tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2208890564265615027.post8337166813813162101..comments2024-03-08T19:47:41.485+11:00Comments on Ascii Dreams: Designing a Magic System - Part Thirteen (Digression)Andrew Doullhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11099404183952971291noreply@blogger.comBlogger7125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2208890564265615027.post-68328155281482146282008-11-09T11:24:00.000+11:002008-11-09T11:24:00.000+11:00Antony: I've got a DS, and have been meaning to bu...Antony: I've got a DS, and have been meaning to buy Disgaea for some time... its on the list of things to do. Thanks for the reminder, of course.Andrew Doullhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11099404183952971291noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2208890564265615027.post-90601168102279626102008-11-09T11:21:00.000+11:002008-11-09T11:21:00.000+11:00Mark: I was imagining more along the lines of a pr...Mark: I was imagining more along the lines of a procedural Zelda-like. e.g. given the following game abilities, what order can we place puzzles in the world to allow the player to overcome the puzzles without requiring an ability which they have not yet been given the opportunity to acquire.<BR/><BR/>And ideally: given the following abilities, procedurally design a puzzle that requires they be used.<BR/><BR/>The first question is a 'straight forward' formal verification process - the second question requires more understanding of how people solve problems and may be intractable.<BR/><BR/>Neither of which has the complexity of chess... I think.Andrew Doullhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11099404183952971291noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2208890564265615027.post-6349056897826708382008-11-08T23:34:00.000+11:002008-11-08T23:34:00.000+11:00Well, I probably just don't believe in AI. Outside...Well, I probably just don't believe in AI. Outside of games, of course. :)<BR/><BR/>Anyway, good luck. I look forward to reading about your exploits.Mikolajhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01280729045107273819noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2208890564265615027.post-10789908396684909462008-11-08T19:49:00.000+11:002008-11-08T19:49:00.000+11:00Thanks for the mention! That's the goal, yeah. Obv...Thanks for the mention! That's the goal, yeah. Obviously there are a lot of hard mathematical/logic problems in doing this; we're going for a system that answers enough questions about enough game-design problems to be useful. It's not going to be some sort of formal-verification system where you implement your whole game inside of a system that makes your game provably correct, because past some point the overhead of writing your game in such a way gets higher than the benefit. The hope is that when you're prototyping the design of the game's rules, you aren't yet past that point. :-)<BR/><BR/>Even then it's easy to write intractable questions: the rules of chess are about a page, and nearly any nontrivial question about chess is impossible to answer with current computational power. But my feeling is that a lot of game-design questions aren't nearly as hard as answering "what's the optimal play for white on move 3 given this board position?" In fact game designers often work out examples manually, in their heads or with paper prototypes and so on---so the goal is to automate a lot of that type of working out implications of rules.Markhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15939949185232291652noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2208890564265615027.post-12713344389350911132008-11-08T07:35:00.000+11:002008-11-08T07:35:00.000+11:00> And if you contemplate a system, which fed ga...> And if you contemplate a system, which fed game rules automatically decides if the game is winnable, forget it, again. :)<BR/><BR/>That's what Mark J Nelson is doing, AFAICT. Given a formalisation of a game, he's using an AI planner to determine if it is winnable.Andrew Doullhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11099404183952971291noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2208890564265615027.post-64105601333050116752008-11-08T03:57:00.000+11:002008-11-08T03:57:00.000+11:00You are right on most of what you write about. I&q...You are right on most of what you write about. I"m looking forward for a next installment. Here's a little nitpicking:<BR/><BR/>> game design is at its heart mathematical and logical,<BR/><BR/>true<BR/><BR/>> and so we can attempt to take this vocabulary and define it more formally using symbolic logic.<BR/><BR/>Generally forget it. You'd have to restrict yourself to a very narrow space of games, but then you are much better off creating a single game with a lot of customizable parameters. Then create another, very different from the first, again with lots of tweakable parameters. Etc. The zoo is too big.<BR/><BR/>> With a formal model for game design, we can potentially prove that a game can be completed<BR/><BR/>You are much better off proving it about a single game. Prove that for a range of parameter values the game is winnable, for another particular range it's not and with some luck you may even exclude the middle, where you can't prove either way.<BR/><BR/>> (unless we fall within the bounds of the Halting Problem)<BR/><BR/>The undecidability of the halting problem talks only about _automatic_ proofs. What you talk about above is human-made proofs for particular games/game formalizations/parameter ranges. Humans may cope or fail, but it has nothing to do with the halting problem.<BR/><BR/>And if you contemplate a system, which fed game rules automatically decides if the game is winnable, forget it, again. :)Mikolajhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01280729045107273819noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2208890564265615027.post-8653467240003811402008-11-07T20:19:00.000+11:002008-11-07T20:19:00.000+11:00hello, i have been following your blog for a few m...hello, i have been following your blog for a few months now, but have only now just read all of your posts concerning magic. i would like to suggest a game that fits many of the things you outline in your blog.<BR/><BR/>maybe you have heard of it. it is a turn based strategy rpg called disgaea. it was originally on the ps2, but has been ported to the psp and ds. it is interesting for many reasons. the first of which is that the maximum level you can reach in the game is lvl 9999. yes, that's right, 9999. i believe that is the highest level cap i have seen for a game, ever.<BR/><BR/>it is made more interesting in the way that at any time you can choose to 'reincarnate' any character in your party. doing this starts them back at level 1, but also stores the levels you have earned before reincarnating to be used in distributing once you are reborn. you are also able to change that characters class to any of the many classes in the game. and there are 6 tiers to every class, each slightly more powerful than the earlier one, unlocked via reaching a certain level with any other tier.<BR/><BR/>there is also a simple magic system, that is quite deep once you play more. it features 4 main types, fire, wind, and ice, and star. most enemies you encounter will have 50% resistance to any of the first 3, 50% weakness to one other, and 0% to the last one. then i believe that most enemies have about 90% resistance to star(not too sure on that one). however so do your characters. there are 4 main mages, each specializing in one of the particular elements. then there is a 'prism' mage, specializing in fire, wind and ice. and a galaxy mage, unable to learn any naturally. also when you reincarnate, you have a change of remembering past spells. there are also 5 tiers of spells, each requiring more sp, but significantly more powerful. then there is the area of effect. as you use your spells, you reach higher levels of that spell, allowing you to cause more damage. you also unlock different AoE's for that particular spell. starts of a one square, then a diagonal, 3 in a row, a few others, and then finally a 3x3 square.<BR/><BR/>there are many other features in this game that are actually talked about in your posts, such as height of the terrain and an interesting feature called 'geopanels'.i can highly recommend at least renting a copy of the Nintendo DS version of the game, if you have one.antony arrigohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06346859187333541050noreply@blogger.com