Re: [Eliot-general] some technical and UI questions

[Olivier Teuliere]

Hello,

In this email, I'm just answering to your issues with Eliot 1.12 (AI
level and changing letters), adding the mailing-list back in Cc.
I will answer the technical parts in a separate email, with the
eliot-dev mailing-list in Cc.

On Tue, Dec 14, 2010 at 1:06 AM, Bruce vanNorman
<address@hidden> wrote:
> The instructions are attached as a TXT file. Feel free to use what you want.
> Like all instructions, they are uneven in their assumptions regarding user
> skills.

Thanks, I will add them to the website and/or the INSTALL file.

> Re: change letters - snapshot {Screenshot.png} attached. Letters entered,
> "pass" button disabled, "change" button enabled. Failure rate: 100%
> reproducible. I will try some other situations to verify. Just in case, I
> have saved the failing game, so additional info is always available - as
> needed.

In the case of your screenshot, changing letters is not allowed
because there are less than 7 letters left in the bag. This rule is
confirmed by Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrabble#Sequence_of_play

I agree that the error message is not very explicit :-)
I will improve this in the next version.

> My wife is looking for a solitaire game. The "free game" type seems the best
> candidate. This is where the AI "strength" seems to be non-operational. I
> will test your scenario and report back.

Here is how the strength algorithm works when a computer player has to play:
 - Eliot first finds all the words that can be played on the board
with the player rack
 - These words are sorted by increasing score
 - The best score is determined
 - The "wanted" score is determined from the AI strength, using a
simple percentage:
   best_score * strength / 100
   For example, with a computer strength of 25 and a best score of 60,
the wanted score is 15.
 - The AI will finally play one of the words with the lowest score at
least equal to the wanted score.

With this algorithm, you usually don't notice much difference between
computers at level 98 and level 100 for example, because the "wanted
scores" will be very close in both cases, tso the played words will be
the same.
However, if the level is set to 0, the computer should always play the
lowest possible score, even in "free game" mode, and the difference
should be quite visible.

Regards,
-- 
Olivier