Use tabletopgames.ai’s open source TAG and PyTAG frameworks to apply Statistical Forward Planning and Deep Reinforcement Learning to two board games of our own design. On an all-green, all-open source, all-AWS stack!
A chameleon playing chess in a train car, as a metaphor of SUSE AI applied to games


Results: Infrastructure Achievements

We successfully built and automated a containerized stack to support our AI experiments. This included:

A screenshot of k9s and nvtop showing PyTAG running in Kubernetes with GPU acceleration

./deploy.sh and voilà - Kubernetes running PyTAG (k9s, above) with GPU acceleration (nvtop, below)

Results: Game Design Insights

Our project focused on modeling and analyzing two card games of our own design within the TAG framework:

  • Game Modeling: We implemented models for Dario's "Bamboo" and Silvio's "Totoro" and "R3" games, enabling AI agents to play thousands of games ...in minutes!
  • AI-driven optimization: By analyzing statistical data on moves, strategies, and outcomes, we iteratively tweaked the game mechanics and rules to achieve better balance and player engagement.
  • Advanced analytics: Leveraging AI agents with Monte Carlo Tree Search (MCTS) and random action selection, we compared performance metrics to identify optimal strategies and uncover opportunities for game refinement .

Cards from the three games

A family picture of our card games in progress. From the top: Bamboo, Totoro, R3

Results: Learning, Collaboration, and Innovation

Beyond technical accomplishments, the project showcased innovative approaches to coding, learning, and teamwork:

  • "Trio programming" with AI assistance: Our "trio programming" approach—two developers and GitHub Copilot—was a standout success, especially in handling slightly-repetitive but not-quite-exactly-copypaste tasks. Java as a language tends to be verbose and we found it to be fitting particularly well.
  • AI tools for reporting and documentation: We extensively used AI chatbots to streamline writing and reporting. (Including writing this report! ...but this note was added manually during edit!)
  • GPU compute expertise: Overcoming challenges with CUDA drivers and cloud infrastructure deepened our understanding of GPU-accelerated workloads in the open-source ecosystem.
  • Game design as a learning platform: By blending AI techniques with creative game design, we learned not only about AI strategies but also about making games fun, engaging, and balanced.

Last but not least we had a lot of fun! ...and this was definitely not a chatbot generated line!

The Context: AI + Board Games

Board games have long been fertile ground for AI innovation, pushing the boundaries of capabilities such as strategy, adaptability, and real-time decision-making - from Deep Blue's chess mastery to AlphaZero’s domination of Go. Games aren’t just fun: they’re complex, dynamic problems that often mirror real-world challenges, making them interesting from an engineering perspective.

As avid board gamers, aspiring board game designers, and engineers with careers in open source infrastructure, we’re excited to dive into the latest AI techniques first-hand.

Our goal is to develop an all-open-source, all-green AWS-based stack powered by some serious hardware to drive our board game experiments forward!

Our Motivation

We believe hands-on experimentation is the best teacher.

Combining our engineering backgrounds with our passion for board games, we’ll explore AI in a way that’s both challenging and creatively rewarding. Our ultimate goal? To hack an AI agent that’s as strategic and adaptable as a real human opponent (if not better!) — and to leverage it to design even better games... for humans to play!

Silvio Moioli & Dario Leidi

This project is part of:

Hack Week 24

Activity

  • 23 days ago: mbologna liked this project.
  • 23 days ago: PSuarezHernandez liked this project.
  • 26 days ago: vliaskovitis joined this project.
  • 26 days ago: livdywan liked this project.
  • 27 days ago: vliaskovitis liked this project.
  • 29 days ago: aruiz liked this project.
  • 29 days ago: moio added keyword "games" to this project.
  • 29 days ago: moio added keyword "gamedesign" to this project.
  • 29 days ago: moio added keyword "boardgames" to this project.
  • 29 days ago: moio added keyword "terraform" to this project.
  • 29 days ago: moio added keyword "containers" to this project.
  • 29 days ago: moio added keyword "amazon" to this project.
  • 29 days ago: moio added keyword "aws" to this project.
  • 29 days ago: moio added keyword "sles" to this project.
  • 29 days ago: moio added keyword "ai" to this project.
  • 29 days ago: moio added keyword "suse" to this project.
  • 29 days ago: moio added keyword "deeplearning" to this project.
  • 29 days ago: moio added keyword "python" to this project.
  • 29 days ago: moio added keyword "java" to this project.
  • 29 days ago: moio added keyword "kubernetes" to this project.
  • 29 days ago: moio liked this project.
  • 29 days ago: dleidi joined this project.
  • 29 days ago: dleidi liked this project.
  • 29 days ago: moio started this project.
  • 29 days ago: moio originated this project.

