The Nature of Retrograde Analysis for Chinese Chess

Retrograde analysis has been successfully applied to solve Awari and construct 6-piece Western chess endgame databases. However, its application to Chinese chess is limited because of the special rules about indefinite move sequences. Problems caused by the most influential rule, checking indefinitely were successfully solved in practical cases, with $50$ selected endgame databases constructed in accord with this rule, where the 60-move-rule was ignored. Other special rules have much less impact on contaminating the databases, as verified by the rule-tolerant algorithms. For constructing complete endgame databases, we need rigorous algorithms. There are two rule sets in Chinese chess: Asian rule set and Chinese rule set. In this paper, an algorithm is successfully developed to construct endgame databases in accord with the Asian rule set. The graph-theoretical properties are also explored as well

Material Symmetry to Partition Endgame Tables

Many games display some kind of material symmetry . That is, some sets of game elements can be exchanged for another set of game elements, so that the resulting position will be equivalent to the original one, no matter how the elements were arranged on the board. Material symmetry is routinely used in card game engines when they normalize their internal representation of the cards. Other games such as chinese dark chess also feature some form of material symmetry, but it is much less clear what the normal form of a position should be. We propose a principled approach to detect material symmetry. Our approach is generic and is based on solving multiple rel- atively small sub-graph isomorphism problems. We show how it can be applied to chinese dark chess , dominoes , and skat . In the latter case, the mappings we obtain are equivalent to the ones resulting from the standard normalization process. In the two former cases, we show that the material symmetry allows for impressive savings in memory requirements when building endgame tables. We also show that those savings are relatively independent of the representation of the tables

Data assurance in opaque computations

The chess endgame is increasingly being seen through the lens of, and therefore effectively defined by, a data ‘model’ of itself. It is vital that such models are clearly faithful to the reality they purport to represent. This paper examines that issue and systems engineering responses to it, using the chess endgame as the exemplar scenario. A structured survey has been carried out of the intrinsic challenges and complexity of creating endgame data by reviewing the past pattern of errors during work in progress, surfacing in publications and occurring after the data was generated. Specific measures are proposed to counter observed classes of error-risk, including a preliminary survey of techniques for using state-of-the-art verification tools to generate EGTs that are correct by construction. The approach may be applied generically beyond the game domain

On forward pruning in game-tree search

Ph.DDOCTOR OF PHILOSOPH

Use-driven concept formation

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 2010.Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.Includes bibliographical references (p. 161-165).When faced with a complex task, humans often identify domain-specific concepts that make the task more tractable. In this thesis, I investigate the formation of domain-specific concepts of this sort. I propose a set of principles for formulating domain-specific concepts, including a new inductive bias that I call the equivalence class principle. I then use the domain of two-player, perfect-information games to test and refine those principles. I show how the principles can be applied in a semiautomated fashion to identify strategically-important visual concepts, discover highlevel structure in a game's state space, create human-interpretable descriptions of tactics, and uncover both offensive and defensive strategies within five deterministic, perfect-information games that have up to forty-two million states apiece. I introduce a visualization technique for networks that discovers a new strategy for exploiting an opponent's mistakes in lose tic-tac-toe; discovers the optimal defensive strategies in five and six men's morris; discovers the optimal offensive strategies in pong hau k'i, tic-tac-toe, and lose tic-tac-toe; simplifies state spaces by up to two orders of magnitude; and creates a hierarchical depiction of a game's state space that allows the user to explore the space at multiple levels of granularity. I also introduce the equivalence class principle, an inductive bias that identifies concepts by building connections between two representations in the same domain. I demonstrate how this principle can be used to rediscover visual concepts that would help a person learn to play a game, propose a procedure for using such concepts to create succinct, human-interpretable descriptions of offensive and defensive tactics, and show that these tactics can compress important information in the five men's morris state space by two orders of magnitude.by Jennifer M. Roberts.Ph.D

Case board, traces, & chicanes: Diagrams for an archaeology of algorithmic prediction through critical design practice

