Re: [piecepack] Re: Is PP really that ZOG friendly?

[Massimo Biasotto <massimo.biasotto@...>]

Ron Hale-Evans wrote:

> Wow, Massimo, you implemented Easy Slider?  Thanks!  Would you please
> upload it to the Files section, or at least email it to me?  I have
> Zillions, and as co-designer of Easy Slider, I would like to give your
> implementation a try.  Is it solitaire-only or does it support
> multi-player play?

It's solitaire-only. If you're really interested I will email it to you
on Thursday (it's in my PC at home and I'll be back at home wednesday night).
Mind you, it's a bit rough: I did it just as an exercise in Zillions
programming, and when I had a working implementation I didn't bother to
polish it up.

> > These are the main points that in my opinion make difficult to implement
> > PP games in ZOG (to be played against AI and without custom engines)
> >
> > 1) Of course the "hidden information" problem. In some cases there are
> > workarounds even for playing against AI.
>
>
> I am a computer programmer, and I really don't understand what the
> problem is with hidden information in games.  Computers are infinitely
> flexible; if you don't want the computer to take into account the suit
> of a coin (say), you tell it to examine the value only, and not the
> suit.  What's the big deal?  Granted, I haven't done a lot of games
> programming, but this problem seems to me to be trivial.

Computers are infinitely flexible indeed, but Zillions is not.
The nice thing in ZOG is that you don't have to implement the AI code.
You just describe the game mechanics (and graphics) and ZOG universal
engine takes care of the rest. It's able to figure out by itself how
to play. This is very cool but the reverse of the medal is that you
can't influence the AI. There is no way to hide anything to ZOG
engine: whatever you need in the game, you have to describe it in
the zrf file, thus making it available to the AI engine.
Actually, as I mentioned in my mail, there is a way: bypass the
universal engine and implement your own custom engine. In this
way you can do whatever you want, but this spoils the main advantage
of Zillions.


Ciao,
Massimo Biasotto