  • Comments

    • moio
      22 days ago by moio | Reply

      Day 1: infrastructure work

      • Silvio: focused on creating AWS/RKE2 Tofu scripts to deploy the Kubernetes infrastructure
      • Dario: focused on containerizing the TAG framework (Java part)

      Results:

    • moio
      22 days ago by moio | Reply

      Day 2: modeling Bamboo

      • Silvio and Dario paired to implement a TAG model of Dario's card game "Bamboo"

      Results:

      • https://github.com/moio/TabletopGames/commit/d1430cd6173c51756cd6694e13f3a3f59f8ef0ce a first implementation of Bamboo was created and runs against an MCTS AI agent
      • metrics from some tens of executions have been analyzed and some bugs were fixed. We are still suspicious others lie behind the surface. More work tomorrow on finding out whether the metrics are actually correct or we have bugs
      • a problem was found in tofu-tag, CUDA does not seem to work correctly. More investigation needed

    • moio
      21 days ago by moio | Reply

      Day 3: refining

      • Silvio: worked around the CUDA problem in tofu-tag. Seems like an early bug in openSUSE and SLES, which hasn't made it to SLE Micro yet, was found and reported! All works now
      • Silvio: also worked a bit on TAG metrics for another simple game "Totoro". Approach seems to be working
      • Dario fixed an embarassing bug in yesterday's "Bamboo" implementation and started working on balance

      Next up: implement the next game!

    • moio
      20 days ago by moio | Reply

      Day 4: modeling R3

      • Silvio and Dario paired to refine a TAG model of Silvio's card game "Totoro" and came to the definition of a "hard mode" for the game by comparing play statistics of an AI (MCTS) against a player choosing actions at random
      • Silvio and Dario paired to implement a TAG model of Silvio's card game "R3" - much more complex than the previous ones, but still manageable. The first implementation works, more work is needed to extract the right metrics and balance

      Results:

      Manuals + pictures of the three games modeled so far are upcoming! Stay tuned.

    • moio
      13 days ago by moio | Reply

      Day 5: Kubernetes, drivers, CUDA, oh my!

      • Silvio and Dario paired with the objective to run PyTAG, CUDA-accelerated via PyTorch, on the infrastructure defined in day 1. We started on Dario's host, to align bits before adding AWS, Kubernetes and containerization into the mix - and found quite some Python packaging challenges before hitting a wall on hardware support (graphic card was a bit too old). Ultimately we tried again on AWS via tofu-tag and things worked!

      Results:

      • more commits on our fork of TAG - Java packaging bits to make Python packaging easier
      • more commits on our fork of PyTAG - Python packaging and container building (including GitHub Action automation)
      • final bits on tofu-tag to tie it all together.

      It was a great HackWeek and we had a lot of fun!

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    Seems to be a Debian 12 derivative, so adding it could be quite easy.

    • [W] Reposync (this will require using spacewalk-common-channels and adding channels to the .ini file)
    • [W] Onboarding (salt minion from UI, salt minion from bootstrap script, and salt-ssh minion) (this will probably require adding OS to the bootstrap repository creator) --> Working for all 3 options (salt minion UI, salt minion bootstrap script and salt-ssh minion from the UI).
    • [W] Package management (install, remove, update...) --> Installing a new package works, needs to test the rest.
    • [I] Patching (if patch information is available, could require writing some code to parse it, but IIRC we have support for Ubuntu already). No patches detected. Do we support patches for Debian at all?
    • [W] Applying any basic salt state (including a formula)
    • [W] Salt remote commands
    • [ ] Bonus point: Java part for product identification, and monitoring enablement


    Contribute to terraform-provider-libvirt by pinvernizzi

    Description

    The SUSE Manager (SUMA) teams' main tool for infrastructure automation, Sumaform, largely relies on terraform-provider-libvirt. That provider is also widely used by other teams, both inside and outside SUSE.

    It would be good to help the maintainers of this project and give back to the community around it, after all the amazing work that has been already done.

    If you're interested in any of infrastructure automation, Terraform, virtualization, tooling development, Go (...) it is also a good chance to learn a bit about them all by putting your hands on an interesting, real-use-case and complex project.

    Goals

    • Get more familiar with Terraform provider development and libvirt bindings in Go
    • Solve some issues and/or implement some features
    • Get in touch with the community around the project

    Resources


    Rancher/k8s Trouble-Maker by tonyhansen

    Project Description

    When studying for my RHCSA, I found trouble-maker, which is a program that breaks a Linux OS and requires you to fix it. I want to create something similar for Rancher/k8s that can allow for troubleshooting an unknown environment.

