Arimaa Forum
        (http://arimaa.com/arimaa/forum/cgi/YaBB.cgi)
      

        Arimaa >> Bot Development >> New Bot caretaker have questions...
        
(Message started by: unic on Apr 15th, 2006, 5:16pm)
Title: New Bot caretaker have questions...
Post by unic on Apr 15th, 2006, 5:16pm
Hi,

I've got my Bot up and working (though playing extremely stupid), and have a couple of questions:

a/ Is there a way for my bot to display information while thinking, without the perl-script interpreting it as a move?  E.g., I would like to display depth, nodes/second, PV, evaluation, etc. - would make it a lot easier to try to debug or improve things.

b/ Is there a way for my bot to play against the bots in the botladder, starting at the bottom?  Otherwise, there usually does not seem to be a weak bot logged in, as far as I've seen.
Title: Re: New Bot caretaker have questions...
Post by Ryan_Cable on Apr 15th, 2006, 5:41pm
I’m not sure if there is a more efficient way, but you can start most bots by clicking on the Arimaa Bots link on the right of the Gameroom, then the Bots Available to Play link at the top of that page.  Pick out the bot you want, and click on its Play link.  Finally, pick the color you want it to play, and click the Start Bot button.  The bot will then show up in the Gameroom with a game for your bot to join.
Title: Re: New Bot caretaker have questions...
Post by jdb on Apr 15th, 2006, 5:58pm
For question a)

Clueless writes a bunch of info to a log file while it is searching. I look at the file with a text editor. This also makes it easier to recreate situations that occurred in a game. Anything written to stdout is digested by the perl script.

For question b)

Ryan's method is the only way I know. I would recommend starting against shallowblue and then trying arimaazilla. They both move within a few seconds, so the games don't take too long.
Title: Re: New Bot caretaker have questions...
Post by unic on Apr 15th, 2006, 6:03pm

on 04/15/06 at 17:58:02, jdb wrote:
For question a)

Clueless writes a bunch of info to a log file while it is searching. I look at the file with a text editor. This also makes it easier to recreate situations that occurred in a game. Anything written to stdout is digested by the perl script.

There is no way around this?  I would really like to be able to see what my bot is thinking, live, while it is playing a game...
Title: Re: New Bot caretaker have questions...
Post by unic on Apr 15th, 2006, 6:04pm
Oh, and thanks to Ryan for telling me how to start a bot - ShallowBlue is a bit less intimidating than Arimaanator.
Title: Re: New Bot caretaker have questions...
Post by 99of9 on Apr 15th, 2006, 6:08pm

on 04/15/06 at 18:03:06, unic wrote:
There is no way around this?  I would really like to be able to see what my bot is thinking, live, while it is playing a game...

I use two methods to get around this.

1) write messages to stderr - they will be dispersed throughout the stdout output, so you will see them live

2) write messages to a log file, and in a separate window, tail -f that log file.  

Admittedly this 2nd is a linux command, so windows may not have an equivalent.  But if you're a true blue windows programmer, you can probably make a new "window" come up with your output ;-).
Title: Re: New Bot caretaker have questions...
Post by unic on Apr 15th, 2006, 7:20pm

on 04/15/06 at 18:08:05, 99of9 wrote:
1) write messages to stderr - they will be dispersed throughout the stdout output, so you will see them live

How ugly!  But it works :)  I expect I shall be using this a lot.

Quote:
2) write messages to a log file, and in a separate window, tail -f that log file.  

Admittedly this 2nd is a linux command, so windows may not have an equivalent.  But if you're a true blue windows programmer, you can probably make a new "window" come up with your output ;-).

I'm afraid I'm not a true windows programmer - most of my programs are compiled as console applications ;)

... either way, seeing some output from my program, it's plain I have a major bug somewhere... (where it played the first step according to the search, but for the remaining steps just played the first move generated) but I feel less that I am fumbling in the dark trying to find out now, with the possibility of seeing some output.

It is way late here though, so trying to fix it will have to wait until tomorrow...
Title: Re: New Bot caretaker have questions...
Post by unic on Apr 15th, 2006, 7:29pm
Oh, and while using stderr works...

I hereby petition for some capable Perl hacker (which rules me out - I know nothing about Perl) to extend the bot perl-script so that it treats any line beginning with a certain character (perhaps #) as a comment, and ignores it...

Not sure how complicated that would be in Perl - but seems to me it shouldn't be too difficult to add.   And it would solve the whole issue of not being able to write data to stdout without the Perl-script trying to interpret it as a move.

Good night.

Tomorrow's goal: have Fairy actually trying to win (or at least capture/defend material) instead of just shuffling rabbits left and right.
Title: Re: New Bot caretaker have questions...
Post by jdb on Apr 16th, 2006, 1:00am

Quote:
There is no way around this?  I would really like to be able to see what my bot is thinking, live, while it is playing a game...


A decent text editor, like TextPad, (free via google) will automatically reload the log file in real time.
Title: Re: New Bot caretaker have questions...
Post by unic on Apr 16th, 2006, 5:17am

on 04/15/06 at 19:29:15, unic wrote:
Tomorrow's goal: have Fairy actually trying to win (or at least capture/defend material) instead of just shuffling rabbits left and right.

Mission accomplished - now that I could actually get output and get on with debugging, a few large bugs were easily found, and in today's first game, Fairy beat ShallowBlue :)
Title: Re: New Bot caretaker have questions...
Post by unic on Apr 29th, 2006, 5:53pm
Fairy is progressing well - working mainly on improving search speed right now.  Have too many ideas for evaluation, so I'm afraid that once I start seriously looking at that, I won't get around to working on search... so want to get a reasonable search speed first.

