Well, connect 4 was solved in 1988 apparently too. You can win if you play perfectly, and go in the middle first...

What next, Othello? ;-)

Alex

Congrats on the GameSpy Best Wii Games of E3 award Paul! Once you wrap up Metroid, it would be interesting to hear how new gameplay interfaces (like the WiiMote) affect AI design. I assume they do. Looking forward to playing Metroid 3. Until then, I guess I'll just try to beat computers at checkers. oh wait...

> Congrats on the GameSpy Best Wii Games of E3
> award Paul!

Thanks, Jeff!!! The team has been working unbelievably hard on this for a very long time, and it's really heartwarming to see the reception we're getting in the press.

> Once you wrap up Metroid, it would be
> interesting to hear how new gameplay interfaces
> (like the WiiMote) affect AI design. I assume
> they do.

I have to be a bit careful about what I say, as Nintendo tends to frown on employees saying too much in public. So I can't go into too many details here, and I'm going to have to check with HQ to see if they'll let me talk about some of these things at AIIDE or GDC.

What I can say is that yes, the Wiimote-based player control definitely has major ramifications for the gameplay. Certain things that may have been a bit challenging for the player to do in Metroid Prime 1 and 2 are suddenly much easier in Metroid Prime 3: Corruption. Being Samus is a very different experience now.

Once we found out what the new controller was (we didn't actually know anything about the remote or the console itself until we'd been already been developing the game for quite some time!), it triggered a cascade of redesign as we suddenly realized what the hardware was capable of, and we began to think through all of the different kinds of player/AI interaction that would be possible with the new controller and worked to iterate and refine them.

I also feel like we've only begun to scratch the surface of what the Wiimote can do as a development-side tool.

Hope all's well with you, Jeff; looking forward to seeing the next version of The Restaurant Game! :)

Wow. I just checked back here for the first time in weeks, and saw this post. Heard about checkers, but didn't know I knew the guy.

btw, the guys that solved 5x5 go are working on 6x6:
http://www.nwo.nl/projecten.nsf/pages/2300139601

If 6x6 is 100,000 times harder than 5x5, don't expect 9x9 solved anytime soon.

Interesting you should mention that, Greg. I don't follow Go AI regularly, but I recently read about some very interesting algorithms that have made fairly stunning progress in tackling Go using bandit-based Monte Carlo planning:

http://www.reuters.com/article/scienceNews/idUSL2053348420070221

(Here are some Google keywords that serve up no end of fascinating results on the techniques used for that system as well as many other similar systems: GO UCT BANDIT "MONTE CARLO")

Although this hardly "solves" Go, it does achieve a remarkable skill level for a computer player, which is really what I'm much more interested personally, as that's the most similar to what we're trying to achieve with real-time games. I'm itching to take a look at how these sorts of techniques (or variants thereof) could be applied to planning in FPS and RTS games in particular.

Paul, I have a question about Metroid Prime 3, and if you can't answer it for reasons of confidentiality, I'll understand.

Metroid Prime 1 (GC) and Metroid: Zero Mission (GBA) both contained unlockable full versions of the original Metroid. Will Metroid Prime 3 contain the full version of the Game Boy game Metroid 2 as an unlockable? It would make sense for two reasons: Virtual Console doesn't have Game Boy games (which will soon make Metroid 2 the only un-re-released game of the original trilogy, as Super Metroid has been confirmed as coming to VC), and Metroid 2 is the next game after Metroid Prime 3 in the Metroid chronology.

Bigger J, since I believe it's already been mentioned somewhere, I can confirm that Metroid Prime 3: Corruption will *not* contain the Game Boy Metroid 2 as an unlockable feature.