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        Arimaa >> General Discussion >> Arimaa android app updates
        
(Message started by: lightvector on Apr 12^th, 2015, 10:45am)

Title: Arimaa android app updates
Post by lightvector on Apr 12^th, 2015, 10:45am

My Arimaa app has now been switched to free going forward. More updates to follow in the next couple of months!

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.icosahedral.arimaa

:)

Title: Re: Arimaa android app updates
Post by Xeranox on Apr 17^th, 2015, 2:51am

Any plans to implement turn-based (postal) games against human players?

Title: Re: Arimaa android app updates
Post by lightvector on Apr 19^th, 2015, 7:11am

Not prior to your post! :)

I'll note it as something to consider, after I get a version released with gameroom connectivity. Thanks!

Title: Re: Arimaa android app updates
Post by deep_blue on Apr 19^th, 2015, 11:40am

Again, congrats on winning the challenge. Now that you won the challenge, will you put sharp2015 into the app?

Title: Re: Arimaa android app updates
Post by lightvector on Apr 19^th, 2015, 6:55pm

Probably yes. :)

I'm considering making sharp2015 + analysis mode as an in-app-purchase. But leaving sharp2012 in the app free as with the rest of the app now.

Title: Re: Arimaa android app updates
Post by deep_blue on Apr 20^th, 2015, 8:01am

Sounds good. How difficult do you think would it be to also publish it as computer program? (since analysis makes more sense on a fast computer) Or should one simply use an emulator?
Another nice idea I thought of was a "sharp-ladder". Each ladder step being, say 50 Elo stronger and then starting with sharp2008 some levels until maximum 2008 playing strength and then next level sharp2009 (does that exist? If not, next sharp version) modified to play a bit stronger than 2008 version and then until that is at maximum strength and so on. So one could see how close to the present one would get. (with a new version every year?!) ;)

Title: Re: Arimaa android app updates
Post by lightvector on Apr 21^st, 2015, 2:56am

I'll think about it.

Your ladder idea would take a lot of work. I'm not all that interested in modifying and tuning ancient versions of sharp to be different strengths. Instead, I'd prefer continuing to push the boundary forward. :)

Title: Re: Arimaa android app updates
Post by Ail on Apr 28^th, 2015, 3:02pm

Nice to hear that the App is getting updated.

Haven't been here for quite some time and just learned through this thread that the challenge has been won. :o

Congrats from my side aswell!

Title: Re: Arimaa android app updates
Post by Xeranox on May 2^nd, 2015, 3:13am

on 04/19/15 at 07:11:42, lightvector wrote:

Not prior to your post! :)

I'll note it as something to consider, after I get a version released with gameroom connectivity. Thanks!

That would be awesome (with push notifications of course). Playing postal games on my android device is quite cumbersome. The arimaa.com gameroom is not really optimised for Chrome...

Title: Re: Arimaa android app updates
Post by CraggyCornmeal on May 2^nd, 2015, 1:00pm

This all sounds incredibly awesome, Lightvector. Lately I've been playing most of my Arimaa games in your app, so I'd be really excited to have gameroom connectivity. Thank you so much for continuing to develop this.

I'm curious, what bots are currently being used in the app? Which bots are we playing on which levels?

Title: Re: Arimaa android app updates
Post by lightvector on May 2^nd, 2015, 5:13pm

Thanks Craggy. Glad to hear that you enjoy the app! I did not get much dev work done in the last 2 weeks, but work will resume next week.

The current bot in the app is Sharp2012. Level 7 is ~P1, Level 9 is ~P2. Level 10 is whatever your device's processor can churn out in however many seconds it normally thinks for. All weaker levels than 7 are progressively worsened versions of P1 (stripping out terms from the eval function, randomly pruning moves, etc).

Title: Re: Arimaa android app updates
Post by arimaaisagame on May 8^th, 2015, 4:43am

This app is great, but there's slight problem. In the load game page, press and hold pops up the alert dialog to allow you to rename/delete the game, but the game pops up too quickly before I can press the buttons.

Title: Re: Arimaa android app updates
Post by lightvector on May 8^th, 2015, 12:45pm

Thanks for reporting the issue. I don't see that behavior - for me a press and hold does not trigger a game load at all. But maybe the android gui behavior here has changed in some newer versions of Android, or something like that. I'll keep this in mind when testing the next version.

