Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Solitaire

localthunk.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 164 posts

Re: Solitaire

#131

Post by beeflet »

ronyeh wrote: post #114
bigstrat2003 wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think Balatro is way too hard to be a good stress reliever. Unlike solitaire, I can barely win a run in Balatro and there's no indication as to what I could do better. I actually find it stressful more than stress relieving, if anything.

Hey! I've played it for a while now (and haven't even followed any Reddit / YouTube guides yet). Early game: Get a joker that gives you a big mult (e.g., Half Joker w/ +20 Mult for small hands). This will allow you to survive while you build out your points engine. (You can survive with flushes in the early game, but it can get harder to win with flush later, due to Bosses, unless you have flush friendly Jokers and a…

>Try easier hands like Two Pair or Pair or High Card

I've always found that bigger hands like Flush, Full House, Straight are easier to work with because they get more chips and mult whenever they level up. I've only used small hands if i've leveled them up a ton with "burnt joker"

I suppose it depends on how you use your discards. If you debuff discards and hand size, then it is harder to get big hands.

Re: Solitaire

#132

Post by pjerem »

ronyeh wrote: post #113
bombcar wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hello, it's me, Factorio.

I have known about this game for a while. I have never bought it because I fear for my productivity.

No worries, you can just go to Satisfactory then. :D

It’s Factorio but you also can make your factory aesthetic (and by aesthetic, I mean, glorious).

Re: Solitaire

#133

Post by npteljes »

AnIrishDuck wrote: post #77
meheleventyone wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The example you post is out of context and maybe a bit overly verbose but again it’s one guy maintaining it and is perfectly readable. Does anyone really struggle to understand that? I’m back working on a twenty plus year old codebase (and game) that’s ~3 millions loc and would kill for something simple like that rather than some of the overabstracted crimes lurking within.

Yeah, without context criticism of this code is silly. What if this wasn't always how cards worked? What if the mapping was (at one point in development) not straightforward? Or localthunk had some ideas and wanted to leave the door open to a more complex mapping scheme?

Either silly, or 20 years in the business.

Re: Solitaire

#134

Post by npteljes »

meheleventyone wrote: post #49
npteljes wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bad code can have a really high cognitive load to maintain. Just to illustrate what bad means, take a look at this: https://www.reddit.com/r/programminghorror/comments/1cb6rca/... I can see that having even bits of modification impacts lots of lines, where if written just a bit more saner, it could impact just a few. Of course everyone is absolutely free to do the things however they want on their project. It's just…

The example you post is out of context and maybe a bit overly verbose but again it’s one guy maintaining it and is perfectly readable. Does anyone really struggle to understand that? I’m back working on a twenty plus year old codebase (and game) that’s ~3 millions loc and would kill for something simple like that rather than some of the overabstracted crimes lurking within.

The problem is not with understanding, but with maintainability. If you need, for any reason, to touch that code again, instead of a few changes, you have to be consistently doing a lot of changes. This has a higher chance of manual errors. And it has nothing to do with other bad code, like the one that you encounter. Both can be bad code, and what you inherited sounds worse. I hate it when the badness is compounded with complexity. It feels pretentious to me.

Re: Solitaire

#135

Post by __turbobrew__ »

bigstrat2003 wrote: post #103
cwizou wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's a comfort game. A pasttime rather than an addiction. Balatro is a stress reliever for me and I can jump in, play, and jump out and it's fine. Exactly. To me there are two specific things that gives it that stress reliever, jump in/out spirit of Solitaire : - You know from the start you may not win every round. - Things can instantly and dramatically turn one way or another. I think both are perfectly captured…

I think Balatro is way too hard to be a good stress reliever. Unlike solitaire, I can barely win a run in Balatro and there's no indication as to what I could do better. I actually find it stressful more than stress relieving, if anything.

You can get better at it, that is what makes the game so rewarding. Im just average at the game and I can probably win on the easiest difficulty 95% of the time.

Part of it is also just being OK with losing, if anything I think you deterministically lose more often in solitaire than in balatro.

I also see belatro similar to poker where you can take all the right actions, play to your outs, and still lose to bad variance. All you can do is your best.

