GUI

Gambit’s graphical user interface provides an “integrated development environment” to help visually construct games and to investigate their main strategic features.

The graphical interface is largely intended for the interactive construction and analysis of small to medium games. Repeating the caution from the introduction of this manual, the computation time required for the equilibrium analysis of games increases rapidly in the size of the game. The graphical interface is ideal for students learning about the fundamentals of game theory, or for practitioners prototyping games of interest.

In graduating to larger applications, users are encouraged to make use of the underlying Gambit libraries and programs directly. For greater control over computing Nash and quantal response equilibria of a game, see the section on the command-line tools. To build larger games or to explore parameter spaces of a game systematically, it is recommended to use the Python package.

Installation

To install the Gambit GUI, visit the Gambit releases page on GitHub and download the appropriate installer or package for your operating system. Each release includes pre-built binaries for Windows, macOS, and Linux distributions, accessible under the “Assets” section of each release.

Manual macOS Build Instructions

To build and install the Gambit GUI from source on macOS, follow these steps:

1. Install build dependencies:

   brew install automake autoconf libtool
   

   Note

   If you encounter interpreter errors with autom4te, you may need to ensure your Perl installation is correct or reinstall the autotools:

   brew reinstall automake autoconf libtool
   

2. Download and build wxWidgets:

   curl -L -O https://github.com/wxWidgets/wxWidgets/releases/download/v3.2.8/wxWidgets-3.2.8.tar.bz2
   tar xjf wxWidgets-3.2.8.tar.bz2
   cd wxWidgets-3.2.8
   mkdir build-release
   cd build-release
   ../configure --disable-shared --disable-sys-libs
   make -j4
   sudo make install
   

3. Build and install Gambit:

   Navigate back to the Gambit source directory and run:

   aclocal
   automake --add-missing
   autoconf
   ./configure
   make
   sudo make install
   

4. Create macOS application bundle:

   To create a distributable DMG file:

   make osx-dmg
   

5. Install the application:

   After creating the DMG file, open it and drag the Gambit application to your Applications folder.

• General concepts
  • General layout of the main window
  • Payoffs and probabilities in Gambit
  • A word about file formats
• Extensive games
  • Creating a new extensive game
  • Adding moves
  • Copying and moving subtrees
  • Removing parts of a game tree
  • Managing information sets
  • Outcomes and payoffs
  • Formatting and labeling the tree
• Strategic games
  • Navigating a strategic game
  • Adding players and strategies
  • Editing payoffs
• Investigating dominated strategies and actions
  • Dominated actions in extensive game
  • Dominated strategies in strategic games
• Computing Nash equilibria
  • Selecting the method of computing equilibria
  • Viewing computed profiles in the game
  • Computing quantal response equilibria
  • Quantal response equilibria in strategic games (experimental)
• Printing and exporting games
  • Printing a game
  • Saving to a graphics file