Re: [Bug-gnubg] Letter of Inquiry.

[Michael Petch]

On 2012-08-05 11:46, lasha lascha wrote:

> But, as you know, the Play in Eastern Europe is a bit different from
> your backgammon and I wanted to ask you about the possibilities of some
> changes in your software. I am interested in this particular change if
> it is possible in your program: the no hit and pass rule (no
> "hit-and-run" in the player's home board). Can I make that particular
> change in your program using your source code? 

My apologies for not responding to your question previously. For some
reason I missed it.

GNUBG doesn't currently support this style of play, and I don't know of
anyone who is working on such a change for GNUBG. The source code for
GNUBG is freely available to everyone. Information on retrieving the
code is here: https://savannah.gnu.org/cvs/?group=gnubg . However, even
if you modify GNUBG to support this style of play, it would require you
to train the neural net for GNUBG to give you accurate information on
the equities of that variation (or to play the variation properly)

At one time GNUGB did support some other variants (Egyptian rule for
one). I believe these variations were removed because to properly
implement them requires properly training the neural net for that type
of Backgammon variation.

So short answer yes, you can modify the code. But for GNUBG to give you
any proper analysis (or to play it properly) requires training the
neural network.

As I noticed in your
> forum, Mr. Rick Janowski was interested in creating a program with
> similar changes. Could you be so kind to tell me if he was successful or
> maybe there are some other people who managed to do it? 
> 

You would have to contact Rick. I don't know. However, there is a fellow
(Nikos Papahristou) who seems to working on some other variations of
Backgammon that GNUBG doesn't support. You might wish to contact him as
well. Some information is here:

We recently had a discussion about this on the mailing list. You may
wish to read the thread of messages here:
http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-gnubg/2011-06/msg00012.html

Nikos contact info and web page are here:
http://csse.uom.gr/~nikpapa/software.html

-- 
Michael Petch
CApp::Sysware Consulting Ltd.
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