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Invisible Bunnies That Power World of Warcraft (2017)

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Re: Invisible Bunnies That Power World of Warcraft (2017)

#81

Post by yett »

kemayo wrote: post #59

In a similar vein, WoW has become a lot more dynamic and stateful over the years, and the somewhat-hacky solution used to track what the current character has actually done is invisible quests. It's the exact same system behind the scenes as the more-visible "kill ten rats" quests that NPCs give you, just hidden away so you're not told about them and tracking things like "you've looted this treasure chest in the open…

Wow thanks for this! I have sometimed wondered how I get 50 quests completed! achievement on a new alt even though I barely did 10 quests

Re: Invisible Bunnies That Power World of Warcraft (2017)

#82

Post by TeMPOraL »

sterlind wrote: post #76
TeMPOraL wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That kind of makes logical sense, though. Physical hidden chests are, after all, how almost all real life shops implement inventories. Those are typically inaccessible to players, too. (There is a part of shopping experience where the player grabs items and puts them in their own chest/basket prior to purchase. This works thanks to the security scheme of law enforcement NPCs dragging your ass to jail you can't save-s…

The jail mechanic is not too complex to implement, depending on the kind of game. It sounds pretty similar to the Keystone Kops in Nethack. Like Dwarf Fortress, it exchanges graphical detail for complexity.

> Nethack

> Dwarf Fortress

Ah yes, the two most complex videogames ever created :).

I do appreciate the remark, though. The mechanics may not be impossibly complex, it's just prohibitively complex for vast majority of the games.

(Which is a sad thing to me; I love games with lots of internal complexity.)

Re: Invisible Bunnies That Power World of Warcraft (2017)

#83

Post by TeMPOraL »

jcalx wrote: post #70
jimmaswell wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recall a story where the camera kept "dying" from explosions but I can't find it.

Under "Camera obscura" here: https://www.gamedeveloper.com/design/more-dirty-coding-trick...

This bug actually kind of added to realism :).

Re: Invisible Bunnies That Power World of Warcraft (2017)

#84

Post by TeMPOraL »

hutzlibu wrote: post #73

"Why is WoW a front for a morally questionable bunny labor operation? The short version is, programmers’ time is limited, and NPCs’ time is not. Programmer time is extremely valuable, and most of the ‘stuff’ that can be done in a game can be done by NPCs,” said Chapman. “NPCs already have to support things like pathing, casting spells, using weapons, doing various actions to other NPCs, etc. So, while you could in th…

Honestly, I see it as accidentally good design. Take the "laser turret pointer" mentioned earlier. If you're not doing an optics simulation, but engage in the magical thinking (usual in storytelling) and treat the impact point as the entity of interest, then... making the impact point another actor on the scene suddenly makes perfect sense. Between the article and the comments, a lot of things bunnies/spectral cats/minions are known to be used for make perfect sense, and I'd consider explicitly planning for it when designing a new game.

Still:

> But they still made lots of money this flawed system, though, which is a good reminder, that the most important thing for any product is usually, does it work?

That is a very good point, especially in videogames/entertainment. Reminds me of the "first law of 3D game graphics" I read somewhere - "if it looks good, it's good - no matter the amount of cheating going on".

Re: Invisible Bunnies That Power World of Warcraft (2017)

#85

Post by TeMPOraL »

jvanderbot wrote: post #71
Spivak wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except of course for all the ontologies in your language's standard library that you don't even notice. Your IO hierarchy, exception hierarchy, your collections hierarchy. As long as you don't kingdom of nouns everything any repeat the mantra: "classes are just interfaces with code reuse" you'll be fine.

This is factually correct, but misses the point I was trying to make. I'll fall on my sword there. What I mean is: For library developers, inheriting an interface makes some sense. But throwing in an ontology that is meant to mimic human-like classification (esp just for the sake of it) is a disaster in all the code I've seen. There really isn't any reason for a Shape: Circle hierarchy. The better abstraction is arou…

You're correct here. I see this as a - still too common[0] - lack of understanding of what classification/ontology/taxonomy is. Categories are made for humans. They're arbitrary and judged only by one thing - are they good enough for the problem being solved. In this sense, reflecting a real-life ontology in your code is usually doing things backwards - it's the code that should invent it's own ontology that's maximally convenient for the problem being solved[1]. Real-life ontologies all have their purposes, but they usually don't include making it easier for you to write software.

