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        Arimaa >> Off Topic Discussion >> Abstract strategy board games
        
(Message started by: clojure on Sep 3^rd, 2010, 7:39am)

Title: Abstract strategy board games
Post by clojure on Sep 3^rd, 2010, 7:39am

Hi,

First of all, Omar, you have created a game that seems to my beginner eyes very fun game that can be played a lot without getting bored. Congrats! If I recall correctly, I read in forum post that you have another game in mind, but at that point of time wasn't ready to publish the rules. May I ask if it's available now? :)

I already posted some random thoughts about Arimaa on the request of a game review (clojure vs. OpFor). Here's some more:

I'm currently unemployed, and would be interested to create some interactive tool for reviewing games (if there is not already). Also some kind of Arimaa problems set with timing could be fun. Somehow I have a strong feeling that there's missing some live community feeling compared to KGS. Is there not a game spesific chat in here. And why on earth everybody is mostly playing just bots? (I'm guilty as charged but I'm a newbie so forgive me ;) )

I think the Mob vs. the One was excellent but I definitely would have liked if the game was watchable with the discussion tied to the board situation so that the moves that were suggested would be easily tried with the client. It was cumbersome enough to read that I didn't really focus on the variations. I wish it would be a possibility to integrate a game viewer inside a forum post; a browser plugin maybe.

Also what do you think about the possibility of team go, like 2 players vs. 2 players so that the team is NOT allowed to discuss the game. It's fun at least in go (rengo).

I recently read the wiki strategy of Arimaa but it seemed quite old (2006). Have there been recent advancement in strategy? Is it covered in Beginning Arimaa (ordered). Will there be a sequel? Are there other active theorist that write their thoughts other than Fritzlein?

The commented videos on World Championships are big plus!

I hope this is not spamming but I just started blogging on board games; have a look if you're interested. http://peculiarflow.blogspot.com/2010/09/introduction-to-this-blog.html

I think when I've gotten better to play games while "thinking out loud" so that beginners that are interested would get into the train of thought of a more experienced player. This would help also to get a larger, coherent vocabulary of Arimaa play combinations.

Title: Re: Abstract strategy board games
Post by Fritzlein on Sep 3^rd, 2010, 12:29pm

on 09/03/10 at 07:39:21, clojure wrote:

I'm currently unemployed, and would be interested to create some interactive tool for reviewing games (if there is not already).

If you are willing to do this, it would be a big service to the community. So far the game viewers can only take a single line of play and and no commentary. Blackknight started working on a viewer that could hold variations and commentary, but it never got to the point of nested variations, and he hasn't posted about it for a while.

Ideally such a viewer should be integrated the game room in some way so that positions can be viewed and analyzed communally. However, even if the analysis tree could only be viewed off-line, it would still be a big plus. I recall from the 1999 game of Kasparov vs. The World that it was invaluable to the World Team to be able to post the analysis tree in chessbase format so that all the contributors could download it. Chess notation is hard to read, and Arimaa notation is harder, so understanding all the analysis that other people have done is made ten times easier when it is displayed visually on the board and organized visually as a collapsible tree.

This is a big project, but maybe the Arimaa community is big enough now to make it worthwhile. Check out these threads:

http://arimaa.com/arimaa/forum/cgi/YaBB.cgi?board=talk;action=display;num=1148187102;start=0

http://arimaa.com/arimaa/forum/cgi/YaBB.cgi?board=siteIssues;action=display;num=1252216594;start=1#1

Quote:

And why on earth everybody is mostly playing just bots?

Because there aren't quite enough players so that you can find a human opponent near your level at any time of day or night. I feel that the Arimaa community is just on the verge of gaining this critical mass. The always-available bots have been instrumental in getting us this far, and now I am afraid that the culture of playing bots is somewhat holding back the culture of HvH games, but we will get there eventually.

