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Show HN: Play abstract strategy board games online with friends or against bots

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Re: Show HN: Play abstract strategy board games online with friends or against bots

#71

Post by abstractbg »

tasuki wrote: post #67
abstractbg wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, beating a 100 bot is still impressive in my book. Thanks for the feedback and suggestions! Yes, the networks are size dependent right now. It's a great idea to copy-paste and then adapt the KataGo network architecture since it isn't size dependent and has been proven to reach superhuman strengths.

I'm about 1950 on littlegolem, but trying again, I just lost a couple of games in a row against the 100 bot. A couple more questions/remarks: - It seems everything is happening on the client? My CPU (I'm on a laptop without a real GPU) goes wild during analysis. But also I don't notice any big bag of neural-net-weights being downloaded. Mind sharing how it works? - Care to share more about the networks? How long did…

The analysis happens on the AI server.

Sans proper profiling, I would guess that the CPU going wild during analysis is due to a combination of 1. analysis is streamed live to the client in 20 simulation intervals 2. some post-processing on the client side 3. the fact that I am using a global context and reducer in React which causes the entire page to re-render each time an update happens.

The networks are simple Resnets with a value and policy head. It's 20 layers with 128 channels per layer. I trained for several days on 2x 4090s. However, recently I trained a few networks (Hex 14x14, Amazons 10x10, Breakthrough 8x8) on a GH200 and it was 2x faster, roughly 100 ckpts per 24 hours for Hex 14x14. I'm not sure about the number of parameters but the .pt and .ts files are on the order of 30-90 MB. There's definitely room for improvement using tricks like quantization during selfplay inference.

I'm very happy you like Tumbleweed! If you're curious there's a Tumbleweed community run by Michał (the creator) https://discord.com/invite/wu6Xdtt497 They are currently playing through their 2025 World Championship.

Re: Show HN: Play abstract strategy board games online with friends or against bots

#72

Post by abstractbg »

baruchel wrote: post #69
Paracompact wrote: post #4

As a longtime chess and go player, I was just doing some research the other day into what modern abstracts are out there. I was disappointed by how dry I came up. Even if you expand the search criteria to include video games, there just aren't many deeply strategic discrete-time games that weren't invented centuries ago and have players online at any given time. Here I exclude games that are perpetually changing and/…

May I suggest the Greenchess website? https://greenchess.net/ It certainly has some huge potential: nice minimalist interface and probably about 50 or 60 chess variants for all tastes. Some of them are obviously more or less "recent". You can easily start a new game or accept a pending invitation. I would call the set of players quite "active" and certainly motivated. But it is true that the pool of players remains s…

Very cool website! Also, check out 5D Chess with Multiverse Time Travel XD

Re: Show HN: Play abstract strategy board games online with friends or against bots

#73

Post by zahlman »

hermitcrab wrote: post #68

Have you come across the Mancala family of board games? I learned to play the Hus variation in Namibia: https://mancala.fandom.com/wiki/Hus It is fun how it is deterministic in theory, but it is hard to predict more than a few moves ahead - so seems random in practice. Also that you can go from being way ahead to losing, very quickly. I implemented a game engine for it. Can discuss if you are interested.

> deterministic in theory, but it is hard to predict more than a few moves ahead - so seems random in practice. Also that you can go from being way ahead to losing, very quickly.

How does one become skilled in something like that?

Re: Show HN: Play abstract strategy board games online with friends or against bots

#74

Post by zahlman »

Buttons840 wrote: post #13
Paracompact wrote: post #4

As a longtime chess and go player, I was just doing some research the other day into what modern abstracts are out there. I was disappointed by how dry I came up. Even if you expand the search criteria to include video games, there just aren't many deeply strategic discrete-time games that weren't invented centuries ago and have players online at any given time. Here I exclude games that are perpetually changing and/…

What about something like competitive Dominion? There are expansions, but the game is symmetrical. All players have the same abilities in an actual game. Or Spirit Island at high difficulty?

> competitive Dominion

Ah, I miss the old Isotropic implementation....

