The, the defining characteristic of
General Game Playing is the
players don't know the rules of games
before those games begin.
Game rules are communicated only at
runtime and the players must be able to
read and understand the descriptions they
are
given in order to play legally and
effectively.
This characteristic carries with it the
requirement
of a language for writing game rules.
In general game playing, information about
games is typically
communicated to players in the formal
language called Game Description Language
or GDL.
As mentioned in the introduction, GDL is
widely used in the research literature.
And it's used in virtually all general
game-playing competitions.
Moreover, it forms the basis for some more
expressive variants that have
significant value in real-world
applications such
as enterprise management and computational
law.
As we shall see, GDL is a logic
programming language.
Game descriptions are logic programs
consisting of
rules that define the key elements of
games.
Such as initial conditions, move legality,
game
dynamics, rewards and termination and so
forth.
This lesson is an overview of GDL.
We're to begin with a detailed
introduction to logic programs in GDL.
We then look at a sample game description
and we'll look at
the use of this description in simulating
a match of the game.
Finally, we talk about some additional
requirements
on games that ensure that they are
interesting.
And we summarize the prefix syntax for
GDL used in most general game playing
competitions.