I work for Ubicom, a semiconductor company. I worked for HP when I originally wrote the game, in the 80's. Microsoft lends me hardware for tournaments, but that is an agreement with a different group, not Microsoft research.
-David > -----Original Message----- > From: [email protected] [mailto:computer-go- > [email protected]] On Behalf Of Jukka Jylänki > Sent: Wednesday, December 22, 2010 8:40 PM > To: [email protected] > Subject: Re: [Computer-go] The Path of Go > > I don't know what its worth, but I bought the game and gave it a quick try > today.. Here're the thoughts.. > > - The music in the game repeats after 10-20 seconds. Don't know if there > are multiple sound tracks, but in a single game, only one looping music > sample is playing, which gets very repetitive starting already from the > first game. I felt very annoyed already after 5 minute and had to turn off > the sounds. > > - The story mode felt interesting, giving tsumego puzzles in between > in-game opponents. The problem is that it starts in the easiest settings > mode (the very first tutorials are skippable, although when you do that, > you seem to lose a part of the story), and you can't choose a story mode > difficulty, which made it very easy and boring to play (my official level > is 9 kyu in the finnish OGP club). In the first game in story mode, the > opponent gives you 3 stones on 9x9 board as handicap, and the result was > 81-0 for me (apparently chinese scoring). In that game, the opponent > passed in mid-game (I thought one of his two groups was livable if it had > played at that moment). > > - The second game in story mode was 9x9 with 2 stones handicap, which was > enough to force me abandon the whole story mode altogether. Perhaps I'll > retry doing the story mode and just grind through those easy difficulty > levels to see if there are decently difficult tsumego problems coming up. > > - After the second game, I started a new free game against the CPU on > 19x19 at the most difficult level. I occupied one corner, white occupied a > second one, followed by me occupying a third one, after which the opponent > approached my corner without taking the fourth one (I guess nothing bad > there, a matter of style). We played the first corner according to a > standard komoku joseki, which was ok. In the second corner I made a > beginner's mistake (I thought I was playing a joseki), and the CPU > properly punished. > > - The third corner however, was a catastrophy for the opponent. I ended > the joseki and tenukied in a situation where one of my stones was > catchable in a ladder, although the ladder favored me, since I had a hoshi > stone at the opposing corner. The bot didn't realize this, but we played > the whole board through the ladder, and only at the very end it realized > the capture is not going to happen (the ladder spawned the whole board > from bottom left to top right), and it tried to desperately back up its > moves. After shattering the opponent, I captured the AI stones for a > while, and eventually just closed the game, since it got boring. It seems > like the AI spends a constant amount of time per move (no time control, > and it never immediately makes a move e.g. even if it's part of an opening > book). > > I oughta try it again on 9x9 even start (although I expect to completely > shatter it). It makes me wonder, why didn't David Fotland make the AI for > the game, doesn't he work for Microsoft after all? :) > > To find something positive, I think the game will be a success in terms of > trying to get new amateur players into the game, but the AI is not > competitive by any means. > > On Mon, 20 Dec 2010 04:17:31 +0200, [email protected] > <[email protected]> wrote: > > > not so hard to beat but feels quite natural. > > it is quite good at finding good spot, abusing weakness and protecting > > its own weakness. > > but it does fatal mistakes. > > > > on a 9x9 it has 5 level of difficulty we can choose from. only 3 > > levels are available for larger board. > > chinese scoring is a pain IMHO > > UI is nice > > 5$ is cheap > > we shall make it play against many face or other strong AI to compare. > > we could setup a game through KGS, I could manually play the moves > > from the game. > > > > another website you might want to take a look at is > > > > http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/projects/go/ > > > > I would not be surprise that some of the AI researcher are following > > this list > > > > > > > > On Sun, Dec 19, 2010 at 5:17 PM, Petr Baudis <[email protected]> wrote: > >> Hi! > >> > >> There's been some talk about the XBox Go game from Microsoft Research: > >> > >> > >> http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/news/features/thepathofgo- > 121510.aspx > >> > >> Anyone has more details on how strong is its AI, etc.? The article > above > >> implies it's a MCTS + patterns engine, perhaps using the pattern > matcher > >> as described in "Bayesian pattern ranking for move prediction in the > >> game of Go"? > >> > >> Petr "Pasky" Baudis > >> _______________________________________________ > >> Computer-go mailing list > >> [email protected] > >> http://dvandva.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/computer-go > >> > > > > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > Computer-go mailing list > [email protected] > http://dvandva.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/computer-go _______________________________________________ Computer-go mailing list [email protected] http://dvandva.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/computer-go
