Department of Computer Science and Technology

Technical reports

METAGAME in symmetric chess-like games

Barney Pell

30 pages

DOI: 10.48456/tr-277

Abstract

I have implemented a game generator that generates games from a wide but still restricted class. This class is general enough to include most aspects of many standard games, including Chess, Shogi, Chinese Chess, Checkers, Draughts, and many variants of Fairy Chess. The generator, implemented in Prolog is transparent and publicly available, and generates games using probability distributions for parameters such as piece complexity, types of movement, board size, and locality.

The generator is illustrated by means of a new game it produced, which is then subjected to a simple strategic analysis. This form of analysis suggests that programs to play Metagame well will either learn or apply very general game-playing principles. But because the class is still restricted, it may be possible to develop a naive but fast program which can outplay more sophisticated opponents. Performance in a tournament between programs is the deciding criterion.

Full text

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BibTeX record

@TechReport{UCAM-CL-TR-277,
  author =	 {Pell, Barney},
  title = 	 {{METAGAME in symmetric chess-like games}},
  url = 	 {https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/techreports/UCAM-CL-TR-277.ps.gz},
  institution =  {University of Cambridge, Computer Laboratory},
  doi = 	 {10.48456/tr-277},
  number = 	 {UCAM-CL-TR-277}
}