Title: Re: Arimaa android app updates
Post by arimaaisagame on May 8^th, 2015, 1:30pm

I'm using a galaxy 4 tablet with android 4.4.2

Did a little more testing. It works fine when I hold the cell, wait for the alert dialog to appear, slide my finger somewhere else and release, but not when I release while my finger is still over the cell.

Title: Re: Arimaa android app updates
Post by aaaa on Jun 17^th, 2015, 2:52pm

Would you perhaps be willing to make the non-bot part of the source code available? This could help others in the creation of their own Arimaa apps.

Title: Re: Arimaa android app updates
Post by lightvector on Jun 17^th, 2015, 11:46pm

Good timing. :)

Over the last month, I *just* completed a huge refactor of the code, including also some rewrites of chunks of the logic. The refactor was to allow the following:

* Game tree support rather than merely a stack - the internals now use a game tree, although there's no GUI support for it yet, so in practice with the current GUI it's usually a linear tree.
* Board editing (woohoo!)
* Platform-independent board and animation and mouse/touch and button handling. I now have a working executable jar file for PC that shares a lot of code with the app, but with the UI using Java's swing libraries rather than the android gui libraries.

I'll release some stuff in the next week or two.

As far as sharing the code, despite the refactor, the code still isn't the most friendly for external devs, but I guess if people want to use it, I'm okay with that...

Title: Re: Arimaa android app updates
Post by lightvector on Jun 21^st, 2015, 7:40pm

New app version (1.2.0) just pushed to the google store.

More changes to come!

Title: Re: Arimaa android app updates
Post by Ail on Jun 23^rd, 2015, 4:26am

Here's some things that I found to be weird:

After the update the game disappeared from my front-page. It was still on the phone but I had to drag it back to my front-page. Never had this seen happen to another app that just had been updated.

I had a crash when using the new set-up-board-feature after the game had already been lost.
It worked well on a fresh game.

When playing around with that feature I played Elephant+Rabbit vs. Elephant+Rabbit.
I noticed that the AI might not be aware of elimination-defeat at all. It would happily sacrifice it's only rabbit when it could have killed mine in the turn after. It didn't matter who had the first move. I always won with elimination-defeat.
Given the very limited amount of possibilities with only 2 pieces I really think there might be an oversight in this regard.

Oh, and one more thing. When starting a new game there's like a 5 second delay before you actually see the board. Not much of a bother though.

Title: Re: Arimaa android app updates
Post by lightvector on Jun 23^rd, 2015, 11:22am

Thanks for the feedback!

* I will push an update tonight fixing the icon disappearing upon update.

* Can you reproduce the crash using the board editing feature? I haven't gotten it to crash myself, so if you could give a sequence of actions that makes it happen, that would be really helpful.

* The new game delay is mostly due to bot_sharp initializing itself (also present in the old version). I don't know how to make this a lot better, although I can reduce it a little.

* For elimination, try running it on level 10. This might be surprising, but even level 7 is nominally only P1 + at most one ply of captures, and lower levels are worse. Level 9 is still only P2. It makes sense that it would play very poorly in that situation with such shallow search depths.

(The reason it normally plays as well as it does at those levels despite being the shallow search depth is due to the complicated evaluation heuristics it currently has, which don't help much when the board is this empty and unusual).

Title: Re: Arimaa android app updates
Post by deep_blue on Jun 23^rd, 2015, 12:07pm

When level 7 is only P1 and thus sucks at endgame, why don't you instead of fixing depth fix (very short) time per move? This should lead to much more balanced strength throughout the game.

Title: Re: Arimaa android app updates
Post by lightvector on Jun 23^rd, 2015, 2:49pm

Interesting idea. Time is not an ideal bound here because that will be very inconsistent between devices and between positions, and it seems better to me if all but the highest few levels are device-independent.

Node count might be good though. I'm not going to prioritize that right now, but I'll keep it in mind!

Title: Re: Arimaa android app updates
Post by aaaa on Jun 23^rd, 2015, 5:19pm

Can you add "instantaneous" as an animation speed option?

Title: Re: Arimaa android app updates
Post by lightvector on Jun 23^rd, 2015, 5:25pm

Sure. Do you literally mean instantaneous (1 frame), or do you just mean "really really fast"?

