Re: PBM design and formulae - a fresh start

From: markiel@callisto.pas.rochester.edu (Andrew Markiel)

Date: Sat, 03 Jul 1993 14:46:45 +0000

In article <C9Jtns.AKE@dcs.ed.ac.uk> gym@dcs.ed.ac.uk (Graham Matthews) writes:
>
>Might I suggest at this point that you have not played a really well
>designed game. Ever played the game FlatTop. This game is a very realistic
>simulation of carrier battles in the Pacific. Now the game is quite
>obviously simpler than the reality, however I was able to use my knowledge
>of aircraft, weather, ships, carrier battles etc to plan my strategy
>quite effectively - I played the game assuming that it was the reality and
>it worked well. In other words just because the game wasn't real and
>the information was coming in a different format than the real world, etc,
>doesn't mean that you cannot keep up the pretense. So I think your point
>is only true of badly designed games - unfortunately there are a lot of
>them about. But don't confuse what a game is capable of being like, and
>what current games are like.
>
This is a nice example (I take back the comment I made earlier about
not wanting to play such a game). However, I guess I don't see where
the formulas are that should or shouldn't be revealed. It seems that
such a game would be run simply by giving movement and combat rules,
essentially like any board game. Certainly it's possible to make a
good game without using complicated formulas at all, but I don't see
how this addresses whether a game that uses a formula to calculate
something should reveal that formula or not.

>rwallace@cs.tcd.ie (Russell Wallace) writes:
>> Note that the case with human-moderated role-playing games is different,
>> because although you still aren't deailng with the real world, you are
>> at least dealing with an entity (a human) that has a genuine
>> understanding of the world, and is not just blindly applying an
>> algorithm.  There are still some problems with this type of game, but
>> they are nothing in comparison to what you get if you have an algorithm
>> instead of the human.  (Hence the widespread detestation of rules
>> lawyers in human-moderated RPGs, who attempt to replace the human with a
>> set of rules.)
>>
>> (What if you could write a game that was based on the computer having a
>> genuine understanding of the world?  Unfortunately this seems to be an
>> AI-complete problem.  :-( )
>
>I think you are really misrepresenting the capabilities that a well designed
>game could have. To illustrate this point lets look ak industrial simulations.
>Now people do simulations of things like air flow over wings and are confident
>enough in the results of the simulations to use these results to design real
>aircraft. This suggests that the simulation is doing a damn good job of
>representing reality. Now if this type of technology were applied to games
>what would happen?
>
>Now before you say "ah yes but you need a super-computer for wing simulations"
>I would like to point out that :-
>
>a) games are much much simpler than wing simulations
>b) these simulations work because they have a clear notion of time, something
>which most (all!) games lack. Put this notion into a game and ...
>c) many quite accurate simulations (of economic systems for example) do not
>require a super-computer.
>
I have to point out here that games and wing simulations are quite
different cases. Simulating the air flow involves using straight-
forward numerical procedures to integrate well known equations: in
other words, the super-computer is needed not because of the
difficulty in formulating the problem, but because a large number
of calculations are needed, over a large set of data.

In a game, however, a significant difficulty is in choosing the
equations; which parameters you consider important, and how those
are related to produce a relevant number. Essentially, since in
real life you don't know the formulas, the choice of formulas for
the game is somewhat arbitrary, and thus it may be appropriate to
tell the players what arbitrary decisions you have made.

Now, you can work with the equations, tuning them until they do
approximate the real situation, but this requires a lot of work,
and still doesn't help if the game is supposed to represent
something that does not exist in the real world (when can you say
that your system is an appropriate simulation of magical combat?)
I'll agree, though, that if you can do this then the game is likely
to be very good. However, I don't know of any PBEM games out there
that would satisfy this (if you know of one, let me know :-)

>
>Ever heard of graphics? Output for the tennis game is in terms of pictures
>of the court, ball, players, racquet. Using this information a player can
>develop an intuition for the game. You don't need VR - that is an extreme
>position! Surely you have played a computer tennis or driving game. You
>develop intution quite rapidly without any VR surrounds.
>
Again, really nice, but doesn't resemble any pbem game I've ever seen.
I think you're arguing for "the way games should be", and I'd agree
that you have some good ideas, but it's sort of off the topic of
"should pbm games hide their formulas".

>graham

-Andrew
markiel@callisto.pas.rochester.edu

References

Re: PBM design and formulae - a fresh start
rwallace@cs.tcd.ie (Russell Wallace)
Fri, 02 Jul 1993 14:54:28 +0000
Re: PBM design and formulae - a fresh start
gym@dcs.ed.ac.uk (Graham Matthews)
Fri, 02 Jul 1993 17:52:40 +0000
PBM design and formulae - a summary
rob@ccc.govt.nz (Rob McNeur)
Mon, 28 Jun 1993 09:53:02 +0000

Referenced By

Re: PBM design and formulae - a fresh start
rwallace@cs.tcd.ie (Russell Wallace)
Fri, 02 Jul 1993 14:54:28 +0000
Re: PBM design and formulae - a fresh start
gym@dcs.ed.ac.uk (Graham Matthews)
Fri, 02 Jul 1993 17:52:40 +0000
PBM design and formulae - a summary
rob@ccc.govt.nz (Rob McNeur)
Mon, 28 Jun 1993 09:53:02 +0000