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Wi Flag (2002)

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Re: Wi Flag (2002)

#201

Post by Stratoscope »

anyfoo wrote: post #44

Around 15 years ago, when casual little games on Facebook were still a thing (actually when Facebook itself was still a thing), I used to play Yahtzee on the site while watching TV shows or whatever. It was one of the most popular games on there. For me it was something to fidget with (there was no money involved or anything, just a personal high score), so I played it a lot. I felt more and more that dice values of…

> the distribution was not uniform: 2-5 were fine, but it seemed that it was twice as hard to get a 1 or a 6 compared to any other value.

As soon as I saw that, I knew exactly what the problem was. I'm glad I was reading on a small mobile screen, so I didn't feel like I was cheating by getting a hint from the rest of your comment.

Yes, voice of painful experience here!

> The crucial point being to use floor() or ceil() instead of round(), to only round towards one direction. [emphasis added]

Not quite. If the random() function in your language returns a value in a half-open interval like Math.random() in JavaScript or random.random() in Python, only use floor(), never ceil().

Those random() functions return a value n where 0 A somewhat related tip for anyone who implements a progress message like "nn% done". You should always use floor() for that number as well. Quite often I see a case where someone has used round() instead, or possibly ceil(). And then what happens is your notification message says "100% done" when the process is not 100% done. It makes me a little crazy when I see that. Use floor() and you won't have this problem.

Re: Wi Flag (2002)

#202

Post by lanternfish »

shihab wrote: post #188
jjcm wrote: post #52

Love bug deep dives like these. Along a similar line is the "foxes lead users to treasure" behavior in Skyrim: https://twitter.com/JoelBurgess/status/1428008041887281157

I don't quite get the bug, that is what exactly makes the fox follow regions of denser triangles?

Basic probability - randomly walking a graph will tend to have you in regions of higher vertex density. Same reason why randomly picking a road intersection will tend to put you in cities - cities just have most of the intersections.

(the walk isn't exactly random but it still works - the pathing heuristic is real-coordinate agnostic).

Re: Wi Flag (2002)

#203

Post by shoo »

dylanpyle wrote: post #3

I've seen a similar mistake in a rushed "feature flagging"/phased rollout system. User IDs were random UUIDs. Let's say we want to release a feature to ~33% of users; we take the first 2 characters of the UUID, giving us 256 possible buckets, then say that everyone in the first 1/3 of that range gets the feature. So, 00XXX...-55XXX... IDs get it, and 56-FF do not. This works fine. However, if we then release another…

> you can't draw meaningful conclusions when some users get every new feature and some get none at all.

those poor cursed users. reminiscent of a joke that used to grace Paul Mineiro's blog (machinedlearnings.com) a few years ago:

> An old curse says: "may you always be assigned to a test bucket."

Re: Wi Flag (2002)

#204

Post by jdk »

sveiss wrote: post #193
jdk wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks! Always nice to hear people who "grew up" play it. AC having server-side physics and actually making use of them led to lots of ridiculous and emergent gameplay. I don't know how many hours I just spend idling in towns jumping from rooftop to rooftop or seeing how high I could climb up massive structures. Everytime I try to play again though, the old "you can't go home again" hits too hard and I just quietly c…

My marriage and a good chunk of my career trajectory can both be traced directly back to having "grown up" playing AC and writing/coding for Crossroads of Dereth. It's a little scary to think how different my life would be if I hadn't picked up that box--possibly the only copy the EB Games in my small English town would get--and gone "huh, looks cool". I think growing up during those years of transition, right before…

Oh man... Now I'm trying to remember which of the CoD folks were from England. Thanks for all / any of the work you put into that site. It was really the nexus of AC for a number of years. I'm glad it's been lost to the ages because I definitely had a number of real spicy comments on it. I'm happy AC at least indirectly helped your career/marriage in some small way. :)

Re: Wi Flag (2002)

#205

Post by jdk »

shostack wrote: post #177
jdk wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks! Always nice to hear people who "grew up" play it. AC having server-side physics and actually making use of them led to lots of ridiculous and emergent gameplay. I don't know how many hours I just spend idling in towns jumping from rooftop to rooftop or seeing how high I could climb up massive structures. Everytime I try to play again though, the old "you can't go home again" hits too hard and I just quietly c…

Are there any games since then you think captured the feel of the unique discovery-based magic system?

In terms of discovery and wonder, I think Valheim did a good job of it in the general atmosphere and loop, but in terms of magic systems, not really. You have the Magika (or even Path of Exile) where spells have component parts and build into something larger, but there's not much mystery there.

