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

  • From: "Sina Bahram" <sbahram@xxxxxxxxx>
  • To: <programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Fri, 18 Feb 2011 09:36:27 -0500

Just to add to this discussion a bit.
 
As far as chess goes, it is considered, anymore, very much uninteresting. 
Unfortunately, chess, unlike what they thought in the
60's, requires no strategy anymore. A bruit force attempt is pretty much 
guaranteed to win, and unlike in 1997 or 1995, my laptop is
good enough to beat all but the very best, and if I want to do that, I could 
just throw it on my desktop.
 
Now, it is a nice framework within which to learn about min/max and other 
simplistic AI strategies, so I encourage anyone who is
studying AI to write a  simple chess solver.
 
Take care,
Sina
From: programmingblind-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx 
[mailto:programmingblind-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Ken Perry
Sent: Friday, February 18, 2011 7:33 AM
To: programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: RE: What's The Name Of This Gaming Thing?
 
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 
  
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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
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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."

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