After quite a bit of testing by myself and others, I've switched over the 'Beta' bots to be the official 'Advanced' bots. I thank everyone who tested the logic and also gave me some great feedback on tactics.

The Advanced bots are available by following the directions on the Coloretto page by clicking the Coloretto Topic link in the upper left hand corner of the site.

I've spent a few hours creating slightly tougher bot logic and if you'd like to try it out, select the 'Beta' option in the new skill-level drop down before you start the game. In developing the new bots I did run across some defects in the original bot logic that I needed to rely on in the derived work. I fixed the defects I ran across so I hope I haven't totally destroyed the original logic.

I'm still going to take a closer look at the beta bot logic but I thought I'd get it out there for people to play with. I'm very open to suggestions and I'm pleased to recieved any feedback via comments on this story.

If you've never played, I invite you to play by following the Coloretto link under Topics in the upper left corner of the site.

Now...if I can only find some time to start implementing an online version of my own unpublished prototype...

Please refresh your browser while viewing the Coloretto game page before trying out the new beta bots. There may be an issue of not picking up the new scripts if your browser is caching the older version of the code.

There is a small yet significant issue with the game. If you begin taking your turn while cards are still moving you can lock up the game. To avoid the problem, wait until all cards have stopped moving before beginning your turn. I'll be making the necessary changes to prevent this but I wanted to make sure everyone is aware of the issue.

Edit

I updated the bots so that you cannot make a move until it's completely your turn. If you still see an issue, let me know.

I updated the bot logic a bit to calm down their card greed in some situations. Still more to go but hopefully this will make them not 'push their luck' so much.

My implementation of Coloretto by Michael Schacht is now available. The intelligence of the 'bot' opponents is not quite there yet (still working on that part) but the game is playable and I thought I'd open it up and start getting a little feedback while I'm at it. Feel free to comment on this story if you have any issues and/or questions. You can get to the game in many ways. The easiest is to create a browser bookmark to the following URL: http://www.marquand.net/games/coloretto You can also come to the marquand.net directly and click on the blue Coloretto Topic Link (in the upper left hand corner). Enjoy.