On Tue, Mar 25, 2008 at 6:24 AM, jankaspermartinsen
<jankaspermartinsen@...> wrote:
>
> --- In staticrecompilers@yahoogroups.com, "Graham Toal" <gtoal@...> wrote:
> >
> > I had a thought today (while watching "The King of Kong" as it
> > happens) which is this...
> >
> > we can emulate classic video games at what - 1000 times faster than
> > real time? 10,000 times?
> >
> > So wouldn't it be possible to set up a real-time emulation that worked
> > out the best play
> > for any game by forking at each decision point and playing ahead -
> > either a fixed window like
> > 10 seconds, or maybe to the end of the screen - so that it could work
> > out a perfect game
> > in real time... much the same as classic AI techniques are used to
> > lookahead in other
> > games like checkers, backgammon, scrabble, whatever...
> >
> > I'm wondering just how much speed is needed to pull this off, and what
> > pruning algorithms.
> >
> > Can you for example play a perfect game just by knowing that you can't
> > die in the next
> > 10 seconds, for example, or do some games require more long-term
> > strategy & planning?
> >
> > I'm thinking of the classic games like mspac, donkey kong, qbert etc?
> >
> > I know that various people have worked on AI players for games like
> > pacman, but I believe
> > they're just heuristics, I don't think anyone has thrown power &
> > classic AI techniques
> > at it yet?
> >
> > Would be a truly cool student project by the way, if we have any
> > students reading...
> >
> > G
> >
>
> Hi,
>
> I've been thinking about that too, maybe making some sort of game
> tree. But if I remeber correctly, I feared that the game tree would
> easily be very large (but please prove me wrong)
>
> jkm

well, think about a game like pacman - there are a very few *right*
choices to make and a lot of *wrong* choices. So although the
branching ratio is indeed large, I have a strong suspicion that
fruitless paths (no pun intended) will die off early. It may be
sufficient to only ever guarantee that you can live for the next 10
seconds for example, to be able to always win, rather than look ahead
to the end of the screen.

G
PS Your yahoo email address is bouncing (acct disabled) so I posted my
reply to the group instead.