and deciding when expansion is worth more than immediate token scoring.
Plain Summary
Chess and Go are deep games played inside fences. Trigame is a deep game in which the field itself can continue to grow. Tetgame carries that idea into a tetrahedral field, where growth, blocking, paths, subs, and full-tet ownership all interact.
Trigame is locally finite, but globally explosive. Tetgame is locally finite, globally explosive, and tactically layered.
Current target path: trigame/tetgame/index.php
Playable prototype: trigame/tetgame/tetgame.php
Help page: trigame/tetgame/help.php