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        Arimaa >> Bot Development >> No javascript client to use at home, right?
        
(Message started by: Swynndla on Jul 29^th, 2011, 5:21am)

Title: No javascript client to use at home, right?
Post by Swynndla on Jul 29^th, 2011, 5:21am

(Not that I'm up to this stage yet, but) I was wondering what bot developers do when they want to play their bot at home to test it ... do they:
- play using a physical board/pieces (with moves output & input via text on a command line shell)?, or
- get the bot to print out a text board on stdout (and moves via command line shell)?, or
- connect the bot with the gameroom and play online?

There's no javascript client that can be used at home right?

Title: Re: No javascript client to use at home, right?
Post by 99of9 on Jul 29^th, 2011, 6:33am

I do the two simplest methods:

Get the bot to play other bots in the gameroom, and watch it.
Set up some sample input files with interesting positions for it to solve.

Title: Re: No javascript client to use at home, right?
Post by Nazgand on Jul 29^th, 2011, 7:11am

I believe this (https://launchpad.net/arimaa-client) is what you are looking for - but, honestly, they all use the terminal and play in their head.

Title: Re: No javascript client to use at home, right?
Post by lightvector on Jul 29^th, 2011, 9:13am

I haven't done that much successful eval testing myself :-/, but I also go with 99of9's methods. Also, I have it evaluate sets of positions directly to see the values are reasonable (after I make a change to position A that should make it better for one player, does it get evaluated higher?), and have a simple testing mode where the bot generates two random setups and plays a game against itself, outputting the board after each step in ASCII, so I can see visually if it makes a really bad move, and try to correct it.

Title: Re: No javascript client to use at home, right?
Post by Swynndla on Jul 29^th, 2011, 6:41pm

Thanks for the replies! :)

lightvector - when your get you bot to play itself, do you use the AEI's analyze & roundrobin scripts, or do you use your own simple script to connect the two bots, or do you get the bot to play itself within its program (if I'm making any sense)?

Title: Re: No javascript client to use at home, right?
Post by lightvector on Jul 29^th, 2011, 8:33pm

In my program, I implemented a simple loop that keeps a board in memory and repeatedly calls the search function to get a move and then makes the move on the board, until one side or the other wins. Search depth and time are passed in through the command line.

When playing with another bot, I use the AEI scripts. But right now, I don't have too many other bots to test against locally.