| Author |
Message |
Karl Scherer (Karl)
| | Posted on Wednesday, August 07, 2002 - 6:57 am: | |
As far as I have tried,
Zillions will not allow you to create
board setups with hundreds of pieces -
you will get an exception error and Zillions
wont even start.
There is an easy way around this problem, namely dropping them in later.
In my new game "Halma Star" I have implemented
this simple trick:
In Halma Star III, which can be selected from the
selection screen of Halma Star,
I needed 400 pieces for a bonus system.
Now the fist player clicks the board for a dummy drop, then a "random" player ?Rand
drops 400 pieces where I want them.
-------------------
By the way, the bonus system
is an interesting feature in itself:
It encourages the computer to find its way
where there are no other encouragements for it
to do so.
In a game like Halma, where there are no
captures and where the win-position
is far beyond the horizon,
a Bonus System helps the computer to find the overall direction towards its target turf.
For further details see Halma Star III
and the upcoming version of Rubics Cube.
You can also use such a Bonus system
to encourage the computer to place a Pawn in the
center of the board in chess, for ecample.
Many possible applications come to mind...
The main difference to using the command
"move-priorities" is that "move-priorities"
uses force, not encouragement, and that
"move-priorities" also forces the human player
into certain moves. A bonus system leaves the human player's options untouched.
I am looking forward to applications you find for yourself!
Cheers, Karl |
Patrick S. Duff (Pduff)
| | Posted on Monday, May 01, 2006 - 12:44 am: | |
Your bonus system idea intrigues me. The regular Zillions AI frequently makes stupid moves in games with more than two players. An example is my go-moku-9 game which supports up to 9 players. I'm going to have to think about this -- let me know if you have any thoughts about using it to improve multi-player games. |
|