Connect Four Game Coding Puzzle Algorithm in Java. Puzzle Description: Connect Four (also known as Plot Four, Find Four.Learning Connect Four - Code. Project. A Connect Four Game that learns from experience. Introduction. First of all, it should be noted right from the start that the fact that this is a connect four game is pretty much incidental to the project. There were two distinct reasons behind the creation of this project, the first being that I wanted a better board control than the one that I had been using in previous applications, and I needed a framework to develop that within, without other projects becoming sidetracked by the process of developing the board. Also, I needed to be able to develop the board control so that I could use it in different applications, and so I wanted to try and avoid the dangers of connecting it too strongly to any particular project. My current personal feeling on this is that the board control still needs another project to get it where I want it to be, but it does the job required of it here. The second reason for the project is to do with the reading I have been doing about Artificial Intelligence and the idea of learning. The argument I read somewhere goes something along the lines that if we ever want to develop computer software that is intelligent then the program must have access to the full knowledge of the human race in order to be able to work anything out. This strikes me as wrong on so many levels, it's kind of hard to know where to start. Connect 4 Java Code: Connect Four Java Code: Connect 4 Java Interface: Connect 4 Java. This recipe shows how to insert java code into a jython program. The java code is automatically compiled and the resulting class is. Brian's Project Gallery A Collection of Software. Software Projects; Photography; Music; Guestbook; Connect Four. Screenshot of Connect Four Java applet. AboutDialog.java; Application.java.
Connect four, how a computer could emulate these strategies, and. So we would need at least that many positions stored to do a brute force search of the game. Connect Four (also known as Captain's Mistress. The code for solving Connect Four with these methods is also the basis for the. Game play is similar to standard Connect 4 where players try to get 4 in a row of their own. Firstly, though there is no one on the planet that either has access to the full knowledge of the human race, or would be capable of remembering more than a fraction of it, even if they did somehow manage to pump it into their brains without having a total nervous breakdown. Then there is the point of heuristics and making decisions with incomplete information, let alone taking into account personal and political bias. But this is distracting from this particular project, so let's get back to it. The question that arises from the idea of a computer having complete access to sum of human knowledge is one thing, but just say for one second that you have written a computer program that is the most intelligent piece of software on the planet. The only problem is that it knows absolutely nothing. How do you get the sum of all human knowledge into the computer in the first place? Forget the sum of all human knowledge for a second, how do you get any information into the program? The most obvious answer to this is with a database of some sort, and the only problem with databases is that they are initially empty. Databases are also used for specific purposes, containing data that is pertinent to the task or business at hand. It would be quite a daunting task to even conceive of a general database that could be used for all things. Finally, though we get to the point where even if we had such a database, we would still need to put the information into it, which brings me to the main thread of thinking that led to this project. Given that we have the imaginary intelligent piece of software and the imaginary all knowing database schema to feed it information, who is going to either write the program/s to fill the database, or sit there typing in the information. I can assure you, I wouldn't. I find database programming tedious at the best of times, the last thing I would be interested in doing would be entering information into a database for the rest of my life because even though I am personally far from knowing the sum of all human knowledge, it would probably take the rest of my life just to type in the small amount of knowledge I do have into a database in a form where a program could meaningfully extract the information. This brings me to the obvious conclusion that if a piece of software is going to learn the sum of all human knowledge, then it is just going to have to do it on its own. A child can learn on its own, so why not a piece of software? Rather than hand the software a database of information to use, surely it makes more sense to develop a way of allowing the computer to learn for itself, than to just chuck information at it and hope that it knows how to deal with it. Which rather conveniently brings us to patterns. Memory Pattern Theory. Everything has patterns. The room you are sitting in at the moment follows exactly the same patterns as all the other rooms you have ever been in your life. That is, it has an entry way, walls, usually four or more, a floor, and a roof of some description. There are usually windows of some sort but these aren't necessary. We can get more involved when we start