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Nintendo gets Monolith Soft from Bandai-Namco

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trinest said:
Disaster is going to be awesome once it comes out of their studios now Nintendo owns em.
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Translation: Since Nintendo bought Monolith, you can bet that they'll up the ante on this game and it will be awesome when released.

I think.
 
I agree if we're talking about XII's gameplay. More AI would be a good thing, but there still has to be a balance between difficulty. If you make a creature to hard, you'll stress out the player. Make it to easy, and you piss the player off. You have to find a medium, really.
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Better AI doesn't necessarily mean "harder to beat" (any more than better graphics necessarily mean "harder to find stuff"). It just means "more intricate behavior".
 
Bizarro Sun Yat-sen said:
Better AI doesn't necessarily mean "harder to beat" (any more than better graphics necessarily mean "harder to find stuff"). It just means "more intricate behavior".
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I don't think behavier has much to do with AI. It's usually triggered.

Hell, even in most modern PC games the AI isn't all that amazing. It really just depends on how good your team is.

When a computer can play a game of Go against a professional and win, then I'll be REALLY impressed. :)
 
duckroll said:
Didn't Deep Blue beat the international chess champion? :P
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Read the post below yours AND!...

:P

It is said that that no game of Go is ever the same. That there are more possible games of go than there are atoms in the known universe.

I don't know how true that is! :) BUT, Go is an entirely different game than Chess. It's hard to explain... It's truely remarkable. As someone who has dabbled in it, I can say that the game teaches you, you aren't taught. You can be, of course! But, the more you play it, the better you understand it. And the understanding is infinite.

I know that doesn't seem to make sense. But it does to me. :/
 
Eteric Rice said:
Read the post below yours AND!...

:P

It is said that that no game of Go is ever the same. That there are more possible games of go than there are atoms in the known universe.

I don't know how true that is! :) BUT, Go is an entirely different game than Chess. It's hard to explain... It's truely remarkable. As someone who has dabbled in it, I can say that the game teaches you, you aren't taught. You can be, of course! But, the more you play it, the better you understand it. And the understanding is infinite.

I know that doesn't seem to make sense. But it does to me. :/
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the number of possible games of Go FAR exceeds that of the number of atoms in the universe.

on a 19x19 board, there are approximately ~0.011957528698 * 3^361 ~ 2.081681994 * 10^170 legal positions in Go (http://homepages.cwi.nl/~tromp/go/legal.html).

With 361 possible moves, you have 1.7 * 10^766 possible games, and, allowing captures and unlimited stones, you have 2.1 x 10^2807 possibilities.


Let's put it this way...

This is a quote from http://senseis.xmp.net/?PossibleNumberOfGoGames

"The harder question is trying to figure out how many possible games there could be that actually make sense as games which might happen between two rational players ...

Let's lowball and say the average game is 150 moves, and that on average a player is only seriously considering about ten possible choices per move, so 10^150, and dividing by eight for symmetry still gives 1.25* 10^149. With only looking at merely five choices per move, that still gives a result of 8.75 * 10^103, or 23 orders of magnitude greater than the atoms in the universe! I wouldn't count on repeating a game anytime soon..."


From personal experience, I can tell you that 150 moves is ridiculously short for a Go game on a 19x19 board, and to say that a player is only going to consider, on average, about 5, or even 10 plays per move, is a very, very, very large simplification and reduction of the complexity of Go. Even in this very simple, reduced case, the number of possible go games is more than a googol.
 
GaimeGuy said:
the number of possible games of Go FAR exceeds that of the number of atoms in the universe.

on a 19x19 board, there are approximately ~0.011957528698 * 3^361 ~ 2.081681994 * 10^170 legal positions in Go (http://homepages.cwi.nl/~tromp/go/legal.html).

With 361 possible moves, you have 1.7 * 10^766 possible games, and, allowing captures and unlimited stones, you have 2.1 x 10^2807 possibilities.


Let's put it this way...

This is a quote from http://senseis.xmp.net/?PossibleNumberOfGoGames

"The harder question is trying to figure out how many possible games there could be that actually make sense as games which might happen between two rational players ...

Let's lowball and say the average game is 150 moves, and that on average a player is only seriously considering about ten possible choices per move, so 10^150, and dividing by eight for symmetry still gives 1.25* 10^149. With only looking at merely five choices per move, that still gives a result of 8.75 * 10^103, or 23 orders of magnitude greater than the atoms in the universe! I wouldn't count on repeating a game anytime soon..."


From personal experience, I can tell you that 150 moves is ridiculously short for a Go game on a 19x19 board, and to say that a player is only going to consider, on average, about 5, or even 10 plays per move, is a very, very, very large simplification and reduction of the complexity of Go. Even in this very simple, reduced case, the number of possible go games is more than a googol.
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Wow, thanks for writing all of that out. :) I love Go, but unfortunately it's not played much here in the west. I've been playing a bit of Chess lately, but I still believe Go is the most amazing board game ever concieved.
 
