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

  • From: "Ken Perry" <whistler@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: <programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Fri, 18 Feb 2011 12:49:21 -0500

Oh by the way that was the intel core 2 duo numbers not the new quad
numbers.

 

Ken

 

From: programmingblind-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:programmingblind-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Sina Bahram
Sent: Friday, February 18, 2011 9:36 AM
To: programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: RE: What's The Name Of This Gaming Thing?

 

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 

  

Jim Homme, 

Usability Services, 

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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 and accessibility advice
<http://collaborate.highmark.com/COP/technical/accessibility/Accessibility%2
0Wiki/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."

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