Adrian! Yours is great news.
First, what does it mean to incorporate Fish's solver into FcPro? Give the
player a choice of which solver to use? Merge the best features of each into
a third solver? FCS may employ different moves than FcPro. Whose will you use?
I've been looking around for people who may have had success with their own
solvers, unknown to us. Found a professor who uses FC in his AI class. No
automoves, single cards only. Pointed him to MK's/your site/solver and
Fish's. He'll be interested in a comparison/competition, as you know I am.
For any comparison/competition to work, some things will need to be discussed
along the way.
1. Sequence moves. The MS version of FC doesn't do well with sequences. It
doesn't move longest sequences at all. It's inconsistent in moving shorter
sequences. Example 1: a player can move a sequence of three cards from the
top of a column to an empty column if there are two freecells, but not if
there are one freecell and two empty columns. Example 2: When a player tries
to move a sequence to an empty column, she is given two choices: the longest
legal sequence, or a single card. No chance to move an intermediate number of
cards. MS is prominent and familiar to all. Does that mean we are stuck with
MS moves?
2. Automatic moves. MS rules for auto-moving cards to the homecells are weak.
Are we stuck with them, or do we go with my stronger but equally safe rules?
(with all due immodesty, I call them "Raymond's Rule")
At the present time a competition/comparison could work if we restricted
ourselves to single-card moves only, and no auto-moves. That will require
more time, certainly, and more space. The additional space may handcuff some
solvers.
My own solver is nearly finished. A year ago it was solving 33 deals/second
at 81 mHz. I expect it to be twice as fast in January. And I expect to have
shortest solutions to all 32K MS deals for 0-4 freecells with Raymond's and
MS' auto-moves, and for all 52-card flourish deals. Shortest solutions for no
auto-moves and no sequence moves may be tougher.
Bill Raymond
Received on Sat Nov 17 2001 - 10:39:25 IST