Adaptoid - Axiom PC game | Adaptoid

Quinn Swanger

(qswanger)

United States
Holly Springs
North Carolina

What a great Christmas present ... thank you!

Posted Mon Dec 28, 2009 8:52 pm
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Greg Schmidt

(gschmidt)

United States
Unspecified
Unspecified

You're welcome and glad to know you're enjoying the game program. I've been enjoying it as well.

Posted Mon Dec 28, 2009 10:49 pm
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Quinn Swanger

(qswanger)

United States
Holly Springs
North Carolina

Yeah, I've been playing the heck out of it today. The AI is super strong! Glad to see that there's also a computer vs. computer mode so that I can run a simulation and then play it back. This way I'm bound to learn how to play better.

Posted Mon Dec 28, 2009 11:21 pm
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Néstor Romeral Andrés

(n_r_a)

Spain

Great job, Greg!

Posted Tue Dec 29, 2009 12:10 am
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Greg Schmidt

(gschmidt)

United States
Unspecified
Unspecified

Thanks everyone.

Quinn it is possible to beat.

For fun you can set the "Thinking Time" and "Strength" sliders to minimum and then uncheck the "Animate Moves" box. Then have the computer play against itself and let 'er rip. Perhaps not terribly instructive, but fun to watch.

Posted Tue Dec 29, 2009 1:00 am
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Quinn Swanger

(qswanger)

United States
Holly Springs
North Carolina

In my previous simulations, as well as the options you suggested above Greg, Black seems to win ALL the time. Is this normal for there to be such a huge second move advantage?

Posted Tue Dec 29, 2009 1:25 am
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Greg Schmidt

(gschmidt)

United States
Unspecified
Unspecified

I noticed that too at the very lowest settings. Given that there is only one move lookahead I wouldn't put too much weight on it. If it is also seen at higher settings, then something might be going on.

I did try one experiment, I set the strength to min and thinking time to 1sec and played 12 games. The wins were split evenly. Of course that's not in any way statistically significant, but I think the behavior may be unique to very low settings.

Having said that, there could be some hidden bias. If so, it could be due to one or more of the following:

1) The dynamics of the game (e.g. a bias towards one player as you suggest).
2) Some hidden bias in the programming of the game.
3) Some hidden bias in the game engine itself, although I've seen some games prefer first player whereas others prefer 2nd.

It could even be some secondary affect that emerges from the AI and the game dynamics. I know that sounds vague, but if so, it wouldn't be something that would be obvious from examining the programming directly, just something that unfolds given the combination of programming coupled with the game and it would be very difficult to uncover.

I don't have a better answer right now, but I'll keep an eye on it. If I see it occur at higher settings (e.g. 5secs - can't say I've done much self play at this setting), I'll look deeper.

Posted Tue Dec 29, 2009 4:50 am
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Greg Schmidt

(gschmidt)

United States
Unspecified
Unspecified

I just tried a little experiment. The experiment was done at minimal strength and thinking time settings. I reversed the scanning order when generating moves (from top-bottom-left-to-right to bottom-top-left-to-right). I noticed that in the original order, the pieces tend to congregate at the top of the board and black wins. In the reverse scan, the pieces tend to congregate at the bottom of the board and white wins. That change effectively "flips" the board and changes the sides of the player (from left to right). The players face each other so effectively the board can be viewed as a mirror image.

So I think what we are seeing appears to be a secondary effect of the order in which the program generates moves. Move ordering can be important in game programs as it affects the search order, and it is possible that one particular move ordering slightly favors one player over another. Again, I would expect this effect to lessen as the strength is increased.

Here's another way to think of it. Imagine a chess program which generates moves in the south direction first for both players. That might put white at a slight disadvantage since white retreat moves are explored before advance moves and advance moves are *generally* better. OTOH black advance moves would be explored first. So black might have a slight advantage since the advance move is explored first, looks good, and by the time we see the retreat move, it's abandoned quickly since we have a better looking move (the advance) to compare it against.

The main point is that the players are mirror images yet share common programming so the ordering could favor one side more than another.

