I recently worked on typing in a program from BYTE Magazine. It was for a Scrabble game "simulation"/AI opponent. From the article accompanying the program you could tell that the author Joseph Roehrig was very proud of his creation. Working completely in BASIC he had managed to create an AI opponent for a very complex game. He had also created a version specifically for the TRS-80 that loaded as one file (i.e. could work from tape), only required a 32K machine (the oncoming standard replacing the 16K and 4K base versions first produced in 1977), and included a dictionary of over 700 words. Compromises had to be made for the sake of speed and storage. He limited the AI opponent to using only 2 and 3 letter words. There were other compromises made in terms of search rigor, and also you could choose a FAST game that lowered these standards even further. But it could play a basic game that certainly might challenge a kid or maybe neophyte players (it's hard for to tell as I'm a neophyte).
The year of 1981 was still firmly a year of the "type-in mania" early informal 8-bit computing period. Lots of home coders were making programs and sharing them with the wider world. The period of selling cassette tapes from home sold in a plastic baggies with some simple reproduced documentation folded in was still a reality, exemplified by Scott Adam's Adventure International company. At that point his "company" was essentially him and a loose group of collaborators. However, by 1983, the company had become a proper software company and had a location and 40 employees (by 1986 it would be bankrupt). It was somewhere in that period that computing pivoted from a do-it-yourself hobby, to an industry overseen by organized corporate actors serving clients. In researching about Roehrig's program in subsequent issues of BYTE to check for possible bug reports, I cam across the following letter:
We were pleased to see an article discussing the feasibility of a computer opponent for Selchow & Righter's popular Scrabble word game (see "Computer Scrabble," December 1981 BYTE, page 320). Others who are intrigued by this concept will appreciate knowing that the state of the art in microcomputer Scrabble has made a great leap forward. It is far beyond the boundaries that Mr. Roehrig tells us will not be broken by anything less than a new, superior generation of microcomputers.
"Monty plays the Scrabble Brand Crossword Game" (a computer-opponent program available on disk for the Apple II and TRS-80 Models I and III from Ritam Corporation for $39.95) demonstrates both speed and ability, within the constraints of today's microcomputers. Monty spends an average of only 4 1/2 minutes per move at the highest skill level, and yet it uses an extensive word list (over 50,000), based in part on the Official Scrabble Players Dictionary.
As for memory, the program requires no more than 48K bytes for Apple and 32K bytes for TRS-80 versions, much of which is ,devoted to machine-language graphics, music, and other user-interface requirements. The dictionary is accessed from disk and is stored in an average of only two bytes per word (with an average length of 6 or 7 letters) by use of advanced compression techniques. In addition, Monty is capable of challenging other players' words, based on linguistic analysis, without accessing the disk.
To give Mr. Roehrig's efforts due credit, the "game's complexities" do offer a challenge I It took us several major design breakthroughs, over four man-years of programming (for three different computers), and a lot of determination to develop "Monty plays Scrabble" without conceding to "certain constraints" on word length, search, and placement.
Although his conclusion that "improved computerized Scrabble will require a faster host computer with more memory capacity" has been disproved by example, we thank Mr. Roehrig for his article. It makes our endeavor seem quite worthwhile when we learn that we've achieved the impossible!
By the way, Mr. Roehrig neglected to properly acknowledge that Scrabble is a trademark of the Selchow & Righter Company, and to disclaim, as does Ritam, any sponsorship or endorsement by Selchow & Righter.
Robert Wall
Ritam Corporation
POB 921
Fairfield, IA 52556* Scrabble is a registered trademark of Selchow & Righter Company. We apologize for not acknowledging this in a prior article ... MH
(BYTE: Small Systems Journal, April 1982 Vol 7 No. 4., p. 20.)
TRS-80 Model I/III Version |
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