RE: Game algorithm

["Steven Deller" <deller@smsail.com>]

Instead of chess, you might want to look into "Go".  The rules are
simpler than chess but the complexity is far greater (huge orders of
magnitude greater).  And it requires as much "feel" as "analysis".  Plus
there is a $1,000,000 prize waiting for the first program to beat a Pro
player at the lowest level.  So far, no program has even gotten close.
In fact, I am a good (not great) amateur player, and I have no problem
giving any Go program a handicap and still beating it without
difficulty.  If this piques your interest, check out:
   http://www.usgo.org

Regards,
Steve

> -----Original Message-----
> From: comp.lang.ada-admin@ada.eu.org 
> [mailto:comp.lang.ada-admin@ada.eu.org] On Behalf Of John Stoneham
> Sent: Saturday, November 02, 2002 8:25 AM
> To: comp.lang.ada@ada.eu.org
> Subject: Re: Game algorithm
> 
> 
> "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)


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