Random output from Fairy searching the start position:

Code:
Searching position:
Move 2,  Step 0,  Gold at move.
+-----------------+
8| r r r r r r r r |
7| h c d e m d c h |
6| . . - . . - . . |
5| . . . . . . . . |
4| . . . . . . . . |
3| . . - . . - . . |
2| H D C M E C D H |
1| R R R R R R R R |
+-----------------+
  a b c d e f g h
Hashkey: 798B31C67F57B17B

Remaining time: 115.00
Allocated time:  46.00
             Depth  Value     Nodes     Evals   Time PV
    5........     50         2         1   0.00 Ha2n
    5........    250         3         2   0.00 Db2n
    5........    400         5         4   0.00 Md2n
    5........    850         6         5   0.00 Ee2n
===  5/ 1.0/ 1    850         9         8   0.00 Ee2n
   10........    850         2         1   0.00 Ee2n
=== 10/ 1.0/ 1    850         9         8   0.00 Ee2n
   15........   1060        17        15   0.00 Ee2n Md2n
=== 15/ 2.1/ 4   1060        95        88   0.00 Ee2n Md2n
   20........   1060        17        15   0.00 Ee2n Md2n
=== 20/ 2.1/ 4   1060       117       108   0.00 Ee2n Md2n
   25........    950       219       204   0.01 Ee2n Ha2n Ha3e
=== 25/ 3.0/ 4    950      1211      1130   0.01 Ee2n Ha2n Ha3e
   30........    950       236       220   0.01 Ee2n Ha2n Ha3e
=== 30/ 3.1/ 4    950      1593      1486   0.03 Ee2n Ha2n Ha3e
   35........    910      3254      3066   0.08 Ee2n Ha2n Ha3e Md2n
=== 35/ 4.0/ 4    910     17619     16588   0.27 Ee2n Ha2n Ha3e Md2n
   40........    910      3809      3575   0.30 Ee2n Ha2n Ha3e Md2n
=== 40/ 4.0/ 5    910     24584     23053   0.45 Ee2n Ha2n Ha3e Md2n
   45........    260      6641      3584   0.48 Ee2n Ha2n Ha3e Md2n ed7s
=== 45/ 4.6/ 5    260     39532     23065   0.77 Ee2n Ha2n Ha3e Md2n ed7s
   50........    260      7374      3593   0.80 Ee2n Ha2n Ha3e Md2n ed7s
=== 50/ 5.0/ 8    260     47909     23776   1.00 Ee2n Ha2n Ha3e Md2n ed7s
   55........     50     10297      3687   1.03 Ee2n Ha2n Ha3e Md2n ed7s me7s
=== 55/ 5.6/ 8     50     63008     23928   1.22 Ee2n Ha2n Ha3e Md2n ed7s me7s
   60........    110     12284      4843   1.25 Ee2n Md2n (pass) ed7s cg7s hh7s
=== 60/ 6.0/ 8    110     73212     25265   1.42 Ee2n Md2n (pass) ed7s cg7s hh7s
   65........    160     16779      6405   1.48 Ee2n Md2n Ha2n Ha3e ed7s cg7s hh7s
=== 65/ 6.6/ 8    160     89533     26610   1.66 Ee2n Md2n Ha2n Ha3e ed7s cg7s hh7s
   70........    160     16130      5096   1.72 Ee2n Md2n Ha2n Ha3e ed7s cg7s hh7s
=== 70/ 7.0/ 8    160     97278     25661   1.92 Ee2n Md2n Ha2n Ha3e ed7s cg7s hh7s
   75........    200     35529     20728   2.13 Ee2n Md2n Ha2n Ha3e ed7s cg7s hh7s me7s
=== 75/ 7.7/ 8    200    128772     41327   2.33 Ee2n Md2n Ha2n Ha3e ed7s cg7s hh7s me7s
   80........    150     88626     70804   2.88 Ee2n Md2n Dg2n Hh2n ed7s me7s (pass) Ee3n
=== 80/ 8.7/10    150    327815    233125   4.23 Ee2n Md2n Dg2n Hh2n ed7s me7s (pass) Ee3n
   85........    140    154343    102091   5.28 Ee2n Md2n Dg2n Re1n ed7s me7s ha7s ha6e Cf2n
=== 85/ 8.9/12    140    473374    327407   7.17 Ee2n Md2n Dg2n Re1n ed7s me7s ha7s ha6e Cf2n
   90........    100    274202    199214   8.77 Ee2n Md2n Dg2n Ee3n ed7s me7s ha7s ha6e Hh2n
=== 90/ 9.5/12    100   1019664    827965  13.75 Ee2n Md2n Dg2n Ee3n ed7s me7s ha7s ha6e Hh2n
   95........     90   1537540   1354628  24.45 Ee2n Md2n Ee3n Ee4n ed7s me7s me6e mf6e Dg2n Ee5w
~~~ 95/10.1/12     90   4420000   4033753  46.05 Ee2n Md2n Ee3n Ee4n ed7s me7s me6e mf6e Dg2n Ee5w

Slightly garbled - I think the forum is eating some of my whitespace or inserting extra (or doing some weird replacement with tabs)... not sure which.


Arimaa Forum » Powered by YaBB 1 Gold - SP 1.3.1!
YaBB © 2000-2003. All Rights Reserved.