Week 9

Hey guys for all the fans out their who have enjoyed my blog, today I am going to talk about games trees and if games can still be fun if you know exactly how it will end up. So the thing is that computers can generate a game tree and caluclate it using minmax or alpha beta prunning. These are twos ways of finding the right answers to the game and solving them.

Minmax is when a computer or yourself looks at all of the possiblities even when you know that they may not work a maximum of 100 states which is a longer way to look at what you are trying to figure out. You can use this for a more complex and long list of Heuristics which are the numbers that the game tree is looking at to find the right solution to the problem or game. Heurisitics are also used for anti-virus software and signatures in code. Anti Virus software looks at a viruses heuristics to determine if the program is corrupt of what not. For examples, a virus comes into your body and your white T- blood cells eventually will kill the virus, but then the T cells picks up the viruses DNA and will keep that code remembered until you die and that is why you do not get the same cold over and over again. Kind of the same way with computers and Heuristics.

Anywyas Alpha Beta prunning is another way that a computer looks through the values and they only look at ten states so they determine the outome faster than the Minmax. It depends on the tree you are looking at as well.

In class last week Professor Hansen showed us how to play this game called Nim and this game consists of 3 piles of chips all different colors with five of each color and you have to determine your outcome and think ahead. You are allowed to pick either 1 or 2 chips from each color but only choose 2 from the same pile. So I played with my partener Shane a few games and it went bak and forth and that was a good example of how game trees work, a little abstract but I am getting used to it since I am in a 400 level IS class.


So can these games be fun with easily calculated game trees, the answer is both, it depends if you enjoy winning or playing a game. Easy calculating an outcome is not fun for me because I enjoy the strategy part of games but if you are playing for money than YES. But when you first start playing games such as Nim it takes a few games to get used to, so initially they are fun. It all depends upon the person.

Have another post up tomorrow for you guys after class.


Peace yall,
Collin

Week 8

     The complexity of a game state matters in games. It matters in games such as Nim, to a less complex game such as Jenga where your goal is to stack pieces of wood upon one another and then remove them piece by piece. I feel as if the complexity of a game would make it fun because you have to think about what you are doing. There are many different games that make you think in other ways. Differences between board games or card games. But you are always thinking ahead in all of games and different scenerios so you will have to understand the complexities of a game. For poker players maybe they think of it as negatively because they dont know the cards being dealt next are. For black jack players they understand that there is a simple algorithm to count cards..."maybe not so simple, but for players that can understand and master counting cards" so they with think of that as an advantage, they understand the variables that they are working with. Other games maybe Monopoly or even computer games such as Age of the Empires or their many other sequels Age of Mythology and the expansion pack but you have many things to think about while you are playing these games and you must have strategy because you have opportunity costs you must think of and that goes with the complexity of a game. Especially when you are playing against a computer, it is constantly thinking and planning ahead looking at different variations of of mooves. The computer is thinking of many moves and they can also be manipulated in a certain way. Look at computer games, Doom, when the mosters come and attack you constantly and you have to fight them off but there are levels of difficulty and those levels are based on the game state and its system of producing these different variables. So computers in a sense can dominate a game or can loose. The computer on Jeopardy Watson thinks like a person the way it filters peoples content through its "brain" he has a very complex way of choosing an answer like a human, it is A.I that is going to be the future, just like in the movie A.I, but Watson can still answer questions wrong. He will win a lot so for the computer it is good or well the creators because they rake in the caash from Jeopardy, so if you are trying to win a game the computer can be another variable that comes into play and you will have to over come it, all of the contestants on Jeopardy want to beat the computer and win some money so the computer negatively impacts them if they win. Thats it for today guys see you soon.