BGonline.org Forums

BGBlitz 2.8.4 is ready - free update ... as usual for 13! years

Posted By: Frank Berger
Date: Sunday, 10 January 2016, at 5:47 p.m.

BGBlitz 2.8.4 is available. Some new features. Most important:
- The cube liveness heuristic was optimized, i.e. better cubes.
- The AI got some speed improvements.

- For the techies: BGBlitz now supports AVX and FMA3 CPU-Instructions, but from now on native code is only supported for 64-Bit CPUs.

- It has always been difficult to develop an AI that plays weaker, so less experienced players are not frustrated. Adding random to the evaluation leads to sometimes ridiculous moves followed by excellent ones, but it doesn't feel like playing against a human. From now on for the lower settings a weaker AI is used. It doesn't understand more advanced concepts so less random noise has to be added. I hope this feels more like playing a human and feedback is highly appreciated.

- For the skeptics about the randomness of the dice rolls I created 8 files with one million pre calculated rolls each. They are calculated with a device that produces *true* random ( "Infinite Noise TRNG" https://www.tindie.com/products/WaywardGeek/infinite-noise). The files are plain text files so anyone can easily analyze them or check the sequence of rolls. I have done some statistical tests (mostly some simple Chi-square-tests) but feel free to do a more advanced analysis like DieHard or NIST.

Several usability improvements. Most notably - At the first start a wizard adapts the initial settings to the user preferences and playing strength - Setting the playing strength of the AI is easier now.

Further three serious and a couple of minor issues was fixed (Most notable: the access to random.org works again) and some internal improvements to increase long term maintainability.

Many thanks to Axel Schmohl, Charlie Dick, David Brown, Daniel Simon, Debbie Curtis, Harry Gordon, Jörg Picard, Kay Kraemer, Michael Petch, Ran Kornfeld, Richard Arratia, Sam Rich, Tom Martin and to all of the people who have provided error reports, making suggestions or helping in any other way to improve BGBlitz.

The update is free!

I hope you enjoy the new version. I always glad getting some feedback. If you find some errors or quirks please drop me an email.

regards
Frank