Title: Re: Arimaa android app updates
Post by aaaa on Jun 23^rd, 2015, 5:45pm

Instantaneous, not only because of the impatience factor, but also because it adds a bit of an educational challenge to figure out what sequence of steps could have brought upon the change on the board.

Title: Re: Arimaa android app updates
Post by lightvector on Jun 24^th, 2015, 12:09am

Updated to fix the icon disappearance, and also adding the new animation speeds.

Given the current way the animation is structured, it turns out the most straightforward implementation has instant be instant step-by-step, rather than move-by-move.

Title: Re: Arimaa android app updates
Post by Ail on Jun 24^th, 2015, 6:57am

on 06/23/15 at 11:22:30, lightvector wrote:

* Can you reproduce the crash using the board editing feature? I haven't gotten it to crash myself, so if you could give a sequence of actions that makes it happen, that would be really helpful.

Well, I tried to but I couldn't. It happened the first time I wanted to use it as soon as I touched a piece of those that had been eliminated before. But I never had it happen again.
I have to say this board-setup feature is realized so brilliantly, that I cannot imagine a way to make it even better!

on 06/23/15 at 11:22:30, lightvector wrote:

* The new game delay is mostly due to bot_sharp initializing itself (also present in the old version). I don't know how to make this a lot better, although I can reduce it a little.

I guess you changed the time when the initialization happens. I think before it maybe happened right when you start the app, where it is more expected to come to a delay. Now the App starts quicker but the delay occurs the first time you start a game. It might even be better this way. It was just a little strange as it was different to before.

on 06/23/15 at 11:22:30, lightvector wrote:

* For elimination, try running it on level 10. This might be surprising, but even level 7 is nominally only P1 + at most one ply of captures, and lower levels are worse. Level 9 is still only P2. It makes sense that it would play very poorly in that situation with such shallow search depths.
(The reason it normally plays as well as it does at those levels despite being the shallow search depth is due to the complicated evaluation heuristics it currently has, which don't help much when the board is this empty and unusual).

Yeah, great... After losing three times in a row with this setup against Level 10 I feel really stupid now. ^^
Also knowing that on the other difficulties the game virtually has no search depth and just won due to superior evaluation makes me really feel bad at this game.
Seriously, I can go up against Stockfish for about 30 moves before I cannot prevent losing pieces and my position falls apart. But in Arimaa I feel the superiority of the computer to be even more drastical when it was supposed to be the other way around.
I feel like I'm lacking a game plan. In Chess I know what to look for in each phase of the game but in Arimaa I don't really know what I'm doing and often become impatient and do things with terrible consequences. Like losing half my pieces while fruitlessly trying to push through with a rabbit.

Title: Re: Arimaa android app updates
Post by lightvector on Jun 24^th, 2015, 8:58am

I figured out how to crash the app now. I'll push a fix for it along with an option for some new board and piece images tonight.

on 06/24/15 at 06:57:26, Ail wrote:

I feel like I'm lacking a game plan. In Chess I know what to look for in each phase of the game but in Arimaa I don't really know what I'm doing and often become impatient and do things with terrible consequences. Like losing half my pieces while fruitlessly trying to push through with a rabbit.

Not too hard to fix that in most cases. :) Play games and discuss and review them with stronger players in the forum or chatroom here. You probably didn't get to where you are in Chess without some practice.

Title: Re: Arimaa android app updates
Post by Ail on Jun 30^th, 2015, 5:23am

on 06/24/15 at 08:58:30, lightvector wrote:

I figured out how to crash the app now. I'll push a fix for it along with an option for some new board and piece images tonight.

Since the new pieces are there, the crash-fix should also be there, right?

But I could just reproduce it:

I played a game from start to finish and lost it.
I picked set up board from that lost position.
I pulled my camel back on the board.
I tried to pull a cat back aswell but then the game froze and I got the Armimaa was closed due to an error briefly after.

I think the crucial thing is not that the game is over (it worked from my saves that I took from games that I won) but that you also must have lost it.

It was the same when I had it for the first time last week.

Title: Re: Arimaa android app updates
Post by lightvector on Jun 30^th, 2015, 8:18am

Cool. Okay, so looks like I half-fixed the previous crash bug. There's yet another case I missed. I'll fix it shortly.

