cross-posted from: https://piefed.zip/c/machinelearning/p/1092955/looking-for-ml-coders-for-help-with-open-source-creative-commons-board-game-ai-player-logi
I know this is probably a long shot, but I’m not sure where else to ask so I’m going to take a shot.
I’ve designed and abstract board game (think chess, shogi, go, etc) and have completed coding the rules for play against an AI player, however getting the actual AI to be good is a whole other problem.
I would love if someone who is experienced in ML would be interested in collaborating on this open source project.
The game is strictly a hobby project, with absolutely no plans for monitization or anything. Currently it’s playable in the browser against AI (no multiplayer yet set up) at: https://greenants.github.io/Amalgam_Webgame/
GitHub Repo: https://github.com/GreenAnts/Amalgam_Webgame
Disclaimer: I’ve mostly used AI to code this project, as I’m a pretty novice programmer. Obviously that’s controversial, so I want to make that clear - but remember this is simply a hobby project, and is a way for me to get my board game design digitized and actually played by others. The code will likely be a bit on the messy side, but I think for the most part the ML coder would only be interacting with the controller - so shouldn’t be too much of a factor.
From my limited understanding, the actual search depth and complexity of the game is quite high, far higher than chess, so it’s been quite hard for me to try and get this set up even with the help of AI coding with hueristics.
If you are interested in in the project at all, I’m always looking for help to farther this project - as I’ve been working on the board game itself (on and off) for more than 10 years.
The GitHub Repo listed above (in the README.md) has a graphical rulebook as well as a video tutorial linked for you to learn the rules and get an idea of the game complexity if you are interested.
Like I said, I know this is a long shot, and unlikely anyone will be interested, but I figured I’d give it a shot :)
Thanks for the advice! Yeah I’ve studied coding a decent amount (learned some web dev stacks, Visual Basic class, and python class in college) but nothing to the level of something like a computer science major. But if I’m being honest, it mostly comes down to not having the attention span/motivation/persistence to actually work through the tedious process of becoming an actual “good & knowledgeable” programmer. I’ve tried this project a few times before AI LLMs were a thing, and I’ve always abandoned the project due to lack of motivation after some time.
But your advice still is very useful, and yeah - I’ve fiddled with trying to tweak hueristical aspects to make the AI more competent, but I’ve found I quickly get over my head. I think like you said, maybe I need to do some actual studying - especially in the hueristics/game AI portion. With the main game code, I somewhat can parse what code is being created, but when it comes to the AI player logic, I’m clueless as to what the LLM is outputting or how to tweak/adjust as needed.
Also, it’s made me curious to ditch the hueristics option and try to actually try true ML instead, but that would likely be far harder is my guess.
Regardless, thanks for your thoughts!
By the way, my focus capacity isn’t good either, and normal study, e.g. university, I’ve found to be terrible for that. If you have a clear objective in mind, and you can discipline yourself into chasing it, that’s a good chunk of the problem solved, at least from my experience. But also from my experiences, if you can find a tutor or private teacher that can adapt his/her strategies to keep you engaged in the studies, that should help immensely too, though the discipline to go after objectives still being needed imo.
Yeah, I have a bit of a longer reply in one of the cross posts, and I’m too lazy to type it all over again - but largely I’ve kind of accepted that I won’t be a programmer. Mostly its just about getting this one specific project finished (because it’s not about the actual software as much as it is about the board game, for me).
I’ve picked up and abandoned this project so many times, but each time it seems I get a little bit further - so baby steps I guess lol. More-so, I’m just hoping to get something that is “good-enough” to get people interested and playing the game - and since the game is open source and creative commons, maybe someone from the player base will get interested enough to make it properly.
I’ve tried to become a programmer in the past (and actually changed career fields after realizing it wasn’t for me) - but with new LLMs, I’ve figured maybe I can get by enough to at least patch something together that’ll pass as a demo. Being honest with myself, I’m not going to invest the time or effort to become “good”, especially on top of my day job.
But of course, I appreciate your input, advice, and time to reply :)