I'll take this opportunity to advertise the SDLMame interface at http://organicrobot.com/mame/ in case anyone wants to try to replicate this with Ms Pacman or any other MAME game they've got.
You have to bring your own visual parsing tools though (I recommend starting with OpenCV), since all you get is a bitmap, not the ghosts position, number of dots, state of ghosts, etc that these researchers had access to by using a different implementation of Ms Pacman.
(btw, having seen a few very smart people try getting a computer to play Pacman, the results obtained are very impressive. As per usual, 4/5ths of the objections/questions/disses posted here could be answered by reading the paper linked to at the bottom of the article. JAIR is open and free, you do not need to pay or subscribe to read it)
hmm, so it is. It's still pointed everywhere as the main source of crafty, so i don't know if this is a permanent void. You can email Robert Hyatt, or you can just download it from one of the distributions (gentoo, at least, carries it).
First major player!? Crafty's been available for linux for over a decade. It has always been a major player and still wins the occassional tournament (including CCT6). It's free and source is available to boot. get from ftp://ftp.cis.uab.edu/pub/hyatt
Rebel's been available for linux for a couple of years
Fruit came second in the latest WCCC (above shredder). It was GPL (decided to go commercial after that result), but the GPL version from a couple of weeks before the tournament can be gotten from http://wbec-ridderkerk.nl/ (download section)
And as mentioned in a prior comment, version 1.1 of Zappa (version 2 is current WCCC champion) is available free for linux.
Ruffian is another very strong (top 10) engine, also available for linux.
Hardware isn't as important in chess (ok, ASIC's would probably make a big difference) as in other programs. A factor of two in hardware speed difference would not even give one more ply in search depth, it will probably change it's rating by about 50-70 points but no more. Remember, chess has a very high number of branches per node (about 30), and a big factor in the strength of the program is to find smart ways to reduce that branching factor. I agree, though, that is not a good benchmark. This is just one more tournament. There are a lot of these every year (somehow, this one made it to slashdot). For a better attempt at benchmarks, go to the ssdf homepage
You are misguided about chessmaster's strength. Chessmaster 8000 regularly plays in these tournaments and does rather well. It may not beat Fritz or Shredder but it's right below them and above Crafty, etc. It's rating is high 2600's.
Slashdot Mirror
I'll take this opportunity to advertise the SDLMame interface at http://organicrobot.com/mame/ in case anyone wants to try to replicate this with Ms Pacman or any other MAME game they've got.
You have to bring your own visual parsing tools though (I recommend starting with OpenCV), since all you get is a bitmap, not the ghosts position, number of dots, state of ghosts, etc that these researchers had access to by using a different implementation of Ms Pacman.
(btw, having seen a few very smart people try getting a computer to play Pacman, the results obtained are very impressive. As per usual, 4/5ths of the objections/questions/disses posted here could be answered by reading the paper linked to at the bottom of the article. JAIR is open and free, you do not need to pay or subscribe to read it)
hmm, so it is. It's still pointed everywhere as the main source of crafty, so i don't know if this is a permanent void. You can email Robert Hyatt, or you can just download it from one of the distributions (gentoo, at least, carries it).
First major player!?
Crafty's been available for linux for over a decade. It has always been a major player and still wins the occassional tournament (including CCT6). It's free and source is available to boot.
get from ftp://ftp.cis.uab.edu/pub/hyatt
Rebel's been available for linux for a couple of years
Fruit came second in the latest WCCC (above shredder). It was GPL (decided to go commercial after that result), but the GPL version from a couple of weeks before the tournament can be gotten from http://wbec-ridderkerk.nl/ (download section)
And as mentioned in a prior comment, version 1.1 of Zappa (version 2 is current WCCC champion) is available free for linux.
Ruffian is another very strong (top 10) engine, also available for linux.
(btw, it's Shredder, not Schredder)
Hardware isn't as important in chess (ok, ASIC's would probably make a big difference) as in other programs. A factor of two in hardware speed difference would not even give one more ply in search depth, it will probably change it's rating by about 50-70 points but no more. Remember, chess has a very high number of branches per node (about 30), and a big factor in the strength of the program is to find smart ways to reduce that branching factor. I agree, though, that is not a good benchmark. This is just one more tournament. There are a lot of these every year (somehow, this one made it to slashdot). For a better attempt at benchmarks, go to the ssdf homepage
You are misguided about chessmaster's strength. Chessmaster 8000 regularly plays in these tournaments and does rather well. It may not beat Fritz or Shredder but it's right below them and above Crafty, etc. It's rating is high 2600's.