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Topic: Essay by Christian Freeling on inventing games (Read 522412 times) |
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christianF
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Re: Essay by Christian Freeling on inventing games
« Reply #885 on: Jan 30th, 2012, 7:30am » |
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on Jan 29th, 2012, 6:44pm, NickBentley wrote:| This stuff is great Christian. I wish more designers would describe the evolution of tactics and strategy following the invention of their games. I can't try out every game in the world, and reading stuff like this helps me to decide which to play. I want to have some sense of whether I'd like the tactics/strategy before I play, and I'm not much of a "game whisperer" so I need help. |
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Hi Nick,
Usually I don't and for good reasons: I'm not that much of a player. I wasn't much inclined to try Symple before the introduction of compulsory movement, because although I saw its 'significance' (quintessential, innovative move protocol, embedded balancing mechanism), it felt like Sygo without capture or drama.
That's a bit different now, and I'll keep posting about it, but please take into account that I'm not any brighter than the next guy where it comes to playing. The main motive is wanting to understand the games nature in a strategic sense, and I'm not anywhere near, but I'm enjoying it tremendously. Playing against Symple_bot reveals all kinds of nice tactics in the process and its strength increases towards the endgame. No lack of drama in that phase so far.
After next year's CodeCup Challenge, there will be a lot of Symple programs and Marcel warns me that some may well be considerably stronger that Symple_bot. And one will win of course. But to provide a context for the results, there should be a match between the winner and the best human player. I would hope that I'm not the best human player by then. 
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NickBentley
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Re: Essay by Christian Freeling on inventing games
« Reply #886 on: Jan 30th, 2012, 10:35am » |
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Luckily, it doesn't matter if the strategy considerations are very deep. They just have to be better than I can conjure in my own head without having played, which is a pretty low bar to clear.
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christianF
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Re: Essay by Christian Freeling on inventing games
« Reply #887 on: Jan 31st, 2012, 1:56pm » |
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Here is a Base-11 Penalty-8 Game against Luis, with some commentary, though not all of it game related.
Considering the boardsize, white_3 is probably a mistake. Instead of taking the center I probably should have grown both white men, preventing black from taking his prerogative as he did in the actual game, whereby the stone at E4 is a killer with regard to white's centerstone.
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christianF
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Re: Essay by Christian Freeling on inventing games
« Reply #888 on: Feb 8th, 2012, 9:14am » |
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Wikito Ergo Sum
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SpeedRazor
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Re: Essay by Christian Freeling on inventing games
« Reply #889 on: Feb 8th, 2012, 4:29pm » |
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on Feb 8th, 2012, 9:14am, christianF wrote:
Awesome!
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christianF
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Re: Essay by Christian Freeling on inventing games
« Reply #890 on: Feb 17th, 2012, 9:51am » |
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on Feb 8th, 2012, 4:29pm, SpeedRazor wrote:
Not to mention Senseito Ergo Sum
It's an informative collaborative site about Go and anything in its periphery and I've uploaded short descriptions of five games that may be considered Go related. Havannah, though hardly Go related, was already present some considerable time.
There have been a couple of Go related inventions lately, notably Loose by Luis Bolaños Mures and Redstone by Mark Steere.
Luis' game is an improvent of Reversi Go and the result of a long standing wish to create a Go variant without cycles. Loose features othelloanian capture and solves the associated difficulties in the quest for life in a most elegant way: by turning 'false' liberties into 'true' eyes, in a capture.
Mark symply wanted to create a Go variant - an inventor's gotta do what an inventor's gotta do. That it would be free of cycles is no surprise. That it is not really territory game but a game of annihilation is no surprise either. I'll restrict my provisional judgement by saying it takes something of both worlds.
I'm, among other things, still wrestling with Marcel's Symple_bot. Current games: AI-CF and CF-AI.
Edit: Black won both, but at least my 'connection inclined' strategy paid off in the one I won.
Spring is in the air and my raccoon dog Daisy is pregnant. 
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| « Last Edit: Feb 20th, 2012, 2:26pm by christianF » |
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christianF
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Re: Essay by Christian Freeling on inventing games
« Reply #892 on: Feb 25th, 2012, 2:56pm » |
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For the record, my Go-related stuff can now be found at Sensei's.
P.S. I wouldn't call Havannah Go-related, but that page was made long ago, presumable in the wake of Hex, which after all isn't all that Go-related either.
