Showing posts with label plot. Show all posts
Showing posts with label plot. Show all posts
[weylfetj] Watching computer chess for a long time

[weylfetj] Watching computer chess for a long time

January 14, 2020 Add Comment

Have a computer play chess against itself for a long time, months to years.  What about this might be entertaining for people to spectate?

One thing that probably won't be entertaining is a single game with a very long time control.  It will probably be a boring draw.  It is also a bad fit with technological advancement.  Computers (and software) become better over time, but a game becomes easier over time, with fewer and fewer pieces.

Three possibilities likely more entertaining:

1. Watch the development of opening theory.  Let the computer play many games against itself and do Monte Carlo tree search, probably also with reinforcement learning as Alphazero did.

As the computer becomes more powerful over time, the opening transposition table can become larger, neural networks can become larger, searches can become deeper and wider.  All of these (hopefully) lead to improvement in opening play.

A human spectating the computer's development, giving it attention occasionally, can query, what are the most interesting changes the computer discovered in opening theory since the human last checked?  Why did those changes occur?  (The reason may be because of a discovery of a key move, and continuation, that busts a line previously believed to be good.)  These are the same questions one asks about the development of opening theory in human games.

Some difficult UI issues: how can a computer quantify how interesting a change to opening theory is?  How can a computer explain why a opening is better?

2. Watch the development of endgame theory.  The simplest version is a progression over time of the computation of endgame tablebases from few pieces to more.  Again, this sort of lines up with computers becoming more powerful over time.

On one hand, it doesn't line up too well computers becoming more powerful because a tablebase of N+1 pieces requires so much more computing power than N that one may have to wait years for computers to become powerful enough to go one piece more.

On the other hand, there are some incremental steps that may be entertaining to spectate that require less computation than calculating a whole tablebase.  Find the positions one more step away from checkmate (or reduction) than previously calculated.  Show the interesting positions.  Keep refining machine learning to compress better existing tablebases or portions thereof.  Show interesting positions that the machine learning algorithm "recently" learned to play or classify correctly, and explain how it's doing so.  (But neural networks are especially bad when explanations of how or why are desired.)  Again, there are a bunch of UI issues, including how to quantify "interesting".

3. We reconsider a variation of the initial rejected idea of a single deeply calculated game of a computer playing itself.  Assuming we can quantify "interesting", we can have the computer play many not-so-deep games against itself and provide to spectators only the most interesting ones, at a rate tuned and suitable for the attention humans will give it.  (Probably around 1 game per week.)  Or maybe instead of an interesting game, just an interesting position that occurred in a game.  Humans will demand higher thresholds of interestingness over time: they become bored of things similar to what they have already seen.  The computer becoming more powerful over time can play more games, filter more exclusively, and deliver higher interestingness over time.  This repeated self-play could also be part of a Monte Carlo framework described above for improving computer play.

We don't have to limit to orthodox chess.  Consider calculating these on Chess960 and other chess variants.

[bfqllxax] Alpha Centauri before public domain

[bfqllxax] Alpha Centauri before public domain

December 23, 2019 Add Comment

Which will happen first: a song that came out this year becoming public domain, or humans colonizing Alpha Centauri?

Original thought: will Alpha Centaurian colonists need a license from Disney to copy "Let it Go"?

It's conceivable humans will get to Alpha Centauri in the next 95 years, and that optimistically assumes copyright will not get retroactively extended again.  It's inconceivable that Congress will decrease copyright.  It's depressingly conceivable that Congress might increase copyright to perpetuity.

Don't think you can escape the long arm of copyright enforcement by heading out to the stars.  Copyright lawyers can wait, then chase you down in a faster starship.

[rffzzbpi] CA with mostly local neighborhood

[rffzzbpi] CA with mostly local neighborhood

December 20, 2019 Add Comment

Consider cellular automata in which a cell's next state depends on both its local neighborhood and a few possible distant interactions.  Inspired by chess (future post).  The distant interactions could be with the first nonempty cell for each of the directions a chess queen can move (or no interaction if there is nothing along a ray).

"Mostly local but with a few distant interactions" tells a story that people can relate to (to be elaborated on in a future post).

[azddjhee] Winning the BOTW opening

[azddjhee] Winning the BOTW opening

December 07, 2019 Add Comment

At some point, subjectively, in Zelda BOTW, you have enough stuff that the world is your oyster, and what you do next is limited only by your imagination.  This where the game starts getting fun (not having to worry so much about mere survival), though others might say this is where the game stops being fun.

Roughly, it means having established convenient access (typically via fast travel or through armor) to good (plentiful, renewable) sources of

This list is subjective; others might include other things (e.g., Revali's Gale, full climbing set upgraded to level 2, upgraded Runes).

There are many ways to get to this point, some which have other prerequisites, making this early part of the game fun (for some) and interesting in its many possibilities.  Two examples:

Stealth can be satisfied by buying the Sheikah suit, but that requires lots of Rupees.

Unlocking Faron Tower gets you a good source of Hearty Durians, Mighty Bananas, and a Hinox to steal good weapons from.  However, that requires having the skills and/or equipment to defeat the enemies around it (primarily the electric wizzrobe), having enough stamina to climb it (or using updrafts), and having enough stealth (and skill) to steal from Hinoxes.

As game design, how difficult should getting to this "oyster" point be?  It's easy to imagine a game in which you never reach this point, e.g., no renewable resources and everything (including armor) having limited durability.  But I don't think a game like that would be very fun.  (Too similar to real life?)

[ezmpildy] Intragalactic versus intergalactic

[ezmpildy] Intragalactic versus intergalactic

December 06, 2019 Add Comment

The distance between galaxies seems not that much greater than the size of galaxies.  Milky Way diameter 100,000 ly.  Distance to Andromeda 2.5 million ly, so scale factor of 25.  This means (maybe) that after becoming a galactic civilization, it's not that much more difficult to then become an intergalactic civilization.  Star Trek (and others) are unrealistic in limiting themselves to just one galaxy.

Compare this with other cosmic distances:

Half-circumference of earth (farthest possible distance between any two points on earth): 20,000 km.  Minimum distance to Mars: 55 million km.  Scale factor 2750.  Going from being a planetary civilization to being an interplanetary civilization is difficult.

Size of solar system, defined by semimajor axis of Neptune's orbit: 4.5e9 km.  Distance to Alpha Centauri: 4e13 km.  Scale factor 9000.  Going from being a solar-system spanning civilization to being an interstellar civilization is difficult.

These distance ratios don't take into account the difficulty of escaping gravity wells.  Don't know if it matters.