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<p style=" margin-top:0px; margin-bottom:0px; margin-left:0px; margin-right:0px; -qt-block-indent:0; text-indent:0px; -qt-user-state:0;">More than 10 years ago I used to work a lot on board game AI engines. I have a pretty advanced set of search and evaluation code for games like othello, Lines of Action, and Amazons that actually competed in the computer olympiad a couple of years.</p>
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<p style=" margin-top:0px; margin-bottom:0px; margin-left:0px; margin-right:0px; -qt-block-indent:0; text-indent:0px; -qt-user-state:0;">I thought it would be a pity if this code got lost and I am working now to port it all to C++ and Qt and to begin with create a KDE program that plays Amazons[1][2]. If this game will ever be part of the KDE games is a question for later but while I am porting the AI to C++, the question is if I should just use it or if I should make some preparatory work to include it in the games library.</p>
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<p style=" margin-top:0px; margin-bottom:0px; margin-left:0px; margin-right:0px; -qt-block-indent:0; text-indent:0px; -qt-user-state:0;">It supports the following features, which none of the current or previous board games (like kenolaba), do:</p>
<p style=" margin-top:0px; margin-bottom:0px; margin-left:0px; margin-right:0px; -qt-block-indent:0; text-indent:0px; -qt-user-state:0;"> - time control of the engine, not just depth of thinking</p>
<p style=" margin-top:0px; margin-bottom:0px; margin-left:0px; margin-right:0px; -qt-block-indent:0; text-indent:0px; -qt-user-state:0;"> - Iteratively deepening alpha-beta search algorithm with lots of optimizations</p>
<p style=" margin-top:0px; margin-bottom:0px; margin-left:0px; margin-right:0px; -qt-block-indent:0; text-indent:0px; -qt-user-state:0;"> - Opening book generation and use of the opening books in the game</p>
<p style=" margin-top:0px; margin-bottom:0px; margin-left:0px; margin-right:0px; -qt-block-indent:0; text-indent:0px; -qt-user-state:0;"> - Support for games with many different types of rule sets like loss vs tie if no move is available, simple win/lose vs graded win/loss (like chess and reversi, respectively), etc</p>
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<p style=" margin-top:0px; margin-bottom:0px; margin-left:0px; margin-right:0px; -qt-block-indent:0; text-indent:0px; -qt-user-state:0;">So, what's your opinion? You could argue that an advanced AI library like this would be unnecessary for the simple types of game that we have in the kde games, but I have one argument against that: efficiency is not wasted even if you don't make full use of it. You can also use it to save batteries which is very important on tablets and phones. And I do think we should port as many of our games as possible to Plasma Active and other tablet operating systems.</p>
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<p style=" margin-top:0px; margin-bottom:0px; margin-left:0px; margin-right:0px; -qt-block-indent:0; text-indent:0px; -qt-user-state:0;">Regarding use of it, if this is interesting I will personally port both KReversi and KFourinline to it but this is probably a half to one year into the future. Could also make a good Summer of Code project.</p>
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<p style=" margin-top:0px; margin-bottom:0px; margin-left:0px; margin-right:0px; -qt-block-indent:0; text-indent:0px; -qt-user-state:0;"> -Inge</p>
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<p style=" margin-top:0px; margin-bottom:0px; margin-left:0px; margin-right:0px; -qt-block-indent:0; text-indent:0px; -qt-user-state:0;">[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazons_%28game%29</p>
<p style=" margin-top:0px; margin-bottom:0px; margin-left:0px; margin-right:0px; -qt-block-indent:0; text-indent:0px; -qt-user-state:0;">[2] http://quickgit.kde.org/?p=scratch%2Fingwa%2Famazons.git</p>
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