Re: Game algorithm

["John Stoneham" <captnjameskirk@moc.oohay>]

"John" <celineg@look.ca> wrote in message
news:us3njhnp968eed@corp.supernews.com...
> I am doing a strategy game of "turned-base" type in Ada and I am in search
> of an algorithm which builds a binary tree in wich all the leaves
represents
> all the possible moves for a player, at the given moment.
>
> Could somebody direct me to a good link for this type of problem.
>
> Thank you
>

One of the "future" projects I am planning is a chess program in Ada.
Studying chess programming has been an on-and-off hobby of mine for several
years, and although you may not be usisng chess as your turn-based strategy
game, I believe the underlying principles will remain the same.

First look at www.cs.ualberta.ca/~tony/ICCA/anatomy.html for a very brief
description of how a computer chess program "thinks". There are two
algorithms enjoying dominance right now, one is called NegaScout, and the
other is MTD(f). C-code for NegaScout is available at
www.zib.de/reinefeld/nsc.html, and pseudo-code with an analysis for MTD(f)
is at www.cs.vu.nl/~aske/mtdf.html. A good links page for computer chess
programming is at www.xs4all.nl/~verhelst/chess/programming.html.

I also highly recommend the book Chess Skill In Man And Machine, which you
will probably need to find used somewhere like www.abebooks.com. Although
dated (it doesn't describe the more recent algorithms I mentioned above),
the basic descriptions of chess programs are very good. I still refer to it
when I want a "refresher".

Hope this helps.

--
John Stoneham
(to email, reverse the domain)