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Subject: Re: What makes Fruit and Fruit-Toga so strong?

Author: Fabien Letouzey

Date: 01:10:29 06/15/05

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On June 14, 2005 at 16:03:42, Roger D Davis wrote:

>Looks like the latest editions of Fruit and Fruit-Toga are very strong. Is there
>any single structural feature that makes them so strong? Is it speed, or tuning,
>or what?
>
>Roger

Not a single feature, not speed and not tuning either.
Like Volker said, the question is a hard one.

I have not tried a different approaches yet, so unfortunately I cannot compare.

In Fruit 1.0 I had a search mostly taken from my other game programs (Othello,
international draughts, Awari, etc ...) and no eval (mostly PST).  Afterwards I
added the eval features that seemed to lack most in the games I watched.

I also apply religious-like principles e.g. trying to keep parameter
dimensionality low and keeping the search "robust" (tolerant to
inconsistencies).  However I picked these principles only for long term reasons
and as yet they are not supposed to matter much.

I believe that I could build strong engines with totally different approaches
like attack tables or going for NPS.  In my opinion, consistency is important
but I cannot quantify or even measure it.  I pick a design before writing the
first line and try to stick to it.

I learnt a lot by rewriting programs from scratch every 3-or-so years.  I think
it's hard to improve an old engine.

Sorry that I can't really answer your question.
I think only professional authors could, but won't.

Fabien.




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