    Goal for this Hackweek

    Create a basic framework for creating Rancher/k8s cluster lab environments as needed for the Break/Fix Create at least 5 modules that can be applied to the cluster and require troubleshooting

    Resources

    https://github.com/rancher/terraform-provider-rancher2 https://github.com/rancher/tf-rancher-up


    terraform-provider-feilong by e_bischoff

    Project Description

    People need to test operating systems and applications on s390 platform.

    Installation from scratch solutions include:

    • just deploy and provision manually add-emoji (with the help of ftpboot script, if you are at SUSE)
    • use s3270 terminal emulation (used by openQA people?)
    • use LXC from IBM to start CP commands and analyze the results
    • use zPXE to do some PXE-alike booting (used by the orthos team?)
    • use tessia to install from scratch using autoyast
    • use libvirt for s390 to do some nested virtualization on some already deployed z/VM system
    • directly install a Linux kernel on a LPAR and use kvm + libvirt from there

    Deployment from image solutions include:

    • use ICIC web interface (openstack in disguise, contributed by IBM)
    • use ICIC from the openstack terraform provider (used by Rancher QA)
    • use zvm_ansible to control SMAPI
    • connect directly to SMAPI low-level socket interface

    IBM Cloud Infrastructure Center (ICIC) harnesses the Feilong API, but you can use Feilong without installing ICIC, provided you set up a "z/VM cloud connector" into one of your VMs following this schema.

    What about writing a terraform Feilong provider, just like we have the terraform libvirt provider? That would allow to transparently call Feilong from your main.tf files to deploy and destroy resources on your system/z.

    Other Feilong-based solutions include:

    • make libvirt Feilong-aware
    • simply call Feilong from shell scripts with curl
    • use zvmconnector client python library from Feilong
    • use zthin part of Feilong to directly command SMAPI.

    Goal for Hackweek 23

    My final goal is to be able to easily deploy and provision VMs automatically on a z/VM system, in a way that people might enjoy even outside of SUSE.

    My technical preference is to write a terraform provider plugin, as it is the approach that involves the least software components for our deployments, while remaining clean, and compatible with our existing development infrastructure.

    Goals for Hackweek 24

    Feilong provider works and is used internally by SUSE Manager team. Let's push it forward!

    Let's add support for fiberchannel disks and multipath.

    Goals for Hackweek 25

    • Finish support for fiberchannel disks and multipath
    • Fix problems with registration on hashicorp providers registry


    ADS-B receiver with MicroOS by epaolantonio

    I would like to put one of my spare Raspberry Pis to good use, and what better way to see what flies above my head at any time? add-emoji

    There are various ready-to-use distros already set-up to provide feeder data to platforms like Flightradar24, ADS-B Exchange, FlightAware etc... The goal here would be to do it using MicroOS as a base and containerized decoding of ADS-B data (via tools like dump1090) and web frontend (tar1090).

    Goals

    • Create a working receiver using MicroOS as a base, and containers based on Tumbleweed
    • Make it easy to install
    • Optimize for maximum laziness (i.e. it should take care of itself with minimum intervention)

    Resources

    • 1x Small Board Computer capable of running MicroOS
    • 1x RTL2832U DVB-T dongle
    • 1x MicroSD card
    • https://github.com/antirez/dump1090
    • https://github.com/flightaware/dump1090 (dump1090 fork by FlightAware)
    • https://github.com/wiedehopf/tar1090

    Project status (2024-11-22)

    So I'd say that I'm pretty satisfied with how it turned out. I've packaged readsb (as a replacement for dump1090), tar1090, tar1090-db and mlat-client (not used yet).

    Current status:

    • Able to set-up a working receiver using combustion+ignition (web app based on Fuel Ignition)
    • Able to feed to various feeds using the Beast protocol (Airplanes.live, ADSB.fi, ADSB.lol, ADSBExchange.com, Flyitalyadsb.com, Planespotters.net)
    • Able to feed to Flightradar24 (initial-setup available but NOT tested! I've only tested using a key I already had)
    • Local web interface (tar1090) to easily visualize the results
    • Cockpit pre-configured to ease maintenance

    What's missing:

    • MLAT (Multilateration) support. I've packaged mlat-client already, but I have to wire it up
    • FlightAware support

    Give it a go at https://g7.github.io/adsbreceiver/ !

    Project links


    Port the classic browser game HackTheNet to PHP 8 by dgedon

    Description

    The classic browser game HackTheNet from 2004 still runs on PHP 4/5 and MySQL 5 and needs a port to PHP 8 and e.g. MariaDB.

