Re: PBM design and formulae - a summary

From: gym@dcs.ed.ac.uk (Graham Matthews)

Date: Fri, 02 Jul 1993 11:52:41 +0000

(Bruno Wolff III) writes:
[in reply to some of my comments]
>This is
>kind of hard to do when you don't know the rules of the game you are
>playing.

This is getting pretty damn frustrating. I have never said that
players should not know the rules (if you disagree please quote
where I have said this!). All I have said is that I don't think
players should know the exact formulas - this doesn't mean they
don't know the rules.

Example to make this crystal clear. Take tennis. Now I play a pretty
mean game of tennis and I do not know any of the formulas for the
motion of a tennis ball. Now according to Russell, you, and David,
not knowing these equations means that my tennis is purely random.
This seems to me and to many of my regular practice partners to be
palpably wrong!

So you see you can not know the formulas and still play a damn good
game.

(Bruno Wolff III) writes:
>The comment was an extreme example of what you are advocating to
>illustrate a point. The questions are why don't you want to people
>to know the details of a game. If your answer is so that they can't
>play well, then I would ask if you are not trying to play well what
>are you trying to do when playing a game.

In reply :-

a) extreme examples illustrate nothing because they are so extreme
as to be ridiculous.
b) I have outlined why I don't like formulas being known and not
once have I said its because I don't like players to play well.
That is all a fiction in your head (again if you disagree please
quote!)

graham
--
Graham Matthews                   Go west, go west
Dept Comp Sci, Univ Edinburgh     Where there's work so I'm told
gym@dcs.ed.ac.uk                  California's never cold

References

Re: PBM design and formulae - a summary
gym@dcs.ed.ac.uk (Graham Matthews)
Thu, 01 Jul 1993 19:31:45 +0000
Re: PBM design and formulae - a summary
bruno@cerberus.csd.uwm.edu (Bruno Wolff III)
Thu, 01 Jul 1993 23:26:28 +0000

Referenced By

Re: PBM design and formulae - a summary
gym@dcs.ed.ac.uk (Graham Matthews)
Thu, 01 Jul 1993 19:31:45 +0000
Re: PBM design and formulae - a summary
bruno@cerberus.csd.uwm.edu (Bruno Wolff III)
Thu, 01 Jul 1993 23:26:28 +0000