RE: What's The Name Of This Gaming Thing?

  • From: "Sina Bahram" <sbahram@xxxxxxxxx>
  • To: <programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Fri, 18 Feb 2011 09:48:05 -0500

 
For those who are interested, here is the chess programming wiki.
 
https://chessprogramming.wikispaces.com/
 
take care,
Sina
 
From: programmingblind-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx 
[mailto:programmingblind-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Kerneels Roos
Sent: Friday, February 18, 2011 9:41 AM
To: programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: What's The Name Of This Gaming Thing?
 
Lost some time there writing that one, but it was fun.
Have a splendid weekend.

On 2/18/2011 4:38 PM, Jacques Bosch wrote: 
Good one, Kerneels. :) 
On Fri, Feb 18, 2011 at 4:11 PM, Homme, James <james.homme@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Hi Kerneels,
Do you mean you want to try it out, help plan and write it, evaluate my 
stumbling as I try to learn it, or something else?
 
Thanks.
 
Jim
 
Jim Homme,
Usability Services,
Phone: 412-544-1810. Skype: jim.homme
Internal recipients,  Read my accessibility blog 
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From: programmingblind-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx 
[mailto:programmingblind-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Kerneels Roos
Sent: Friday, February 18, 2011 8:57 AM 

To: programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: What's The Name Of This Gaming Thing?
 
Hi list,

Sorry, it was a bit of a "whoo, look at me, look what I know" kind of answer to 
Jim's question -- don't take it too seriously. Had I
only paid more attention in class, worked that bit harder I might just have 
been busy with this kind of stuff on a daily basis. Just
imagine... Job satisfaction here we come! But then again, perhaps one would go 
mad, grow serious facial hair and hardly ever go out
into the real world if your job was that interesting and nice -- not to mention 
the pizza / coka cola / beer belly!  Ha ha!

Would welcome any books on such topics now that my hard copy books requires 
significant processing before it's in a digital format
fit for audio consumption.

Jim, I thinnk a Java project to produce a PNG reader / validator for chess 
games is an excellent idea! Count me in on that project
please! Even if there are PNG APIs for Java it would be an excellent excersise 
to build one with good OO principals during the
design. Would also be nice if it one day could incorporate a chess diagram 
recognition component that could describe chess diagrams
-- like an OCR for chess board diagrams if you like.

Jim all that AI and CI jargon is more bark than bite really. Doesn't it sound 
impressive hey? The truth is, as with most things, it
is finite meaning you can grasp it if you put your mind to it.

The real beauty for me of AI and CI and any science that looks to the natural 
world for ideas and inspiration is that, for me, it
keeps on astounding me as to how complex, clever and majestic this world we 
live in really is. See also [1]. 
How can this be a product of chance I ask you?

The illustration of Socrates, probably penned by Plato fits well in here. It is 
of a group of people tied down facing the inside
wall of a shallow cave. Outside the mouth of the cave a huge fire is blazing, 
and between the fire and the cave a procession of
every kind of animal is underway. The cave captives marvel at the shadows being 
cast against the cave walls. With a fair bit of
interest they ooh and aah over the dancing shadows on the wall.

Then, the unthinkable happens. One cave captive is freed from his bounds. He 
jumps up, looks around and behold, he sees the
prosession of real animals, the fire, the shadows....
 
In one sense, as far as I understand it, this was the thesis of Socrates -- 
this world is but a shadow of something even more real
and wonderful.

Socrates considered himself the freed cave captive -- as far as I have it. Any 
philosophy student  it's like that hey?

Why does a linux fanatic try so hard to convince that it's the better system? 
In his mind he's that freed captive, to put it in OS
terms if you like. The question is, is he right. In landing, just thought I'd 
throw that in there, so no one can say the post was
off topic ha ha!

[1] The flip side of all of this is of course, how crewel  harsh and mercyless 
this world also is, but for my take on this please
contact me off list should you be interested.

Kerneels




On 2/18/2011 2:33 PM, Ken Perry wrote: 
Kerneels, 
  
This is one of the best answers of this question I have seen outside of a class 
room.  I have nothing to add except if you're
looking for books on this sort of thing do a google search on "game 
intelligence book" 
  
ken  
  
From: programmingblind-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx 
[mailto:programmingblind-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Kerneels Roos
Sent: Friday, February 18, 2011 3:18 AM
To: programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: What's The Name Of This Gaming Thing? 
  
Hi Jim,

Nice question! 

The problem of solving strategy games such as chess and tic tac toe and drafts 
involves generating a search tree that represents as
many possibilities for each move at each level as you have resources for, and 
then, by searching finding the best possible next move
with an eventual favourable end in mind. In essense, the program looks ahead 
into the future to avoid being duped by sub optimal
moves which might yeald short term benefits but eventual damnation!

A big part of this is searching the tree or graph of possibilities efficiently, 
representing the structures efficiently and
employing huristics (rules of thumb) to keep things from exploding into too 
large to handle data sets.