This could be mitigated by using a more sophisticated move ordering. A simple thing to do what be to choose one of the two orderings based on the current player. I'm not sure if it's worth making these sorts of changes or not unless someone wants to do some serious self-play analysis.

Posted Tue Dec 29, 2009 5:27 am
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Greg Schmidt

(gschmidt)

United States
Unspecified
Unspecified

Quinn - I have an experimental version of Adaptoid which generates moves relative to the direction of each player (as opposed to absolute for both players and I'm seeing very close to a 50/50 split between wins now. If you'd like to try this version out, I can send it to you if you email me at:

gschmidt958 "at" yahoo "dot" com

(after making the appropriate substitutions above of course).

Posted Tue Dec 29, 2009 6:09 am
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Ben Stanley

(Blue Steel)

United States
Pleasant Grove
Utah

I tried installing and running this program today, but I always get an error message "Could not load axiom.dll" or something like that. Does that mean my .NET framework is corrupt, or too high a version number? I tried updating it, but I get the same error.

Posted Tue Dec 29, 2009 6:49 am
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Greg Schmidt

(gschmidt)

United States
Unspecified
Unspecified

I have acces to two XP machines and one running Vista. All have 2.0 & 3.0 installed. I tried installing 3.5 on the XP's but the setup failed on both (it simply said "setup failed"). I'm at SP3 already so I wonder if I need something more.

I found the following statement:

[Newer versions are fully backwards compatible. However, if you have both installed, code compiled to the older version will still use the older version - the frameworks can be installed "side by side".]

So that jives with my understanding of the .net framework. Given that it's backwards compatible I would expect 3.5 to work although I've not been in a position to actually try it. I also understand that multiple versions of the framework can coexist. So if you only have 3.5 installed, then you could try installing 3.0, then 2.0 if that doesn't work.

If possible, perhaps you could also try it on another computer.

Sorry I don't have a better answer right now other than installing earlier versions to see if the problem goes away. This is the first I've heard of it not working. Is anyone else seeing this problem?

Posted Tue Dec 29, 2009 7:56 am
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Jesper Johansson

(geggakloss)

Sweden
Vittinge

Yay! An expensive feature that nobody will ever see. Weeee!

Blue Steel wrote:

I tried installing and running this program today, but I always get an error message "Could not load axiom.dll" or something like that. Does that mean my .NET framework is corrupt, or too high a version number? I tried updating it, but I get the same error.

I have the same problem on my end. I am running Windows 7 64bit with .NET framework 3.5.1 installed.

Edit: As I understand it, windows 7 comes preinstalled with both version 2.0 and 3.0 of the .NET framework. I tried uninstalling v3.5 (while still retaining the older versions) to see if that helped, but I still got the same error message.

Maybe it is a Windows 7 problem, or the fact that I am running the 64-bit version of it.

Edited Tue Dec 29, 2009 11:37 am
Posted Tue Dec 29, 2009 11:00 am
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Ben Stanley

(Blue Steel)

United States
Pleasant Grove
Utah

I am running vista on my machine, and messing around with the versions of .net doesn't seem to be helping yet.

Posted Tue Dec 29, 2009 12:14 pm
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Greg Schmidt

(gschmidt)

United States
Unspecified
Unspecified

I haven't tried it with 64 bit W7.

I wonder if it is a permissions issue.

You could try right clicking on Adaptoid.exe in the folder
C:\Program Files\Adaptoid\Adaptoid

then selecting "Run as administrator" and see if that works.

Posted Tue Dec 29, 2009 2:40 pm
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Greg Schmidt

(gschmidt)

United States
Unspecified
Unspecified

I was able to get .net 3.5 successfully installed. I now have 2.0, 3.0 and 3.5 installed. I'm not seeing any problems.

I haven't tried un-installing the earlier versions.

As another thought, if you own Zillions, you can also try that version which is at:
http://www.zillions-of-games.com/cgi-bin/zilligames/submissi...;id=1787

Posted Tue Dec 29, 2009 3:34 pm
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Ben Stanley

(Blue Steel)

United States
Pleasant Grove
Utah

gschmidt wrote:

I haven't tried it with 64 bit W7.

