Game design : Making computer play

[Carl G.]

"Marc 'BlackJack' Rintsch" <bj_666 at gmx.net> wrote in message 
news:66gf8dF2ju94lU3 at mid.uni-berlin.de...
> On Mon, 14 Apr 2008 00:13:56 -0700, v4vijayakumar 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?
>
> That depends on the type of the game.  For a certain class of games one
> can use the `minimax method`_ for instance.
>
> .. _minimax method: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimax

While checking the Wikipedia, also check out the A* (a-star) graph search 
algorithms:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A%2A

There is a table on the top-right of this page that includes other graph 
search algorithms.

My AI games are usually built around general purpose mini-max code, possibly 
inplementing A* (I reuse the same code for various games).  For each new 
two-player game, I usually only have to write new "position evaluator" code, 
which generates a quantitative value that gives the relative position of one 
player over the other for a particular board.  Some games can benefit from a 
database of opening moves that have been shown to be be superior (this 
speeds up the computer's response).

Carl G.