This PhD thesis utilises diagrams as a language for research and design practice to critically investigate algorithmic prediction. As a tool for practice-based research, the language of diagrams is presented as a way to read algorithmic prediction as a set of intricate computational geometries, and to write it through critical practice immersed in the very materials in question: data and code. From a position rooted in graphic and interaction design, the research uses diagrams to gain purchase on algorithmic prediction, making it available for examination, experimentation, and critique. The project is framed by media archaeology, used here as a methodology through which both the technical and historical "depths" of algorithmic systems are excavated. My main research question asks: How can diagrams be used as a language to critically investigate algorithmic prediction through design practice? This thesis presents two secondary questions for critical examination, asking: Through which mechanisms does thinking/writing/designing in diagrammatic terms inform research and practice focused on algorithmic prediction? As algorithmic systems claim to produce objective knowledge, how can diagrams be used as instruments for speculative and/or conjectural knowledge production? I contextualise my research by establishing three registers of relations between diagrams and algorithmic prediction. These are identified as: Data Diagrams to describe the algorithmic forms and processes through which data are turned into predictions; Control Diagrams to afford critical perspectives on algorithmic prediction, framing the latter as an apparatus of prescription and control; and Speculative Diagrams to open up opportunities for reclaiming the generative potential of computation. These categories form the scaffolding for the three practice-oriented chapters where I evidence a range of meaningful ways to investigate algorithmic prediction through diagrams. This includes, the 'case board' where I unpack some of the historical genealogies of algorithmic prediction. A purpose-built graph application materialises broader reflections about how such genealogies might be conceptualised, and facilitates a visual and subjective mode of knowledge production. I then move to producing 'traces', namely probing the output of an algorithmic prediction system|in this case YouTube recommendations. Traces, and the purpose-built instruments used to visualise them, interrogate both the mechanisms of algorithmic capture and claims to make these mechanisms transparent through data visualisations. Finally, I produce algorithmic predictions and examine the diagrammatic "tricks," or 'chicanes', that this involves. I revisit a historical prototype for algorithmic prediction, the almanac publication, and use it to question the boundaries between data-science and divination. This is materialised through a new version of the almanac - an automated publication where algorithmic processes are used to produce divinatory predictions. My original contribution to knowledge is an approach to practice-based research which draws from media archaeology and focuses on diagrams to investigate algorithmic prediction through design practice. I demonstrate to researchers and practitioners with interests in algorithmic systems, prediction, and/or speculation, that diagrams can be used as a language to engage critically with these themes

Breaking out stories and networks of interdependency: using actor-network theory to trace emergent challenges to narrative norms in AAA and indie game development sectors.

My intervention in this thesis is two-fold: Firstly, I aim to explore how design practitioners are leveraging the form of videogames to tell new types of stories that speak to and help shape newly emerging audience formations, and how the material and organisational structures of the industry constrain or enable those attempts. Secondly, the thesis implements a novel framework adapted primarily from the production studies work of John Caldwell (2008b), which has been recognised as an urgently needed addition to the growing critical tool kit of game studies (Banks et al., 2016), and combined with actor-network theory of Bruno Latour (2005), in order to make an original contribution to the growing methodological field of game studies. I argue that the innovative framework of actor-network theory (Callon et al., 2009; Latour, 2005; Law, 2004) applies particularly well to the shifting videogames industry as an object of study. My specific focus is on the kinds of stories that are told in the complex and shifting production contexts of game design, but also the kinds of trade stories that circulate within production cultures. Thus I link textual analysis and the study of production by exploring how such narratives are formed within real material spaces of production. I do so by utilising a mixed method of anthropology of production cultures and semi-structured interviews (Galletta, 2013). In particular I have attempted to make the game studio a unit of analysis within the complex flows of narrative intention and economic realities, which ties my work into an emerging field of Studio Studies (Farías and Wilkie, 2015), and I specifically focus on the emergence of the independent studio as a significant challenge to industry norms and the narrative forms and core gamer identities that rest upon them. In doing so I build on a new generation of work in game studies (Anable, 2018; Chess, 2017; Keogh, 2018a; Nooney, 2017; Ruffino, 2018a) seeking to challenge the entrenched academic orthodoxy of game studie