Just for comparison, the statistics and descriptions mentioned below are for my
released solver (anyone can download it and verify them).
> Which hard games are you interested in? And I should note that FCS has many
> possible run-time configurations, each one potentially performing better on
> some games than others. I've constructed some aggregate scans, that on average
> perform better than others. See the "-l" flag for more details.
>
I have tried to build in multiple attacks on difficult games so that no run-time
configuration is necessary. I have tried to tinker with solving parameters so
that the user doesn't have to.
>> its average solution
>> length,
>
> I haven't measured this, though I can easily. The question is with which
> preset are you interested. Would "-l gi" - good-intentions be good enough for
> you?
>
I just ran my solver on the 1st 1000 games and it got solution lengths of
fewer than 64 moves on all games (34 of them < 48 steps). Of course this
doesn't count automove steps, and all "supermoves" are counted as single
steps. I think it is important to use standard move notation and layout
description.
> I should note that Freecell Solvers's solutions explicitly includes many moves
> that are implicit in MS-Freecell/Freecell-Pro. As a result, the solution may
> be artificially longer than a strictly FC-Pro compatible solver that
> automatically moves some cards into the foundations. Which of the two options
> are you interested in?
>
>> its speed over a range of games,
>
> To quote http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/fc-solve-discuss/message/887 :
>
> {{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{
> Added the FCS_FREECELL_ONLY compile-time flag to hard-code the settings
> for Freecell and thus allow faster run-time. On a Pentium 4-2.4GHz machine
> running Mandriva Linux Cooker, this allows to solve the Microsoft 32,000 in
> 194.56353 seconds ( 164 deals / second ) instead of
> 228.84 seconds for the generic version ( 140 deals / second ).
> }}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}
>
> I only tested it against the first 32,000 deals.
>
I just ran my solver on the 1st 32000 games and on a 1.73 GHz Pentium with
a 794 MHz RAM, it solved all the games (except 11982, of course) in 145 s.
This is 220 games/second. Of course, in this small set, there were no False
Negatives or intractables.
>> and its
>> percentage of false negatives or intractables.
>
> Freecell Solver supports atomic moves, so assuming there are no bugs in the
> code, solving configurations that end up using atomic moves, will have no
> false negatives.
>
> I'm a bit more hazy about intractables. Freecell Solver has an arbitrary
> (~2**32) limit on its resources so it may go on searching forever given enough
> time and resources. If you want me to determine the number of intractables for
> a certain iterations' limit - that would be doable, though may be somewhat
> time consuming.
>
I pretty much consider a game or layout intractable when it takes over five
minutes and doesn't get a result. My released solver rarely encounters such
a layout, but it does occasionally (game 10916159 is such a game).
How does your solver handle Game# -2 (the artificial Microsoft layout)?
My released version also finds this one intractable.
My current research and development is aimed at reducing or eliminating
intractables without introducing any false negatives. This is like walking
a tightrope. But, I'm getting closer all the time.
My solver is aimed at standard freecell, but I expect my next version to
handle 0-4 free cells, instead of exactly 4. It also handles the full eight
billion games of the standard random number generator, not just the
four billion that are determined by the 32-bit datatype. However, you
have to run FCELL standalone to get them. When using its front end,
it is limited to the standard four billion games (plus an infinite number
of layouts that you might input as text files).
Received on Mon Mar 30 2009 - 15:59:48 IDT