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BGonline.org Forums
iGammon 2.0
Posted By: Tom Keith
Date: Thursday, 1 October 2009, at 3:59 p.m.
iGammon 2.0 is now available. This version includes many of the most requested features. (1) Board rotates to the orientation of the phone. (2) Doubling cube -- just slide it forward to double. (3) Multiple of levels of play. (4) Many minor features that improve playability.
One of the challenges was how to create different levels of play that are reasonably humanlike. In 1.0, I tried reducing the size of the neural net, but that didn't work very well. The tiny neural net had surprisingly good strategic skills in many parts of its game (better than most humans) but noticeable weaknesses other parts.
So I tried a different approach this time. I started out with a strong neural net (50 hidden nodes instead 20) and then created weaker players by giving them certain biases. One player, called "Cautious," doesn't like to be hit, so he tends to play safe. Another player, called "Wild," loves getting hit, and if you play him you can end up in some very long games. The "Expert" level just plays a normal game without trying to be fancy. All the levels are fun to play against.
I'm really falling in love with the touch-screen interface. This is how all backgammon will be played in the future. [Father to son in the year 2015: "Back in the 20th Century, we played backgammon with a thing called a mouse. It was sooo slow."]
That suggests an idea for a new game -- SpeedGammon. The rules are the same as standard backgammon except games are clocked and each player gets 3 seconds per move, plus a reserve time of 30 secs for the game. It should be very exciting.
(Mischievous thought: In iGammon, the rolling of the dice is animated. The animation is pretty boring -- the dice just roll and stop. But in SpeedGammon I could "enhance" the animation whenever the computer sees it is losing. Make it more realistic. Let the dice get cocked sometimes. Occasionally have one of the dice spin for and extra 1/2 a sec. With only 3 seconds to play your move, every millisecond counts!)
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Thank you to everyone who submitted feedback on v1.0. You will see that many of your suggestions are in 2.0 and I'm working hard to add the others. Please keep the ideas coming. This is a really fun project to work on.
[iGammon runs on an iPhone or an iPod Touch. It's a free download from the app store. Just search for "igammon".]
Tom
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