It's part of the field of classic AI and it has been studied for decades now. 
It's sometimes also referred to as symbolic AI as it
deals with discrete values and usually involves a type of math called discrete 
math (as aposed to calculas for example, that deals
with continuous systems, values approaching 0, values approaching infinity and 
fractions).

All this might sound fairly complicated but I can assure you it's actually not, 
and many of these classic AI problems have been
solved sufficiently. For example, there are chess systems that can't be beaten. 
Yes, the machines can beat us at very narrowly
defined games such as chess, and it can only beat the world champions with 
significant effort on the machine designer's part, to
such an extent that it's debatable if the contest is even fair or not.

For example, in the whole Deep Blue saga, IBM programmed their system to beat 
Gary Kasparov in particular. Had another world
champion shown up for the tournament it might have had different results -- an 
indication of what an amazing game chess is and how
hard it is to beat the best mind on earth.

Moving on from classic AI, there is a very interesting field which have been 
termed CI (Computational Intelligence) which concerns
it'itself with some of the same goals as classic AI, but it does this with 
things like artificial neural networks (symulation of how
a brain functions), particle swarm optimisation (modelling how swarms of living 
insects operate to find solutions to complex
problems) and many other models of real life living systems that exhibit 
intelligent behaviour.

Wow, where has the time gone!

Cheers,
Kerneels 


On 2/17/2011 11:17 PM, qubit wrote: 
So did your coffee working yield the answer? *smile* 
--le 
  
----- Original Message ----- 
From: Homme, James <mailto:james.homme@xxxxxxxxxxxx>  
To: programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx 
Sent: Thursday, February 17, 2011 2:43 PM 
Subject: RE: What's The Name Of This Gaming Thing? 
  
Hay Laura, 
I asked the question before my coffee started working this morning. 
  
Jim 
  
Jim Homme, 
Usability Services, 
Phone: 412-544-1810. Skype: jim.homme 
Internal recipients,  Read my accessibility blog 
<http://mysites.highmark.com/personal/lidikki/Blog/default.aspx> . Discuss
accessibility here 
<http://collaborate.highmark.com/COP/technical/accessibility/default.aspx> . 
Accessibility Wiki: Breaking news
and accessibility advice 
<http://collaborate.highmark.com/COP/technical/accessibility/Accessibility%20Wiki/Forms/AllPages.aspx>
  
  
From: programmingblind-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx 
[mailto:programmingblind-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of qubit
Sent: Thursday, February 17, 2011 3:35 PM
To: programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: What's The Name Of This Gaming Thing? 
  
heuristics are just educated guesses.  I suppose it can be useful in developing 
strategies, but it's not the only part of the
science... Hey Jim, this must have been a good question with all the attention 
it has received...*smile* 
--le 
  
  
  
----- Original Message ----- 
From: Christopher <mailto:ccoale427@xxxxxxxxx>  
To: programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx 
Sent: Thursday, February 17, 2011 2:29 PM 
Subject: Re: What's The Name Of This Gaming Thing? 
  
Heuristics, perhaps?

On 2/17/2011 12:25 PM, Haden Pike wrote: 
Artificial Intelligence?  Logic, perhaps?  Just tossing ideas out there.
Haden

On 2/17/2011 7:58 AM, Homme, James wrote: 
Hi, 
I'm not sure how to ask this question since I don't have the background yet. 
When you have a program that is playing a game, let's
say a simple game, like TicTacToe, and it tries to figure out what the best 
move is, what is that whole subject called? Or when you
have a game where you are moving two people around and you don't want them to 
run into one-another, is that the same subject? 
Thanks. 
Jim 
Jim Homme, 
Usability Services, 
Phone: 412-544-1810. Skype: jim.homme 
Internal recipients,  Read my accessibility blog 
<http://mysites.highmark.com/personal/lidikki/Blog/default.aspx> . Discuss
accessibility here 
<http://collaborate.highmark.com/COP/technical/accessibility/default.aspx> . 
Accessibility Wiki: Breaking news
and accessibility advice 
<http://collaborate.highmark.com/COP/technical/accessibility/Accessibility%20Wiki/Forms/AllPages.aspx>
  
  
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--   
Kerneels Roos  
Cell: +27 (0)82 309 1998  
Skype: cornelis.roos  
   
"There are only two kinds of programming languages in the world; those everyone 
complains about, and those nobody uses."  
 
-- 
Kerneels Roos
Cell: +27 (0)82 309 1998
Skype: cornelis.roos
 
"There are only two kinds of programming languages in the world; those everyone 
complains about, and those nobody uses."



-- 

Jacques Bosch 

Software Architecture and Development
Independent Contractor
Cell: +27 824711807 Fax: +27 86 504 4726
E-Mail: jfbosch@xxxxxxxxx   



-- 
Kerneels Roos
Cell: +27 (0)82 309 1998
Skype: cornelis.roos
 
"There are only two kinds of programming languages in the world; those everyone 
complains about, and those nobody uses."

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