One idea I had for a Wii/ DS title was a game for $29.99 that includes Go, Chess, Checkers, and Backgammon. It would also include features to teach players the more advanced aspects of each game, and the history.

Sort of like a game you can play Chess/ Go/ Backgammon, and learn simple AND advanced strategies for each game.

Oh, and there would be online, of course. :)

Go_board.jpg
 
Love Go and Wii... but playing "Go Wii" sounds too much like a potty training technique.

I don't believe there is a really good computerized go competitor out there - for reasons listed above. The game is beautifully simple yet amazingly complex at the same time.
 
Eteric Rice said:
One idea I had for a Wii/ DS title was a game for $29.99 that includes Go, Chess, Checkers, and Backgammon. It would also include features to teach players the more advanced aspects of each game, and the history.

Sort of like a game you can play Chess/ Go/ Backgammon, and learn simple AND advanced strategies for each game.

Oh, and there would be online, of course. :)
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Strategy Training CONFIRMED!
 
Hopefully this will allow Miyamoto to give them a dose of the ol' Delay Stick until they learn how to make a decent game.
 
Eteric Rice said:
One idea I had for a Wii/ DS title was a game for $29.99 that includes Go, Chess, Checkers, and Backgammon. It would also include features to teach players the more advanced aspects of each game, and the history.

Sort of like a game you can play Chess/ Go/ Backgammon, and learn simple AND advanced strategies for each game.

Oh, and there would be online, of course. :)

Go_board.jpg
Click to expand...

Sounds freaking awesome, if they add orchestra music like hikaru no go to increase the tension a hundred fold it would so be worth it.

hng6.jpg
 
Eteric Rice said:
I don't think behavier has much to do with AI. It's usually triggered.

Hell, even in most modern PC games the AI isn't all that amazing. It really just depends on how good your team is.

When a computer can play a game of Go against a professional and win, then I'll be REALLY impressed. :)
Click to expand...

The so-called AI in Chess and Go are mostly brute force approach by using as powerful a machine as possible to build all possible outcomes for the next X moves. The faster your computer, the more moves you can look ahead and makes it more likely the computer will win.

For modern games, let's say a RTS, it's impossible to take such an approach. The game "board" is not 8x8 or 32x32 any more. In games where you can have pixel-precise movement, the board size could be 64k X 64K. Even if you have all the PS3s in the world linked together aka folder@home, it would still take forever to build it tree based on that. You will need to rely on human programmed algorithms to dictate AI movements. Unless devs start hiring AI specialists and spend a few years on developing advanced algorithms, I don't see much improvement in this area in the near future.
 
Eteric Rice said:
Translation: Since Nintendo bought Monolith, you can bet that they'll up the ante on this game and it will be awesome when released.

I think.
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Delayed until 2008 confirmed?

Someone might be brought into to up-end the tea table...
 
duckroll said:
Wow, maybe you can tell us all about them!
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Sure, just a sec., I'll be sure to use my vast knowledge of Japanese I never claimed to have to translate all the names for you guys.
 
jj984jj said:
Sure, just a sec., I'll be sure to use my vast knowledge of Japanese I never claimed to have to translate all the names for you guys.
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Thanks, I can't wait! HYPED! Nintendo is ON A ROLL!!!!!!!!!
 
linsivvi said:
The so-called AI in Chess and Go are mostly brute force approach by using as powerful a machine as possible to build all possible outcomes for the next X moves. The faster your computer, the more moves you can look ahead and makes it more likely the computer will win.
Click to expand...

It's false to say that this is a brute force approach, since what you're referring to, exhaustive searching or mapping, is almost never used. In general most Chess algorithms rely on very extensive pruning. Almost all consumer level Chess AI uses NegaMax or NegaScout, normally with a pre-programmed 'beginning of game" strategy unit.

For modern games, let's say a RTS, it's impossible to take such an approach. The game "board" is not 8x8 or 32x32 any more. In games where you can have pixel-precise movement, the board size could be 64k X 64K. Even if you have all the PS3s in the world linked together aka folder@home, it would still take forever to build it tree based on that. You will need to rely on human programmed algorithms to dictate AI movements. Unless devs start hiring AI specialists and spend a few years on developing advanced algorithms, I don't see much improvement in this area in the near future.
Click to expand...

But such an AI is not desireable. There's no reason why you'd ever want an AI in an RTS that behaved in the way that a Chess AI behaved. Video game AI has several weaknesses, none of which would be solved by "advanced algorithms"--the two biggest I can think of are:

1) Video game AI is predictable; we need to improve AI so that responses to similar inputs will be different outputs. Players quickly learn how computers react to given playing styles and learn to overcome the computers.

2) Video game AI cheats; we need to create an AI that does not require rubberbanding, resource-free building, map prescience, or any other cheat tactics. In the long term, AI should learn to play the game without being aware of unit stats or anything else that a human is not capable of being aware of while using the UI.

