In the summer of 1974, I was working on my master's thesis on visual binary stars. The thesis, "A Catalogue of Dynamical Parallaxes of Visual Binary Stars," was mostly a matter of computer programming, with judicious assessments of the occasional oddball binary star. Consequently I spent a lot of time at the university computer center. While working there one afternoon, I ran into a chap who was attempting to write a program that would play a boardgame called Blitzkrieg. It was a strategy wargame, using division-sized units maneuvering across continental-sized maps. I was skeptical of his project; it seemed to me that the task of creating algorithms for planning such movement was likely impossible. Nevertheless I was intrigued, and for the next few years mulled over the problem. After graduating, I taught physics at a small community college in Nebraska. In my spare time, I played board wargames and continued to wonder if it might be possible to program a computer to play a wargame. The problem of programming a strategy wargame seemed too difficult, but a tactical wargame of armored combat was a simpler proposition. With tanks, there are only a few combat units, each moving and fighting separately. Each one need only establish a simple line of sight to shoot at an enemy. Terrain considerations seemed simple enough. As I mused about the problem, I broke it down into sub-problems, writing down my rough approach to each. In this way, I convinced myself that the overall problem could in fact be solved. |