--

[0] - Is tomato a fruit or a veggie? Is a whale a fish or a mammal? Etc. The answer to that is just "either, none, whatever - it's you who are confusing culinary, economic and genetic taxonomies".

[1] - Which is some combination of code thinking and domain thinking. It's never just purely one of them.

Re: Invisible Bunnies That Power World of Warcraft (2017)

#86

Post by TeMPOraL »

deadbabe wrote: post #80
Jyaif wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ECS is really the best way to make games. A little bit of nuance would go a long way. Even in games where ECS is a good match, having to implement a boss with ECS is wasteful in terms of dev time and performance: You have to create components and matching systems unique to the boss, where with a traditional approach you just have to create a single Boss class.

A boss is nothing special it is just an entity, also after you beat up the boss you can have later enemies use components from the boss to reflect the players progress in killing enemies using similar mechanics as the boss, until you reach a final big boss.

On the other hand, the classical approach lets you treat the boss as the one-off actor of an one-off scene, which it really is. This narrows the scope of your work (and associated testing). Integrating it into your overall ECS means you either make all aspects of a boss fully generic, working everywhere, or risk someone at some point adding "SpecialLaserCannonHelmet_Boss1" component to a random mook and breaking the game.

Re: Invisible Bunnies That Power World of Warcraft (2017)

#87

Post by deadbabe »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #86
deadbabe wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A boss is nothing special it is just an entity, also after you beat up the boss you can have later enemies use components from the boss to reflect the players progress in killing enemies using similar mechanics as the boss, until you reach a final big boss.

On the other hand, the classical approach lets you treat the boss as the one-off actor of an one-off scene, which it really is. This narrows the scope of your work (and associated testing). Integrating it into your overall ECS means you either make all aspects of a boss fully generic, working everywhere , or risk someone at some point adding "SpecialLaserCannonHelmet_Boss1" component to a random mook and breaking the…

It wouldn’t break the game, it just probably wouldn’t render correctly since a boss works with certain graphics.

Having a one off actor is really limiting. You can create several boss components and build entire permutations of bosses just by mixing and matching them up, without writing specialized code. Designers can put together the entities without developer input.

Re: Invisible Bunnies That Power World of Warcraft (2017)

#88

Post by Already__Taken »

h4kor wrote: post #8

Building custom maps in WarCraft3 also involved a lot of invisible units to create unique spells. Creators generally used toads or sheep for these effects. I've created a custom map turning the system a round, where you played the invisible critters instead of the hero :D

oh that map was you? I was completely baffled as a kid whatever that map was about

Re: Invisible Bunnies That Power World of Warcraft (2017)

#89

Post by alasdair_ »

eqvinox wrote: post #36

The only thing that bugs me about this is that they used bunnies rather than making a specific "spell effect/scripting" NPC. (I mean just one type to be used everywhere rather than bunnies, not a new one for each use.) It's common enough of a pattern in other games, and the #1 bug is that someone forgets to click the "invincible" checkbox somewhere, your scripting 'bunny' dies, and then the game just breaks. If you c…

Perhaps the most famous time this happened in an MMO was the assassination of Lord British.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lord_British

Re: Invisible Bunnies That Power World of Warcraft (2017)

#90

Post by sterlind »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #82
sterlind wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The jail mechanic is not too complex to implement, depending on the kind of game. It sounds pretty similar to the Keystone Kops in Nethack. Like Dwarf Fortress, it exchanges graphical detail for complexity.

> Nethack > Dwarf Fortress Ah yes, the two most complex videogames ever created :). I do appreciate the remark, though. The mechanics may not be impossibly complex, it's just prohibitively complex for vast majority of the games. (Which is a sad thing to me; I love games with lots of internal complexity.)

I love them too. I'm hopeful LLMs may eventually help fill in the details and lead to complex generative mechanics like this.
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