Let's see if I can beat Scrabble Deluxe on highest level then

[ParadigmShifter]

what about LAR, an ape name
or even CAR

Yeah when I saw your post I immediately saw car. Think CUR is also good, gonna play that.

It is good, not challenged. Scores 10. Just the invisible A left lol




CPU plays UR. It's left with IVT so I will get +6 CPU will get -6 when I go out now.



Or I could risk YAHA for 8. Still won't be enough to double the CPU score, shame May as well try that though to go out in style... or with a whimper.

It's bad. CPU to play again. Would have been worth 9 not 8.

CPU passes anyway lol. It could play IN at the bottom unless I have done the tiles remaining thing wrong?

[ParadigmShifter]

I did the tiles remaining thing wrong. It only had V left on its rack.

I played AN just to finish off.

Final scores:



I played AN just to taunt it with its V it could have doubled playing VAN there

Well that's a big win and nearly 500 points, that's very good considering I changed and got one denied when CPU still had places to play.

I scored really well on most of the triple word scores that was why my score was so big. CPU set me up or didn't block though, it played poorly that game.

[sn3j]

gg

[ParadigmShifter]

gg

Cheers.

Now you see why it is so bad to play a vowel next to a double letter score (especially the one in the same lane as the triple word score), textbook example of how not to play well there from the CPU

I did it once with my bingo, opened up triple letter score twice for X, but I got away with it. I would have also had a massive score if CPU didn't block there immediately as well, since I then picked up the X.

I also did it with atones but most of the danger letters had gone by then really. And the triple had already been used so it was just a double letter score. I ended up bagging both of those anyway with K and P which scored big too.

[sn3j]

It was surprising to see the algorithm open up the board after all that clogging.
Nice score and follow up to the previous wins, despite the bad find where you had no vowels.
And perhaps not trying BEDS/DEX...
Btw AGIO is valid.

[ParadigmShifter]

Yup BEDS/DEX would have been very good. I will remember DEX now I think. I think EDS is fine too (editors), yup, checked, it is, so could have kept B for a hook there (but probably CPU would have played off EDS).

AGIO good to know too, Speccy Deluxe Scrabble likes playing GIO a lot.

I'm a bit scrabbsed out though now don't think I'll play another game for a while lol. I'll offer tips if anyone else wants to take over for a bit of course

EDIT: Close games also more fun to play really, those last 2 games were just easy romping to victory, which gets a bit dull at the end.

[sn3j]

It was entertaining. Should make a good read for Scrabble enthusiasts.

[ParadigmShifter]

I'll do a more detailed analysis tomorrow I think see if I missed any bingos etc.

I'm surprised to have won 4-0 anyway must be because I took my time over moves.

It would probably do much better if I turned on the time control stuff, wouldn't be able to post per move then, only after match reports.

[sn3j]

It would be interesting.
Maybe there's a way to wrap up the screens and post it with a bit of automation, if you didn't do it already.

[ParadigmShifter]

Just watched it in German. Translation is right, Luftkissenfahrzeug voller Aale.
I was mistaking a news report about military hovercrafts that was aired back in the days in Germany probably for a Monty Python episode. They were driving that thing through all sorts of terrains, marsh, small rivers etc.

You must have some crazy news reports in Germany if you mistake them for Monty Python sketches lol

I'm sure this would have made it on to the radio during WW2 if it was true though



Also the German translation of the joke is a good hidden extra funny bit Although maybe they changed the joke I think the sketch was in "And Now For Something Completely Different" so may have been a different joke in that to the original series. EDIT: ahh it's the German attempt at a joke I was thinking of lol

[ParadigmShifter]

CPU could have played VIN where I played AN at the end way before the end... so I guess it does not know VIN then (relating to wine I think - not vehicle identification number that's an acronym only I think).

That would have made it score a few more points anyway.

I wish there was a way to hack this and the Psion one to improve it's word list. They should know ALL the 2 letter words really. Could probably remove all the level restricted gimping it does to itself to make the data smaller as well? So you just have a noob friendly version with level based nerfs on and a version that gets rid of any code that is involved with that and adds more and better words for experienced players who like a challenge.

They should both definitely be taught about QI which as I have said is the most played word in Scrabble (for obvious reasons). Both versions probably need an improved list of words involving a V since they both seem to struggle to play that especially if they get it near the end.(Psion one really struggles with a late Q or Z too - often ending with QZV on the rack). I don't think I've ever seen either of them change letters also, which is a good strategy sometimes (didn't work out that well for me that game, but it made statistical sense I think).

