I want my Gret Prophet back or how much random in the random...

[RalphTrickey]

Originally posted by Bogdanovist


errmm for a computer, actually it's impossible. That "annoying random seed thing" is how computers have to generate psedo-random numbers from a pre-set list. If you can suggest a better way you will either get very rich very quicly or get very dead very quickly as the suits from the NSA take you out....

It's not impossible, just hook up a geiger counter, and count the atoms going by... You could also hook up to WWV and use the current time as the seed.

[Urban Ranger]

If your game depends on something, save it when that something comes on line. Unless it's something like a free Great Artist if you are the first person who discovers Music.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Handel
BUT: For those 3 turns I did a lot of different things and all those different things resulted in a scientist. So it is not really depending on your actions, neither on chance, but on some obscure and meaningless move.

A lot of actions are deterministic, not probabilistic. Only things such as combat resolution and mining requires randomness.

[Diadem]

Well I did some testing with goodie huts. What I found is that the results are fixed 1 turn in advance. If you save the turn you take the hut, or the turn before that, you'll always get the same result. Even if you do something different that turn.

If you save 2 turns before though, you can get different results even if you do the same things. I must admit I'm not 100% sure on the latter.

I don't think it's a simple matter of random seeds. I think the game pre-evaluates actions

[Bogdanovist]

Originally posted by RalphTrickey


It's not impossible, just hook up a geiger counter, and count the atoms going by... You could also hook up to WWV and use the current time as the seed.

The second option still uses a seed of some sort, so is still a pseudo random number. The first requires a geiger counter which is not in itself a computer. If Civ4 shipped with a geiger counter that you hooked up to your USB port in order to generate random numbers I think those whinging that Civ4

still uses that annoying random seed thing from civ3

would have a field day about this

[Bhruic]

There's absolutely nothing wrong with using seeds for random numbers. It's just a matter of whether you want to use a 'random' seed (ie, something like the current time, which will almost never result in the same value), or a 'static' one that is saved in the save file. Going to the semi-ridiculous length of geiger counters is just plain unnecessary. Pseudo-random is plenty good enough for gaming.

Bh

[gilfan]

Originally posted by Diadem
Well I did some testing with goodie huts. What I found is that the results are fixed 1 turn in advance. If you save the turn you take the hut, or the turn before that, you'll always get the same result. Even if you do something different that turn.

If you save 2 turns before though, you can get different results even if you do the same things. I must admit I'm not 100% sure on the latter.

I don't think it's a simple matter of random seeds. I think the game pre-evaluates actions

you probably did this very early on in a game, right? there are other civs in the world other than yours, one of THEM did something that required a random number generated, such as opening a goodie hut. if you tried this in a game where everything has already been explored and no one was at war, you'll find that the number of turns doesn't matter. you could go many turns without any event occuring that needs a random number.

[Rommel2D]

Originally posted by RalphTrickey
It's not impossible, just hook up a geiger counter, and count the atoms going by...

I'm suing Firaxis for not listing this on the box under system requirements...

[Martinus]

I don't see a problem here at all. I mean GP generation uses the simplest and most obvious random number generator.

If you have, say, 20% to get a Great Artist, 30% to get a Great Engineer and 50% to get a Great Prophet, the game simply generates a random number between 1 and 100.

If the number is 1-20, you get a Great Artist; if it is 21-50, you get a Great Engineer; if it is 51-100, you get Great Prophet.

Pure, unadulterated probability calculus.

[Robert]

Put autosave on every turn in the ini file.

[Henrik]

Originally posted by Martinus
If you have, say, 20% to get a Great Artist, 30% to get a Great Engineer and 50% to get a Great Prophet, the game simply generates a random number between 1 and 100..

Well it's just that people are complaining about the method used to generate these "random" numbers. As there isn't really such a thing as something random to a computer

[Last Conformist]

People complaining about the pRNG should shot and have their games taken away from them.

[Diadem]

Originally posted by gilfan

you probably did this very early on in a game, right? there are other civs in the world other than yours, one of THEM did something that required a random number generated, such as opening a goodie hut. if you tried this in a game where everything has already been explored and no one was at war, you'll find that the number of turns doesn't matter. you could go many turns without any event occuring that needs a random number.

Yes, but if it just a fixed random seed then everything the AI does and all the results it gets from random actions should also be fixed.

If you play 100 turns in exactly the same way, does the AI do exactly the same as well? And does it get all the same results from goodie huts etc?

Now *that* is an interesting question.

[Shogun Gunner]

Originally posted by Last Conformist
People complaining about the pRNG should shot and have their games taken away from them.

Yes, I wonder if so much work would have gone into this if the situation were reversed. The turn did not give the Great Prophet, game crashed, and restarting and playing turns from an old save generated the Great Prophet.

We would have never seen this thread.

[Strudo]

Originally posted by RalphTrickey


It's not impossible, just hook up a geiger counter, and count the atoms going by... You could also hook up to WWV and use the current time as the seed.

A more accessible way to do it is to use a web cam and a lava lamp. Have the web cam pointed at the active lava lamp, then use an algorithm to generate a number from the digital representation of the image. There is some linux software on the web to do it, or there used to be, or there was talk about there being some software, or something like that Either way it gives a pretty random result since the motion of the lava lamp is generally pretty random.

Think of this you could probably do the same thing if you had a TV tuner card in your PC, then when you need a completely random number, just grab an image from there and use that. Wouldn't even need to have reception as the static would be random anyway.

Just what I thought....