I just came across this article which digs through the actual code of the original NES version of Tetris and then creates an AI to play it.
Taking Apart The NES Version of Tetris
January 28, 2014
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AI, games, video games | Tagged: AI, Alexey Pajitnov, games, Nintendo, Tetris, video games, videogames | 
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Posted by Karl W. Reinsch
Dreaming Tetris
September 12, 2013Fascinating. Dr. Robert Stickgold found that amnesiacs will dream about Tetris (aka The Tetris Effect) even though they do not remember playing the game.
No Comments » | brain science, games, Sleep, video games | Tagged: games, Tetris, This Is Your Brain On Tetris, This Is Your Brain On Videogames, video games, videogames | Permalink
Posted by Karl W. Reinsch
Playing Tetris Forever
August 2, 2013Somehow I had previously overlooked this excellent page on methods for playing Tetris forever.
No Comments » | games, video games | Tagged: Tetris, This Is Your Brain On Tetris | Permalink
Posted by Karl W. Reinsch
Move Notation System For Tetris
December 23, 2012Chess has had standard notations for a long time. Isn’t it time that Tetris had one as well?
No Comments » | games, video games | Tagged: chess, Tetris, This Is Your Brain On Tetris | Permalink
Posted by Karl W. Reinsch
Pac-Man, How Does It Work?
December 8, 2010Speaking of game AI…two Pac-Man-related links are making the blog rounds these days – one of them is new.
The new one is Chad Birch’s “Understanding Pac-Man Ghost Behavior”. It is clear and well illustrated.
As Chad points out, he was inspired by and used Jamey Pittman’s “Pac-Man Dossier”. This is a nice resource.
It also seems that I haven’t previously blogged Don Hodges’ fix to a bug in the behavior of two of the ghosts. (The bug-fixing of classic videogames is a topic we will return to in the future.)
Of course, the ghosts need a Pac-Man to chase. I have previously linked to a Ms. Pac-Man computer player competition. Of specific interest is this paper on evolving rules to play Ms. Pac-Man (seems that I have not directly linked it before).
(Post title is of course a play on the “magnets…” meme.)
2 Comments | AI, games, rules, video games | Tagged: AI, games, magnets...how do they work?, Ms. Pac-Man, Pac-Man, rules, video games | Permalink
Posted by Karl W. Reinsch
Detecting Poker Bots
December 7, 2010The folks at the PokerStars online poker service actively police their games to make sure that bots are not being used to gain advantage.
Here’s a recent post from their Game Security staff demonstrating that they paid a visit to one player in order to witness the playing and playstyle in person.
It ends with the following wonderful quote:
We are pleased to report, however, that ‘rs03rs03’ is human.
(I also thought JWZ’s take on it was amusing. But you would need to have read Neuromancer to get it.)
1 Comment | AI, games, video games | Tagged: AI, games, poker, PokerStars, Turing Police, video games, William Gibson | Permalink
Posted by Karl W. Reinsch
Action Videogames Train Your Brain For Decision-Making
September 21, 2010Researcher Daphne Bavelier is back with more videogame research. Once again, the study used The Sims 2, Call Of Duty 2, and Unreal Tournament.
The results of this study showed that those who played the action games made quicker decisions:
“In the problem-solving exercise, the action-game players made decisions 25 percent faster than the strategy group, while answering the same number of questions correctly.”
No Comments » | brain science, Uncategorized, video games | Tagged: brain, brain science, Call of Duty 2, The Sims 2, This Is Your Brain On Videogames, Unreal Tournament 2004, videogames | Permalink
Posted by Karl W. Reinsch
Every Rubik’s Cube Position Solvable In 20 Moves Or Less Proven
September 13, 2010It is always interesting to see computing power used to completely solve a game such as Connect Four or Checkers.
Now, it has been proven that every position of a Rubik’s Cube can be solved in 20 moves or less.
“It took fifteen years after the introduction of the Cube to find the first position that provably requires twenty moves to solve; it is appropriate that fifteen years after that, we prove that twenty moves suffice for all positions.”
No Comments » | games | Tagged: checkers, Connect Four, Rubik's Cube | Permalink
Posted by Karl W. Reinsch
Games As A Killer App For AI
August 2, 2010It has been ten years to the day since John E. Laird and Michael van Lent published their paper “Human-level AI’s Killer Application: Interactive Computer Games”. In ten years, what has and hasn’t changed?
No Comments » | AI, games, rules, video games | Tagged: AI, artificial intelligence, expert systems, games, John E. Laird, Michael van Lent, rule engines, rules, videogames | Permalink
Posted by Karl W. Reinsch
The Future Of Gaming
March 17, 2010Here’s the video for an interesting speech by Jesse Schell entitled “Design Outside The Box.”
Topics of the speech include:
- the psychology of games – making them sticky
- the consumer desire for realism and authenticity as a recent trend
- technological convergence/divergence of devices, the iPhone, the iPad, and the “pocket exception”
- the possibility of game achievements improving behavior
- the fact that there are more FarmVille players on FaceBook than there are Twitter accounts
Achievements are already leaking over to non-games, some items that could have been mentioned:
Read the rest of this entry »
No Comments » | games, video games | Tagged: Amazon.com, FaceBook, FarmVille, Microsoft, Microsoft Office, Netflix, Ribbon Hero, Twitter, video games, XBox 360 | Permalink
Posted by Karl W. Reinsch
