Search Algorithms in gaming

The goal of search algorithms is to find the optimal set of moves so that they can reach at the final destination and win. These algorithms use the winning set of conditions, different for every game, to find the best moves.

Visualize a computer game as the tree. We know that tree has nodes. Starting from the root, we can come to the final winning node, but with optimal moves. That is the work of search algorithms. Every node in such tree represents a future state. The search algorithms search through this tree to make decisions at each step or node of the game.

The major disadvantage of using search algorithms is that they are exhaustive in nature, which is why they explore the entire search space to find the solution that leads to wastage of resources. It would be more cumbersome if these algorithms need to search the whole search space for finding the final solution.

To eliminate such kind of problem, we can use combinational search which uses the heuristic to explore the search space and reduces its size by eliminating the possible wrong moves. Hence, such algorithms can save the resources. Some of the algorithms that use heuristic to search the space and save the resources are discussed here:

Minimax Algorithm

It is the strategy used by combinational search that uses heuristic to speed up the search strategy. The concept of Minimax strategy can be understood with the example of two player games, in which each player tries to predict the next move of the opponent and tries to minimize that function. Also, in order to win, the player always try to maximize its own function based on the current situation.

Heuristic plays an important role in such kind of strategies like Minimax. Every node of the tree would have a heuristic function associated with it. Based on that heuristic, it will take the decision to make a move towards the node that would benefit them the most.

Alpha-Beta Pruning

A major issue with Minimax algorithm is that it can explore those parts of the tree that are irrelevant, leads to the wastage of resources. Hence there must be a strategy to decide which part of the tree is relevant and which is irrelevant and leave the irrelevant part unexplored. Alpha-Beta pruning is one such kind of strategy.

The main goal of Alpha-Beta pruning algorithm is to avoid the searching those parts of the tree that do not have any solution. The main concept of Alpha-Beta pruning is to use two bounds named Alpha, the maximum lower bound, and Beta, the minimum upper bound. These two parameters are the values that restrict the set of possible solutions. It compares the value of the current node with the value of alpha and beta parameters, so that it can move to the part of the tree that has the solution and discard the rest.

Negamax Algorithm

This algorithm is not different from Minimax algorithm, but it has a more elegant implementation. The main disadvantage of using Minimax algorithm is that we need to define two different heuristic functions. The connection between these heuristic is that, the better a state of a game is for one player, the worse it is for the other player. In Negamax algorithm, the same work of two heuristic functions is done with the help of a single heuristic function.