Quote:

I recently read the wiki strategy of Arimaa but it seemed quite old (2006). Have there been recent advancement in strategy? Is it covered in Beginning Arimaa (ordered). Will there be a sequel? Are there other active theorist that write their thoughts other than Fritzlein?

Yes, strategy has advanced since 2006, but the basics haven't changed much. Yes, Beginning Arimaa covers more advanced strategy than the Wikibook, but the main advantage is that the presentation is more mature, not that it goes deeper. For more advanced Arimaa studies, we await chessandgo's book.

Quote:

I think when I've gotten better to play games while "thinking out loud" so that beginners that are interested would get into the train of thought of a more experienced player. This would help also to get a larger, coherent vocabulary of Arimaa play combinations.

Stay tuned for the "think out loud" games of the Arimaa Festival, and for the live audio commentary on event games, such as the ongoing AWL. Live commentary is spotty during the off-season, but during the World Championship starting in January, you can expect an abundance of commentary. I am hoping that in 2011 we can get a live commentator for every game of the finals and most games of the preliminaries.

Title: Re: Abstract strategy board games
Post by omar on Sep 7^th, 2010, 7:54pm

Quote:

First of all, Omar, you have created a game that seems to my beginner eyes very fun game that can be played a lot without getting bored. Congrats!

Thanks, it was just beginners luck I guess.

Quote:

If I recall correctly, I read in forum post that you have another game in mind, but at that point of time wasn't ready to publish the rules. May I ask if it's available now?

Every so often I have some thoughts which I try out, but I have not really pursued any to completion.

Quote:

I'm currently unemployed, and would be interested to create some interactive tool for reviewing games (if there is not already).

That would be very useful, but as Karl mention it would probably be quite a task to do it in a way that allows posting and viewing analysis trees. You are welcome to use the JavaScript client code if that might help.

Thanks for the link to your blog. It was an interesting read.

Title: Re: Abstract strategy board games
Post by clojure on Sep 8^th, 2010, 3:55am

on 09/07/10 at 19:54:26, omar wrote:

Every so often I have some thoughts which I try out, but I have not really pursued any to completion.

We'll be hoping something interesting emerges!

Quote:

Thanks for the permission. I just recently read the license and noticed that it's not permitted to publish source code / program for this kind of use without asking.

Actually I've already started; I think I'll do everything from scratch, since I love coding. I'm going to write a follow-up to better suited sub forum in a few days I hope.

If I understood correctly, I could use the pictures as well?

Quote:

Thanks for the link to your blog. It was an interesting read.

This gives energy to post more :)

Title: Re: Abstract strategy board games
Post by omar on Sep 9^th, 2010, 12:21am

Quote:

If I understood correctly, I could use the pictures as well?

Feel free to use the graphics and sound files.
http://arimaa.com/arimaa/graphics

Title: Re: Abstract strategy board games
Post by clojure on Sep 12^th, 2010, 10:25am

on 09/09/10 at 00:21:34, omar wrote:

Feel free to use the graphics and sound files.
http://arimaa.com/arimaa/graphics

Thanks, I did. :) See the Game viewer thread in Site discussion area. Also here's my new blog post: http://peculiarflow.blogspot.com/2010/09/sharing-knowledge-of-board-games.html

Title: Re: Abstract strategy board games
Post by leo on Sep 12^th, 2010, 5:57pm

on 09/12/10 at 10:25:58, clojure wrote:

Also here's my new blog post: http://peculiarflow.blogspot.com/2010/09/sharing-knowledge-of-board-games.html

Wow, that's a clear-thinking blog post. I hope you write more about this topic. I've always been fascinated by how concepts and vocabulary emerge from a new thing or a new point of view.

Title: Re: Abstract strategy board games
Post by clojure on Sep 12^th, 2010, 6:20pm

on 09/12/10 at 17:57:06, leo wrote:

I hope you write more about this topic.

We'll see, it's interesting topic but that blog might have 'peculiar flow' of discussion :P At the moment I feel that the progress of the project will influence the content of posts. It's nice to write when there's some concrete anchor to stabilize to.

