Background
Gamesman is a software library for solving and playing two-person,
complete-information (no change or hidden information) board games
started by Dan Garcia in the summer of 1988 (when he was an undergraduate
just like you!). This software works with game modules which describe the
rules and winning / losing conditions of a particular game. The Gamesman
system then solves the game (i.e., plays every game against itself and
makes a table of the value at each position), and provides an interactive
platform to play and analyze it. With this table at hand, Gamesman plays
perfectly, and by doing so provides the ideal opponent for a player
wishing to improve their skill.
The system is quite nice in that there is relatively little work to
implement a game. You just fill in a few required functions
and then sit back while Gamesman does all the work solving it and
controlling the play. By now, you've already seen Gamesman in action.
The following slides briefly introduce the game theories that Gamesman
is based on.
Adobe Portable Document Format (227kb)
Microsoft Powerpoint 97 (351kb)
Or, conveniently view the slides as simply images
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