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

[Handel]

Originally posted by Henrik


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

Actually there is soemthing wich is ABSOLUTELY random - the time when you press "End of Turn" button. Generating a row of pseudorandom numbers is a very basic function in every computer. And it generates thousands of pseudorandom numbers every second. So when you press the "End of Turn" you pick a number from this row. And this is really random number, because you can try 100 times and you awlays will be pressing the button in actually random time.
But as I said before implementing such technology to generate a really random number will tempt the players to reload and realod and reload zillion times.

[Shogun Gunner]

Originally posted by Handel

But as I said before implementing such technology to generate a really random number will tempt the players to reload and realod and reload zillion times.

People do anyway...but yet don't want the HoF score to be marked "cheat"

[Dis]

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....

I did it on my commodore 64 fairly easy. I'm not sure how random they actually were, but they seemed fairly random.

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by Handel
Actually there is soemthing wich is ABSOLUTELY random - the time when you press "End of Turn" button.

Well actually it isn't. In practice, IIRC, random numbers generated from user input end up being less 'random' than a traditional pRNG.

[Dis]

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

why did civ2 get it right, but civ3 and civ4 can't?

[padillah]

Originally posted by Strudo


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....

You are closer than you think.

https://www.lavarnd.org

Basically you take a webcam and put it in a sealed box (or glue something over the lense) then turn up the "gain" and use the random bits from the "white noise" static that results to generate a random number.

And, yes, it's OS.

Tom P.

[padillah]

Originally posted by Dis




why did civ2 get it right, but civ3 and civ4 can't?

Why do you say Civ4 doesn't get it right?

[padillah]

Um, this is not a circumstance of random number generation, it's number distribution.

And you'd be surprised what is random and what isn't.

For example, if you take a pin and a piece of lined paper (with the lines spaced as far apart as the pin is long) and you drop the pin onto the paper - the ratio of times the pin crosses a line to the times it doesn't aproach pi as the number of attempts approach infinity.

Or, did you know the number of petals on a sunflower is always a Fibionocci number? (1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34...)

That's NOT random. If the best you can get is a distribution of pi than I'm not that impressed and your random number generator stinks.

The same type of results can be extracted from geiger counters or webcam CCD's or quite a few natural phenomenon. True utter randomness is quite difficult and remains one of the more studied fields of number theory.

Tom P.

[padillah]

Originally posted by Handel


Actually there is soemthing wich is ABSOLUTELY random - the time when you press "End of Turn" button.

Yes and no. This event can only be read on an interupt so while the event itself may occur at a random point in time (or, more precisely, unique point in time) the evaluation of that event comes under certain restrictions. Then you have to perform mathmatics to turn that number into a number "between 1 and 100". It's this math that causes the number to "unrandom" itself.

Generating a row of pseudorandom numbers is a very basic function in every computer. And it generates thousands of pseudorandom numbers every second. So when you press the "End of Turn" you pick a number from this row.

True enough. You do get a pseudorandom number. A "kind of" random number. In other words, "not really random but you'd be hardpressed to find the pattern".

And this is really random number, because you can try 100 times and you awlays will be pressing the button in actually random time.

No, you'll be pressing the button at a UNIQUE point in time. There are, technically, no "random points in time. Since time can only move in one direction and at one speed there is little "random" about it, but that's not what you meant and I know it.

Also, more to what you did mean, that may be a unique point in time but the math involved to make that into a "number between 1 and 100" is what messes it up. It's the random number distribution that you are complaining about.

Have you ever done that thing where you:
Take your birth month multiply it by 5, add 7, multiply by 4, add 13, multiply by 5, and add the day of your birth(day of the month), then subtract 205.

This should be a pretty random number right? It's not. the first digit will be your birth month the last will be your birthday.

Numbers and math have a way of doing this quite often. Yet another example, take any number (i.e. 459), add the digits together (i.e. 4+5+9=18), keep adding them together until you only have one digit (1+8=9)... If that digit is divisable by three (9/3=3) the original number is evenly divisable by three (459/3=153 ). (Try it, it's true with any number no matter the size).

Random is, in fact, quite difficult to find. Understand that in order to restrict the number to a specific range we must creat a function that will return, for ANY given value a number between our "top" and "bottom". If you use something like a sine function you can force results to between one and zero. But look at a graph of a sine wave, there is substantially more concentration near the "top" and "bottom" than near the middle. It's almost self-evident just looking at the graph but you could use calculus to find the area under the curve at given points (I forgot how, hey I don't use it anymore) and you'll see it's about 35% fall near the "top" and "bottom" as opposed to the middle. Bad distribution.

But as I said before implementing such technology to generate a really random number will tempt the players to reload and realod and reload zillion times.

And we're back to not really being random after all. So why kill ourselves when the people who don't care... don't care and the people that do will force the answer they want anyway?

Tom P.

[Bogdanovist]

Originally posted by Dis


I did it on my commodore 64 fairly easy. I'm not sure how random they actually were, but they seemed fairly random.

The C64 used the internal clock to generate the seed by default. Using BASIC you could explicitaly give it a seed if you wanted, but if you didn't it just used the clock.

The reason you think civ I & II 'got it right' and civIII and IV in your opinion did not, is that I & II hid all the details from you, just like the C64, which actually gives the user less flexibility. III & IV bring the question of what you want to do with the seed and saved games into the open, and all of a sudden everyone complains of issues with randomness. There are two lessons in this:

1) a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing

2) Ignorance is bliss....

[Shogun Gunner]

holy crap, this is starting to sound like work...

just play the game guys. Enjoy

[Dis]

Originally posted by Shogun Gunner
holy crap, this is starting to sound like work...

just play the game guys. Enjoy

It's hard to enjoy the game when I lose every single game.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Strudo
A more accessible way to do it is to use a web cam and a lava lamp.

Why bother? Just ask the player to press a key.

[padillah]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger

Originally posted by Strudo
A more accessible way to do it is to use a web cam and a lava lamp.

Why bother? Just ask the player to press a key.

Exactly. Given the fact that we are not using this to encript DoD documents one way is just as good as another and the easiest way is better than all of them.

Which is exactly my argument, about this, about the AI... why do so many people feel they deserve DoD-level cryptology and Star Trek-level "AI" in a $50 game?

Yes, effort has been put into it. But, it is, after all, a game.

Tom P.

[Aro]

Originally posted by padillah


Which is exactly my argument, about this, about the AI... why do so many people feel they deserve DoD-level cryptology and Star Trek-level "AI" in a $50 game?



Tom P.

Well, case closed.