Game design : Making computer play

[xakee]

On Apr 14, 12:13 pm, v4vijayakumar <vijayakumar.subbu... at gmail.com>
wrote:
> In computer based, two player, board games, how to make computer play?
> Are there any formal ways to _teach_ computer, to choose best possible
> move?
>
> I know this is kind of off-topic here. Please redirect me, if there
> are more appropriate newsgroup.
>
> Many thanks.

You should pick up some nice Artificial intelligence book and see for
the game playing section. Most of them have it. Teaching the computer
is almost like telling it all the possibilities. The actual teaching
is telling the computer how to decide which possibility is the best.
That is by using heuristics. All possibilities are normally
represented as trees, one move leading to another. Then there is are
pruning techniques, miny-maxy things where we deal with the concept of
minimizing opponents gain and maximizing your own. So you design
heuristics like that. (For example in the game of tic tac toe, there
can be say 5 moves to be made, and the heuristic function is the
number of moves a given player will win in.... and the computer
calculates that its 4 for him and 3 for you for a certain move.... he
will pick the next move with is maybe 3 for him and 4 for you and
execute that move). This is a very simplistic application but this is
how it goes. There are many searching heuristic based algorithms, some
blind search algorithms etc. They are very important in game playing
not just board ones but almost all of them. They are the foundation.
So I would recommend you to open some elementary AI book.