repeatable randomness

[tobyr]

I'm an addict, and I want Civ3 to protect me from myself. Specifically, I'm addicted to reloading the game to get a better result (e.g., opening huts).

Having written game software myself, I know that when a feature (like a hut) is created, it can be assigned a randomly determined random number seed. When the hut is used (e.g., opened), that seed sets the random number generator. As a result, you could reload the game and reopen the same hut and always get the same result.

If you reloaded the game, went away from the hut and did something different (such as discovering invention), and then went back to the hut, you could get a different result (game situation has changed), but then you would get that same different result over and over. Bottom line: very little temptation to reload the game!

- toby


------------------
toby robison
criticalpaths@mindspring.com

[UltraSonix]

I've noticed this in games all the way back to Colonisation.

I noticed that in Civ2, there was only certain things that would affect the random hut - battle was one, but moving didn't.

In Colonisation, which didn't have huts, if you wanted your unit to win a battle, just load, and move another unit into an Indian camp, and then just cancel. Somethings you had to do this twice to work the system.

But in SMAC, I've noticed that the blasted energy crashes, where you loose 75% or 66% of your money, can't be stopped (almost like fate has deemed it so). Loading back a few turns and doing heaps of different things didn't help. The only way to deal with it is loading, and then spending all your money. Then again, the huts in SMAC aren't very smart - loading the game does get different results.


------------------
No, in Australia we don't live with kangaroos and koalas in our backyards...
[This message has been edited by UltraSonix (edited July 05, 2000).]

[tobyr]

In ToT, it seems to me that the programmers did try to do something to make reloading less encouraging. If you quickly reload a ToT game and quickly reopen the hut, you have a remarkably good chance (40% maybe) of getting exactly the same result. It feels like perhaps the minute of the day is being used as a seed to the random number generator, so that quick reloads are pointless.

I have not tested this carefully, it's just a hunch.

- toby


------------------
toby robison
criticalpaths@mindspring.com

[MidKnight Lament]

I read somewhere that SMAC's random events (although perhaps not pods) are calculated something like 10 turns in advance to try to stop people just reloading. Which is a damn fine idea in my opinion.

UltraSonix - you're dead right about Colonisation. I didn't know exactly how to manipulate it, but I knew for sure that it got stuck using the same random seed unless you did something differently. It was a big culprit.

- MKL

[Lord Magnus]

Repeatable randomness --- sounds like an oxymoron. But anyways I agree with having a result locked in.

------------------
Learn the mistakes of yesterday to prevent the ones of tomorrow...

[phunny pharmer]

Would be nice if the battles are like this too...I always have the urge to cheat during those critical moments...