Ivo Reis

Generic Interface: for Developing Abstract Strategy Games Ivo Reis

Abstract games have always been a part of human societies, being excellent tools for conveying knowledge, express cultural ideals and train thought processes. To understand their cultural and intellectual significance is not only an important part of anthropological studies but also a pivotal catalyst in advances in computer sciences. In the field of Artificial Intelligence in particular, the study of abstract games provides ways to understand the relations between rule sets and playing strategies. The aim of this book is to describe the different stages of the Generic Interface project, consisting in the development of a generic platform capable of creating any kind of abstract strategy game using the Zillions of Games rules language. It is essentially divided in three phases: research on board games and related topics, design and specification of a system that could generate such games and lastly the development of a working prototype.