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Randomness: A Seed of Doubt
April 22nd 2002, 14:22 CEST by m0nty The new 1.21f patch for Civilization 3 introduces a new option to the world-building screen to incorporate more randomness into the game mechanics, which raises issues about game design and customer feedback in patches. Previous versions of the Civ3 executable generated a single "random seed", a string of numbers which is referred to by the in-game random number generator, and used it for all battles and other events within the Civ3 game which required an unpredictable element. The random number is usually entered into an equation with a number extrapolated from the PC's internal clock to generate the random number, although in the case of Civ3 it seems the random seed is the only external element introduced into the equation. What this meant in game terms pre-1.21f was that the "random" events would stay predictable after they happened, so that if your Musketeer lost a fight with a Rifleman, when you loaded a savegame back up again and went through the same movements, you would lose that fight in exactly the same way. The new patch allows the option for the program to regenerate a new random seed every time a game is loaded, so that quickload-freaks who want their Spearman to beat that Tank can conceivably keep reloading and reloading until the random numbers fall their way. Personally, I thought the original design to maintain the original random seed was a good one, because it forced savegame whores like me to come up with clever strategies to win battles and achieve in-game goals, rather than just hitting reload every time they lost a unit. Playing with the new patch with the option to change the seed at every reload makes it feel like a different game - one which took the requests of players too far. Some of the fans even complained that the options couldn't be changed for old saved games. There are some times as a developer, I would contend, when you have to disregard the bleating of the hardcore fans for their pet gameplay change and stick to your design principles. Do you agree, or is the customer always right? Should developers cave in to pressure from gamers to let them win with less effort by, in effect, breaking their game? Are savegame whores playing the game wrong? How often do you hit reload just because you lost one hit point or 5% stamina, or spent more than the minimum amount of ammo to kill the umpteenth Skaarj, shambler or Stormtrooper? |
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Topic: Randomness: A Seed of Doubt
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I seem to remember that in Civilisation 1 the AI would randomly build wonders. One turn they wouldn't even be building it and the next turn it would be theirs. A recognised tactic at the time was just to reload the last turn if the AI 'built' something you were close to completion on. Next (reloaded) turn, they wouldn't build it. Seems to jar with the saved seed at the start of the game thing. It might explain why some games seemed easy and others seemed hard though. |
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In thread hijacking news, I think Apache has finally hit the vino one too many times...I mean, what the hell is going on over there? Will warez for food.
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Nova: Where is the strategy in winning every time? Or knowing that if you need to win, you just can? just figure, perhaps, that your average mainstream gamer isn't napoleon or patton. the only way to learn how to do something is to do it wrong, then see how it's done right. fixed-seed reloads let you do this. of course, you could complain that goddamnit, it needs to be realistic and that's how battles ARE is random and if you don't like the heat get out of the kitchen. then you could join the flight-sim diehards in a couple of years bitching about how no one makes games for you any more. for pretty much the same reason. - if you can laugh at it, you can live with it.
- "Hey, how 'bout this: fuck you." -LPMiller |
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How fortunate then, that most of the folks that play these games will never be responsible for the defense of this or any other country. Will warez for food.
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I never understood the flight sim crowd. I thought the point of games was to escape the tedium of real life. What would Jesus warez?
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LPMiller...could you give me a clue as to what I'm supposed to be looking at? I don't go to VE, so...what's the story? Nothing leapt out at me as being unusually stupid/ugly/pretty/weird/pornographic, etc. |
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crash, I personally don't care if someone needs to cheat to win. My questions weren't really there to be answered... I just personally can't understand that line of thought. I think an interesting thing is that this does come down to the developer forcing his vision on to the player. I think jafd is right on this one. Let the player decide. Forcing the desicion for them, just alienates people who might otherwise enjoy the game and play. Still though, I don't understand how people can enjoy a strategy game if they are able to make sure they win, every time. heh. Bailey: Beep beep, motherfucker.
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So...the one post, at 2:15 am, promising news, with no followup, isn't a hint? Will warez for food.
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Erm...I just see a general entry page with a bunch of links to junk...no promises of news, no 2:15 am...? Do you have some cookie based custom view maybe? |
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oh sure, NOW he changes it. Apache, you fucker. Will warez for food.