(It's not related to the game ending by the way, I was mislead by this for a while when trying to reproduce it. It occurs when you drag a captured piece and drop it on to an empty spot that another captured piece *would* belong. It used to also happen when you dragged a captured piece to an arbitrary off-board location.).

Title: Re: Arimaa android app updates
Post by lightvector on Jul 4^th, 2015, 11:38am

Fixed! I also fixed a funny bug where you can get a piece on the board that looks like one piece but behaves like a different piece (I have no idea what further mayhem you can engineer from there).

Poke me if there are any further crashes (on version 1.2.3).

Title: Re: Arimaa android app updates
Post by Ail on Jul 8^th, 2015, 10:34am

Out of curiosity and hoping to learn something I had 2 AIs play against each other.

A level 9 gold vs. a level 10 silver.

Silver soon went ahead in material and forced gold to give up a framed dog in order to save a horse.

Soon silver had killed a horse, a dog and a rabbit, while gold only had a dog and a cat.

Silver had control over c3 and f6, gold had control over f3 and c6 was contested but with more material of gold nearby.

Then, out of nowhere, gold made a desperate-looking goal-attack on the a-file and succeeded after a mere 20 turns. Silver simply was spread too thin to hold it.

I was both surprised and even shocked by that. Screw material, screw trap-control, bringing a rabbit over is what wins you the game.

Title: Re: Arimaa android app updates
Post by deep_blue on Jul 8^th, 2015, 6:46pm

Well, goal ends the game so a rabbit push through is not that bad strategy when you are dead lost. Though of course that shouldn't work.

Lightvector, which sharp version plays in the app? Somehow already level 7 (= P1) is pretty good but then level 9 / P2 is still very beatable. (I haven't come around to play level 10 but so far I could beat every other level).
Also can you imagine the analyze mode that I suggested earlier?

Title: Re: Arimaa android app updates
Post by lightvector on Jul 8^th, 2015, 10:17pm

The version in the app is sharp 2012/2013 (these are the same). It's well-known that this version is quite weak at goal fights - it wasn't until 2014 that Sharp actually became good at endgames.

Also, 2012-2014 are prone to overextending, indeed often making it feasible to win by sneaking a rabbit through after the bot advances everything and leaves nothing on defense. The newest version, 2015, is far less vulnerable to this, but swings a little back to the "too passive" side of things, but also on net is much stronger for it. Striking the right balance here is tricky. :)

Yes, I can imagine an analysis mode. But I'm not going to implement it right now though. It would take some work and I want to do other things first (website, online play, finish writing challenge paper, improve sharp's opening play).

Title: Re: Arimaa android app updates
Post by Ail on Jul 9^th, 2015, 3:02am

Wow, all of these planned features sound totally amazing! :)

I'll try to put that knowledge about its weaknesses to use and beat it that way. ^^

Also what does Sharp winning the Challenge mean for the future of the game?

I'd really like to see a WCC where both bots and humans can compete.

Title: Re: Arimaa android app updates
Post by Ail on Sep 1^st, 2016, 7:58am

Today I stumpled about a bug in the App, I've never seen before.

It might be connected with me having a new phone, which I got this tuesday.
On my old phone I never had this bug in approximately 100 or so games.

It was maybe the 4th or 5th game on the new phone, Level 6, me playing silver turn 12.

Problem was the AI appeared to be stuck in a loop. Usually, on the new phone on level 6 the AI moves within 2-3 seconds. But in this case I waited for over a minute before I gave up.
It is 100% reproducible with the savegame of that position.
I tried doing something different (but still viable) the turn before it happened. Same effect.

I'll give the setup, so you can try and reproduce it without the savegame:

R2CR3
2D1MRR1
RR1HD1R1
2e4R
1H5d
1m1hd1hC
2Ec1crr
rrrrrr2

Capital Letters: Gold
Minor Letters: Silver
Numbers: Empty fields on that row

Edit:
Oh, wow, after about 5 minutes it finally moved! ^^

Title: Re: Arimaa android app updates
Post by lightvector on Sep 4^th, 2016, 1:23pm

Interesting. :)

There used to be occasional cases in back in Sharp2012 where the qsearch exploded in the presence of certain blockade-like tactics. I suspect this is one of them. I think they're all fixed for recent sharps though.