Re: Solitaire

#136

Post by __turbobrew__ »

junon wrote: post #127
ronyeh wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey! I've played it for a while now (and haven't even followed any Reddit / YouTube guides yet). Early game: Get a joker that gives you a big mult (e.g., Half Joker w/ +20 Mult for small hands). This will allow you to survive while you build out your points engine. (You can survive with flushes in the early game, but it can get harder to win with flush later, due to Bosses, unless you have flush friendly Jokers and a…

All of this, though unless I have a planet-based joker, then I don't personally find the planets all that appealing - it really feels like a drop in the bucket compared to jokers in terms of base chips and mult.

I find Planets are more powerful with better hands. A pluto for instance is nearly useless early game, but a single saturn can get you through the first two antes on its own.

I had a run on nebula deck today where I made it to ante 6 just slamming saturns and straights over and over, no scoring jokers.

Eventually you need X mult to make it to ante 8, but I think you can usually get away with as little as 2X mult if you are hitting saturns.

Re: Solitaire

#138

Post by meheleventyone »

npteljes wrote: post #134
meheleventyone wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The example you post is out of context and maybe a bit overly verbose but again it’s one guy maintaining it and is perfectly readable. Does anyone really struggle to understand that? I’m back working on a twenty plus year old codebase (and game) that’s ~3 millions loc and would kill for something simple like that rather than some of the overabstracted crimes lurking within.

The problem is not with understanding, but with maintainability. If you need, for any reason, to touch that code again, instead of a few changes, you have to be consistently doing a lot of changes. This has a higher chance of manual errors. And it has nothing to do with other bad code, like the one that you encounter. Both can be bad code, and what you inherited sounds worse. I hate it when the badness is compounded…

That code is a few lines maintaining a mapping though, changing it is not going to be hard and all the mappings are captured explicitly which makes it even more straightforward versus shaving off lines of code by making some of them implicit (e.g. by seeing a pattern in the mapping and using an if statement to capture them all). I'd really love to know what you think it should be to be more maintainable!

Re: Solitaire

#139

Post by npteljes »

meheleventyone wrote: post #138
npteljes wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is not with understanding, but with maintainability. If you need, for any reason, to touch that code again, instead of a few changes, you have to be consistently doing a lot of changes. This has a higher chance of manual errors. And it has nothing to do with other bad code, like the one that you encounter. Both can be bad code, and what you inherited sounds worse. I hate it when the badness is compounded…

That code is a few lines maintaining a mapping though, changing it is not going to be hard and all the mappings are captured explicitly which makes it even more straightforward versus shaving off lines of code by making some of them implicit (e.g. by seeing a pattern in the mapping and using an if statement to capture them all). I'd really love to know what you think it should be to be more maintainable!

Something like this would pass a code review, while the original would not:

  function createObject(value, id, nominal)
      return {
          value = value,
          id = id,
          nominal = nominal
      }
  end
  
  local objects = {
      createObject(100, 1, "nominal1"),
      createObject(200, 2, "nominal2"),
      createObject(300, 3, "nominal3"),
      createObject(400, 4, "nominal4")
  }
Still far from ideal, but I'm not that familiar with LUA either. And I do acknowledge that bad code can work, and heck, even I write them sometimes. My original point is that it has downsides and risks, and so I don't consider it fine. I have dreaded to touch such code (mine and others) many times, and made mistakes because of past laziness like that, many times.

Re: Solitaire

#140

Post by IsTom »

junon wrote: post #127
ronyeh wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey! I've played it for a while now (and haven't even followed any Reddit / YouTube guides yet). Early game: Get a joker that gives you a big mult (e.g., Half Joker w/ +20 Mult for small hands). This will allow you to survive while you build out your points engine. (You can survive with flushes in the early game, but it can get harder to win with flush later, due to Bosses, unless you have flush friendly Jokers and a…

All of this, though unless I have a planet-based joker, then I don't personally find the planets all that appealing - it really feels like a drop in the bucket compared to jokers in terms of base chips and mult.

One difference is that this is mult that comes before cards-in-hand get scored, so steel cards (or 1.5X for kings in hand joker) have something to work off.
Post reply on HN