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I'm baking right now. Does that make me less of a man? -- Martin
Business as usual. |
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Bailey - post #33 I never understood the flight sim crowd. I thought the point of games was to escape the tedium of real life. The problem with the flight-sim crowd is the same problem that the rest of the gaming community (such as it is) has: a highly vocal minority that cannot and will not be placated. They spend all their time peeling back layers trying to find that last little bit that they think is wrong, and when they find it, they jump on the high horse and rant for all they are worth until a) they get their way, or b) they find another problem to rant about. I will say this though, the flight-sim crowd is infinitely preferable to the l337 d00d contingent that plagues the FPS/MMORPG crowd. For the most part, they tend to be more tolerant, particularly in regards to newbies. As long as you don't start pressing hot buttons, you can actually get help from most of them. Having said that, I agree that they are overly concerned with the concept of realism. To the point where they would rather have a game that is realistic to the nth detail, rather than close enough but playable. As an example, IL2 Sturmovik is a great game, with a major flaw. It is a beast to play, because you have to be concerned with every little detail regarding flight. You spend as much time as possible simply keeping the aircraft up in the air as you do anything else. Realistic, yeah, but hard to do in your typical desktop environment. And they consider this good. It makes creating games for them difficult and expensive, and they are not a large market to begin with. Microsoft is really the only developer left that has a long track record with their flight sims. How fortunate then, that most of the folks that play these games will never be responsible for the defense of this or any other country. There was a story a couple of years ago about a kid who got into the Air Force Academy, based on his simulator performance. He basically walked into the academy knowing everything he needed to know about operating f16's from playing sims at home. |
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VeeSPIKE The problem with the flight-sim crowd is the same problem that the rest of the gaming community (such as it is) has: a highly vocal minority that cannot and will not be placated. Which is the situation where I would fall back on the sound practice of ignoring the vocal minority. I mean, let's face it, most flight sim sales are likely people who go "Oh cool, planes" and install it, try to play it six times, then walk away. You're talking about an sharply defined niche market with a rather group of complainers. Ignore 'em. They threaten to not buy your product? What, you lose 200 sales? Big deal. There was a story a couple of years ago about a kid who got into the Air Force Academy, based on his simulator performance. He basically walked into the academy knowing everything he needed to know about operating f16's from playing sims at home. So he was able to get into the academy with his knowledge, but how much basic training did it take before he could wedge his ass into the cockpit? What would Jesus warez?
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LPMiller: How fortunate then, that most of the folks that play these games will never be responsible for the defense of this or any other country. not to belabor the point, but perhaps this is the very reason they play these games--because they are not military-trained generals. call it a hunch. Nova: Still though, I don't understand how people can enjoy a strategy game if they are able to make sure they win, every time. perhaps they're playing it as a game, in the hopes that they'll eventually win. perhaps they're not taking Civ3 as a West Point substitute. crazy idea, that people would play games to have fun, but hey, i'm a crazy guy. - if you can laugh at it, you can live with it.
- "Hey, how 'bout this: fuck you." -LPMiller |
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I won't take up too much of your time, but I'd like to make a short personal thread hijack. I inherited a mobo with a PIII 500 and no markings or logo that i can see. Also no documentation or box. I have no idea what kind of mobo it is other than it accepts a PIII 500 and PC100 ram. Is there any way for me to find out what the fastest processor is that it will accept? Thanks for any answers and return to this random topic about randomness. Warez is naughty, saving your game is a personal choice and the coffee was just too damn hot.
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completely politically incorrect. with that said, i can't get more than six fatalities at a time. - if you can laugh at it, you can live with it.
- "Hey, how 'bout this: fuck you." -LPMiller |
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#43: Boot the thing up, hop into the BIOS setup and see if you can glean any manufacturer information from there. "If it was so, it might be; and if it were so, it would be; but as it isn't, it ain't. That's logic." -- Lewis Carroll
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crash- crazy idea, that people would play games to have fun, but hey, i'm a crazy guy. Of course people play to have fun. All I'm saying is that personally, I don't find winning non-stop fun, and as such, I can't understand those who do. No need to read any more in to it than what is there. Bailey: Beep beep, motherfucker.
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jjohnson, you need this thang here. Will warez for food.
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crash The best I got was five kills, three injured. What would Jesus warez?
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Of course people play to have fun. All I'm saying is that personally, I don't find winning non-stop fun, and as such, I can't understand those who do. No need to read any more in to it than what is there. So losing is more fun to you then? I mean, the ultimate goal of a game is to beat it...to win. As long as the process of winning is enjoyable, then what's the beef? Will warez for food.
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I like flight sims. I thought the point of games was to escape the tedium of real life. Or to do things that I would never be able to do otherwise. And to feel like I really am in control, rather than just hitting a few keys and repeating until my character makes it to the next cutscene. Besides, all the little details quickly become instinctual. I remember what a bitch it was to learn to play BC3K, but once I did, I remembered. There's a fine line between making the game challenging enough for the majority of gamers, and also making it a challenge for the hardcore anal retentives with time to play for 8 hours per day until they have the mad skillz. Sometimes I just want to have fun and have no challenge at all, and sometimes I spend 8 hours a day overcoming a challenge. Usually those require separate games. If I could do both in one game, I would be happy. I suspect many people would. For example, I thought the easiest setting of the Serious Sam games still required too much work. |
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crash: with that said, i can't get more than six fatalities at a time my best is 4 with 3 injuries. i like monkeys. are you a monkey?
