5 ms·

Automating Threes [video]

66 points by felixmo 13y ago

bibinou 13y ago
archived videos : http://www.twitch.tv/teamcolorblind/b/517016772 http://www.twitch.tv/teamcolorblind/b/517016772 http://www.twitch.tv/teamcolorblind/b/517126107 http://www.twitch.tv/teamcolorblind/b/517126107
DEinspanjer 13y ago
It is cool and fun, but I really wanted to see his AI code. :/
- devindotcom 13y ago
  It looked like whoever was in charge of the bot was debugging a bit earlier. He/she might be tweaking things between games.
kencausey 13y ago
This should be marked with a [video] if not [video stream] tag.
- felixmo 13y ago
  Marked it, thanks for the suggestion.
yeldarb 13y ago
I felt good that my top score was higher than the machine's failure point.. then it swiped to its top score of 205,824 and I realized how woefully inadequate my feeble human mind truly is.
matthew-wegner 13y ago
Hey everyone! I wrote the robot integration here, but not the AI core, which was https://twitter.com/waltdestler https://twitter.com/waltdestler . He's going to write up a piece on his AI stuff at some point soon. I'm actually not super familiar with it, despite hooking into it, so I can't speak too much about it. The physical integration is pretty simple. I'm using libimobiledevice to get a screenshot over the cable: http://www.libimobiledevice.org/ http://www.libimobiledevice.org/ . Recognizing the board isn't very hard. An Arduino and Adafruit motor shield are controlling two stepper motors with cardboard/tinfoil arms. Stepper motors are important because they won't drift over time. The AI gets 3k tiles ~30% of its games, and 6k tiles ~3% of the time. These are simulated games--currently the robot is streaming its 5th complete game.
- kevingadd 13y ago
  Are there plans to release the simulator you used to train the AI? I was thinking it would be fun to mess around, but building out a simulator or all the tools needed to drive Threes in a VM would be a pain.
  - matthew-wegner 13y ago
    Walt is planning on doing a blog post with some source code tomorrow, I think!
Frozenlock 13y ago
This is only remotely related, but I figured this might be worthwhile. I was an everyday Twitch consumer, but I practically stopped watching it overnight. Not because I don't enjoy the content anymore, but because my Chromium crashes every time it tries to load Flash. Now, while this shows how lazy I can be in this regard, this is also a great insight. Sure, I could just fire up Firefox or even try to fix the Flash issue, but this is one step too much for my taste. From watching Twitch everyday to watching practically never, only because of this issue. So if you spend months developing an application and say to yourself "The user just has to do the little step X to fully enjoy my work...", I'd beg you to reconsider. Sometimes, the smallest friction can stop a user.
cousin_it 13y ago
"You missed it."

66 points by felixmo 13y ago

archived videos : http://www.twitch.tv/teamcolorblind/b/517016772 http://www.twitch.tv/teamcolorblind/b/517016772 http://www.twitch.tv/teamcolorblind/b/517126107 http://www.twitch.tv/teamcolorblind/b/517126107

DEinspanjer 13y ago

It is cool and fun, but I really wanted to see his AI code. :/

devindotcom 13y ago
It looked like whoever was in charge of the bot was debugging a bit earlier. He/she might be tweaking things between games.

kencausey 13y ago

This should be marked with a [video] if not [video stream] tag.

felixmo 13y ago
Marked it, thanks for the suggestion.

yeldarb 13y ago

I felt good that my top score was higher than the machine's failure point.. then it swiped to its top score of 205,824 and I realized how woefully inadequate my feeble human mind truly is.

matthew-wegner 13y ago

Hey everyone! I wrote the robot integration here, but not the AI core, which was https://twitter.com/waltdestler https://twitter.com/waltdestler . He's going to write up a piece on his AI stuff at some point soon. I'm actually not super familiar with it, despite hooking into it, so I can't speak too much about it. The physical integration is pretty simple. I'm using libimobiledevice to get a screenshot over the cable: http://www.libimobiledevice.org/ http://www.libimobiledevice.org/ . Recognizing the board isn't very hard. An Arduino and Adafruit motor shield are controlling two stepper motors with cardboard/tinfoil arms. Stepper motors are important because they won't drift over time. The AI gets 3k tiles ~30% of its games, and 6k tiles ~3% of the time. These are simulated games--currently the robot is streaming its 5th complete game.

kevingadd 13y ago
Are there plans to release the simulator you used to train the AI? I was thinking it would be fun to mess around, but building out a simulator or all the tools needed to drive Threes in a VM would be a pain.
- matthew-wegner 13y ago
  Walt is planning on doing a blog post with some source code tomorrow, I think!

Frozenlock 13y ago

This is only remotely related, but I figured this might be worthwhile. I was an everyday Twitch consumer, but I practically stopped watching it overnight. Not because I don't enjoy the content anymore, but because my Chromium crashes every time it tries to load Flash. Now, while this shows how lazy I can be in this regard, this is also a great insight. Sure, I could just fire up Firefox or even try to fix the Flash issue, but this is one step too much for my taste. From watching Twitch everyday to watching practically never, only because of this issue. So if you spend months developing an application and say to yourself "The user just has to do the little step X to fully enjoy my work...", I'd beg you to reconsider. Sometimes, the smallest friction can stop a user.

cousin_it 13y ago

"You missed it."