Re: Show HN: Play abstract strategy board games online with friends or against bots

#75

Post by hermitcrab »

AtlasBarfed wrote: post #59
Paracompact wrote: post #4

As a longtime chess and go player, I was just doing some research the other day into what modern abstracts are out there. I was disappointed by how dry I came up. Even if you expand the search criteria to include video games, there just aren't many deeply strategic discrete-time games that weren't invented centuries ago and have players online at any given time. Here I exclude games that are perpetually changing and/…

Civilization? Master of Orion? Here's a wealth of turn-based strategy out there, especially in the retro days.

I loved the first versions of Civilization and Masters of Orion. I tried one of the more recent version of Civilization and didn't like it anything like as much. But I am a lot older - so it could just be me. How do more recent versions of Masters of Orion hold up?

Re: Show HN: Play abstract strategy board games online with friends or against bots

#76

Post by hermitcrab »

zahlman wrote: post #73
hermitcrab wrote: post #68

Have you come across the Mancala family of board games? I learned to play the Hus variation in Namibia: https://mancala.fandom.com/wiki/Hus It is fun how it is deterministic in theory, but it is hard to predict more than a few moves ahead - so seems random in practice. Also that you can go from being way ahead to losing, very quickly. I implemented a game engine for it. Can discuss if you are interested.

> deterministic in theory, but it is hard to predict more than a few moves ahead - so seems random in practice. Also that you can go from being way ahead to losing, very quickly. How does one become skilled in something like that?

I guess similar to chess. You have to be able to see more moves ahead than your competitor. The game tree is quite narrow compared to chess, but complexity is added by the cascading nature of moves. It is a fun game. I recommend trying it. Good for kids as well.

Re: Show HN: Play abstract strategy board games online with friends or against bots

#77

Post by vkazanov »

krapp wrote: post #65
vkazanov wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing is that dragons and magic and Harry Potter all become irrelevant at some point in life. Power fantasies do have an expiration date. Now, the genre itself, all the storytelling involved, can easily be adapted to more serious, or even abstract, thinking. In fact, it was, and there are plenty of alternative rpg universes. But, similar to how serious non-marvel movies are a niche, serious rpgs are also less pop…

They're all games. They're all escapist power fantasies. No one wants to role play a character who doesn't matter to the story, regardless of the genre.

Well, this depends on a story. Escapist? Yes. All of them, by the very definition of, ehm, role play.

Power? Not necessarily. Numerous rpgs have nothing to do with power. Be a Cat has nothing to do with power, and everything with escapism (and cats).

I mean, there is nothing wrong with power and fantasies. Or powerless fantasies, as in horror stories, or whatever.

Re: Show HN: Play abstract strategy board games online with friends or against bots

#78

Post by kej »

This reminds me of the game engine "Zillions of Games" from the '90s. It was a basic system for describing abstract strategy games and then an AI that could play them with you. They're still online but I don't know how active the community is: https://www.zillions-of-games.com/

Re: Show HN: Play abstract strategy board games online with friends or against bots

#79

Post by quuxplusone »

aidenn0 wrote: post #64
Paracompact wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Asalto? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asalto

Bingo! That looks exactly like the game I'm thinking of, but it was not named that. What I played was in one of those books that came with checkers and had different board-game printed on each page, and I'm guessing "Asalto" is trademarked or something.

The Book of Classic Board Games called it "The Dalmatian Pirates and the Volga Bulgars."

https://boardgamegeek.com/image/926606/the-book-of-classic-b...

Re: Show HN: Play abstract strategy board games online with friends or against bots

#80

Post by bix6 »

abstractbg wrote: post #34
bix6 wrote: post #30

I don’t quite understand this tumbleweed game but it seems fun so I’ll look up a video.

Here's the rules video used by the Tumbleweed community https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mjA_g3nwYW4 Also, in case you are curious, Tumbleweed has a discord https://discord.com/invite/wu6Xdtt497 They are currently playing through the 2025 Tumbleweed World Championship. Lots of strong players there!

You should put that video in the info link, super helpful. I am getting crushed by the bot lol. Fun game!
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