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Thanks LPmiller and dev, hopefully it will work. crash: with that said, i can't get more than six fatalities at a time my best is 4 with 3 injuries. How did you get six? Most i can get is 3 with 3 injuries. Maybe I'm just too impatient to wait for large groups. Blowing my wad early and all that. Warez is naughty, saving your game is a personal choice and the coffee was just too damn hot.
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I find it's best to wait and let them come to you. Patience is a virtue. What would Jesus warez?
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I won't take up too much of your time, but I'd like to make a short personal thread hijack. I inherited a mobo with a PIII 500 and no markings or logo that i can see. Also no documentation or box. I have no idea what kind of mobo it is other than it accepts a PIII 500 and PC100 ram. Is there any way for me to find out what the fastest processor is that it will accept? Go here and grab the BIOS Wizard program. If that doesn't work you'll have to used the BIOS Id string, if your lucky the company will acctauly have an entry at motherboards.org or one of the other id string searches (try google to find them), if not it's probably not worth the effort anyway. |
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jjohnsen: How did you get six? campin the edges. get 'em when they bounce back. - if you can laugh at it, you can live with it.
- "Hey, how 'bout this: fuck you." -LPMiller |
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On topic: This is a single player game. The random seed on/off toggle is a moral judgement by hardcore gamers upon casual players. Since hardcore players have no ownership over the playing enjoyment of casual players, there is no reason the random seed should not be on all the time. For the hardcore player, the choice is to to reload or not to reload. They choose if their own battle is final or if it would be cheating to reload. If they do "cheat" and reload, then the onus of cheating the game is their own moral dilemma to ponder sleeplessly. For the casual player the choice is to reload to get past a part they haven't got enough forces to actually beat except for favorable odds, and they get to "win" the game and earn satisfaction, creating happiness and replay value. They are not going to think, "I cheated, I suck." They are going to enjoy the game and maybe play it a couple more times. Hardcore players whine and complain all the time that newbs have it too easy and don't put in the time to enjoy the game asthetically - Well tough! They are just here to have fun and they pay the bills! I'd say put in a control-z and see how the hardcore right wingers struggle not to cheat. |
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If the casual players get some kind of elated feeling from knowing that they suck badly enough at a game to have to continuously reload a saved game until they get the outcome that they want, that's their problem. Maybe in the next patch they should add an option that immediately shows the victory screen and tells you how great of a job you did. I wouldn't mind at all except that Firaxis spent time on implementing this when they could have been working on multiplayer. |
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yes, because it took the whole team to create the little randomness toggle. Will warez for food.
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My point is that while it looks like they're adding more randomness into the game, they're actually taking more diversity of playstyles out by encouraging lazy gameplay. Meier has always done this - hell, there was a whole Cheat menu in Civ2 - so it's not entirely surprising, just disappointing. I mean, what sort of game would chess be if suddenly they changed the rules so that rooks could suddenly move diagonally as well? You could say that people could ignore the new rule, but it would be hurtful to the game, nonetheless. Is there a Quickload-Whore Anonymous that I can join to start a 12-step program? |
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I'd say put in a control-z and see how the hardcore right wingers struggle not to cheat. This sounds like a perfectly acceptable idea to me. Why bother with all that tedious re-loading? If you're going to cheat, may as well face up to it and go whole hog. Just as long as there's a way to turn it off, no problem. It's a single-player game, the more options for enjoyment, the better. Something else that would be good, just a toggle that says "never, ever, ever lose a battle." I assume this is something that would be disabled by default, yeah; but as stupid as I think the average person is, I can't see them being so stupid as to turn that on, and then get tired of the game too early because of it. Hell, put the information about it in the readme.txt, almost no one reads that anymore. So losing is more fun to you then? Well, without the possibility of "loss," to "win" becomes meaningless. If someone wants to reduce the experience of Civ3 to the level of The Sims, uh, sure, go right ahead and let them. "Hrrrm. I think the Pyramids would look really nice next to these Hanging Gardens. I'll just spawn 60 Caravans, bling-bling!" I mean, the ultimate goal of a game is to beat it...to win. Per-user setting. I suppose thinking goes, if one just gets to "the end" of the game without putting in the normally required effort, nothing has been "won" at all, thus utterly cheapening the experience... but it's a single player game. So it doesn't matter. At all. I'll admit to wishing that I didn't share atmosphere with these ghits who are of the opinion that cheating = fun, even at solitaire, but, hey; as long as it isn't multi-player, it's all good with me. It ought to be for just about everyone, imho. You just don't like being told what to do. Admit it.
