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A CHAT WITH NAUGHTY DOG ABOUT NEXT-GEN!


We chatted with Stephen White, co-president and programming manager 
of Santa Monica, CA-based videogame developer Naughty Dog about creating 
games for the next-generation consoles … and he offered some suggestions 
for dealing with next-gen hurdles.


Q. Naughty Dog is known for the “Crash Bandicoot” and “Jak and Daxter” 
franchises which have sold over 35 million units combined. What have 
been the fundamental keys to the success of your titles and how do 
you plan to apply those to your next-generation game development?


A. One of the biggest factors in the making of a successful game 
is hiring very talented people who are motivated and can get the 
job done without the need for extensive management and finely detailed 
schedules.

Rebol is about the technology. Success or failure in the market is 
about the marketing. Marketing is about perception. People who make 
buy decisions are not technically in the know, so its a percption 
game. Even if the facts fly in the face of what they espouse to be 
right, they will fall back to the idea that "the bigger the better". 
You have to counter that concept and still not have the technology 
written off as a "nice trick" or "toy technology".

about this split-view thing: i once thought about showing some more 
text, what this directory is about. for help, or maybe some kind 
of "dungean-game". Now you have this split-view, could you extend 
it to show some text? maybe [ info {You are here ...} ] ?

I remember I did lot of simmilar tricks in the arcadia game engine 
editor http://www.rebol.cz/~cyphre/arcadia-editor.jpgwhere the graphics 
rendering has been done completely in DRAW(I mena the old DRAW from 
1.2View) - lot of fun :)

ICarii: Rebtower is eating 100% CPU while waiting for player's actions 
(WinXP). Is this a time-limit game feature : beat your opponent before 
your CPU melts ? ;-)

Oles: I still can't fully get this.. are you building this flash 
game in REBOL? or is there AS3 code + REBOL to for example generate 
some data for game, etc... ?

I made some flash games (in HaXe mostly).. I have no idea how to 
make a game with so many details, animations, sound, things that 
need to work together...what else to do is in REBOL using some dialect

you should try and market your engine as an alternative to the other 
flash game building tools.

Beer pressure does work.... that is how I ask contractors to do things. 
 I call them over, and as I ask them to make changes, I pull out 
the ice from the bag, pull all the beer out of the boxes, and put 
it all in the cooler.  But the time I'm done talking it is all set 
up, and by the time they are done working, the beer is ice cold!


Graham, yes, great idea.  This is a model we have used in game rooms. 
 


It would be interesting in this context to see how people help each 
other.  I suspect it "might" be a zero sum game.  There are people 
that regardless of the facts simply help the underdog.    It is why 
so many hard criminals attract women from the outside.  


I have not seen anything like this though in Qtask.  I think the 
fact that you upload your picture makes you a little more "accountable", 
and that a moderator can kick you out.  Slashdot's system works pretty 
well, it might be fun to play with that more too.

Right, that would be a drinking game : )

when you say to me graphical interface + internet i think or 3D game 
or IRC client lol

to me the problem is that MS should have created a real application 
framework... actually, only Apple with OSX seems to be really close 
to this.


there should be THREE root directories and only three dirs for each 
application.  windows has dozens, which is crazy.
1. Application SOURCE data (.exe, libs, datafile, etc)
2. Application STORAGE data (game saves, defaults
3. Application Temporary data, flushed on program quit by the OS.


within Storage, you'd have application and user-based storage and 
that's it.


The os refuses to execute any file not within application source 
dir, so you have already clamped down on a lot of security issues. 
 a list of approved .exe is stored whenever you launch an application 
for the first time.


for a bit more flexibility, several application dirs could exist, 
so that you can do stuff like compile items and run them locally 
within your dev environment, but these dirs would be explicitely 
registered within the os.


on install the Application should be required to ask permission (like 
flash) in how much space will be stored within STORAGE if it exceeds 
a max default, independently of SOURCE.


