# Play 2048… using R!

April 19, 2014
By

(This article was first published on Decisions and R, and kindly contributed to R-bloggers)

I've lost about 100 hours over the past week to the black hole of 2048. In an attempt to extricate myself, I thought I'd try writing an R script to play for me. While there are already a ton of great algorithms for the game, I haven't seen any implemented in R.

There's a recent package, RSelenium that allows you to drive your browser through R, so we can jump right into playing the game. As an aside, it's definitely worth browsing through the really nice vignette to get a sense of just how cool this package is.

The code below is divided into a few sections. Section I loads RSelenium, and navigates to the 2048 site. Make sure that in the remDr command, you specify the right sort of browser – I'm using firefox, but it's pretty easy to adjust this (see the vignette).

Sections II - VI break down different steps in the development of an algorithm to play the game. The rough steps are (SII) writing a function to predict the next board states depending on which move is selected, (SIII) writing a few functions to report on features of these boards (for example, the sum of the scores on the tiles in a particular column), (SIV) writing functions to score the various potential future positions based on the features of the boards, and (SV, SVI) putting these together to actually play.

The algorithm I've written is mediocre at best – its mean score is around 7000, but it's won once or twice. It's a pretty thrown-together attempt, but I think it's fun to watch. Hopefully this'll be the antidote I've needed… code is below.

