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Correlated randomness in Slay the Spire 2

tck.mn

11–20 of 92 posts

Re: Correlated randomness in Slay the Spire 2

#11
The trash heap event gave me the same relic the first 3 times in a row that I got it before it gave me anything else. I wonder that's another example of this correlation?

I hope the StS team is made aware of this and is able to make the earlier outcomes a bit more evenly spread, so that the distribution matches more closely with what people would intuit them to be.

Re: Correlated randomness in Slay the Spire 2

#14
post #8

I've always thought that random number generators are one of the best examples of Hyrum's law ("all observable behaviours are part of your API"): once you release a random number generators that either uses a default seed or allows you to seed it, you can't ever change it, it's a huge breach of backwards compatibility. Imagine if you did a Minecraft style game that relied on the behaviour of some PRNG, and then you c…

If you’ve played the game it makes sense to have the seed be settable and shareable. In Slay the Spire it can be exciting to have an outrageously unlikely starting state or early option, and in order for players to share this with each other the seed has to be user controlled. It’s a big part of what gives the game its community!

Re: Correlated randomness in Slay the Spire 2

#15

The trash heap event gave me the same relic the first 3 times in a row that I got it before it gave me anything else. I wonder that's another example of this correlation? I hope the StS team is made aware of this and is able to make the earlier outcomes a bit more evenly spread, so that the distribution matches more closely with what people would intuit them to be.

It always gives me Clash :(

Re: Correlated randomness in Slay the Spire 2

#17
post #2

> the game used several distinct pseudorandom number generators, to prevent e.g. randomness within a combat from influencing future card rewards. Why is this important? Feels like fixing what seems to be a non-issue lead to a bunch of real issues. With a good RNG it should not be possible to predict future numbers based on past numbers so players cannot manipulate card rewards in their favour based on combat actions,…

For a singular seed, they wanted the resulting run to be stable in the sense that small deviations in decision making does not result in a vastly different result (as far as random events are concerned)

Imagine the game of two players having the same state X. While combat, one player would trigger a random action, the other doesn't. After the combat, both should still get the same randomized reward options. This wouldn't work with just a singular RNG.

Re: Correlated randomness in Slay the Spire 2

#18
post #7
post #2

> the game used several distinct pseudorandom number generators, to prevent e.g. randomness within a combat from influencing future card rewards. Why is this important? Feels like fixing what seems to be a non-issue lead to a bunch of real issues. With a good RNG it should not be possible to predict future numbers based on past numbers so players cannot manipulate card rewards in their favour based on combat actions,…

The game stores and allows you to see the RNG seed that controls the run's events and layout. The developers want players to be able to share seeds that produce interesting runs. That requirement is what made this problem difficult for the devs to solve.

This shouldn't actually be difficult to solve though.

The issue is that knowing the offset of seeds helps predict outputs.

Instead of calling RNG(seed+hash(string)) 10x, make one RNG(seed) and call that 10 times to get random seeds for your 10 rngs. Now you have perfect determinism and no correlation.

Re: Correlated randomness in Slay the Spire 2

#19
post #2

> the game used several distinct pseudorandom number generators, to prevent e.g. randomness within a combat from influencing future card rewards. Why is this important? Feels like fixing what seems to be a non-issue lead to a bunch of real issues. With a good RNG it should not be possible to predict future numbers based on past numbers so players cannot manipulate card rewards in their favour based on combat actions,…

I don't think it's deliberate RNG manipulation they worry about. It's a single player (or coop) game after all. However, one of their design goals is that people playing on the same seed should have roughly the same game, it should feel "fair". Some things you probably want to be fairly random, for instance your card choices can depend on what cards you chose before. But it's also important that people choosing the e…

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