The implementation of MyXxxx folders is completely horrendous, and 
should be a simple and ubiquitous form that has one entry for each 
media type, and a browser where you want to put your stuff (which 
might not be user-specific).


IIRC this was addressed in Vista, but then they went and added aliases 
to everything, which raises errors in the explorer, cause you can't 
use them.  They alias core windows directories in other languages, 
the result being that explorer and actual disk info are different! 
 this completely fucks up many applications (like rebol).


windows has a hard time "fixing" things... they always just patch 
it... its worse since they have a hard time starting with any good 
implementation of anything to begin with.

I'm probably going to write a game basedon it

Good to know, Cyphre. And thanks guys! Preciate it. I hope, this 
'little' project will turn out well. I need a DPaint program to do 
the graphics for a phone-game, I'm involved in.

do http://home.wilddsl.net.au/anton/rebol/game/maze-generator.r

.... maybe, if rich-text is part of the game, then underlined letters 
hor hot-keys :-)

The end game is to create a series of routines that will cut a full 
install of XP from Approx 1.5 gig installed to approx 212 mb's specifically 
geared for diagnostics and repair.

ok. I follow your extraction of rules idea & this is what you had 
in your original suggestion.  Now I am getting more familiar with 
what I am looking at I can understand the benefit of that & will 
start to work that way now.

[copy .. [" ip address" to end]]  was to get the interface address 
in the interface section of the file. It is identified by
1) some line after the line containing "interface"

2) at the begining of the line always starting with one space before 
the word "ip address"

3) before any line with a non-blank first char unless it is a new 
instance of "interface" (hence my IntFlag which Steeve didn't like 
my method of use)


I found from testing that [to "ip address" copy temp to end] or [to 
" ip address" copy temp to end] found the string anywhere in the 
line, but [copy .. [" ip address" to end]] only finds the string 
if it is at the start of the line which is what I was trying to achieve. 
Have I made a mistake here & need to retest my assumptions perhaps?


I always appreciate lots of different views on issues so I am loving 
the multiple responses. 

Sunanda you have reminded me about line numbers. I will tackle them 
after the extraction of rules I think, as I want them in my output 
for data output quality & validation checking.


I have been looking at your parse-ini.r to see how you have read 
a file into a Rebol block, but I may stick with read/line for a bit 
longer while get my head round parsing each line in turn.  I get 
the impression that once I have a final block of code there will 
be someone who can turn it into 2 short lines including a built in 
Easter egg game.

I''m trying to understand this language, sometimes getting it, sometimes 
not. Anyway here's my question.

In VID, I have a layout.  I want to put random images in 3 columns 
with 5 rows.  The images are stored together in a single binary file. 
(this is a mod of the card game on Nick's tutorial site).


So I read in the images into a series,  after I set the layout. But 
how do add those to the layout?

Here's my current code:
do %cards.r

the-tableau: layout [
	size 320x480 backdrop 0.170.0
	across
	at 30x20 tc1: box 80x100 teal 
	tc2: box 80x100 teal 
	tc3: box 80x100 teal return
	at 30x130 tc4: box 80x100 teal
	tc100: box 80x100 coal
	tc5: box 80x100 teal return
	at 30x240 tc6: box 80x100 teal
	tc200: box 80x100 coal
	tc7: box 80x100 teal return
	at 30x350 tc8: box 80x100 teal
	tc9: box 80x100 teal
	tc10: box 80x100 teal
]

foreach [card label num color pos] cards [
	
	dimg: load to-binary decompress (card)
	append deck-cards dimg ;feel movestyle
	throw-away-label: label
	append deck-cards-num num
	append deck-cards-color color
	throw-away-pos: pos
]

view/new the-tableau

do-events

I've been toying with this to obtain a very parsable "dialect" -- 
my goal being to scrape live game updates from a certain sports web 
site (for personal use, natch).  It's reliant on 'parse-xml though, 
so ymmv....

