General Game Playing

General Game Playing refers to the design of Artificial Intelligence programs to be able to play more than one game successfully. [ [http://games.stanford.edu/competition/misc/aaai.pdf General Game Playing: Overview of the AAAI Competition] by Michael Genesereth and Nathaniel Love.] For many games like chess, computers are programmed to play these games using a specially designed algorithm, which cannot be transferred to another context. For example, a chess playing computer program cannot play checkers. A General Game Playing system, if well designed, would be able to help in other areas, such as in providing intelligence for search and rescue missions.

Stanford project

General Game Playing is a project of the Stanford Logic Group of Stanford University, California, which aims to create a platform for General Game Playing. The games are defined by sets of rules represented in the Game Description Language. In order to play the games, players interact with a game hosting server [ [http://games.stanford.edu:4000 Gamemaster] , platform for competition of General Game Playing systems.] that monitors moves for legality and keeps players informed of state changes.

Since 2005, there have been annual General Game Playing competitions at the AAAI Conference. The winner of the competition is awarded with $10,000 (USD). So far, the following programs were victorious: [ [http://games.stanford.edu/competition.html General Game Playing competition] .]

* 2005: Cluneplayer, by Jim Clune (UCLA)
* 2006: Fluxplayer, by Stephan Schiffel and Michael Thielscher (Dresden University of Technology)
* 2007: Cadiaplayer, by Yngvi Björnsson and Hilmar Finnsson (Reykjavik University)
* 2008: Cadiaplayer, by Yngvi Björnsson, Hilmar Finnsson and Gylfi Þór Guðmundsson (Reykjavik University)

Other approaches

There are also other General Game Playing systems, which use their own languages for defining the game rules. In 1992, Barney Pell developed the system Metagame [ [http://www.barneypell.com/games_research.html Barney Pell's research on computer game playing] .] . This system was able to play a number of chess-like games, given game rules definition in a special language. In 1998, the commercial system Zillions of Games was developed by Jeff Mallett and Mark Lefler. The system used a LISP-like language to define the game rules. Zillions of Games derived the evaluation function automatically from the game rules based on piece mobility, board structure and game goals. It also employed usual algorithms as found in computer chess systems: alpha-beta pruning with move ordering, transposition tables, etc. [ [http://groups.google.com/group/comp.ai.games/browse_thread/thread/c3f734729a107d22/a25c735d6a0693db?&hl=en#a25c735d6a0693db Available: Universal Game Engine] email to comp.ai.games by Jeff Mallett, 10-Dec-1998.] The package was extended in 2007 by the addition of the Axiom plug-in, an alternate metagame engine which incorporates a complete Forth based programming language.

ee also

* Game Description Language
*Artificial Intelligence

References

External links

* [http://games.stanford.edu General Game Playing Project] by Stanford University.
* [http://www.general-game-playing.de/research.html Fluxplayer] , more information about the winner of the 2nd International General Game Playing competition.
* [http://cadia.ru.is/wiki/public:cadiaplayer:main CADIAPlayer] , more information about the winner of the 3rd and 4th International General Game Playing competition.
* [http://www.ai.univ-paris8.fr/~cazenave/extendedggmodel.pdf Extended general gaming model] by Michel Quenault and Tristan Cazenave.
* [http://www.zillions-of-games.com/cgi-bin/zilligames/submissions.cgi/19249?do=show;id=1452 Axiom Development kit] a metagame engine plug-in for Zillions of Games by Greg Schmidt.
* [http://palamedes-ide.sourceforge.net/ Palamedes] - A General Game Playing IDE.