Saturday, July 14, 2018

tinkered with the Spades bots

This morning's update fixed a couple of minor bugs.

In addition, I tinkered with the strategy of the Spades bots. There are small changes in their bidding and also in the way that they play.

Please keep in mind that sometimes it's hard to know what to bid, and the bots are not perfect! If you spot a particularly egregious bidding or playing error, where it's obvious that a bot did something bone-headed in the course of a hand of cards, and you want to do something to help correct it, you can! Please try to remember to download the hand history as soon as that hand is finished. Once you download it, you can send it to me, and tell me what you think was wrong. With this information, I can rework the code to improve the bots.

For those who do not know about the hand history, that is just a small text file with a URL (link) in it. The link is to a "replayer" at World of Card Games. When you copy and paste the URL into a web browser, you will get a "replay" of that hand, showing who bid what, and how each card was played. All the cards will be shown face-up straight from the start. This link is an example of a "hand history".  You can click it to see how it works. But don't click it if you are currently playing a game at World of Card Games; it will not work, in that case.

You can only download the hand history if you are a registered user and signed in. Also, it's only available for 30 seconds after the hand finishes. So grab it quickly if you want to save it! To download it, click the little floppy disk icon that appears near your avatar. You can see that in the screenshot, below:
click the floppy disk icon to download hand history