Show HN: Play a pen-and-paper game that is almost unknown in the US and Europe
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Re: Show HN: Play a pen-and-paper game that is almost unknown in the US and Europe
#2Hi HN, I played this game a lot in school over here in Ukraine and was surprised that there is almost no coverage [1] of it in English. So, I built this tiny website where one can read the rules and play the game online. There is also an optional game mode that is impossible IRL on paper (with the "fog of war").
The game is usually known as "virus wars", but I didn't feel like registering a domain name with the word "virus" in it, so Paper Tactics it is:)
[1] https://www.iggamecenter.com/en/rules/viruswars is the only English source I know, there is also a Wikipedia article in German: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kampf_der_Viren
Re: Show HN: Play a pen-and-paper game that is almost unknown in the US and Europe
#3I had to play a few games to understand the rules, but I'm wining most games. How good is the bot?
It's strange that you can make a few moves in each turn. With 1 move the strategy is too easy. Which is the standard lenght of the turns?
Re: Show HN: Play a pen-and-paper game that is almost unknown in the US and Europe
#4I had to play a few games to understand the rules, but I'm wining most games. How good is the bot? It's strange that you can make a few moves in each turn. With 1 move the strategy is too easy. Which is the standard lenght of the turns?
The bot is not very good, unfortunately. It's mainly useful to help understand the rules, as in your case. If you're interested in playing with an experienced player, ping me at nazar@vinnich.uk :)
> Which is the standard lenght of the turns?
The usual setup is a 10×10 grid with 3 moves per turn. More moves means more interesting manoevres are possible. I like 7 moves on 12×12.
Re: Show HN: Play a pen-and-paper game that is almost unknown in the US and Europe
#5I had to play a few games to understand the rules, but I'm wining most games. How good is the bot? It's strange that you can make a few moves in each turn. With 1 move the strategy is too easy. Which is the standard lenght of the turns?
The bot is not very good, unfortunately. It's mainly useful to help understand the rules, as in your case. If you're interested in playing with an experienced player, ping me at nazar@vinnich.uk :) > Which is the standard lenght of the turns? The usual setup is a 10×10 grid with 3 moves per turn. More moves means more interesting manoevres are possible. I like 7 moves on 12×12.
> It's mainly useful to help understand the rules, as in your case.
I agree.
[spoiler alert]
I tried with 2 or 3 moves per turn. My strategy was to advace in diagonal to have a lot of space in tha back, and keep some distance from the oponent. When it advances, I wall the pieces. If it doesn't advance I fill my backshard space. With 2 or 3 it's humanly learnable in 10 minutes. I imagine that 7 moves would be much ore complex, but sadly I have no time now.
Perhaps you can progem the bot to advance more in the first few turns. (Assuming my strategy is good.)
Re: Show HN: Play a pen-and-paper game that is almost unknown in the US and Europe
#6Earlier quoted context omitted.
The bot is not very good, unfortunately. It's mainly useful to help understand the rules, as in your case. If you're interested in playing with an experienced player, ping me at nazar@vinnich.uk :) > Which is the standard lenght of the turns? The usual setup is a 10×10 grid with 3 moves per turn. More moves means more interesting manoevres are possible. I like 7 moves on 12×12.
> It's mainly useful to help understand the rules, as in your case. I agree. [spoiler alert] I tried with 2 or 3 moves per turn. My strategy was to advace in diagonal to have a lot of space in tha back, and keep some distance from the oponent. When it advances, I wall the pieces. If it doesn't advance I fill my backshard space. With 2 or 3 it's humanly learnable in 10 minutes. I imagine that 7 moves would be much ore…
Your strategy is definitely good — capturing territory to fill it later when advancing doesn't make sense is important. 7 moves are more complex, but much less so when playing against the bot.
Your suggestion about making the bot eager to advance makes sense, thanks. Hope you'll play a few times against a human opponent in the future:)
Re: Show HN: Play a pen-and-paper game that is almost unknown in the US and Europe
#7I had to play a few games to understand the rules, but I'm wining most games. How good is the bot? It's strange that you can make a few moves in each turn. With 1 move the strategy is too easy. Which is the standard lenght of the turns?
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Re: Show HN: Play a pen-and-paper game that is almost unknown in the US and Europe
#8I had to play a few games to understand the rules, but I'm wining most games. How good is the bot? It's strange that you can make a few moves in each turn. With 1 move the strategy is too easy. Which is the standard lenght of the turns?
The bot is not very good, unfortunately. It's mainly useful to help understand the rules, as in your case. If you're interested in playing with an experienced player, ping me at nazar@vinnich.uk :) > Which is the standard lenght of the turns? The usual setup is a 10×10 grid with 3 moves per turn. More moves means more interesting manoevres are possible. I like 7 moves on 12×12.
So the source code of the bot is here:
https://github.com/Kharacternyk/paper-tactics/blob/master/pa...
It seems like there's an evaluation function but there's no state search / recursive minimax tree for the bot.
I think if we added a 10-ply lookahead minimax algo for the bot here it would be pretty good. [1]
I will probably do it myself if I end up having a bit of free time this weekend.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimax#Minimax_algorithm_with...
Re: Show HN: Play a pen-and-paper game that is almost unknown in the US and Europe
#9Hi HN, I played this game a lot in school over here in Ukraine and was surprised that there is almost no coverage [1] of it in English. So, I built this tiny website where one can read the rules and play the game online. There is also an optional game mode that is impossible IRL on paper (with the "fog of war"). The game is usually known as "virus wars", but I didn't feel like registering a domain name with the word…
I guessed the game just by “show HN” title :)
We played this game a lot in the Urals during high school, but upon arriving in Moscow for higher education discovered that locals don’t know about it. Good memories. I implemented a version of it in MIDletPascal in my 10th grade.
Another popular modification was “rivers” which would drown any unit placed in the next turn, and also support for 3rd and 4th player, you just have to have enough pens of different colors :)
Re: Show HN: Play a pen-and-paper game that is almost unknown in the US and Europe
#10great polish on the UX.