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Using AI to design board games

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Re: Using AI to design board games

#11

Post by mjwalshe »

Jtsummers wrote: post #9
mjwalshe wrote: post #3

Hmm i recall Trillion Credit Squadron back in the 80s where the use of computers was almost required to play and being at the bleeding edge of Ai research would be useful

Thanks for providing the name, I've been trying to remember that story for a while now but my google-fu was weak and I couldn't recall any name involved (person, program or game). I think you're refering to Dr. Douglas Lenat's Eurisko program. He applied it to the game Trillion Credit Squadron and won two years in a row with fleets the other participants scoffed at. The first year he/Eurisko won by creating a largely…

Yes that was what I was thinking of i was always struck by the fact the book (in 1980) had the line "a personal computer would be useful"

Ironically Elite was a rip off of the basic starship combat rules in Traveller and i did try and write a game on our PDP 11/03 / VT55 using Traveler as a base.

Re: Using AI to design board games

#12

Post by radarsat1 »

Interesting application of genetic algorithms. The weird thing about GA though, and any optimiser, is that you need an "error function" that you will us to determine when one solution is better than another. Presumably he designed an error function for "fun", and his GA system finds local minima within it. But this is what I mean by "weird thing": you have to come up with a quantification of what makes a game fun, and _this_ is ultimately what will determine what kinds of solutions you come up with. Regardless of how the optimiser works, the error function is what the programmer is designing, and therefore the programmer is designing the space in which solutions will exist, so I would argue that any specific games are attributed to the programmer (or whoever designed the error function), and any specific game just happens to be one choice within the available search space.

Unless you want to manually try every iteration and rate it from 1 to 10, this implies that it's possible to come up with a "funness" model of human game playing. That in itself is sort of a interesting thing, falling somewhere between philosophy and psychology, rather than computer science.

Re: Using AI to design board games

#13

Post by MichaelGagnon »

kiba wrote: post #5
MichaelGagnon wrote: post #4

From the article: "Should the mantle of 'creator' lie with the program or the programmer?" Strangely enough, this was the exact dilemma that Clarissa faced in in Episode 29 of Clarissa Explains it All, "Poetic Justice," in which she developed a program that generated poetry. When her program's poetry won the school's contest, she decided to publicly relinquish her award to her computer. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L…

What an obscure reference to use. That show aired from 1991 to 1994, when I was a mere toddler.

As far as pop-culture goes, I think Clarissa still holds the cake for female programmer characters. Acid burn (from Hackers) is a close second...

Re: Using AI to design board games

#15

Post by eru »

radarsat1 wrote: post #12

Interesting application of genetic algorithms. The weird thing about GA though, and any optimiser, is that you need an "error function" that you will us to determine when one solution is better than another. Presumably he designed an error function for "fun", and his GA system finds local minima within it. But this is what I mean by "weird thing": you have to come up with a quantification of what makes a game fun, an…

Given enough money, you can outsource the error function to mechanical turk. Or to go more meta (and possibly cheaper): Make designing a good error function part of a meta GA-run, and let those functions be judged by comparing their judgements with human judgements.

Re: Using AI to design board games

#16

Post by Blocks8 »

MichaelGagnon wrote: post #13
kiba wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What an obscure reference to use. That show aired from 1991 to 1994, when I was a mere toddler.

As far as pop-culture goes, I think Clarissa still holds the cake for female programmer characters. Acid burn (from Hackers) is a close second...

Learn something new everyday -- Clarissa was a programmer! Loved that show!

Re: Using AI to design board games

#17

Post by ced »

eru wrote: post #15
radarsat1 wrote: post #12

Interesting application of genetic algorithms. The weird thing about GA though, and any optimiser, is that you need an "error function" that you will us to determine when one solution is better than another. Presumably he designed an error function for "fun", and his GA system finds local minima within it. But this is what I mean by "weird thing": you have to come up with a quantification of what makes a game fun, an…

Given enough money, you can outsource the error function to mechanical turk. Or to go more meta (and possibly cheaper): Make designing a good error function part of a meta GA-run, and let those functions be judged by comparing their judgements with human judgements.

Why not go full Turk? Have a Turker suggest a new rule/modification. It will be paid for only if accepted by another, who must play N recorded moves of the game with a friend before passing judgment. Iterate.

Disclaimer: I've never used MT. Is this possible?

Re: Using AI to design board games

#18

Post by Nvn »

radarsat1 wrote: post #12

Interesting application of genetic algorithms. The weird thing about GA though, and any optimiser, is that you need an "error function" that you will us to determine when one solution is better than another. Presumably he designed an error function for "fun", and his GA system finds local minima within it. But this is what I mean by "weird thing": you have to come up with a quantification of what makes a game fun, an…

In the comments the author of the article refers to a paper[1] that describes the system (Ludi) that they're using. They came up with 57 aesthetics criteria which they used on games played by humans and compared the scores on the criteria to the human judgements.

Based on this they picked the 16 best criteria and generated games. The fitness function is a score based on the criteria after n amount of automated playthroughs. These generated games tested by humans and they found that the aesthetics criteria and human judgements correlated significantly.

Besides these criteria (they do not describe all criteria in depth but I assume some might be leaning towards being subjective in regards to the programmers preferences) they also add a restriction to how long the planning of a move for a game can take (15 seconds) and discarding the game if it surpasses this. Which as you say can be seen as designing the search space, but the results indicate that they've come up with a way to effectively measure the "fun" factor of the games they came up with.

[1] http://www.cameronius.com/cv/publications/ciaig-browne-maire...

Re: Using AI to design board games

#19

Post by esrauch »

radarsat1 wrote: post #12

Interesting application of genetic algorithms. The weird thing about GA though, and any optimiser, is that you need an "error function" that you will us to determine when one solution is better than another. Presumably he designed an error function for "fun", and his GA system finds local minima within it. But this is what I mean by "weird thing": you have to come up with a quantification of what makes a game fun, an…

The article didn't really go into detail about the criteria, but there are some easily quantifiable things that are desirable in a game if it is intended to be played 'seriously' (like Backgammon or Go, unlike the games "We didn't playtest this at all" or Munchkin which are just trying to be fun instead of legitimately competitive. A minimal first player advantage, turnabout (ability for someone to come from behind), balance between skill and randomness in games with luck.

I think you could come up with metrics for interactivity, eg how much of it is 'goldfishing' vs choices that are notably different based on what the other player has done or will do. Dominion is an example where I think you could show that (for many configurations) an AI that ignores opponents actions would still win some significant portion of the time compared to an AI that takes it into account.

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