Psion one seems to plan ahead a bit and make moves to set up good moves for itself later (or else when I played it things I noticed to do with that were a fluke), Scrabble Deluxe does not seem to do that - I suspect it just finds the best scoring play it can make (maybe with a bit of rack leave logic so as not to leave a really bad rack) and plays it without thinking about positioning.

I'm not going to investigate how they store the words myself though

In SJOE I didn't compress words at all, I just whipped the top letter off and had a table of 26 pointers (A_words, B_words, etc.) to where the 3 byte remainders of the words lived. So when I was searching to see if a word was valid I would set the first letter as the root letter and do a binary search on the (already sorted) list of the remaining 3 letters. There was an "is it a CUSS word" bit on the first or last letter of each 3 letter word endings to handle that.

I am planning to do an update of SJOE eventually with better (faster) graphics drawing routines and stuff, may have to compress the 3 letter word endings into 15 bits which still leaves 1 bit for the cuss flag, would make the binary search slower for each word it had to lookup though - binary search is a very fast algorithm however. When the board is nearly full it has to lookup a lot of words - but player is not in control at that point so performance isn't so important then. Better graphics drawing routines waste a lot of memory and SJOE doesn't have that much spare memory at the moment. But packing 3 letters per word into 15 bits reduces the table size by 1/3 (so from 16K to about 10.5K I reckon) and the search routine wouldn't be that slow I think (search routine would obviously be a bit bigger codewise too).

For a Scrabble game you'd want to do stuff like flag with a single bit which words take an S and such... and there are better structures available than just a flat list as well (need to store pointers or offsets and such then though). At least it's not a fast game like SJOE though which couldn't spend very long every time you played a word checking if it was ok, so compression could be more compact in a Scrabble game.

[Cosmium]

It was entertaining. Should make a good read for Scrabble enthusiasts.

It certainly was.

I'm not much of a Scrabble player but I unexpectedly found the ongoing play by play, the thinking behind the moves and all the tips quite riveting

[ParadigmShifter]

It would be interesting. {re: playing a time control game}
Maybe there's a way to wrap up the screens and post it with a bit of automation, if you didn't do it already.

Nah no automation or anything, I use the snipping tool in Windows to grab part of the screen from the emulator (I'm using Spin), then save it, then upload it to postimage, and post the link here, so quite tedious and time consuming, no way I'd be able to do that in a time control game.

Spin also pauses if I tab away so would give me more think time. You can set Spin to not pause emulation when you tab away though, then I wouldn't have enough time to do all the screen grabbing, uploading and posting.

It's a shame there's no easy way to do a play by play walkthrough of backgammon either and there are a lot more moves/decisions to be made in that game (also have to draw arrows all over the board to show move possibilities, so MS Paint is needed for that too), I did have fun playing against Psion backgammon on the highest level though, obviously with backgammon since luck of the dice plays a part you have to play an extended match (either up to 7 or 11 I usually play - games up to 7 can be over in one game easily though with the doubling cube). I do love backgammon but I think it's less understandable for most people because not everyone knows how to play (you should learn though - it's an excellent game and there is A LOT more skill involved than people expect - there is still a good amount of luck though so best player does not always win, they will surely win in the long run though because it should all average out). Psion is the only decent backgammon game on the speccy (I played them all - many didn't know the proper rules lol). Only thing I don't like about Psion backgammon is it automatically autodoubles the stakes if the first roll is a double (then you both roll again - highest number goes first and takes the roll of both dice - so it's impossible to start with a double - that's the rule most backgammon games get completely wrong!). Psion you should be able to turn off the autodoubling "feature" though (when I am playing I ignore the reported score and use the proper tournament score). If you keep rolling doubles first roll I think it keeps doubling as well! I don't think I've ever seen Psion backgammon refuse a double (in normal play) though, i.e. I've never seen it concede a game it usually just accepts the double, which is not what it should be doing.

What's great about backgammon though is how quickly who is winning can change, so games can be very exciting.

Unless there's any suggestions for other traditional games I should play the speccy against. Not gonna play chess I'm sure there are people here who are loads better at chess than I am, and the chess programs on the speccy don't play very well either I think (will probably batter me though I make loads of silly errors).

Monopoly is a crap game not gonna play that I played the Automata version a few times back in the day, that plays really bad too IIRC, and it's easy to exploit.


EDIT: Meh I think I've talked myself into at least having a go at a backgammon game now... will be tonight's game, see how it goes. Moves don't take very long in backgammon so probably 10 minutes per move tops.

[ParadigmShifter]

LOL just watched this video of a constructed game for a challenge. He moans about it using SOWPODS though silly Americans lol.

Challenge was to construct a game in which every play is a bingo and the game ends in a tie.

This one has 2 15 letter bingos as well. I spotted one of the 15 letter words before it was played