The ideal game AI would be one that sees the entire game as a black box, like the player does, and receives only output information. The AI would have to visually process the screen, rather than being told what's on it. Only then will it be possible to accurately emulate the strengths and failings that humans have. We don't want better AI; we want more realistic AI.

There's a problem though. Current AI routines require very little processing power. Pathfinding? A breeze. Build orders? No problem. This is because current AI consists of very very very very cheap heuristics. Think about it this way: Developers aren't willing to sacrifice graphics for a playable framerate. They will certainly not be willing to sacrifice the same amount of graphics processing power for very small improvements in AI quality.

So, yeah, the problem is not that dev's aren't able to do it. It's that dev's aren't willing to do it.
 
Eteric Rice said:
One idea I had for a Wii/ DS title was a game for $29.99 that includes Go, Chess, Checkers, and Backgammon. It would also include features to teach players the more advanced aspects of each game, and the history.

Sort of like a game you can play Chess/ Go/ Backgammon, and learn simple AND advanced strategies for each game.

Oh, and there would be online, of course. :)

Go_board.jpg
Click to expand...


Oh man. What i would give for a Go videogame.
 
Anyone care to look through the staff changes and see if there are any significant changes?

d[-_-]b said:
But aren't they on a bun. Zing!
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And there was me thinking you would go with the 'not a a duckroll, though!' gag... :/
 
jesusraz said:
Anyone care to look through the staff changes and see if there are any significant changes?



And there was me thinking you would go with the 'not a a duckroll, though!' gag... :/
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I can try and translate the kanji via rikai but I don't know where this staff listings page is in the first place...
 
All I can see is that they removed a couple of Namco guys from the board of directors and put in a couple of Nintendo guys (there's still one Namco guy there, and Namco still owns 20% of stock). Sugiura, Takahashi, Honne and Nomura are all still there.
 
Bizarro Sun Yat-sen said:
All I can see is that they removed a couple of Namco guys from the board of directors and put in a couple of Nintendo guys (there's still one Namco guy there, and Namco still owns 20% of stock). Sugiura, Takahashi, Honne and Nomura are all still there.
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I don't believe you. Are you saying jj984jj misled us? That's impossible. I refuse to believe it. You're just a troll.
 
Ranger X said:
Oh man. What i would give for a Go videogame.
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There was a version of Go in the game "Putt-Putt and Fatty Bear's Activity Pack" that was released in 1993.

....

I was 7 when the game came out! Don't judge me!
 
Eteric Rice said:
Translation: Since Nintendo bought Monolith, you can bet that they'll up the ante on this game and it will be awesome when released.

I think.
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*cough*Silicon Knights, Rare*cough*

The were better when they werent owned by Nintendo. And i am a FAN of those two companies.
 
Stumpokapow said:
It's false to say that this is a brute force approach, since what you're referring to, exhaustive searching or mapping, is almost never used. In general most Chess algorithms rely on very extensive pruning. Almost all consumer level Chess AI uses NegaMax or NegaScout, normally with a pre-programmed 'beginning of game" strategy unit.



But such an AI is not desireable. There's no reason why you'd ever want an AI in an RTS that behaved in the way that a Chess AI behaved. Video game AI has several weaknesses, none of which would be solved by "advanced algorithms"--the two biggest I can think of are:

1) Video game AI is predictable; we need to improve AI so that responses to similar inputs will be different outputs. Players quickly learn how computers react to given playing styles and learn to overcome the computers.

2) Video game AI cheats; we need to create an AI that does not require rubberbanding, resource-free building, map prescience, or any other cheat tactics. In the long term, AI should learn to play the game without being aware of unit stats or anything else that a human is not capable of being aware of while using the UI.

The ideal game AI would be one that sees the entire game as a black box, like the player does, and receives only output information. The AI would have to visually process the screen, rather than being told what's on it. Only then will it be possible to accurately emulate the strengths and failings that humans have. We don't want better AI; we want more realistic AI.

There's a problem though. Current AI routines require very little processing power. Pathfinding? A breeze. Build orders? No problem. This is because current AI consists of very very very very cheap heuristics. Think about it this way: Developers aren't willing to sacrifice graphics for a playable framerate. They will certainly not be willing to sacrifice the same amount of graphics processing power for very small improvements in AI quality.

So, yeah, the problem is not that dev's aren't able to do it. It's that dev's aren't willing to do it.
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Nice post, but it would be even nicer if there was a seperate thread where we could discuss these things. In the end though, AI is easy for simple problems, but very hard for medium to difficult problems. Chess is easy, but if you want to implement something like you said, where the AI acts as a black box, it would require some pretty advanced algorithms. Could be way too advanced for most game programmers.
 
C.T. said:
Clubhouse Games for DS, it includes 42 board games including Go and has wifi.
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Preeeetty sure Go isn't in there. I remember it coming up frequently in topics, and from my own experience don't remember playing any Go.
 
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