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Topic: Essay by Christian Freeling on inventing games (Read 522046 times) |
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MarkSteere
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Finite games rule
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Re: Essay by Christian Freeling on inventing games
« Reply #750 on: Dec 12th, 2011, 10:57pm » |
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on Dec 12th, 2011, 9:15pm, froody wrote:
Are you afraid of his words and ideas or has he done something immoral? |
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All of the above 
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MarkSteere
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Re: Essay by Christian Freeling on inventing games
« Reply #751 on: Dec 13th, 2011, 12:15am » |
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on Dec 12th, 2011, 8:30pm, SpeedRazor wrote:
Dude, what is your friggin' problem?! |
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Outlandish claims are harmful.
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MarkSteere
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Re: Essay by Christian Freeling on inventing games
« Reply #752 on: Dec 13th, 2011, 12:42am » |
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on Dec 12th, 2011, 8:30pm, SpeedRazor wrote:
Did you [like] invent a game or something, |
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Abstract game design is a part of who I am. That'll always be true, even after I go pro on the sax.
-Mark
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froody
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Re: Essay by Christian Freeling on inventing games
« Reply #753 on: Dec 13th, 2011, 5:10am » |
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on Dec 12th, 2011, 10:57pm, MarkSteere wrote:
All of the above |
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What immoral thing did you do to arimaa.com?
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“Arimaa holds its master in its own bonds, shackling the mind and brain so that the inner freedom of the very strongest must suffer”
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MarkSteere
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Finite games rule
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Re: Essay by Christian Freeling on inventing games
« Reply #754 on: Dec 13th, 2011, 6:31am » |
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on Dec 13th, 2011, 5:10am, froody wrote:
What immoral thing did you do to arimaa.com? |
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I questioned the dogma of Christian Freeling.
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froody
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Re: Essay by Christian Freeling on inventing games
« Reply #755 on: Dec 13th, 2011, 6:49am » |
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Asking questions is never immoral.
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“Arimaa holds its master in its own bonds, shackling the mind and brain so that the inner freedom of the very strongest must suffer”
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christianF
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Re: Essay by Christian Freeling on inventing games
« Reply #756 on: Dec 13th, 2011, 8:01am » |
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on Dec 13th, 2011, 6:49am, froody wrote:| Asking questions is never immoral. |
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That may be, the point however is that there's no dogma on my part, it's all projection. Here's how it works.
For years now Mark has advocated, if not insisted, that games should be finite, drawless and balanced. That's his dogma.
Though I agree on 'balanced', I disagree on the other two. That would be my 'dogma'.
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| « Last Edit: Dec 13th, 2011, 8:02am by christianF » |
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christianF
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Re: Essay by Christian Freeling on inventing games
« Reply #757 on: Dec 13th, 2011, 9:16am » |
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on Dec 11th, 2011, 2:20pm, christianF wrote:| Volo appears to be soft finite, that is, two dedicated opponent's with a draw as their common goal, could probably find ways to proceed forever. |
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Finitude
Finitude is an interesting subject. The number of legal Chess positions is finite. Large beyond comprehension, but finite. From that point of view the number of routes between them is [beyond comprehension]^n, but still finite. For the sake of the finitude argument, this is not interesting. The understanding is that a game is 'infinite' if the tree contains cycles.
Without any particular disregard for facts, one could note that Chess, Shogi, Go and Draughts are infinite, but that millions of players worldwide don't seem to care.
What's wrong with these people?
On the other hand there are finite games like Tanbo or Rive, that would make players wish they were finite indeed.
Cycles do not make games 'infinite' because finitude has a human component that is disregarded in the above definition. Humans can terminate 'infinite' games because they're intelligent.
An example
Take a Chess board and place a black pawn and a white pawn somewhere around the center. The pawns move and capture as usual, but have the additional option of moving one step sideways. What do we have? The smallest possible Jump Sturdy endgame.
- If the pawns are in opposition, the player to move can only move sideways and can be captured.
- Otherwise one pawn will be first to reach the back row and win.
So despite having cycles, the game is finite for intelligent humans, and less than intelligent ones, and so on, all the way down the scale, till eventually we find one person who wants to protect all others from their natural inclination of aimlessly moving pawns sideways.
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| « Last Edit: Dec 13th, 2011, 9:24am by christianF » |
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MarkSteere
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Re: Essay by Christian Freeling on inventing games
« Reply #758 on: Dec 13th, 2011, 10:16am » |
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What triggered the major meltdown, you ask? Me and Dieter Stein discussing his game, Volo, in rec.games.abstract.