A theme of a bunch of the comments is that the internet / audience makes this sort of thing impossible these days. One of my white whales for game design is figuring out if mystery, especially in multiplayer games, is still possible in a meaningful way.

Re: Wi Flag (2002)

#206

Post by jdk »

choffman wrote: post #181
jdk wrote: post #90

Really didn't expect to see AC at the top of HN. Asheron's Call was the first game I worked on and I remember all the times we'd joke with Wi about it and watch monsters beeline for him. It seemed like one of those "Haha sure, player perception" problems and not something that was actually real. IIRC someone did a very cursory look at the code at one point but it never bubbled up as important enough to assign someone…

Devilmouse! AC is one of my favorite games of all time (neck and neck with Ultima II (I'm old)). I still play on the emulators from time to time - endlessly searching for more Hoary Mattekars. I played on Thistledown and ran a little portal bot named Stip Dickens an Ayan Baqur that helped ferry people into the Shard of the Herald event. That was a lot of fun. The loot system was also one-of-a-kind. I don't see that l…

You're welcome! Haha, mattekar farming will always hold a special place for me. And, of course, TD's herald defense is probably top 3 gaming memories for me. So much lifting done across the community for what's now basically oral history.

But also thank YOU for participating in some of my very formative experiences of my life as well. The players really made it a joy to work on.

Re: Wi Flag (2002)

#207

Post by jdk »

blipmusic wrote: post #195
jdk wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For the last 15 years or so, coworkers ask when I'm going to make a new allegiance system but "less broken". So many good social behaviors came from its structure that it really deserves another attempt. And yeah, Ash Gromnies were the bane of so so so many players.

As with many concepts designed to do good in this world I think it's (unfortunately? not sure) human nature to attempt to "solve" a system, whether the consequences greatly diverges from - or is even the opposite to - the intended path or not. (E.g. optimizing for time is not always a good thing, but we often act as if it were - the right amount of "grind" may mean I'm spending more time doing other things than just…

You're welcome!

I think I mentioned this in another comment and certainly a ton over the years - but a lot of the magic of AC was that it was made by a bunch of people who had never made a game before, much less an MMO, and there were very few ingrained lessons, so we were foolhardy enough to just do things the way it felt we should, player behavior or other consequences be damned. It was built on hopes and dreams and naivete and that made it beautiful and flawed.

But also yeah, once something ships to players, it's now "theirs" and not "ours". We stood in pretty stark contrast to EQ's "you're in our world now" philosophy, again, for better or worse.

Re: Wi Flag (2002)

#208

Post by madeofpalk »

Stratoscope wrote: post #201
anyfoo wrote: post #44

Around 15 years ago, when casual little games on Facebook were still a thing (actually when Facebook itself was still a thing), I used to play Yahtzee on the site while watching TV shows or whatever. It was one of the most popular games on there. For me it was something to fidget with (there was no money involved or anything, just a personal high score), so I played it a lot. I felt more and more that dice values of…

> the distribution was not uniform: 2-5 were fine, but it seemed that it was twice as hard to get a 1 or a 6 compared to any other value. As soon as I saw that, I knew exactly what the problem was. I'm glad I was reading on a small mobile screen, so I didn't feel like I was cheating by getting a hint from the rest of your comment. Yes, voice of painful experience here! > The crucial point being to use floor() or ceil…

> Quite often I see a case where someone has used round() instead, or possibly ceil(). And then what happens is your notification message says "100% done" when the process is not 100% done.

The video game Destiny has this problem with how it displays objective percentages - it will round up, and there's a quest every now and then that shows progress as a percentage and has a high enough denominator to trigger this.

Re: Wi Flag (2002)

#209

Post by rjewell »

jdk wrote: post #205
shostack wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are there any games since then you think captured the feel of the unique discovery-based magic system?

In terms of discovery and wonder, I think Valheim did a good job of it in the general atmosphere and loop, but in terms of magic systems, not really. You have the Magika (or even Path of Exile) where spells have component parts and build into something larger, but there's not much mystery there. A theme of a bunch of the comments is that the internet / audience makes this sort of thing impossible these days. One of m…

Literal showerthought while ruminating on this idea: are you aware of any multiplayer systems where individual characters have intentional Wi flags (good and bad) at a very granular level? for example, every spell or skill includes a fixed modifier generated for the player so that two identically built characters have different capabilities. Every aspect determining success or power has one. You are just slightly slower at lockpicking in the rain and your fireball casts a little faster than average, and the decrease in damage for casting while moving is a bit more significant.

You remove the “meta” from the game because every character has a different meta that is just a little too cumbersome to figure out in any way other than “feel” it.

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