do http://www.ross-gill.com/r/scrape.r
probe load-xml some-xml

Yes, I used to use wireless through a game console like adapter that 
appears like normal ethernet

on mac VLC is very usefull... it plays all the stuff Apple doesn't 
want you to look at  ;-)


its actually one of the few softwares installed on my mac (I've only 
had to install 4 so far, 1 being a game I bought)

I study 4 years coding , system and multimedia (sound grpahics 2D 
/ 3D) because I follow a game realiser formation ;)

good to know - so once RT decides they will finally produce Rebol/Media, 
you can help :-) View is still somehow underpowered for anything 
like game development - very slow in blitting, no nice movements 
on screen etc. :-)

if you had a game that was operated by keys only, for example, you 
would not need to do any of this, so it's even faster than R2

but you don't need to use "faces" at all, you can just use gobs in 
a game for eg. and handle events your own way... maybe gob/data maps 
to the player object :)

translation for clip would be nice.  I was making a custom card game 
where clipping was being used repetitively and constantly resetting 
the clip coords as well as translating the draw commands was rather 
clunky :)

yeah or drawing non image based texts ... most of the time in game 
text are all fuzzy small et because of the distance with using AGG 
to draw the text on top of your opengl embeded to VID layer you could 
at no cost  get a stable way to display them

load the jquery library into your site and make your life much easier, 
it makes manipulating DOM a kid game 8) http://jquery.commaybe look 
also for the accordion or tree plugin for your menu

IIRC, when Cyphre did some game for Java enabled cell phone, he created 
small engine emulating faces

If you can get to them from the root, then they are fair game, unless


.....they have a rel=nofollow......We have that on a few simply because 
they duplicate content (eg viewing a script, viewing a script in 
color, downloading a script


....Mailing list -- best to index either the individual posts (http://www.rebol.org/ml-display-message.r) 
or the complete threads (http://www.rebol.org/ml-display-thread.r) 
but not both.


....you may get a __lot__ of duplication when spidering the AltME 
archive as every post has a URL, but we display in batches of 50.....So 
perhaps only spider URLs like
http://www.rebol.org/aga-display-posts.r?post=r3wp291xNNNN
when NNNN is 1, 51, 101, 151, etc....


....I think You already have indexed the ML as on REBOL.,net and 
Carl's latest 300 AltME messages, eg
   http://mail.rebol.net/cgi-bin/mail-list.r?msg=45305
   http://host4.altme.com/altweb/rebol3/chat771.html

It would be better _not_ to have index those; it just creates duplicates 
once you have indexed the equivalents on REBOL.org (especially as 
the AltMe last 300 goes out of date so quickly).

Tell me what is unclear there!

http://it.linkedin.com/in/ingdariogiacomelli

anyone game to test it out?

some motivation for faster view. preview, installation is somewhat 
complicated, and the (few) texts  still german. http://polly.rebol.it/test/test/game/run.r

shrinkwrapt

 graphics/network-demo: http://polly.rebol.it/test/test/game/istaba.exe

RebRings a new AGG/Draw based puzzle game can be downloaded here: 
http://rebol.mustard.co.nz/rebrings.r

Mahjong updated to include unlimited undo, right click match and 
hint helps and added a few warnings on things such as no moves, game 
completed etc.  If you already have the resources from the zip file 
then you can access the script at: http://rebol.mustard.co.nz/mahjong.r

RebTower (a Magic the Gathering style - strategy card game) has been 
released.  http://rebol.mustard.co.nz/rebtower-0.0.6.zipThis is 
the fully playable version (minus help :P )

The preview of translation of the final chapter of Olivier Auverlot's 
Rebol - Guide du Programmeur is now available atÊhttp://www.lulu.com/content/4564589


 This final chapter consists of a number of workshops that bring together 
 much that has been covered in the book. These case studies focus 
 on the foundations to build a video game, on developing a chat program, 
 on writing a MySQL administration console, and finally on creating 
 a reblet for Rebol/IOS.


  There is still a little work left before the book can be published. 
  I hope that it won't take too long. Once the full book is published, 
  the individual preview chapters will be withdrawn from Lulu.com.