    Goals

    • Port the game to PHP 8 and MariaDB 11
    • Create a container where the game server can simply be started/stopped

    Resources

    • https://github.com/nodeg/hackthenet


    Enable the containerized Uyuni server to run on different host OS by j_renner

    Description

    The Uyuni server is provided as a container, but we still require it to run on Leap Micro? This is not how people expect to use containerized applications, so it would be great if we tested other host OSs and enabled them by providing builds of necessary tools for (e.g. mgradm). Interesting candidates should be:

    • openSUSE Leap
    • Cent OS 7
    • Ubuntu
    • ???

    Goals

    Make it really easy for anyone to run the Uyuni containerized server on whatever OS they want (with support for containers of course).


    ClusterOps - Easily install and manage your personal kubernetes cluster by andreabenini

    Description

    ClusterOps is a Kubernetes installer and operator designed to streamline the initial configuration and ongoing maintenance of kubernetes clusters. The focus of this project is primarily on personal or local installations. However, the goal is to expand its use to encompass all installations of Kubernetes for local development purposes.
    It simplifies cluster management by automating tasks and providing just one user-friendly YAML-based configuration config.yml.

    Overview

    • Simplified Configuration: Define your desired cluster state in a simple YAML file, and ClusterOps will handle the rest.
    • Automated Setup: Automates initial cluster configuration, including network settings, storage provisioning, special requirements (for example GPUs) and essential components installation.
    • Ongoing Maintenance: Performs routine maintenance tasks such as upgrades, security updates, and resource monitoring.
    • Extensibility: Easily extend functionality with custom plugins and configurations.
    • Self-Healing: Detects and recovers from common cluster issues, ensuring stability, idempotence and reliability. Same operation can be performed multiple times without changing the result.
    • Discreet: It works only on what it knows, if you are manually configuring parts of your kubernetes and this configuration does not interfere with it you can happily continue to work on several parts and use this tool only for what is needed.

    Features

    • distribution and engine independence. Install your favorite kubernetes engine with your package manager, execute one script and you'll have a complete working environment at your disposal.
    • Basic config approach. One single config.yml file with configuration requirements (add/remove features): human readable, plain and simple. All fancy configs managed automatically (ingress, balancers, services, proxy, ...).
    • Local Builtin ContainerHub. The default installation provides a fully configured ContainerHub available locally along with the kubernetes installation. This configuration allows the user to build, upload and deploy custom container images as they were provided from external sources. Internet public sources are still available but local development can be kept in this localhost server. Builtin ClusterOps operator will be fetched from this ContainerHub registry too.
    • Kubernetes official dashboard installed as a plugin, others planned too (k9s for example).
    • Kubevirt plugin installed and properly configured. Unleash the power of classic virtualization (KVM+QEMU) on top of Kubernetes and manage your entire system from there, libvirtd and virsh libs are required.
    • One operator to rule them all. The installation script configures your machine automatically during installation and adds one kubernetes operator to manage your local cluster. From there the operator takes care of the cluster on your behalf.
    • Clean installation and removal. Just test it, when you are done just use the same program to uninstall everything without leaving configs (or pods) behind.

    Planned features (Wishlist / TODOs)

    • Containerized Data Importer (CDI). Persistent storage management add-on for Kubernetes to provide a declarative way of building and importing Virtual Machine Disks on PVCs for


    Technical talks at universities by agamez

    Description

    This project aims to empower the next generation of tech professionals by offering hands-on workshops on containerization and Kubernetes, with a strong focus on open-source technologies. By providing practical experience with these cutting-edge tools and fostering a deep understanding of open-source principles, we aim to bridge the gap between academia and industry.

    For now, the scope is limited to Spanish universities, since we already have the contacts and have started some conversations.

    Goals

    • Technical Skill Development: equip students with the fundamental knowledge and skills to build, deploy, and manage containerized applications using open-source tools like Kubernetes.
    • Open-Source Mindset: foster a passion for open-source software, encouraging students to contribute to open-source projects and collaborate with the global developer community.
    • Career Readiness: prepare students for industry-relevant roles by exposing them to real-world use cases, best practices, and open-source in companies.

    Resources

    • Instructors: experienced open-source professionals with deep knowledge of containerization and Kubernetes.
    • SUSE Expertise: leverage SUSE's expertise in open-source technologies to provide insights into industry trends and best practices.


    New migration tool for Leap by lkocman

    Update

    I will call a meeting with other interested people at 11:00 CET https://meet.opensuse.org/migrationtool

    Description

    SLES 16 plans to have no yast tool in it. Leap 16 might keep some bits, however, we need a new tool for Leap to SLES migration, as this was previously handled by a yast2-migration-sle

    Goals

    A tool able to migrate Leap 16 to SLES 16, I would like to cover also other scenarios within openSUSE, as in many cases users would have to edit repository files manually.