I wonder if it is a permissions issue.

You could try right clicking on Adaptoid.exe in the folder
C

rogram FilesAdaptoidAdaptoid

then selecting "Run as administrator" and see if that works.

I checked and my vista machine is a 64 bit OS. That must be the problem.

I got the game to work on an XP laptop, but that one is ultra-portable and the screen is too small to show the whole board.

64 bit windows machines are not able to load axiom.dll. I wonder if there is an easy fix, like an update to axiom or if the program is simply looking in the wrong folders, since Adaptoid installs to c:\program files (x86)\adaptoid

At any rate, if you know an easy solution, I'd love to hear it. It does look like an amazing implementation. You should consider putting it on the iPhone, Greg and Nestor! All the hard work is already done, right?

Posted Tue Dec 29, 2009 7:46 pm
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Greg Schmidt

(gschmidt)

United States
Unspecified
Unspecified

Unfortunately I don't have access to a 64 bit system so I'm not in a position to run any experiments. One think you could try is to copy axiom.dll to the following folders:

C:\Windows\System32
C:\Windows\SysWOW64.

and see if that makes a difference.

Another thought is to run in a vmware box, but that is a bigger deal and not the ideal solution.

Quote:

I got the game to work on an XP laptop, but that one is ultra-portable and the screen is too small to show the whole board.

I realize the graphics may be too large for some and I thought about creating a variant which uses smaller graphics. If there's enough demand for it I will consider doing that. What is your screen resolution?

Quote:

You should consider putting it on the iPhone, Greg and Nestor! All the hard work is already done, right?

Given that it's Microsoft app that uses both MFC and .NET technolgies there would be considerable work in porting it to an apple platform. Since Axiom is a general purpose game development platform, the entire system would have to be ported. If I thought there was $$$ in it, I would consider quitting my job to work on it full time.

Posted Tue Dec 29, 2009 10:44 pm
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Jesper Johansson

(geggakloss)

Sweden
Vittinge

Yay! An expensive feature that nobody will ever see. Weeee!

I have now tried the game on vista 32-bit and windows 7 32-bit and it works beautifully on both systems.

gschmidt wrote:

I haven't tried it with 64 bit W7.

I wonder if it is a permissions issue.

You could try right clicking on Adaptoid.exe in the folder
C

rogram FilesAdaptoidAdaptoid

then selecting "Run as administrator" and see if that works.

I set permissions on folder/files to full access for all users, and disabled the UAC. I have also tried to explicitly install and run the game as administrator, but to no avail.

gschmidt wrote:

Unfortunately I don't have access to a 64 bit system so I'm not in a position to run any experiments. One think you could try is to copy axiom.dll to the following folders:

C:WindowsSystem32
C:WindowsSysWOW64.

and see if that makes a difference.

I tried this also, but the problem remains. I seem to remember reading somewhere about a similar error message (a dll-file not loading properly) being due to an illegal memory reference. I of course have no idea if this is the case here, but seeing as the problem seems to occur when going to 64-bit OS'es it might be something to look into nonetheless.

Anyway, thank you very much for doing this! I've had my eye on this game for a while, and it's always nice to be able to try before buying.

Posted Wed Dec 30, 2009 12:30 am
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Greg Schmidt

(gschmidt)

United States
Unspecified
Unspecified

Quote:

I have now tried the game on vista 32-bit and windows 7 32-bit and it works beautifully on both systems.

Glad to hear it.

One of the joys of developing software with Microsoft tools is that you believe you've followed all the rules, your program works fine on all the systems you've tried, but then it fails on someone else's computer that has a configuration different from yours in some way.

In any case, I plan on working to resolve the issue once I have the ability to reproduce it, but it looks like in the mean time, we'll be limited to 32 bit OS's.

Posted Wed Dec 30, 2009 1:48 am
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Ben Stanley

(Blue Steel)

United States
Pleasant Grove
Utah

gschmidt wrote:

Quote:

I got the game to work on an XP laptop, but that one is ultra-portable and the screen is too small to show the whole board.

I realize the graphics may be too large for some and I thought about creating a variant which uses smaller graphics. If there's enough demand for it I will consider doing that. What is your screen resolution?