  One of the things still to be done is toÊangliciseÊthe sample scripts 
  which will then be made available for downloading.

Hi... we are going to finish with the Machinarium game I'm working 
on using my Rebol/Flash dialect. Last level left to do, adding sounds 
and of course some bug fixing and optimizations must be done now.
Here is the newest trailer (contains a few game spoilers!):
http://www.amanita-design.net/blog/2009/08/05/new-trailer/

what's the safest way to allow users to create templates in rebgui 
and not allow them to put executeable code in it?
 http://polly.rebol.it/test/test/game/use/game/unbind.r

Just realized, David H. Eberly is also the author of a book called 
"3D Game Engine Design". I should get this.

Game developers have solved many such problems, and often in efficient 
ways (games like performance). Intersections with Bezier curves are 
discussed here:
http://www.gamedev.net/community/forums/topic.asp?topic_id=385751

Thing is yesterday evenning I started messing with wxwidgets on my 
newly installed ubuntu on laptop and after few hours of not being 
able to produce anything usefull I gave up..... And then I asked 
Anton how to set it up in Rebol  :)


And after few lines of code in rebol I had just the thing I needed 
- simple 2d display to test algorythm for my new game :)

Reichart: Have you seen a game called Yoomp for Atari 8bit ?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TNxICcU3bPo

Well, something like that... I'm messing with that tunnel effect 
... and it works :)

Interesting...people still making Atari games.


One of my team makes emulators for about 15 old game machines, his 
goal is to preserve them before all is forgotten.

Vladimir, can we see what you've done so far with your Yoomp-like 
game ?

Well... it was supossed to be just an tunnel algorythm test and tunning... 
:)
My goal is to write Game like yoomp for C64 :)

Now when I think about it.. if I already have tunnel moving in rebol.... 
it would be quite easy to add a jumping ball to it.... :)
Will upload something usefull later in the day...

Vlad, Good to know that there is other people involved in old computers 
revival.
I'm always coding for MSX computers . 

Last year, with Rebol, i tried to simluate the PSG AY family (sound 
processor of MSX) and  an old game (GALAGA).

I think Rebol is perfect to construct toolsets for that purpose (graphics/maps/patterns/sprites 
editors, asm preprocessor).
(see http://www.rebol.org/search.r?find=guest2&form=yes)

yes... if Im going to make a game in rebol out of this, then the 
speed is a must :)

ufff.... demo from contest wont run..... Im on Ubuntu right now.... 
it cannot open sound.....

looks nicely smooth, and fast. Almost screams for addition of small 
car and doing some simple game upon it :-)

Geomol: more than ever. But I'm rather fed up now working on this 
markup engine. I need fresh air.

I was thinking of a game, and in fact I've found one, but I think 
I need your help. Beware : that's not easy !

:-) We have a game group. You could start posting there and see, 
what will happen.

Thanks Geomol. I think I have to study game programming before!

that does not work...even the print message does not appear. An idea 
?

monlayout: [
    origin 0x0 space 0x0 across
    ; --- define a new button (style)
    style p image %vide.png 
    style node image %but.png 
    effect [draw [line]] feel [ 
        engage: func [f a e /local x y island] [
            if a = 'over [
                print "over"
                x: round/down e/x / 40 + 1
                y: round/down e/y / 40 + 1
                island: game/:x/:y
                if island/ways <> none [
                    foreach v island/ways [

                        append f/effect/draw to-pair [x y] to-pair [v/x v/y] show f
                    ]
                ]
            ]
        ]
    ]
]

I guess this is the best place to ask this question:


I wrote many scripts in rebol that helped me a lot but they were 
all just that... small scripts (I think biggest of them all was 40-50 
lines...).

My question is, what would be "Rebol way" of writing more complicated 
applications in rebol ?

Stuff like game or accounting application, something with many parts....

What would be differences from other languages? And why would it 
be better? :)
What about dialects?

