Influence Map
Web-based interactive go maps.
Screenshots
N.B. Seki and dame in grey.
http://lyon-shinogi.jeudego.org/simulation_influence/
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Dieter: I did a little test. It apparently does not recognise ponnuki. Didn't test other captures. It's nice for a start: keep up the work!
LouisMeckes: Stones are in god mode, waiting for the next release :)
LouisMeckes: I added a map called "flux". It is some kind of mix between influence and tension. it seems interesting
agro1986: Nice. It would be great to have 9x9 and 13x13 board sizes.
knakts: Yes, 9x9 and 13x13 would be great. Also, a possibility to load an existing sfg file and walk back and forth according it. I started to create a game and made one mistake somewhere, now I have to click all the stones from the beginning.
DavidKay?: I played a little with it and I like the influence and concentration maps a lot. However, I think tension and instability can be improved. For instance, two unconditionally living territories butting up against one another have no tension or instability in a real game of go. I feel that instability comes when you have a mix of opposing stones (i.e. little influence for either side) and a low concentration. High concentrations of stones tend to lead to stability. That said, I like this tool. It's fun to play with and it's pretty ^_^.
anonymous: Is the source code available?
Tamsin: The screen-shots remind me of those gorgeous Hubble pics of the Horsehead nebula and other galactic sights. Perfect for cosmic go, ne?
rajmahendra: Is it possible to have it offline and in English version?
erikpan: As a mathematician, I just ask out of interest: does anyone know what model was used to generate these 'regions of influence'? Is it based on the data of many go games, or is it based on fluid dynamic/electrodynamic field equations or some such? I'd be very keen to know, thanks :)
anonymous: My best guess at the implentation is a lot simpler than you suggest, if this is anything like the "influence map" technique common in game AI. Here, it looks like each stone adds some influence to the grid behind it (Imagine B is positive, W is negative) inversely proportional to it's distance from that tile. The values are then summed. For the concentration map, B and W are both positive. I have no idea how tension works, but am interested if anyone has some insight here. "Instability" looks like the difference between tension and concentration. I attempted to contact the author, but unfortunately, it appears the e-mail address is invalid.
I could see this, combined with MoyoGo, a strong Pro Game Database for Fuseki, and something like Kogo's Yoseki Dictionary, with a Touchscreen as big as a real Go Board, where you place your stones in reality on the glass of the touchscreen board and the touchscreen realises it, and via buttons you can activate options like, fuseki patterns, influence and all others. On another small screen, Comments and the SGF tree can be displayed. This embeeded in a nice wooden Table.
This would be a great Go Board for learning purposes.
You play like on a real Go Board, but have the advantages of the computer and its database.
Ah in some years when I graduated College in IT I will maybe start to create something like this.
erikpan: please djmj, please please please make this! I've thought about this kind of thing before and wished someone would make one since I have no skills in this area. If you do develop such a thing, let us all know! :D
This appears to be described in the blog entry at http://gameschoolgems.blogspot.com/2009/12/influence-maps-i.html - at least, the images are clearly the same, not sure if the algorithms are.
(Sebastian:) This seems to have very little bearing on Go. It probably works for a game where you crush your opponent by sheer superiority of numbers, as in the computer games discussed in the blog. But it has no concept of eye space, which is why it treats the ponnuki just like a dango, as Dieter pointed out.
All it does is look at the density of stones (defined as convolution of the stone distribution with some arbitrarily chosen "dissipation" function), and do some very simple math based on that. Currently, the web site doesn't allow me to run the simulation ("La base de données est inaccessible"), but I am sure that it would believe the highest tension in the depicted board situation to be in the upper right corner, not around the lower left, where the actual action was. (This is corroborated by the statement "in circumstances when there is no conflict on the map this will give the greatest assembly of troops as the highest tension which in a way is true because where there are many troops there's a big chance of something happening." - which is certainly not true for Go!
Oliver: Does anyone know why the program is not accessible anymore? I wrote a mail to the developer some time ago without getting an answer. Didn't care much as I used to have a software, which did an influence simulation. Unfortunetly it's not available anymore. Combined with a good database such a thing is really a great tool to study Go. Are there alternatives?
chad: peepo.com hosts the pachi Go engine and provides a variety of visualisation options including influence maps. It's a pity this wiki-page is not in reverse date order ~:"
RobertJasiek: Can influence maps that work similar to light be used for anything else than recognising basic spheres of influence and stone distances? Other than that such influence maps are useless and should be replaced by my influence definition, which assesses n-connection, n-alive and n-territory.