Tool for analysis

[zugzwang]

Further to the 'tools for analysis' thread...

I just wanted to informally announce the preliminary release of SMGE, a little tool I made the other week and have been polishing here and there since. It isn't really finished, but I think it's reached a plateau in its development. I would be interested to hear any opinions on the concept, and secondarily on the implementation (which I know is crappy in various ways).

The URL: mbays.freeshell.org/smge/

Short blurb: The Simultaneous Move Game Explorer is a dumb tool intended to aid in-depth analysis of positions in Warlocks and games like it. From a position to be analysed, you select possible moves for the two players deemed to be worth considering, creating possible future positions to be analysed. SMGE keeps track of and lets you navigate within the tree you get in this way, and to annotate it with notes and valuations, with various facilities to make doing so as inarduous as possible.

Thanks to the magic of urwid, there's an AJAX web-based version accessible from the above link as well as the installable console-graphics version, so you can try it without fiddling with python library dependencies. It may be a bit slow though. The web version is set up to begin with the current position of a game from a top warlock in case you want to consider what their next move should be...

I've so far only put SMGE into use a few times in my own games, but when I have I've found it quite useful in marshalling my thoughts, and occasionally in calculating probabilities.

[awall]

When I try to run it, I get this:


awall@Prometheus:~/Warlocks/smge$ python smge.py
Traceback (most recent call last):
 File "/home/awall/Warlocks/smge/smge.py", line 626, in <module>
   main()
 File "/home/awall/Warlocks/smge/smge.py", line 620, in main
   interface = Interface(Node("nameless", historyR=" \n\n\n ", historyC=" \n\n\n "))
 File "/home/awall/Warlocks/smge/smge.py", line 153, in __init__
   align = 'right')
 File "/home/awall/Warlocks/smge/EmacsEdit.py", line 13, in __init__
   self.__super.__init__(caption, edit_text, multiline, align, wrap,
AttributeError: EmacsEdit instance has no attribute '_EmacsEdit__super'


I have python-urwid and glpk installed, and my python version is 2.5.1. Is there anything else I need?

[dni]

2 zugzwang:
The Warlocks game can't be fully evaluated even for 5 moves. You have at least 64 variants of gestures (not include spell targets, monster attacks and more) at each semi-move. So you have at least 64^10 = 2^60 = 1 152 921 504 606 846 976 variants of game after 5 moves.

[zugzwang]

dni said:

2 zugzwang:
The Warlocks game can't be fully evaluated even for 5 moves. You have at least 64 variants of gestures (not include spell targets, monster attacks and more) at each semi-move. So you have at least 64^10 = 2^60 = 1 152 921 504 606 846 976 variants of game after 5 moves.

Yes indeed. Of course even a tiny bit of intelligence applied to eliminate dominated strategies can cut that down massively, but still I'm convinced that brute-forcing warlocks is no more possible than brute-forcing chess.

The intention was instead to assist humans in performing their own (almost always incomplete and imperfect) analyses.

[Derfel]

Man, Brute-Force Chess is such a great spectator sport.

[Rycchus]

Wasn't an English King supposed to have killed his (victorious) opponent by breaking a chess board over his head?

[dni]

2 Rycchus:
Never heard of this fact, interesting...
I know that chess may considers as traumatic kind of sports. For example, unexpected sleeping while playing chess may cause you losing your eye if your face fall down to the sharp top of king piece.

[taliesin]

No-one's mentioned chess-boxing yet?

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chess_boxing

[nawglan]

Would be more fun to have a Full Scale battle chess... Let's all dress up in our chain mail and battle it out. Archon style though. If I try to capture your knight, but your knight defeats me in hand-to-hand battle, I lose my knight. 8)

[Dubber]

taliesin said:

No-one's mentioned chess-boxing yet?

If Partners Chess Boxing ever makes it, I'll do the boxing if you'll do the Chess...

[Rycchus]

taliesin said:

No-one's mentioned chess-boxing yet?

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chess_boxing

What the ...?!

[dni]

2 Rycchus:
Ouch, h-m-m, it's an idea. F**king chess? Interesting variant...

[zugzwang]

awall said:

When I try to run it, I get this:


awall@Prometheus:~/Warlocks/smge$ python smge.py
Traceback (most recent call last):
...
AttributeError: EmacsEdit instance has no attribute '_EmacsEdit__super'


This, along with some other problems, should be fixed in the latest version (same place, same name... proper versioning will begin soon, I promise!).

This latest release also adds the ability to draw pretty diagrams if you have gnuplot. Not the most useful of features perhaps, but fun.

Please mail bug reports etc to the address given in the README file.