Should rebol programmer start with making a specific dialect first?

I can just take it as a game, and land some easy punches on places 
you exposed up-there :)

for example, you mention drawing the lines:
- I prefer consistency
easier parser
- consistend languages are often easier to parse 
various cases where it might look wierd
- f (a.b + c'd)  ~ is this better? this is valid now :)

allowing

- I like languages where creator makes a conceptually focused, clear, 
expandable, consistent "engine" and we can grow and combine that 
beyond what language maker was able to initially imagine.


This Guy (:)) talks about something like this: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8860158196198824415


REBOL is one of very few languages where this actually is possible, 
another language like this is Factor.


You ask if this could be a word a[ . And in Factor this is the case, 
and they also found a concrete use for this specific case. It's been 
more than year so I have to check where I have seen it. (Factor has 
compilation stage (live compilation too) so they have compile time 
macros where they can extend syntax in various ways).

if you show example where #"," is confusing then #"," should be forbidden 
(you the programmer can't make a choice yourself). I am sure I can 
make confusing examples of code with stuff  that is allowed if I 
tried. Look I am not fightinh this, just reacting to what you say. 
I have no hard feelings in game.

My understanding is that our last discussion was that you say it's 
a different game because "," is a delimiter and "|" is an operator, 
I say I don't see mayor difference... who f* cares .. you think your 
way and I'll think my way. I just work on hayfield for 2 hours and 
this "," issue is the smallest of things I care about. Even if I 
limit on Rebol it's unimportant. Especially in the light that R3 
(which fixes tons of issues I have with rebol) might not ever materialize 
for all I know.


I respect you, you wrote closure (and a bunch of other wizard level 
stuff) for R2 which I am ***very*** happy I can use, and I still 
hope I will get your Bindology when I get time to read it. Let's 
move on.


Same for Gabriel. But if you will keep writing why "," must be forbidden 
and I will see (what are in my oppinion) flaws in your reasoning, 
I will reply with my counterpoints. If I have time.

'you say it's a different game because "," is a delimiter and "|" 
is an operator' - I prefer to speak for myself

and he lied to us .. he never gived enough  work to rebol to make 
rebol something big and you as a community acknoledged it and played 
that game

(it a memory game - pexeso) any other question? :)

(I think it does actually. Quite a nice game, Questionaut)

First demo with just 3 levels of game Machinarium, which I'm working 
on using my Rebol/Flash dialect, was presented on E for All festival.

Here is one recension: http://www.destructoid.com/machinarium-the-best-game-you-most-likely-have-never-heard-of-106669.phtml

Would love to get more info on that game, how it's done, Oldes.

No, there are multiple people involved in the game. They are also 
behind the Samorost 1 and 2 games, which you can play here:

http://amanita-design.net/samorost-1/

will this be multiplatform or windows only? or do you play in the 
browser like samorost? (from the review it seemed like it's a standalone 
game rather than one you can play in the browser)

What do you mean "reference page"? I was not making many web pages 
using the dialect as making the game was very time consuming. But 
in the past I used it for example to make this site http://miss3.cz/

My neighbour here in Ljubljana hackerspace bought Machinarium and 
showed it to me yesterda, very very very awesome!!! He also wrote 
this blogpost today .. 

http://swizec.com/blog/the-greatest-casual-game-ever-devised/swizec/1058

I have demoed Machinarium to couple of my friends who are not active 
gamers and they all seem to like it a lot. I liked this game so much 
I purchased it for myself as a X.mas present.

Btw, I will buy a Machinarium full version, I've enjoyed playing 
the demo. That would be the first game I'll buy since David Braben's 
"Elite" release on Amiga. ;-)

I've also thought about buing the game, especially to play with my 
kids :-)

...But not liked quite as much by Microsoft:

    http://www.xblafans.com/indie-adventure-game-machinarium-refused-for-xbla-41.html

I don't think so. Me not. We are now solving, hot get running subset 
of Flash 8 (AS2 bytecode) to get our game on Wii so AS3 is really 
in a far future.

