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Why Can a Machine Beat Mario but Not Pokemon?

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Re: Why Can a Machine Beat Mario but Not Pokemon?

#71

Post by gepoch »

This isn't exactly a case where a machine beats a game, but if you want to get an idea of how such a machine would need to think, and if you want to see someone apply a lot of interesting algorithms to brew a sequence of steps to speedrun a game with much more complexity than Pokemon, check out Artjoms Iškovs's series where he comes up with a speedy approach to become the head of all factions in Morrowind:

https://kimonote.com/@mildbyte/travelling-murderer-problem-p...

Absolutely awesome.

Re: Why Can a Machine Beat Mario but Not Pokemon?

#72

Post by jknightco »

VLM wrote: post #60
ghaff wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But there are effectively no other players as far as you're concerned. You're playing against the dealer/house who makes purely rule-based plays.

Three players off the same deck is not unheard of, I suppose it depends on state regulators and casino policy. I agree theres no direct me vs you money transfer but plenty of "we're all gonna start with $500 and whoever has more at the end of the night is the winner". Although I would agree with you in spirit, if you want to feel like you're playing poker, theres no point in simulating it poorly with blackjack unless…

It doesn't matter how many people are playing off the same deck, you're only playing against the dealer, and they're following protocol. When its your turn, its you vs. the state of the game.

You can add rules on top of a game all you want (e.g. we're all gonna start...) but that doesn't change the actual game that's being played.

Re: Why Can a Machine Beat Mario but Not Pokemon?

#73

Post by pas »

ziaddotcom wrote: post #17
pas wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Discover as much of the map as possible? Talk to as many NPCs as possible? Try to get as many different dialogues from NPCs as possible? (I assume that to get to the you won dialogue means you encounter more dialogues than if you cleverly lose.)

With the bayesian mesh you could arbitrarily apply heuristics over what otherwise looks pretty similar to a simple coordinate map. If you happen to die near a certain node you could add an ajacent node of "scary" or whatever. Reverse idea for nodes where you get free food and pokemon.

Sure, the heuristic function can be as complex as one wants, but what's a good heuristic? How can we formalize winning Pokemon? (Without getting too low level, so that ideally the same heuristic would work for other RPGs too.)

Re: Why Can a Machine Beat Mario but Not Pokemon?

#74

Post by kd0amg »

ziaddotcom wrote: post #35
kd0amg wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A pokemon can be one (or two) of a bunch of different types like "bug" or "rock" or "ghost," each of which comes with a particular set of types it's vulnerable to (2x damage taken) and another set of types it's resistant to (0.5x or 0 damage taken). So no one pokemon has an advantage over all the others, and there's no 2-3-4-...-J-Q-K-A strength ordering for types. You can also freely substitute among your team of 6,…

Right, but IRL blackjack the human is the pokemon, vulerable to various type of human tells etc to what is otherwise grindable. As far as the various pokemon vs another vs the simplicity of jkqa it seems to me something like a weighted adjacency matrix could handle the increased complexity even in a relatively simple ai (imagine two pokemon doing a graph traversal to opposite ends of a node graph, whichever gets ther…

What graph do you propose to search, and what decision do you propose to make based on the resulting paths?

Re: Why Can a Machine Beat Mario but Not Pokemon?

#75

Post by Bartweiss »

dragontamer wrote: post #67
Bartweiss wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The poker analogy seems like the right one to use, although Pokemon is made messier by the level of variance. (Meaning both "semi-random effects" and also "far more than 52 possibilities for mon and moves".) I'd imagine the completely-hidden playstyles would be incredibly hard for an AI to learn, but the popular Showdown style that has team preview might be workable. The poker analogy seems like a good one, at least…

> The metaphor goes from there - though I might use 'raise' for leaving a threatened pokemon exposed, which lets us differentiate a strong hand ("I'll use a coverage move with higher speed") from a bluff ("I can hit his switch if I call it.") As an example, opening Koko v Landorus. The fold is switching Koko to Skarmory, the honest raise is HP Ice, and the bluff is Thunderbolt. I'd argue that the raise is U-Turn :-).…

> Koko staying in and doing something

Heh, good example. I keep running into defog Koko, I think precisely for this reason. In raw number terms it's not a great use of a Koko or a moveslot, but Koko forces so many U-Turns or outright switches that it's a strong way to gain momentum. And if Lan-T just switched out to avoid HP Ice, the check might not be ground, opening the door to Volt Switch away for even more momentum. Taking a time-biding move for specific switches is a pretty great example of this back-and-forth pattern.

(Although - I'm not sure Lan can/does U-Turn on Koko? If it's scarfed it can lead with Earthquake for a kill, if it isn't it'll drop to HP Ice before the turn.)

Re: Why Can a Machine Beat Mario but Not Pokemon?

#76

Post by dragontamer »

Bartweiss wrote: post #75
dragontamer wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The metaphor goes from there - though I might use 'raise' for leaving a threatened pokemon exposed, which lets us differentiate a strong hand ("I'll use a coverage move with higher speed") from a bluff ("I can hit his switch if I call it.") As an example, opening Koko v Landorus. The fold is switching Koko to Skarmory, the honest raise is HP Ice, and the bluff is Thunderbolt. I'd argue that the raise is U-Turn :-).…

> Koko staying in and doing something Heh, good example. I keep running into defog Koko, I think precisely for this reason. In raw number terms it's not a great use of a Koko or a moveslot, but Koko forces so many U-Turns or outright switches that it's a strong way to gain momentum. And if Lan-T just switched out to avoid HP Ice, the check might not be ground, opening the door to Volt Switch away for even more moment…

It really depends on what I'm predicting. U-Turn on Lando wins a surprising number of options:

* Beats Koko Volt-Switch: Lando is immune, so Koko fails to switchout.

* Beats the Koko Uturn: Lando is slower, as the 2nd U-Turner you capture the switching momentum.

* Beats the Koko Thunderbolt: Its prediction-on-top-of-predictions going on here, but this happens sometimes.

* Beats the Koko Hard-Switch: Hey, maybe they thought your Lando was scarf'd so they hard switch out.

--------

* Loses to HP-ice: This is the "obvious move" for Koko to do, and will happen more often than not. But as you go up the ranks, people start going for 2nd tier or 3rd tier mind-games, and you see fewer and fewer "obvious moves", especially in the early game where momentum is such a big deal.

It really depends where you are on the ladder: how stupid or aggressive you think your opponent is and all that.

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