Month / June 2016

by Leif

SameGame with F# and Fable: Functional programming meets JavaScript

Fable is a compiler for F# to JavaScript.

It brings all the good parts of functional-first programming in F# to JavaScript development.

Even without a lot of knowledge of Node.js and the JavaScript ecosystem, it is fairly easy to get started with and use functional-first programming for client-side browser applications. Fable can also be used for client-server, Node, mobile or desktop applications.

After reading the very nice introductory tutorial Getting started with Fable and Webpack I was ready to make an implementation of SameGame.

It is integrated in this post and you can play it right here in the browser.

This sample was also published on Fable's official sample site where you can find more information on the implementation details.

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by Leif

A generic implementation of a Nested Monte Carlo Search for single player games

A 15\times 15 initial SameGame board has an upper bound of 1.97\times 10^{182} reachable board positions.

Therefore it can be extremely difficult to solve, even for computers.

A very promising approach to solving complex problems such as SameGame is the Nested Monte Carlo Search (NMCS). It is a very simple variation from the family of Monte Carlo Search algorithms, especially suited for single player games.

In this post we will see a generic implementation of the NMCS in Java that can easily be adapted to different problem domains.

But before we come to that, let's look at how the NMCS works.
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