Beginners in Pente often struggle with the basics of the game, and it isn’t usually fun to win a game just because the other player misses an open four! (ok sometimes it is…)
When playing over-the-board, some of the original Pente instructions suggested warning your opponent when you make a threat (open 3 or 4). For pente.org I’ve always thought it would be cool to highlight the threats on the board, provided of course both players agree to it.
I have implemented threat highlighting for a new Pente program I’m working on (more about that later) and maybe if it proves popular I’ll see about including it for live or turn-based games.
I was going to include some of the code for how I draw the highlighted portions using Java 2D, but after looking at it I realized it is horribly ugly stuff!