B551 Elements of Artificial Intelligence - Fall 2008

Events

Mark will match all hw3 competition version submissions against one another to determine the best four. The matches will be timed using the code provided below.

An optional human tournament will be held in LH406 at 7pm on Monday Oct 20, to determine the best Othello player in the class.

On class in Tuesday Oct 21, we will hold a live tournament between the four best programs to determine a champion, and then have a match between the best student player and the best program. Before the matches, we will invite the authors of the four top-rated programs to say a few words about the secrets of their programs (e.g., their evaluation functions or methods to increase efficiency), and then watch as their systems confront each other for the machine championship!

Rules

• All matches will use a standard Othello board and starting position (as given in the homework). When neither player can play, or the board is full, the game ends and the player with the most pieces on the board wins. When one player cannot play on its turn, play passes automatically to the other player. 
• Each match will consist of two games, each with a different player as black (going first). In case of a tie (both games are tied, or each player wins one), the match will be repeated with the time halved. This will continue until the match is decided.
• In (non-tie-breaking) matches, each player gets 64 seconds for the entire game. If a program runs out of time or makes an invalid move, it forfeits the game.
• The final four will compete in a standard single-elimination tournament, with random initial match-ups.
• The tournament is no-holds-barred, as long as the ideas are entirely yours. Be creative!
• For the tournament you must turn in a file containing only one procedure (to avoid namespace conflicts between competing programs). The procedure will take 5 arguments, as follows:
  1. Initializing: Before the start of the game, your program will be called once with this set to #t. All other arguments will be dummy arguments, except for "remaining time" (see below). This is an opportunity for your program to initialize for the start of a new game. Your initialization may be a no-op if you wish. In all subsequent calls, this parameter will be #f.
  2. Board state. For the initialization call, this will be a dummy argument.
  3. Current player: Either 'X or 'O For the initialization call, this will be a dummy argument.
  4. Remaining time: Remaining time in milliseconds. For the initialization call, this will be the total time allotted to your player for the game.
  5. Opponent's remaining time: Your opponent's remaining time in milliseconds. For the initialization call, this will be the total time allotted to your opponent.

  The name of the procedure must correspond to your IU username. For example, if your username is mw54, your procedure should be called mw54 as well. To define additional procedures that will be visible to your main procedure and to each other, but not externally, you can place your additional procedures inside a let expression, with the lambda expression for your main procedure as the body of the let additional procedures. For example,

  
  (define mw54
    (let ()
      (define proc-1 (lambda (arg1 arg2 ...) body-1))
      (define proc-2 (lambda (arg1 arg2 ...) body-2))
      ...
      (define proc-n (lambda (arg1 arg2 ...) body-n))   
      (lambda (initializing? board-state current-player remaining-time opponent-remaining-time)
        your main code here, calling the helper procedures as appropriate)))
  
  

  Or, you can use defines inside your lambda expression:

  
  (define mw54
    (lambda (initializing? board-state current-player remaining-time opponent-remaining-time)
      (define proc-1 (lambda (arg1 arg2 ...) body1))
      (define proc-2 (lambda (arg1 arg2 ...) body2))
      ...
      your main code here, calling the helper procedures as appropriate))
  
  

Provided Code

• timing.ss is a wrapper for othello.ss which allows for games with a time limit. Times are in milliseconds. To see a program called mw54 play against itself:



(othello-timed-game mw54 mw54 64000)
To play against a program, do this:
(othello-timed-game game-human-move mw54 64000)

(To time the human as well as the computer, change the global time-human? to #t)
• tourn.ss manages a list of programs, allowing each program to play all other programs, and selecting those with the largest number of victories. The initial round will allot 64 seconds to each program; ties will be resolved by rematches with less time.