Research About The Key Technologies Of The Connect6 Computer Game

Artificial Intelligence is an important branch of computer science, with energy technology, biotechnology, space technology, known as the world's most advanced technology. Computer games are an important aspect of artificial intelligence research, a large number of research results have been made because of studies about computer game, these results had an important impact in wider areas. After the computer game has successed in Othello, Checker , chess and so on, scholars around the world again eyeing on the Chinese chess, Shogi, Go and other more complex chess. Connect6 as a two-person zero-sum perfect information game, has the similar complexity with Go, and become to the focus of research.The key technologies of Connect6 computer game include data structure, generating moves, evaluating state, search engine, opening bank and optimization of parameters, this paper's main task is to research and improve generating moves, evaluating state, search engine, opening bank, the specific content of the work and results are as follows:1. Having a comparison of advantages and disadvantages of the current board state representations, and studying bit board's thinking, a new improved bit board has been submitted and applied to the Connect6. Various chess-types can be quickly distinguished using'and'operation provided by the new bit board.2. After having in-depth study of some varieties of Alpha-Beta Search and technology used to improve it, I programed these algorithms, and compared the difference of performance between these algorithms while be used in the Connect6 game program, and founded that MTD(f) algorithm has the best performance.3. By analyzing the work process of the MTD(f) search, and the special moves generation in the Connect6, I proposed to make the preset table in the moves generation module and the transposition table in the search engines together as a improvement, this improvement can reduce the frequent of generating moves in the search process. And by comparing the performance of different MTD(f) algorithms before and after improved, proved the effectiveness of the improvement measures.4. Through seriously studying the characteristics of Connect6, raised some new definitions of Connect6 chess-type. Using the definitions can greatly reduce the difficulty of chess-type classification, and improve the operating speed of the evaluation function.5. Basing on the new chess-type definitions, designed a simple and feasible method of chess-type identification, and proved the correctness of the method. Also realized a rapid and efficient evaluation algorithm basing on the method and the improved bit board.6. A simple opening bank has been designed and realized using hashing table technology, including 31 kinds of openings and their symmetrical forms, and also including the key moves to four bad openings among them and some diversifications following the key moves.The innovations of this paper are as follow:1. In the state representation aspect, A new bit board which was improved from the chess bit board was raised to apply to the Connect6 game program.2. In the search engine aspect, by using the preset table and the transposition table together, reduced the time spent to generate moves, and improved the efficiency of the search algorithm.3. In the Connect6 theory aspect, put forward some new definitions of Connect6 chess-type, and simplified the chess-type classification.4. In the Connect6 game situation evaluation aspect, proposed a 6-8 window method, this method can be used to quickly and effectively identify the chess-type. This method is also used in the generating moves and the evaluation of the value of the empty spots.