Scrabble


Winterkid

Active Member
Joined
Nov 15, 2004
Messages
942
Age
51
Location
Surrey BC CANADA
Website
Visit site
Was playing around with MS Paint as I often do when I'm feeling semi-creative, and was just wrapping the alphabet in copies of boxes and I whimsically thought they looked an awful lot like small Scrabble tiles. I know I can duplicate a Scrabble board almost perfectly, and at a very tiny size, while still remaining fairly visible. I know nothing about coding, I know nothing about AI routines or even how to start. I'm an idea and graphics kinda guy.

Was wondering how possible this project would be if I provided all the tiles, boards, rules, etc. for a coder to work their magic on.

Just an idea. Also I need to know which format is easiest to use to make a game on the GP32. Seems to be GIF, but I wanna make sure.
 
A two-player Scrabble game would not require any AI, and it would merely require a large dictionary of "real words" to check from, and iteration in a line.

TBH it seems one of the simpler projects suggested on this board (probably because all the other ones are like "Make a PS2 emulator" or "Port an entire RPG series without source or tools").
 
Aren't there dictionary files in most spell checkers that could handle this? You could even get rid of the words that are more than 14 letters long.

How hard would it be to get a rudimentary AI subroutine for a single player mode?
 
Well, here's how you'd do the best possible AI:
1. Start at a tile on the board
2. Try to build a word with that tile and the letters in inventory; check the dictionary to see if it's actually a word.
3. Determine all of the words you can from your supplies, and then store the largest score in that tile. {Might be hard: You can go multiple ways out from a single tile, and there are things like "Triple Word Scores", etc. But it wouldn't be terribly hard with a well-thought iterator}. Perhaps you could also deposit a C structure in memory containing the move, so you can replay it when you get to step 5.
4. Move onto the next tile, and do steps 2-3 for it until you have no more tiles with letters on them.
5. Run through the scores you wrote down and go with the best one.

You can quite obviously skimp on a lot of that; i.e. just write the first word that comes to mind, don't do the "big check".
 
I don't know any programming, I'll have to find a coder to do all that, but since I now know it's feasible, I'll get to work on the rest of the graphics.
 
you should write a flowchart for your ideas... it helps while programming, and is kind of 'a step towards' if you know what I mean...

edit: if only Fenix had better documentation...
 
Yeah :) really great idea :) I would love to see more of such games (I mean play with words etc...) on GP32 :)
or some Monoply or Risk....
any ideas of recommandations waiting for Scrabble? ;p
 
Monopoly is a great idea. Would mostly be a question of math, might actually be smaller than Scrabble, since you don't need the dictionary files.

All the tiles are finished... Board is half done already.
 
And of course Go ;)

Not that anyone's actually going to do a Go proggy/sgf reader, but you can't bame me for reminding people :)
 
Tobriand posted on Dec 1 2004 at 07:38 AM said:
And of course Go ;)

Not that anyone's actually going to do a Go proggy/sgf reader, but you can't bame me for reminding people :)

Go rules are totaly unknown for me unfortunatly :(


Yep a Monopoly would be damn great on GP :)
with a great IA, a multiplayer mode (turn based or real time) & some different sets of board it can have a really long replay value :)

So Winterkid you're working actually on the Gfx of a Scrabble game or Monopoly? or both? ;p
 
Last edited by a moderator:
All the graphics are finished. Tiles and the board, the rules are about half done, according to official scrabble rules, and I'm playing around with colors and a Title screen, but otherwise all done.

All I need next is the programmer. *Nod*

EDIT: Just Scrabble. If al goes Well, maybe Monopoly next.
 
chris posted on Dec 4 2004 at 09:11 PM said:
I almost started a GP scrabble but then found the GBC version which is pretty good.
cool is that the GB version, cos there is a Monopoly on NES but it's the American one :(
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Tidus posted on Dec 2 2004 at 11:59 AM said:
Tobriand posted on Dec 1 2004 at 07:38 AM said:
And of course Go ;)

Not that anyone's actually going to do a Go proggy/sgf reader, but you can't bame me for reminding people :)

Go rules are totaly unknown for me unfortunatly :(


Yep a Monopoly would be damn great on GP :)
with a great IA, a multiplayer mode (turn based or real time) & some different sets of board it can have a really long replay value :)

So Winterkid you're working actually on the Gfx of a Scrabble game or Monopoly? or both? ;p

Go rules are actually remarkably simple, though if you try and write a program to play against you, very very hard. However, I imagine a port of GNUgo's engine could be achieved using some of the previous (less strong, but equally, less CPU-intensive) versions. Basically, players take it in turns to place stones on a very big board. The object is twofold. To surround a large area of the board whilst preventing your oponent from doing the same, and to get your oponent's stones into such a position that you can capture them if you wish (actually capturing them can be strategically disadvantageous - but rendering them inert is definitely a goal). Captures are achieved by surrounding a group of stones on all non-diagonal sides.

Players can play anywhere except points where they would instantly be captured, and points that would place the board into a position it had already been in (prevents eternal battles - so-called "ko"s).

The game is said to be over when both players think they can't do anything more to get more territory for themselves or reduce their oponent's. Once over, each player's score is the number of captures, plus the number of "dead" enemy stones in their territory (stones that could be taken regardless of how the oponent played), plus the area of territory they've secured.

That's basically it.

Unfortunately, since a board is 19x19 points large, it is VERY hard for a computer to see all the combinations.

More useful might be an SGF viewer, which lets you replay games in the SGF format or some such. PocketGO springs to mind (such a program for a PocketPC running WinCE) as a potential candidate, but it is designed for WinCE...

However, Go, whilst it has a following on these boards, is not followed by maybe 99% of people here. Maybe 10 of us play? I dunno... there's a thread called "Go" in this forum a while back which has some more info, links to things to look at in terms of a GP32 proggy, etc. But I doubt anything'll ever get done on it.

However, enough thread hijacking for now. Scrabble - what a coold game :) Good luck in making it work, Winterkid :)
 
Last edited by a moderator:
kknd_cf posted on Dec 5 2004 at 10:32 AM said:
chris posted on Dec 4 2004 at 09:11 PM said:
I almost started a GP scrabble but then found the GBC version which is pretty good.
cool is that the GB version, cos there is a Monopoly on NES but it's the American one :(
No, its Yank. But it's still really good and one of my favourites on the GP32. There's an inferior C64 version - I can't remember what flavour of English that was in.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Back
Top