🚀 go-pugleaf

Amit Jayant Patel writes:
>
>My understanding was that genetic algorithms would be done once, and they 
>would tweak the values for you so that you don't have to guess.  You could
>run the GA every night, and in a few weeks, you'd have such a good opponent
>that it could beat any other possible opponent using those few simple rules.
>(It wouldn't be done at run-time, so it wouldn't slow down the game...)

...but you've got to do *something* at run-time, I would think :-)

I don't think most people want to play against undefeatable opponents.
They'd prefer oppponents with different styles, etc.  Remember, the
computer can "see" everything perfectly (it can access internal data
structures).  So the exactly what methods the computer is using to
figure out its moves may not be obvious to a human player, making the
computer player, at the very least, not completely predictable.

I think we are talking about two different kinds of games.  In a war
game or strategy game, some sort of solid "thinking" opponent is
necessary.  In an action-oriented game (Wing Commander, Pac-Man)
one of the player's opponents is himself--can he absorb everything 
that's going on and figure out what to do *fast*?  The rocks in
Asteroids don't have much intelligence, but they make damn good
opponents.  It is almost too easy to come up with an undefeatable
enemy.  The trick is getting a balance between too easy and too
hard (IMO, most current games are way too easy).

--
James Hague   
exuhag@exu.ericsson.se