#### SECTION I: fire up the game #### require(RSelenium) checkForServer()startServer() remDr <- remoteDriver(remoteServerAddr = "localhost"                       , port = 4444                      , browserName = "firefox")Sys.sleep(10) remDr$open() # navigate to pageremDr$navigate("http://gabrielecirulli.github.io/2048/")  #### SECTION II: functions for predicting board states ##### functions to determine current board state:pos.strip = function(string){   first.cut = strsplit(string,split = " tile-position-")[[1]]  val.sub = as.numeric(strsplit(first.cut[1],split = "-")[[1]][2])  pos.sub = first.cut[2]  second.cut = strsplit(pos.sub,split = " ")[[1]][1]  third.cut = strsplit(second.cut, split = "-")[[1]]  conv.to.num = as.numeric(third.cut)  rev.order = rev(conv.to.num)  out = c(rev.order,val.sub)  return(out)} conv.to.frame = function(htmlParsedPage){ n1 = xpathSApply(htmlParsedPage,"//div[@class='tile-container']",xmlValue)n2 = xpathSApply(htmlParsedPage,"//div[@class='tile-container']//@class")n2 = n2[-1]curr.len = length(n2)n2 = n2[which((1:curr.len %% 2) == 1)] mat = t(sapply(n2,pos.strip)) rownames(mat) = 1:nrow(mat)colnames(mat) = c("x","y","val")mat = data.frame(mat) empty.frame = matrix(rep(NA,16),nrow = 4) for(i in 1:nrow(mat)){  empty.frame[mat$x[i],mat$y[i]] = mat$val[i]} return(empty.frame)} ## predicting next board state:comb.func = function(vec){ empty.vec = rep(NA,4) four.three = as.numeric(sum(vec[4] == vec[3],na.rm = TRUE)) three.two = as.numeric(sum(vec[3] == vec[2],na.rm = TRUE)) two.one = as.numeric(sum(vec[2] == vec[1],na.rm = TRUE)) layout.vec = c(two.one,three.two,four.three) if(all(layout.vec == c(1,1,1))){ empty.vec[3] = 2*vec[2] empty.vec[4] = 2*vec[4] } if(all(layout.vec == c(0,0,1))){ empty.vec[4] = 2*vec[4] empty.vec[1:3] = c(NA,vec[1:2]) } if(all(layout.vec == c(0,1,0))){ empty.vec[3] = 2*vec[3] empty.vec[2] = vec[1] empty.vec[4] = vec[4] } if(all(layout.vec == c(1,0,0))){ empty.vec[2] = 2*vec[2] empty.vec[3:4] = vec[3:4] } if(all(layout.vec == c(0,1,1))){ empty.vec[4] = 2*vec[4] empty.vec[1:3] = c(NA,vec[1:2]) } if(all(layout.vec == c(1,0,1))){ empty.vec[3] = 2*vec[2] empty.vec[4] = 2*vec[4] } if(all(layout.vec == c(1,1,0))){ empty.vec[3] = 2*vec[3] empty.vec[2] = vec[1] empty.vec[4] = vec[4] } if(all(layout.vec == c(0,0,0))){ empty.vec = vec } return(empty.vec)} collect.right = function(board){ first.move = t(apply(board,1,function(x){ n.na = sum(is.na(x)) stripped = x[!is.na(x)] comb = c(rep(NA,n.na),stripped) return(comb) })) second.move = t(apply(first.move,1,comb.func)) return(second.move)} ninety.rot = function(mat){ empty = matrix(rep(NA,16),nrow = 4) empty[1,] = mat[,4] empty[2,] = mat[,3] empty[3,] = mat[,2] empty[4,] = mat[,1] return(empty)} collect.down = function(board){ temp.turn = ninety.rot(board) collapse = collect.right(temp.turn) turn.back = ninety.rot(ninety.rot(ninety.rot(collapse))) return(turn.back)} collect.up = function(board){ temp.turn = ninety.rot(ninety.rot(ninety.rot(board))) collapse = collect.right(temp.turn) turn.back = ninety.rot(collapse) return(turn.back)} collect.left = function(board){ temp.turn = ninety.rot(ninety.rot(board)) collapse = collect.right(temp.turn) turn.back = ninety.rot(ninety.rot(collapse)) return(turn.back)} count.tiles = function(board){ sum(!is.na(board))} preds.lst = function(Parsed){ board.temp = conv.to.frame(Parsed) preds = list(orig = board.temp, left = collect.left(board.temp), right = collect.right(board.temp), up = collect.up(board.temp), down = collect.down(board.temp)) return(preds)} allowed.func = function(lst){ # note: this is a function of the output from preds.lst # returns the directions that are currently allowed. vals = unlist(lapply(lst[2:5],function(x){identical(x,lst[[1]])})) sub = names(vals)[which(vals == F)] return(sub)} legal.sub = function(Parsed){ preds = preds.lst(Parsed) moves = allowed.func(preds) out = preds[names(preds) %in% moves] return(out)} prep.to.send = function(choice.arrow){ return(paste(choice.arrow,"_arrow",sep = ""))} send.func = function(prepped.choice){ remDr$sendKeysToActiveElement(list(key = prepped.choice))} comb.move = function(arrow){  return(send.func(prep.to.send(arrow)))}  #### Section III: functions to determine properties of boards #### tiles.in.fourth = function(board){  sum(!is.na(board[,4]))} tot.sum.in.fourth = function(board){  sum(board[,4],na.rm = TRUE)}  bottom.right.val = function(board){  return(sum(board[4,4],na.rm = TRUE))} bottom.right.third.val = function(board){  return(sum(board[3,4],na.rm = TRUE))} bottom.right.sec.val = function(board){  return(sum(board[2,4],na.rm = TRUE))} bottom.right.first.val = function(board){  return(sum(board[1,4],na.rm = TRUE))} prep.for.next = function(board){  sum(board[,3] == board[,4],na.rm = TRUE)} prep.for.next.third = function(board){  sum(board[,2] == board[,3],na.rm = TRUE)} prep.for.next.second = function(board){  sum(board[,1] == board[,2],na.rm = TRUE)}  #### SECTION IV: scoring boards ####top.val.moves = function(score.vec){  raw.scores = score.vec  temp.max = max(raw.scores)  indx = which(raw.scores == temp.max)  maxima = names(raw.scores)[indx]  return(maxima)  } score.em = function(legal.board, FUN){  return(unlist(lapply(legal.board,FUN)))  }   #### SECTION V: algorithm for a single play #### play.func = function(parsed){  legal.boards = legal.sub(parsed)   bottom.right = score.em(legal.boards, bottom.right.val)  leftover.moves = top.val.moves(bottom.right)  leftover.boards = legal.boards[leftover.moves]  if(length(leftover.boards) == 1){    return(comb.move(names(leftover.boards)))}   bottom.right.third = score.em(leftover.boards, bottom.right.third.val)  leftover.moves = top.val.moves(bottom.right.third)  leftover.boards = legal.boards[leftover.moves]  if(length(leftover.boards) == 1){    return(comb.move(names(leftover.boards)))}   bottom.right.sec = score.em(leftover.boards, bottom.right.sec.val)  leftover.moves = top.val.moves(bottom.right.sec)  leftover.boards = legal.boards[leftover.moves]  if(length(leftover.boards) == 1){    return(comb.move(names(leftover.boards)))}     tot.fourth.scores = score.em(leftover.boards, tot.sum.in.fourth)  leftover.moves = top.val.moves(tot.fourth.scores)  leftover.boards = legal.boards[leftover.moves]  if(length(leftover.boards) == 1){    return(comb.move(names(leftover.boards)))}   prep.scores = score.em(leftover.boards, prep.for.next)  leftover.moves = top.val.moves(prep.scores)  leftover.boards = legal.boards[leftover.moves]  if(length(leftover.boards) == 1){    return(comb.move(names(leftover.boards)))}   tile.tots = score.em(leftover.boards, function(x){20 - count.tiles(x)})  leftover.moves = top.val.moves(tile.tots)  leftover.boards = legal.boards[leftover.moves]  if(length(leftover.boards) == 1){    return(comb.move(names(leftover.boards)))}   prep.scores.third = score.em(leftover.boards, prep.for.next.third)  leftover.moves = top.val.moves(prep.scores.third)  leftover.boards = legal.boards[leftover.moves]  if(length(leftover.boards) == 1){    return(comb.move(names(leftover.boards)))}   prep.scores.second = score.em(leftover.boards, prep.for.next.second)  leftover.moves = top.val.moves(prep.scores.second)  leftover.boards = legal.boards[leftover.moves]  if(length(leftover.boards) == 1){    return(comb.move(names(leftover.boards)))}   rand.choice = leftover.moves[sample(1:length(leftover.boards),1)]  return(comb.move(rand.choice))}  execute = function(){  temp = htmlParse(remDr$getPageSource()[[1]]) play.func(temp)} #### SECTION VI Playing the game #### grand.play = function(){remDr$navigate("http://gabrielecirulli.github.io/2048/")temp2 = rep("Continue",2)while(temp2[2] != "Game over!"){  temp = htmlParse(remDr\$getPageSource()[[1]])  execute()  temp2 = xpathSApply(temp,"//p",xmlValue)  curr.score = as.numeric(strsplit(xpathSApply(temp,"//div[@class='score-container']",xmlValue),split = "\\+")[[1]][1])}return(curr.score)} # example:grand.play()

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