Also there is a pretty high chance that the old site will expire 
in a near future. I will create a new one, but at this moment I'm 
busy to finish Wii version of Machinarium which means I must put 
360MB of the original game to the Nintendo's 40MB limit. I'm still 
6MB over at this moment.

As you maybe know, when you want to get your app to iOS, all code 
must be compiled into single IPA file (from ActionScript bytecode 
to native bytecode), which you can make out of one SWF only. I was 
not able to even load all sources of our game (>GB) into Flash Pro 
to be able create the only one SWF.

But I've found a solution (I hope, because it's still not tested 
on real iPad). The solution is:

REBOL [
	title: "Machinarium for iPad"
	type: 10
	file: %Machinarium_iPad.swf
	background: 0.0.0
	rate: 25
	size: 1024x721
	compressed: false
]

background 0.0.0
FileAttributes 2#{000 01000000000000000000000000000}

import-swf %levels/00_intro.swf no show
import-swf %levels/01_skladka.swf no show
import-swf %levels/02_brana.swf no show
import-swf %levels/03_dno.swf no show
import-swf %levels/04_pec.swf no show
import-swf %levels/05_mafodoupe.swf no show
import-swf %levels/06_vezeni.swf no show
import-swf %levels/07_bachar.swf no show
import-swf %levels/08_venek1.swf no show
import-swf %levels/09_venek2.swf no show
import-swf %levels/10_ulicka.swf no show
import-swf %levels/11_namesti.swf no show
import-swf %levels/12_predhernou.swf no show
import-swf %levels/13_herna.swf no show
import-swf %levels/14_vodarna.swf no show
import-swf %levels/15_bar.swf no show
import-swf %levels/16_zed1.swf no show
import-swf %levels/17_zed2.swf no show
import-swf %levels/18_zed3.swf no show
import-swf %levels/19_sklenik.swf no show
import-swf %levels/20_pata_veze.swf no show
import-swf %levels/21_mezilevel.swf no show
import-swf %levels/22_vytah.swf no show
import-swf %levels/23_foyer.swf no show
import-swf %levels/23_foyer_wc.swf no show
import-swf %levels/24_bomba.swf no show
import-swf %levels/25_mozkovna.swf no show
import-swf %levels/26_strecha.swf no show
import-swf %levels/27_outro.swf no show
import-swf %Machinarium.swf no show

showFrame
end

The survey helped (even with those who didn't play the game ;)
Thans to all

mostly Game roms

only 86kb for the source + game rom

(game rom include)

steeve, you could probably make your file even smaller by enbasing 
the game rom in source.

Firefox3: Web Apps Game changer. Firefox3 is going to deliver support 
for offline applications. http://www.drury.net.nz/2007/02/03/firefox3-web-apps-game-changer/

LWJGL - Java game library 1.0 released - http://www.lwjgl.org/

source code of a game (one of them) for Silverligth http://silverlight.net/samples/1.0/Sprawl/xaml/scene.xaml
--> http://silverlight.net/samples/1.0/Sprawl/default.html

Pyglet has sound, opengl link, there is nice asteroid game in 27kb 
of source!

Another RIA platform - Apple's SproutCore. So we have Flash, Silverlight, 
Google, Curl, R3 in the future, and now Apple is entering the game 
with interesting development - 


http://www.roughlydrafted.com/2008/06/14/cocoa-for-windows-flash-killer-sproutcore/


SproutCore not only makes it easy to build real applications for 
the web using menus, toolbars, drag and drop support, and foreign 
language localization, but it also provides a full Model View Controller 
application stack like Rails (and Cocoa), with bindings, key value 
observing, and view controls. It also exposes the latent features 
of JavaScript, including late binding, closures, and lambda functions. 
Developers will also appreciate tools for code documentation generation, 
fixtures, and unit testing.