MS: Volo is interesting, as I said on the first day of its
announcement here. It's also infinite.
...
DS: You're right, I really missed that.
MS: No worries
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froody
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Re: Essay by Christian Freeling on inventing games
« Reply #759 on: Dec 13th, 2011, 1:04pm » |
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SpeedRazor said that Omar has asked MS to leave. Is that true? Why?
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“Arimaa holds its master in its own bonds, shackling the mind and brain so that the inner freedom of the very strongest must suffer”
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megajester
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Re: Essay by Christian Freeling on inventing games
« Reply #760 on: Dec 14th, 2011, 2:07am » |
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on Dec 13th, 2011, 1:04pm, froody wrote:| SpeedRazor said that Omar has asked MS to leave. Is that true? Why? |
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Scan this page and the next one. I can also testify that he made some very obscene posts that were subsequently deleted. He's been relatively well-behaved since. Emphasis on "relatively".
Edit: Actually, he'd been warned before (this page and subsequent ones).
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| « Last Edit: Dec 14th, 2011, 2:18am by megajester » |
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christianF
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Re: Essay by Christian Freeling on inventing games
« Reply #761 on: Dec 18th, 2011, 3:24pm » |
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Our multi-player section was 'the Field'. It's gone now. It contained three games.
Chinese Checkers has been removed. I won't apologize to the Chinese, because the name was coined by an American for a German game. 'Oriental' was fahionable at the time.
Phalanx has been moved to the Pit. There it awaits a two-player applet. Multi-player Phalanx is a game thriving on ad hoc collusion, treaties, treason, diplomacy, agreement or disagreement, over the board. That disagrees with turnbased play.
Mu has been moved to the ArenA. Mu is not collusionproof, but neither is life. If you can't win, you can at least live. Mu requires more than mindsports applets currently provide, so a halfway step will be the release of a generic two-player implementation that will give players a first opportunity prepare for the multi-player implementation that will be build within the same framework later.
[Edit]
We've also provided the Grand Chess and Havannah applets with new graphics. That leaves as far as the ArenA is concerned only the Glass Bead Game with old graphics, and an old structure in which the pits have coordinates, but the beads inside them not. Hence moves must be entered manually and cannot be tried out.
Which is totally unsatisfactory, so here's the (hidden) background of the new applet, 2x5 pits and 2 collecting cups in the middle, and precise coordinates for every individual bead.
So the Glass Bead Game will be the next step.
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| « Last Edit: Dec 19th, 2011, 6:47am by christianF » |
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christianF
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Re: Essay by Christian Freeling on inventing games
« Reply #762 on: Dec 19th, 2011, 9:50am » |
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There seem to be two extremes in terms of how games should be judged, at either end of the spectrum.
On the one end there's the Pro-Human Association arguing that games must go through a long process of modifications and finetuning to become reliable. Deep flaws are not in the habit of exposing themselves up front.
"Look what happened to Draughts" they say. It took a century of play to expose a flaw that wasn't more than a faint shadow when the rules were established.
Which of course is true.
On the other hand there's the Church of Hard Finitude. They argue that modifications and finetuning aren't necessary if the "architecture" is right. And the architecture is right if and only if the game is finite, drawless and balanced. No need to check - we're a church, believe us.
"Look what happened to Draughts" they say. Infinite, infested with cycles - what do you expect?
Which of course is also true. Without cycles there wouldn't be a draw in the first place. Why don't Draughts players turn en masse to Ossetian Draughts instead, one might ask. Weird guys, those humans.
I did become more interested in the subject only recently, busy as I was either with inventing games, or not bothering about them at all, as the case might be. As it happens, I can identify with both sides, to a degree. So I'll sharpen my powers of provocation and put in the occasional post. Now I must go and feed my dog - or did I just do that?
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| « Last Edit: Dec 19th, 2011, 10:34am by christianF » |
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MarkSteere
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Re: Essay by Christian Freeling on inventing games
« Reply #763 on: Dec 19th, 2011, 11:12am » |
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on Dec 19th, 2011, 9:50am, christianF wrote:
Now I must go and feed my dog - or did I just do that? |
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Your dog food is growing stale, Christian. Stop whining about finite games.
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MarkSteere
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Finite games rule
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Re: Essay by Christian Freeling on inventing games
« Reply #764 on: Dec 19th, 2011, 2:00pm » |
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Infinite games are dime a dozen.
<---------- Read it and weep.
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