Title: Re: Abstract strategy board games
Post by clojure on Sep 16^th, 2010, 4:40pm

on 09/09/10 at 00:21:34, omar wrote:

Feel free to use the graphics and sound files.
http://arimaa.com/arimaa/graphics

Hey!

Actually, those sounds are not what I want. I looked at the source code and it seems these files are used instead.
http://arimaa.com/arimaa/jsClient/pro/sounds/

Is it ok to use them?

edit: Hahaha. This one is the winner! http://arimaa.com/arimaa/jsClient/pro/sounds/more/winHasta.wav

And another http://arimaa.com/arimaa/jsClient/pro/sounds/more/freeze.wav

edit: argh, can't find a decent mp3 to ogg converter. Online converters seem to reject step.mp3 :<

Title: Re: Abstract strategy board games
Post by omar on Sep 16^th, 2010, 5:31pm

Actually the sound files I linked are the ones used in the Flash client. Those sound and graphic files were created for me by an artist so I own those. When I was working on the JavaScript client I used other sound files which I found on sites that offered free sound effects. So I suppose there would not be any problem with you using these sound effect files. The movie sound bytes I saved just for fun. I don't know if the copyright owners of the movies would care if you used them or not. You probably would not be able to get in touch with them to ask anyways. So use those at your own risk :-)

Title: Re: Abstract strategy board games
Post by omar on Sep 16^th, 2010, 5:40pm

Quote:

Hahaha. This one is the winner! http://arimaa.com/arimaa/jsClient/pro/sounds/more/winHasta.wav

It's one of my favorites too. It would fit nicely before the two steps of pushing an opponents piece into a trap :-)

This one would be nice after winning against a bot :D

http://arimaa.com/arimaa/jsClient/pro/sounds/more/halThankYou.mp3

Title: Re: Abstract strategy board games
Post by clojure on Sep 16^th, 2010, 5:45pm

"HAL".map((asInt(_)+1).asChar) = "IBM"

HAL was very interesting character in 2001 Space Odyssey. Kinda scary to be in a computer controlled ship :)

Maybe someone should make a remade video of HAL playing Arimaa with the astronauts...

Title: Re: Abstract strategy board games
Post by clojure on Sep 17^th, 2010, 10:02am

Omar, the step.mp3 seems to be have some problems. Some converters / web browsers don't like it. e.g. they crash. I got it working for some, though. Is there an original .wav file?

In comparison, some of the javascript mp3s work fine but the step is the only I would need right now :)

Title: Re: Abstract strategy board games
Post by omar on Sep 18^th, 2010, 10:38am

on 09/17/10 at 10:02:36, clojure wrote:

Not sure why that one is not working. See if this works better:
http://arimaa.com/arimaa/jsClient/pro/sounds/step2.mp3

I resaved it to be more compatible using Audicity.

Title: Re: Abstract strategy board games
Post by clojure on Sep 18^th, 2010, 12:06pm

on 09/18/10 at 10:38:42, omar wrote:

Not sure why that one is not working. See if this works better:
http://arimaa.com/arimaa/jsClient/pro/sounds/step2.mp3

I resaved it to be more compatible using Audicity.

That is definitely better since if I directly compile it to an ogg, it works. The problem is that with Firefox, it seems I cannot do the same things programmatically as in Chrome and Opera. That is to stop and start playing the file again in the middle of already playing it.

Because of that, I need a shorter version of that file. There's about half of the file just empty sound, which could be trimmed. But I fought with Audacity and another Wave editor and for some reason Firefox interpretes the end result as having 0 lenght, even though it should be about 170 milliseconds. I'm quite nervewrecked about this so I'm not going to try it anymore for a while unless someone can produce me a ogg file of that mp3 that works in Firefox (natively).

Or maybe I could play many channels but it could produce weird interplay...

Thanks for sharing though!