Graham - and that is exactly what I don't like - it makes me headaches 
:-) I am two week before I have to decide, which way to go - IBM 
WebSphere portal, or MS SharePoint portal :-) Guys want to go .NET 
way ... and now eventual third player to the game with own platform 
:-)

Geomol, I agree. And I think it will happen. The first company breaking 
out of the stupid "web-app" path, delivering a product that adds 
so much more value for customers that they use, gaining market momentum 
will win the game.

But, there is still a chance. REBOL was made for what it was made 
for - lightweight distributed apps. We are scrapping "the bad", and 
remedying situation with R3. Does web in general throws away bad 
ideas? Mostly not. Where situation will get more interesting is the 
compatibility. In the past, there was IE, then FF, and Opera. Now 
Apple and Google entered the game, with more significant browser 
market share. We will see, what headache all those new browser cause 
to developers - I mean - various incompatibilities between browsers. 
Not to mention mobile browser incarnations, which are often separate 
projects ...

if it was just a language, you would be using directx, MFC, etc. 
on Windows, QT or the GTK or Linux, and Cocoa on OSX, regardless 
of whether you're writing the Viewtop or a little game.

Maybe we'll even be able to use the back button, when someone shoot 
us in the game.

hehe You make me think of the sci-fi novel "Hyperion" by Dan Simmons. 
In that nano-technology has advanced, so you can have little invisible 
robots in the air around you doing "magical" stuff. Read it, if you 
haven't! One of the best. Same idea in the online role-playing game 
"Anarchy Online". Lots of fun!

Doc.. Im just thinking scalability / benchmarking.  I plan on spending 
my spare time over the next number of months building a next gen 
webserver using Cheyenne as the core, and I want to make sure I don't 
hit a game killer 3 months in.


i posted earlier in the Rockstar group how superior Cheyenne is compared 
to vhosts and .htaccess.. night and day.

might still be much faster than a db call.  but the real game-changing 
aspect of mod-remark is that a document in ram, will only render 
parts of itself which are changed, or which cannot be cached, so, 
unless you've actually changed a parameter, it knows that it hasn't 
changed and will not need to ask for the broker to give it back the 
value.  in fact, it wont even process that part of the page, only 
using the data in its local node cache directly.

Pekr; At this stage of the game, I doubt anyone wants to risk losing
corporate involvement.  So I'll add a ditto, me too.

Kaj, .... Gab pretty much nailed it.


Endo, .... Indeed, so are you saying you can't beat this go program 
every single time in just a few moves?  I seem to be able to beat 
it every single time almost instantly, which I think was Ladislav's 
point.


I'm just confirming I did not simply find a way to beat it as a sort 
of trick.  I used to design AI for games, so I tend to get around 
it pretty quickly.


If you would like I will send you a video of me plaything this game 
several times.

Of note, I still thank you for this program, it  was exactly what 
I was looking for.  Of course it would be nice if it was a little 
smarter, but it is a great program to give to begginers simply to 
understand the "rules" of the game.

Reichart: I really want to see to trick :) You can find my email 
address on Altme.

I mostly can guess next moves of the computer, but couldn't find 
a trick to win every game (Well actually I know one, after a game 
finished you can still continue to play, like 2 two players game. 
By that way you can increase your rank.. But this is nothing about 
AI ofcourse.

At the first a few games I can win immediately, but after several 
games (say 10-15 games) then I cannot win easily. After computer 
rank is 2-3 kyu I cannot win at all (as I'm a beginner Go player.)
By the way its help files are also very well to teach the rules.

After computer rank is 2-3 kyu

 the computer rank is never 2 - 3 kyu. The computer "thinks" it is 
 9 kyu, I assume. (but it is not very reliable, either) Anyway, after 
 losing some games the computer "thinks" that you are 2 - 3 kyu (again, 
 not very reliably), and takes for itself some handicap to make the 
 game even.

SuperMastermind game: http://www.rebol.org/view-script.r?script=supermastermind.r
enjoy!

Great remake an old NES game:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=mTBXvP89Now
http://abobosbigadventure.com/