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Did anyone here NOT use the God Mode cheat in DOOM? I didn't think so, you bunch of damn cheaters. You ruined the integrity of the game! |
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jafd Well, without the possibility of "loss," to "win" becomes meaningless. I'd have to concur, strongly. I used to love playing CounterStrike, since beta 2 up until about beta 5. By the end, a friend and I who played together constantly could pretty much take down a team of 8 on our own. Something to be proud of, in a geeky way. But one day on de_dust, I got a kill/death ratio of 30/1. What do you do after that? You can't lose anymore without handicapping yourself. Same deal happened with games like Rune, JK2, after a certain point, when you have the reactions, the knowledge, the ping, the system, you'll win almost every time. At which point, all the fun drains out of the game. What would Jesus warez?
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Time to join the professional gaming league for BIG MONEY PRIZES! Or just sell your blood for more beer money. |
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BobJustBob: Sure, just to play around with it. Did I use it to beat the game? I don't think I did. However, in Unreal I used the god mode to finish the game because I wanted to see all the levels but the game was getting too tedious to have to play through. Greg
-Swallow it all and be glad, for a shilling I've paid and a shilling's worth I'll be having! |
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A totally off topic.. None related post.. Tell me.. WTf happened to Apache? The last 3 posts from him have all dealt with his addiction to Daoc. As the Head editor to VoodooExtreme.. You would think he would have opinions on all the big releases for the pc in the last month or so. He hasn't played Dungeon Siege.. or Jedi Knight2.. and Freedom force.. 3 of the biggest releases of the last month. He kept mentioning that he would be going to purchase Jk2.. and then the words Daoc kept creeping into his posts. He said he was quitting after he hit.. LEvel 50.. like 5 days after he hit that "milestone" There he was posting about playing DAoc again. Now here is my question? WTF happened to him? This was a guy that a year ago.. played everything. Now he is becoming a poster child for Evercrack addicts. And while this addiction is going.. His employees have been the one who have had to carry the weight. On 2002-04-18 04:47:00 Some Sick fool said this.
"awww yeah, buzz baby, buzzzzz just for me." |
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I think you answered your own question. =) -chris |
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Go here and grab the BIOS Wizard program. If that doesn't work you'll have to used the BIOS Id string, if your lucky the company will acctauly have an entry at motherboards.org or one of the other id string searches (try google to find them), if not it's probably not worth the effort anyway. Well mine seems to be a phoenix bios which the site says can't be used to identify teh mobo, whatever that means. Thanks anyway. Any other suggestions? Warez is naughty, saving your game is a personal choice and the coffee was just too damn hot.
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Funny stuff --jmc
ICQ-121684 AIM-jmcdavel U=FAG0T |
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People need to stop using quicktime. :P -chris |
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devttys0 Time to join the professional gaming league for BIG MONEY PRIZES! Clans are great for teenagers, but they don't work for me. The only people I play with on a regular basis are those who don't make me wish team damage was on. And there's not enough of those in the world to form a clan. What would Jesus warez?
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Love the quicktime. Well, compared to realplayer at least. Warez is naughty, saving your game is a personal choice and the coffee was just too damn hot.
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There's been a few interviews about GTA3 PC (or rather one interview cloned three times) and it was announced that there will be no multiplayer, and apparently no first-person mode. Suck. But one feature that has me excited is a replay mode with saveable replay movies. I love replays. I still have a batch of replay movies from Carmageddon 2 that I sometimes watch. But anyway, they say that the replay movies are limited to the last 30 seconds. I was wondering: is there a technical reason for this? It seems that the replay length should depend on the memory available; that's how the the Carmageddon games handled it. My digital camera does that too -- only 60 seconds, no matter how big the Flash card is. Can anyone who knows more about this than me explain it? |
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GTA3 without MP isn't even worth warezing. Get creative or get the hell of my internet. What would Jesus warez?
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GTA3 without MP is still the best game released last year. If you don't have a PS2, and you're avoiding the PC release because of a lack of MP, then more's the pity for you. -chris |
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I finished the PS2 version, so what the hell does the PC version have to offer? Oh, right, jack all. Pass. What would Jesus warez?
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It's called a port. What did you expect? --jmc
ICQ-121684 AIM-jmcdavel U=FAG0T |
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I bet you think Halo will have all sorts of PC only special features too right? --jmc
ICQ-121684 AIM-jmcdavel U=FAG0T |
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So pass. =) If it comes down to a question of time/money, and Rockstar decides that they won't make enough of the latter to justify the former, then they're not going to add multiplayer. I don't think they're expecting anyone who played through and finished the PS2 version to buy the PC version. That's not why companies make ports. -chris |
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