Griddle: a GDL editor for Eclipse

Griddle is an Eclipse plugin that provides a specialized GDL editor for game files. The editor makes it easier to write new games while avoiding typos and syntax errors.

Implication deduction: Logic over propnets

Today I'd like to share a simple and surprisingly useful algorithm for making logical inferences about games using propositional networks.

I developed this as part of the implementation for a more specific feature (one of the applications listed below). Although it was developed in the context of a larger feature, I wrote the code for this step to stand alone, and it has proved useful in quickly writing other features that involve understanding games more deeply.

The question that it answers is simple: given a set of components that we know to be true or false in a propnet, which other components are also guaranteed to be true or false? I call this implication deduction.

Rewriting chess (again)

One of the embarrassing questions about GGP: "So, how good are they at chess?"

Not very good. Not very good at all.

There are several reasons for this.

Sancho gets a blog

Steve Draper and Andrew Rose have put together a blog describing their work on their (very good) general game player, Sancho. Sancho is the successor to Quixote, the winner of the first MOOC iteration of Stanford's General Game Playing class.

I fully expect their blog will update more frequently than mine.

The Annotated Tic-Tac-Toe

Tic-tac-toe is a classic and widely-understood game. Introductions to GDL typically use it as a sample "first game", as the rules are fairly simple and usually already known by the reader. However, the GDL representation can still be foreign enough to be difficult to understand. This post is my attempt to flesh it out with explanations of what each component of the rules is doing. This isn't my first attempt at an introduction to GDL, but different people will find different approaches better.

The General Game Playing Forum

Just a short note and link: There is now a long-term forum for discussion of General Game Playing, born from the discussions out of the GGP Coursera course last fall. (Speaking of which, a new session is starting right now.)

Improving Chinese checkers performance

This is another post on improving the performance of game simulations by modifying the GDL by hand. Today, we look at chineseCheckers4, a game known for its particularly poor performance, especially for propnets.