My netbook has a max resolution of 1024x600. Anything you could do make it playable for me would be awesome.

Posted Wed Dec 30, 2009 5:32 am
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Greg Schmidt

(gschmidt)

United States
Unspecified
Unspecified

Ben - Please email me at:

gschmidt958 "at" yahoo "dot" com

That way, if I produce a smaller version, I can have you try it out.

Posted Wed Dec 30, 2009 3:06 pm
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Greg Schmidt

(gschmidt)

United States
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Unspecified

I now have an updated version of the game available which offers a variant called "Adaptoid - Mini" with smaller graphics. I believe this will display properly even on a Netbook (although if you do use a netbook you may want to increase the "thinking time" due to the modest processing power).

If you're interested, please email me and I will send it to you. Once I'm convinced it satisfies the need, I'll post the update here.

Posted Wed Dec 30, 2009 5:33 pm
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Greg Schmidt

(gschmidt)

United States
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Unspecified

Good news! Adaptoid now runs on 64 bit OS's. I'll be posting the update here (which usually takes a few days to appear).

In the mean time, email me if you would like a copy.

Posted Thu Dec 31, 2009 4:32 am
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Ben Stanley

(Blue Steel)

United States
Pleasant Grove
Utah

That's awesome, Greg! Amazing support! I'm sending you an email.

Posted Thu Dec 31, 2009 6:29 pm
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Greg Schmidt

(gschmidt)

United States
Unspecified
Unspecified

Adaptoid v2 is now available for download.

Posted Sun Jan 3, 2010 3:17 am
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Néstor Romeral Andrés

(n_r_a)

Spain

It works in my Windows 7 Netbook, Greg!

Néstor

Posted Fri Jan 8, 2010 10:21 pm
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Greg Schmidt

(gschmidt)

United States
Unspecified
Unspecified

I don't own a Netbook so I haven't tried it (I made an educated guess at the graphic size). Glad to know it's working out for you. One other person also commented that they're able to play it on their Netbook. For me, that might be reason enough to get one.

I'm planning a v3 update which will streamline some things in the menu system and add some further animation options (e.g. captures will rise off the board). Give it some time though as I'm suffering from the "too many projects, so little time" syndrome.

-- Greg

Posted Tue Jan 12, 2010 7:11 am
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Greg Schmidt

(gschmidt)

United States
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Unspecified

Adaptoid v3 is now available for download (meant to post this message sooner!)

Posted Thu Mar 4, 2010 1:58 am
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Kenny Jenkins

(Lapppi)

Switzerland
Bern

v3 runs fine under Wine 1.1.36

Posted Thu Mar 25, 2010 2:28 pm
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FullContactGEEK

(lsamadi)

Canada
Toronto
Ontario

Just installed this and I was wondering why it requires Adobe Acrobat to read the rules rather than opening the rules via whatever the default pdf reader is.

Posted Thu Dec 23, 2010 3:22 am
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Greg Schmidt

(gschmidt)

United States
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Quote:

Just installed this and I was wondering why it requires Adobe Acrobat to read the rules rather than opening the rules via whatever the default pdf reader is.

I'm aware of that and fixed it back in April but never uploaded the new version. I just uploaded a new version (v4) with the fix, but it usually takes several days for the admins to review and for it to show up here. If you or anyone else would like v4 sooner, send me an email (via bgg) which includes your (non bgg) email and I will send you the update directly. Thanks for your comment.

Posted Thu Dec 23, 2010 6:24 pm
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Adam Barney

(Barninator)

United States
Raytown
Missouri

This is seriously great. The AI was unstoppable at first, but it's true: you can win against Black! thumbsup

I wouldn't play this against the computer all the time, but this was the perfect way to see how the game actually plays out. Watching the video on the Nestor website makes almost no sense without completely understanding the rules. Thanks for sharing this!

Posted Sun May 29, 2011 9:13 am
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Charlie Johnston

(PapaBear73)

United States
Milpitas
California

Very cool! This just shot up on my want list!

Posted Sat Apr 28, 2012 8:29 am
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