CS 101 Lecture Notes

Week Thirteen, Wednesday/Thursday: Game Applications

The earliest computer games were board games like checkers. In the 1970s people began experimenting with graphical games like Asteroids, Pong, Space Invaders, and Pac-Man.

Computer versions of traditional card, dice, and board games are challenging because the pit machine intelligence against human.

Program Example: Craps

Craps is a dice game of pure chance. There is a slight house advantage, but a lucky player can sometimes walk away a winner.

Source Code.

Program Screen Shot.

Program Example: Tic Tac Toe

Tic tac toe is one of the simplest skill games. It makes an excellent demonstration of the classic min-max algorithm for state space search. The game is otherwise uninteresting because of its simplicity: it is a known drawn game. That is, with proper play, nobody wins. A chess playing program, on the other hand, can be (and many have been) built on the same principle. Chess is more complicated, so it remains an open question out of reach of the most powerful computers.

Source Code.

Program startup screen.

Program intermediate screen.

Program game over screen.

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