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| « Last Edit: Feb 25th, 2012, 3:33pm by christianF » |
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christianF
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Re: Essay by Christian Freeling on inventing games
« Reply #893 on: Mar 1st, 2012, 9:04am » |
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"I've got a new player that uses one tenth of the current calculation time, possibly without loss of strenght. I've got reasons to believe that it will play differently though."
This message by Marcel came with a challenge for this game so that might be interesting.
As of the time of the edit, two days delay.
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| « Last Edit: Mar 2nd, 2012, 7:50am by christianF » |
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christianF
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Re: Essay by Christian Freeling on inventing games
« Reply #894 on: Mar 2nd, 2012, 9:52am » |
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Another thing, I'm currently playing a Sygo game at Life in 19x91 against one of the site's moderators, using their Go diagram code format. The game is mirrored at mindsports.
I've already come to experience by playing against another strong Go player, that the broader strokes of strategy translate very well (in other words I lost, and quite decidedly so  ).
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christianF
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Re: Essay by Christian Freeling on inventing games
« Reply #895 on: Mar 5th, 2012, 10:16am » |
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on Mar 1st, 2012, 9:04am, christianF wrote:"I've got a new player that uses one tenth of the current calculation time, possibly without loss of strenght. I've got reasons to believe that it will play differently though."
This message by Marcel came with a challenge for this game so that might be interesting. |
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I just now found out that Marcel has a nice website and that we have at least one musical hero in common.
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christianF
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Re: Essay by Christian Freeling on inventing games
« Reply #896 on: Mar 8th, 2012, 6:42am » |
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By a considered request of a member of the Life in 19x19 forum we've implemented Hexsygo after all.
My initial reserve - I consider Go a very square game because other grids seem to lack the same visual clarity - already had become less, because despite the absence of the diagonal crosscut Hexsymple proved more intruiging than I had anticipated.
These were considerations by said member:
Quote:"Sygo on hexhex would be very interesting I think, on a reasonably large board (assuming hexhex is a la Havannah). The reason I like the idea in principle is I think growth feels more organic to me on a hex board, and I think the capture dynamics will be neater.
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Territories will be smaller, but the inter-group dynamics will be more fluid I think - in our game, once I'd marked out my initial interests I just expanded without much you could do about it. Hex movement allows for a greater variety of interruptions on expansions." |
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So all in all, including for completeness' sake, we implemented it. An applet will be operational shortly.
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| « Last Edit: Mar 8th, 2012, 6:43am by christianF » |
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christianF
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Re: Essay by Christian Freeling on inventing games
« Reply #897 on: Mar 9th, 2012, 3:32am » |
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First time ever I guess to see a thread with more replies than views. It must have broken some barrier. 
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christianF
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Re: Essay by Christian Freeling on inventing games
« Reply #898 on: Mar 10th, 2012, 5:43am » |
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How about this? Luis posted it at rga:
Quote:Pushee is a little game inspired by Arimaa that I found quite a long time ago when googling "arimaa". It was invented by Bram Cohen, of BitTorrent fame.
Rules on his (not game-oriented) blog:
Pushee
Pushee is simple, finite and drawless. On a 5x5 board, it lasts about 70 moves. It seems to be completely unknown to abstract gamers, and I haven't played it seriously in any way, but I feel it may have some potential.
What do you think? |
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Did any Arimaa players ever come across this one? For such a tightly wrapped game it has an amazingly similar feel, with a random setup and the combined moves. And as easily improvised anywhere as Tic tac toe. 
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ocmiente
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Re: Essay by Christian Freeling on inventing games
« Reply #899 on: Mar 10th, 2012, 1:27pm » |
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on Mar 10th, 2012, 5:43am, christianF wrote:How about this? Luis posted it at rga:
Did any Arimaa players ever come across this one? For such a tightly wrapped game it has an amazingly similar feel, with a random setup and the combined moves. And as easily improvised anywhere as Tic tac toe. |
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Yes, it's been mentioned here before:
on May 31st, 2010, 4:01am, gatsby wrote:| I'm sure Omar and many others already know about it, but Bram Cohen, the creator of BitTorrent, came up with an interesting game inspired by Arimaa some years ago. It's called Pushee, and it is a naturally finite game: http://bramcohen.livejournal.com/2005/04/16/ |
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