[HN Gopher] Play Othello in your web browser (made with Mithril)
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       Play Othello in your web browser (made with Mithril)
        
       Author : gmac
       Score  : 30 points
       Date   : 2023-12-13 20:48 UTC (2 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (jawj.github.io)
 (TXT) w3m dump (jawj.github.io)
        
       | ranting-moth wrote:
       | Nice! If the dev is here, could we have the option of faster
       | animation please.
        
         | gmac wrote:
         | Hmm, should be a simple CSS tweak, so I guess so.
        
       | tromp wrote:
       | Looking good! The AI player is just a simple 2-ply lookahead, so
       | should be beatable by the better Othello players (not me).
        
         | gmac wrote:
         | Indeed! I basically programmed it to do roughly what I (a total
         | novice) do when I play. Mainly for when my kids want to play
         | and I don't (or am not around).
        
           | smithcoin wrote:
           | Darn I was impressed when I pulled off this: https://jawj.git
           | hub.io/fliptiles/#!/4/52222224222222f222222d.... But now not
           | so much. The key is to work to the edge and out.
        
         | bewaretheirs wrote:
         | For Othello, picking the positionally best square (corners very
         | good, adjacent to corners very bad, 2 squares from corner good,
         | etc.) beats lookahead, likely because having unflippable pieces
         | in good positions leads to large swings in score in the endgame
         | that a short lookahead won't see.
         | 
         | I play almost purely positionally with no conscious lookahead
         | and I beat it soundly every time, playing as both black and
         | white, frequently with the AI having to pass because it had no
         | legal moves.
         | 
         | A "don't yield a corner" heuristic to never move in the three
         | squares around a corner unless there are no other legal moves
         | would likely significantly strengthen its play.
        
       | kqr wrote:
       | This is really smooth and polished. My othello skills are bottom
       | of barrel so I got whooped by the AI, but had fun anyway.
       | 
       | Does anyone know of something similar for go?
        
         | smithcoin wrote:
         | There are a lot of options out there. I've used this:
         | https://www.cosumi.net/en/
        
       | MrJohz wrote:
       | Very nice! I like how the state of the game is directly available
       | in the URL - I could send a game directly to another person and
       | have them see the history of the moves I've played, if I
       | understand that correctly.
       | 
       | That said, when I want to go back to the previous page, I now
       | need to click back through the game's history to get there -
       | using `replaceState` from the History API would allow you to keep
       | on using the URL as state, but without clobbering the user's
       | browser history.
        
         | kqr wrote:
         | On the other hand, I liked that I could back out of a mistake
         | with my browser back button!
        
       | fidotron wrote:
       | I did one of these a few months ago.
       | https://www.luduxia.com/reversi
       | 
       | The AI was based on ideas from https://archive.org/details/byte-
       | magazine-1980-07/page/n57/m... and it was an end to end test of
       | my WebGL code.
       | 
       | One of the life lessons of mine is that your UI is probably a
       | much better direction. There is a sort of upper limit beyond
       | which the whole graphical side of things is an absolute
       | distraction to everyone. My gut feeling is the whole Wordle style
       | end of things will be where a lot more future growth occurs.
        
         | gmac wrote:
         | You may be right, but your one is seriously impressive. Good
         | work!
        
       | pier25 wrote:
       | This is cool but the AI is not very good :)
       | 
       | I got a corner after like 5-6 moves.
        
         | gmac wrote:
         | Agreed. :)
         | 
         | I made it mainly for pass-and-play, but perhaps one of these
         | days I should try to implement an AI vaguely worthy of the
         | name.
        
       | ilrwbwrkhv wrote:
       | This is great. And love to see Mithril. One of the best
       | JavaScript frameworks before the whole madness started.
        
         | LVB wrote:
         | Indeed! Still my go-to for smaller personal projects.
        
         | lordgroff wrote:
         | I agree. Mithril hits the sweet spot.
        
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       (page generated 2023-12-13 23:00 UTC)