Scrabble

Discuss using and improving Lua and the Lua Player specific to the PSP.

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fullerlee
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Joined: Thu Nov 03, 2005 9:46 am

Scrabble

Post by fullerlee »

Here's my first go at a lua game.

http://lee.3-lions.net/lua/scrabble.zip
KawaGeo
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Location: Calif Mountains

Post by KawaGeo »

The link is unreachable.
Geo Massar
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fullerlee
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Post by fullerlee »

Sorry about that, my DNS seems to be having trouble.

Try:

http://24.10.32.168/lua/scrabble.zip

EDIT: Errgghh, I'm not sure that will work either, seems like more serious ISP problems. I'll see if I can find somewhere I can host it temporarily.
MikeHaggar
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Post by MikeHaggar »

link on my page taken down since wraggster got a mirror now.
Last edited by MikeHaggar on Sat Nov 05, 2005 1:37 pm, edited 1 time in total.
fullerlee
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Joined: Thu Nov 03, 2005 9:46 am

Post by fullerlee »

Cool, thanks.

Hopefully my site won't be down for too long. I take it you got to the file via the numbered address rather than the domain name?

Thanks again,

Lee
MikeHaggar
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Post by MikeHaggar »

I got it this morning, before the problems were there ;)

Hm... Problem seems fixed now... but I'll keep the file @ my page for a couple of days (or until wraggster mirrors it), just in case.
Wraggster
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Post by Wraggster »

hi nice game, ive mirorred your release and ive took some screens, both can be found here http://psp-news.dcemu.co.uk/scrabblelua.shtml
Webmaster of http://www.dcemu.co.uk

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fullerlee
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Post by fullerlee »

Thanks.
HairyDVD
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Post by HairyDVD »

Been playing this game and it is very good.

A few suggestions .....
- There seems to be a bug when you are near the end of the game and there are no more tiles left in the "bag" - say you have 3 tiles on your rack and go to place them on the board, if you press O to cancel it seems to fill your rack back up with tiles that are not there rather than the 3 tiles you were left with.

A good feature would be when you are selecting tiles from your rack, currently you can only press left,right or x to pick - if you could press down and it mix up the tiles on your rack ( randomly - this sometimes helps you think / pick a word easier ). Another good idea at this point would be to press up and be able to swap a number of tiles with ones left in the bag.

I only make these points as I think you have made a cracking game here and hope you continue to make it better.
fullerlee
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Joined: Thu Nov 03, 2005 9:46 am

Post by fullerlee »

Thanks very much for the feedback, I like your ideas.

This is the first time I'm ever released anything, so I'm not too up on versioning or providing documentation. Consider this release 0.1!

I'll have a look into the bug you found, and I'll definately implement down to mix up the letters. I'll put this stuff into the next release (0.2 I suppose)

Other things for future releases:
- Swap tiles
- Word checker with ability to add words to the dictionary.
- Computer player
- Network play (when we have networkability in LUA)
- Performance improvements (although the game runs fine, I'm thinking of preserving battery life as much as possible)
- Play music whilst playing (when we have oggability in LUA)
HairyDVD
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Post by HairyDVD »

No problem,

I would like to learn to program in Lua - maybe I'll have a look around net for a few tutorials (only use visual basic at the moment). Lemme know when you have the next version available and I'll test it out for ya (been playing against the wifey)
fullerlee
Posts: 54
Joined: Thu Nov 03, 2005 9:46 am

Post by fullerlee »

I've got a bit of slack time at work today, so I've been working on it.

I've implemented the tile mix-up and fixed the cancel word bug. I think I'll put in the ability to swap tiles before I release a new version (although I can email you what I have currently if you'd like to try it, I definately appreciate your testing).

I'm new to LUA so my coding in it is fairly simplistic, it may give you some ideas. That reminds me, another thing I need to do is document the code a little better.

Lee
Arwin
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Post by Arwin »

A few thoughts (from a moderate scrabble fan)

- rather than an editable wordlist, you could (also) give an option to use the official scrabble wordlist. This would also help with programming AI

AI:
- there are two important variables in the AI that can be very finely tuned to decrease/increase AI skills.

Dictionary knowledge - how many words does the AI know: for reference, an average English speaker knows about 50.000 words actively. But not all of these can be used in Scrabble of course.

Placement skill - how effective do you allow the AI to be while placing the words. You can relatively easily write an exhaustive routine that places the highest scoring word. (For even better skills, you may have to add some routines that consider an option to for instance get rid of the Q + probably just adding 10-20 points internally to the value of the letter Q for choosing the word to place would do the trick. Other options would be defensive playing). So, basically, you just limit how long the AI is allowed to search, stuff like that.

just a bit of brainstorming here, feel free to ignore ;)
fullerlee
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Post by fullerlee »

Thanks for the info, it's all useful stuff.

I've not really thought too much about the computer player (it's kind of daunting). I have a wordlist that's not too big (from Scrabble assistant by Andy Fung) so that's somewhere to start.

There are a few algorithms around on the net which I may be able to pilfer.

Lee
fullerlee
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Post by fullerlee »

0.2 (10th Nov 2005)
-BUGFIX: Cancelling a word when bag is empty now works properly.
-FEATURE: When in rack-mode, press Dpad down to shuffle the tiles.

Get it here:
http://psp-news.dcemu.co.uk/files/scrabble.zip

Please let me know what you think.

Lee

Wraggster, please update the info at:
http://psp-news.dcemu.co.uk/scrabblelua.shtml
Cheers
Last edited by fullerlee on Sat Nov 12, 2005 2:43 am, edited 1 time in total.
Arwin
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Post by Arwin »

if I follow the dcemu link, I get a 'you have to login' message, even after logging in and enabling a cookie ... I can't figure out where to download it now. I'll just wait until it is publicly updated ...
Wraggster
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Post by Wraggster »

the page is updated :)

strange about the login thing (some weird Vbulletin error ?)
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cooleyandy
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Post by cooleyandy »

Here is the ospd 3 list on my home server. Good luck.

http://cooleyandy.webhop.net/ospd3.txt
fullerlee
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Post by fullerlee »

Thanks
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DrNicket
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Settlers of Catan for LUA

Post by DrNicket »

Fullerlee: I'm wanting to create a game in LUA and wanted to know if I can ask you questions off forum (don't know how to PM in this forum).
Dr. Nicket
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fullerlee
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Post by fullerlee »

DrNicket: You have a PM.
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DrNicket
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Post by DrNicket »

Odd. The Icons for "pm" "icq" and all that weren't loaded last time I was here.

Thanks. msg received.
Dr. Nicket
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"Alright, you primitive screwheads, listen up. See this? This is my BOOMSTICK!"
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