talking about types of rooms but they follow the same basic pattern with added extras such as shelves, and books for a library, or a stove for a kitchen, or a Bath or shower or both for the bathroom. The question then is how do we apply the idea of patterns to a form that the software can use in such a way that it can learn about its environment, which brings us back to the Connect Four program in that the formations of the pieces represent the patterns of the game. If you think about it on a very basic level, the game of Connect Four is simply a collection of color patterns that the players respond to in order to make their moves. Certain patterns mean certain things within the game, and the players make their decisions based on these patterns, especially if they have seen those patterns before and they have caused the game to be either won or lost. A game of Connect Four takes place on at least three levels. There is the level of memory. The 'have I seen this pattern before' level that the player knows could be a threat or not. There is the level of threat in which the player recognizes a pattern of three pieces of the same color that could result in either the player or their opponent winning the game, and there is the safe level in which the current move will neither win nor lose the game. Learning Connect Four. The Connect Four game uses four distinct types of patterns to determine a move. These are Aggressive, Defensive, Warning, and Tactical. Aggressive: - An Aggressive Pattern is where the software either knows or thinks that it can make a move that will win the game. Every time that the software makes a move, it takes a snapshot of the board. At this point, it doesn't matter what color the pieces are or which player they belong to. Once the pieces within the board have been determined then the computer starts searching through the pieces looking for patterns, where a pattern is defined as two or more pieces of the same color. Naturally, the color of the pieces determines what type of pattern the group of pieces is eventually defined as, so a group of either two or three pieces of computers color will be defined as being an aggressive pattern that can be used by the software to win the game. Although, at this stage, the code is simply concerned with determining valid patterns of whatever color. An example of the code finding a pattern is: pattern. Square. Info = connect. Four. Game. Get. Square. Info(. Get. Identifier. Above( square. Identifier ) ). Square. Info != null ). If there is, it then checks the square above that to see if the square above is a valid square and if it also contains a piece. If the square above the original piece is valid then this is a two piece pattern, and as long as the colors match, then the piece is stored, but the pattern is not added to the collection unless the square above it is not equal to null. If the square above that is valid then this is a three piece pattern, and the remaining piece is added as long as the colors are the same and the square above is valid and unoccupied. This is done because if the pattern contains three pieces then the next piece to be added to that pattern is going to be a winning move for someone, and if there is no where to move to, then it is simply not relevant as a pattern. We are now in the position where we have a snapshot of the board to work on with all the patterns that the board contains being held within the pattern. Collection object which is just a collection of Connect Four Patterns. The next step is to determine what we are going to do with the patterns. The following code is a snippet from the code that finds the defensive patterns. Collection. Count; i++ ). That is, if the code has encountered that specific pattern in previous games. This is determined by the code saving all the patterns collected from the last snapshot of the board at the end of each game. If the pattern is a pattern that has been seen before, and has been part of a losing game, then the weighting for the pattern is given a memory defensive weighting. If, however, the pattern has been seen before but has not been part of a losing game, then the pattern is still added to the defensive patterns list, as long as the color criteria matches, but it does not get given any special weighting. The bit that generates a lot of code is when the pattern has not been seen before, and we have to work it out the hard way. This is done by getting the squares along the axis that we want to check, and then testing to see if the squares along the axis in the case of the defensive pattern contain the player's pieces in such a formation that could lead them to win the game. This procedure is repeated for all the pattern types whenever the computer makes a move in order for the computer to build a complete picture of the patterns within the current snapshot. Once the patterns within the snapshot have been processed then the computer reaches this code: if( aggressive. Patterns. Count == 0 & & defensive. Patterns. Count == 0. Patterns. Count == 0 & & tactical. Patterns. Count == 0 ). Note though that as there needs to be at least two adjoining squares of the same color to form a pattern, this will not just be called for the first move. Once we have the separate pattern collections, then we get to the process patterns function which is used to deal with all four of the pattern collections.
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