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Show HN: HearthSim, an AI and game simulator for Hearthstone Heroes of Warcraft

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Re: Show HN: HearthSim, an AI and game simulator for Hearthstone Heroes of Warcraft

#31

Post by gavanwoolery »

ciaranm wrote: post #30
gavanwoolery wrote: post #29

In order to balance the game I am working on, I am planning to use a somewhat similar automated system (although its good to note, you can get a very interesting statistical analysis by ignoring the AI and just playing random cards/skills/whatever you are testing against each other). This of course works best if you are selecting two discrete subsets of one superset and playing with card variance (random decks, contr…

FYI - the way your comment is formatted caused text to be hidden in a horizontal scroll bar which wasn't visible on Chrome on OS X - took me a good minute to figure out what was going on.

think I fixed it...

Re: Show HN: HearthSim, an AI and game simulator for Hearthstone Heroes of Warcraft

#32

Post by TheMakeA »

oyachai wrote: post #10
minimaxir wrote: post #3

Note that the game only implements about 50 cards of the 382 cards available in the game: https://github.com/oyachai/HearthSim/tree/master/test/com/he... BTW, if you haven't tried it yet, Hearthstone is a great CCG with a very fair progression system and very good polish/balance.

Yep, I'm up to about 100 cards at this time, working on the basic cards first. Besides the cards, there needs to be more work on the AI modeling... currently, it won't handle any card with elements of randomness to it. I think I have an idea on how to treat it (without the AI cheating), so that implementation is coming up... soon.

Are you implementing each card by hand? I was going to make something like this and was just going to regex match all of the cards (from HearthPwn). It seemed like there were few enough variations to make something like that possible.

Curious if you already tried automating it.

Re: Show HN: HearthSim, an AI and game simulator for Hearthstone Heroes of Warcraft

#33

Post by ciaranm »

gavanwoolery wrote: post #31
ciaranm wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FYI - the way your comment is formatted caused text to be hidden in a horizontal scroll bar which wasn't visible on Chrome on OS X - took me a good minute to figure out what was going on.

think I fixed it...

I think you fixed it as I was replying - please ignore!

Re: Show HN: HearthSim, an AI and game simulator for Hearthstone Heroes of Warcraft

#34

Post by [deleted] »

gavanwoolery wrote: post #31
ciaranm wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FYI - the way your comment is formatted caused text to be hidden in a horizontal scroll bar which wasn't visible on Chrome on OS X - took me a good minute to figure out what was going on.

think I fixed it...

[deleted]

Re: Show HN: HearthSim, an AI and game simulator for Hearthstone Heroes of Warcraft

#35

Post by dirtyaura »

gavanwoolery wrote: post #29

In order to balance the game I am working on, I am planning to use a somewhat similar automated system (although its good to note, you can get a very interesting statistical analysis by ignoring the AI and just playing random cards/skills/whatever you are testing against each other). This of course works best if you are selecting two discrete subsets of one superset and playing with card variance (random decks, contr…

To me Hearthstone didn't feel grindy at all compared to almost any other top IAP game available in App Store. I think Hearthstone hit a pretty good balance for freemium IAP model, I never felt that I had to pay to be able to play, unlike in most of the other freemium IAP games.

I agree that classing causes a bit too predicable deck strategies, MtG felt more balanced on this aspect.

What Hearthstone got right was the flow: they had to remove instants and introduce secrets and taunts, but with that they achieved an excellent flow for a turn-based card game.

Re: Show HN: HearthSim, an AI and game simulator for Hearthstone Heroes of Warcraft

#36

Post by jdmichal »

oyachai wrote: post #16
_halgari wrote: post #12

I'm a bit against the code style: https://github.com/oyachai/HearthSim/blob/master/src/com/hea... So the card that does the damage has to do the removal check for the minions? Talk about duplication of code. Wouldn't something like this be better: engine.dealDamage(1).to(Category.EnemyMinions);

Good suggestion, let me think about that.

If I may, I would suggest thinking about things in a way very similar to how Magic: The Gathering does, which is as a "state-based effect" or "triggered effect". This models very well into programming as event handlers watching state-changes and acting appropriately.

For instance, the most common state-based effect in MTG is death from damage. This is perhaps even easier to model in Hearthstone, as damage is persistent. Simply register event handlers on minions which get called whenever the health of a minion changes; if it's Death will then cause any "triggered effects" to fire, such as a deathrattle tigger. This is also easy; just a listener on the death event.

Re: Show HN: HearthSim, an AI and game simulator for Hearthstone Heroes of Warcraft

#37

Post by goldenkey »

ciaranm wrote: post #28
epriest wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How come then, that the simulator says that the player actually wins more games without The Coin? This isn't what the results say. The win rate for the player who goes first ("Player 0") rose from 41% to 61% when the player who goes second ("Player 1") was not given The Coin. This is summarized in the text: > The Coin basically makes what used to be a first player advantage into a first player disadvantage. Not bad…

As far as I'm aware, official stats from Blizzard is that the player going first is wins a higher % of the time than going second, despite the coin. I'll try and find the source. User dtech already found the source for me (: -> https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8020232

Not with all decks though apparently. Freeze mage can benefit from the coin immensely

Re: Show HN: HearthSim, an AI and game simulator for Hearthstone Heroes of Warcraft

#38

Post by ohashi »

goldenkey wrote: post #37
ciaranm wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As far as I'm aware, official stats from Blizzard is that the player going first is wins a higher % of the time than going second, despite the coin. I'll try and find the source. User dtech already found the source for me (: -> https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8020232

Not with all decks though apparently. Freeze mage can benefit from the coin immensely

Miracle rogue too (coin defias ringleader anyone?). Certain rush/zoo decks to get extra minions out faster can be overwhelming.

Re: Show HN: HearthSim, an AI and game simulator for Hearthstone Heroes of Warcraft

#39

Post by Kiro »

dtech wrote: post #9
NickPollard wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In that article, he shows that giving the coin to p1 (the 2nd player, it's 0-based) gives a /disadvantage/ to p0 (the 1st player), so it is actually beneficial for the player who gets the coin.

In the simulator maybe, but according to Blizzard statistics going first has a small advantage (51%-53% winrate in feb 2014: http://www.hearthpwn.com/news/296-developer-interview-with-e... ). It was much greater before the extra card and coin was added.

I don't see anything about The Coin in that interview. Where did you get 51%-53% from?

Re: Show HN: HearthSim, an AI and game simulator for Hearthstone Heroes of Warcraft

#40

Post by infiniteri »

arrogant wrote: post #11
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Adding a 'pretty good' card to a deck means you might draw that card when you need a critical one. Even though 'The Coin' is good, it may not work (as well) with the rest of the cards. As you say, 1 card, 1 round can decide the game.

While this is true in the general case, The Coin is an extra card added to your hand at the beginning of the game and is never a part of your deck. It is purely beneficial.

It is. Additionally the person who gets the Coin also gets an extra card in their starting hand. You can "mulligan" this card, or swap it out of your starting hand for another draw. Although this might seem relatively trivial, having an extra chance to mulligan a card increases your chances significantly of getting a card that you want in a specific matchup.
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