Maven (Scrabble) on Scrabble. The problem with Alpha Beta is that some Scrabble endgames require 14 moves to play out, and it is not possible to search that deeply. This is not merely a theoretical possibility. When one player is "stuck" with a tile, then playing out all remaining tiles is impossible. In that situation the optimal strategy for both sides is usually to play one tile on each turn. Maven uses a different approach. The B* search algorithm is a selective-depth, progressive-widening algorithm that guarantees to find optimal solutions to two-player games when one can compute upper and lower bounds on
Tile-based video game Much video game hardware from the late 1970s through the mid 1990s had native support for displaying tiled screens with little interaction from the CPU. Tile-based games are not a distinct video game genre; rather, the term refers to the technology a game engine uses for its visual representation. For example, "Ultima III" is a role-playing video game and "Civilization" is a turn-based strategy game, but both use tile-based graphic engines. Tile-based engines allow developers to create large, complex gameworlds efficiently and with relatively few art assets. Tile-based video games usually use a texture atlas for performance reasons. They also