    • Leap -> Leap n+1 (minor and major version updates)
    • Leap -> SLES docs
    • Leap -> Tumbleweed
    • Leap -> Slowroll
    • Leap Micro -> Leap Micro n+1 (minor and major version updates)
    • Leap Micro -> MicroOS

    Hackweek 24 update

    Marcela and I were working on the project from Brno coworking as well as finalizing pieces after the hackweek. We've tested several migration scenarios and it works. But it needs further polishing and testing.

    Projected was renamed to opensuse-migration-tool and was submitted to devel project https://build.opensuse.org/requests/1227281

    Repository

    https://github.com/openSUSE/opensuse-migration-tool

    Out of scope is any migration to an immutable system. I know Richard already has some tool for that.

    Resources

    Tracker for yast stack reduction code-o-o/leap/features#173 YaST stack reduction


    SUSE KVM Best Practices by roseswe

    Description

    SUSE Best Practices around KVM, especially for SAP workloads. Early Google presentation already made from various customer projects and SUSE sources.

    Goals

    Complete presentation we can reuse in SUSE Consulting projects

    Resources

    KVM (virt-manager) images

    SUSE/SAP/KVM Best Practices

    • https://documentation.suse.com/en-us/sles/15-SP6/single-html/SLES-virtualization/
    • SAP Note 1522993 - "Linux: SAP on SUSE KVM - Kernel-based Virtual Machine" && 2284516 - SAP HANA virtualized on SUSE Linux Enterprise hypervisors https://me.sap.com/notes/2284516
    • SUSECon24: [TUTORIAL-1253] Virtualizing SAP workloads with SUSE KVM || https://youtu.be/PTkpRVpX2PM
    • SUSE Best Practices for SAP HANA on KVM - https://documentation.suse.com/sbp/sap-15/html/SBP-SLES4SAP-HANAonKVM-SLES15SP4/index.html


    Port some classic game to Linux by MDoucha

    Let's pick some old classic game, reverse engineer the data formats and game rules and write an open source engine for it from scratch. Some games from 1990s are simple enough that we could have a playable prototype by the end of the week.

    Write which games you'd like to hack on in the comments. Don't forget to check e.g. on Open Source Game Clones, Github and SourceForge whether the game is ported already.

    Hack Week 24 - Master of Orion II: Battle at Antares & Chaos Overlords

    Work on Master of Orion II continues but we can hack more than one game. Chaos Overlords is a dystopian, lighthearted, cyberpunk turn-based strategy game originally released in 1996 for Windows 95 and Mac OS. The player takes on the role of a Chaos Overlord, attempting to control a city. Gameplay involves hiring mercenary gangs and deploying them on an 8-by-8 grid of city sectors to generate income, occupy sectors and take over the city.

    How to ~~install & play~~ observe the decompilation progress:

    • Clone the Git repository
    • A playable reimplementation does not exist yet, but when it does, it will be linked in the repository mentioned above.

    Further work needed:

    • Analyze the remaining unknown data structures, most of which are related to the AI.
    • Decompile the AI completely. The strong AI is part of the appeal of the game. It cannot be left out.
    • Reimplement the game.

    Hack Week 20, 21, 22 & 23 - Master of Orion II: Battle at Antares

    Master of Orion II is one of the greatest turn-based 4X games of the 1990s. Explore the galaxy, colonize planets, research new technologies, fight space monsters and alien empires and in the end, become the ruler of the galaxy one way or another.

    How to install & play:

    • Clone the Git repository
    • Run ./bootstrap; ./configure; make && make install
    • Copy all *.LBX files from the original Master of Orion II to the installation data directory (/usr/local/share/openorion2 by default)
    • Run openorion2

    Further work needed:

    • Analyze the rest of the original savegame format and a few remaining data files.
    • Implement most of the game. The open source engine currently supports only loading saved games from the original version and viewing the galaxy map, fleet management and list of known planets.

    Hack Week 19 - Signus: The Artifact Wars

    Signus is a Czech turn-based strategy game similar to Panzer General or Battle Isle series. Originally published in 1998 and open-sourced by the original developers in 2003.

    How to install & play:

    • Clone the Git repository
    • Run ./bootstrap; ./configure; make && make install in both signus and signus-data directories.
    • Run signus

    Further work needed:

    • Create openSUSE package
    • Implement full support for original game data (the open source version uses slightly different data file contents but original game data can be converted using a script).