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Topic: Essay by Christian Freeling on inventing games (Read 522419 times) |
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christianF
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Re: Essay by Christian Freeling on inventing games
« Reply #780 on: Dec 22nd, 2011, 7:01am » |
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Why I'm thankful to Luis Bolaños Mures
Luis invited me to a game of Symple, accompanied by an unobtrusive mail:
Quote:| "One rules question, though: is passing allowed? I'm just asking because I've seen some passes played in the recorded games, even though the rules don't seem to allow it. Of course, if passing is allowed, trivial draws are possible, so I guess it isn't." |
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Since the rules explicitly stated that passing was allowed and that successive passes ended the game, this is a very forgiving way of putting it. Yes, players could agree to a draw by passing with an equal count. That's not exactly in the game's spirit, but under tournament conditions it could become a problem. I hadn't even considered that because a Symple tournament seemed far from imminent, but there was this point regarding draws by mutual agreement.
So I considered compulsory movement in the sense that a player must (instead of 'may') either place an isolated single, or grow any or all of his groups.
As it turned out, this minute change has deep consequences for the endgame. Whereas the main consideration regarding invasions used to be whether they could be advantageous, they now should be regarded in terms of whether they could be forced. If the board fills up, there may come a point where it has become impossible to grow because all a player's groups are fully enclosed. In that case, instead of simply leaving vacant territory to the opponent, the player is now forced to invade it, and be penalized for it. It implies that at a certain stage it may not be advantageous to grow all one's groups, in order to save growing options and prevent being forced to create new groups. This of course comes at the price of the very stones (read points) that are not placed. In other words, where Symple used to suffer from a a certain lack of drama, compulsory placement turns this around in a rather dramatic fashion, with a sharp increase of tension towards the endgame (in a balanced game).
So where I've always argued that Symple lacked the drama associated with the really great games, this minute change turns it into a great game after all!
And that's why I'm thankful to Luis Bolaños Mures  .
I've made the necessary modifications in the rules, the About and in How I invented ... .
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MarkSteere
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Re: Essay by Christian Freeling on inventing games
« Reply #781 on: Dec 22nd, 2011, 8:52am » |
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on Dec 22nd, 2011, 5:48am, Eggman wrote:
The only time I've ever seen anyone as butthurt as you was when my little niece figured out she's not really a princess. |
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lol, Sorry about your niece's butthurt. I'll try to be more careful next time.
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MarkSteere
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Re: Essay by Christian Freeling on inventing games
« Reply #782 on: Dec 22nd, 2011, 9:00am » |
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on Dec 22nd, 2011, 7:01am, christianF wrote:
this minute change turns [Symple] into a great game after all! |
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[scream]
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christianF
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Re: Essay by Christian Freeling on inventing games
« Reply #783 on: Dec 22nd, 2011, 9:13am » |
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3.
on Dec 20th, 2011, 10:29am, christianF wrote:| Though one cannot predict all aspects of all games, one can predict some aspects of all games and all aspects of some games. |
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Noughts & Crosses is point in case for the latter. Disregarding actual strategy, Othello doesn't suffer from a large amount of unpredictability either. Predictability depends on the game. One doesn't have to be a genius to see that Hex is hard finite and decisive. That's predictable without any playing experience. If one happened to be familiar with connectivity on the hexgrid, one could add that playing the game would by no means be trivial and basic knowledge of game trees would lead to the conclusion that any move in any position, including the initial empty board, would either be winning or losing. One might even reason towards a first player win, because John Forbes Nash' non-constructive proof isn't all that hard to follow and might be produced without any playing experience.
That's quite a lot of predictable aspects that don't rely in any way on experience.
Another thing that can be seen at first glance is that in terms of strategy the game can only go in one direction: deeper, either to the point of being solved, as it is for small boards, or on and on. The depth of the abyss may not be immediately evident, but in the absence of draws there's nowhere else to go. That's where I dwelled in relative ignorance for a long time. For a reasonably strong player like me, playing against really strong players was a sobering experience. One of them, my friend Benedikt Rosenau, paraphrased a famous quote by Edward Lasker thus:
Quote:| "While the Baroque rules of Go could only have been created by humans, the rules of Hex are so elegant, organic, and rigorously logical that if intelligent life forms exist elsewhere in the universe they almost certainly play Hex." |
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Tongue in cheek of course but with an undercurrent of seriousness: unlike Hex (that is, barring turn order advantage), Go does indeed have structural problems that require regulation. Given the basic idea of placement and capture, and concluding that groups can live, one would for instance encounter cycles (ko, superko) and stalemate (seki). Both can be solved, as all Go players know, and the provisional solutions that would have suggested themselves would maybe have lacked the refinements that now govern superko and komi, but they would largely have been self evident and satisfactory.
Given some thought and cycles and seki being covered, one might conclude that Go's behaviour would not be all that more difficult to predict: like Hex, the game has nowhere else to go than deeper.
Again, these predictions do not actually require any playing experience. They aren't even very helpful in actual play.
So, given that the long term behaviour Chess type games, Draughts type games and Mancalas is difficult to predict and has often been shaped by past modifications, and that the same behaviour of Hex and Go is far easier to predict, while these games are not subject to modifications, or at most peripheral, what's the difference?
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Eggman
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Re: Essay by Christian Freeling on inventing games
« Reply #784 on: Dec 22nd, 2011, 9:24am » |
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on Dec 22nd, 2011, 9:00am, MarkSteere wrote:
Yeah. Just like little Amanda.
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christianF
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Re: Essay by Christian Freeling on inventing games
« Reply #785 on: Dec 22nd, 2011, 10:24am » |
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on Dec 22nd, 2011, 9:24am, Eggman wrote:
Yeah. Just like little Amanda. |
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The only difference is that she would probably have less trouble understanding Symple's balancing rule. 
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| « Last Edit: Dec 22nd, 2011, 10:29am by christianF » |
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MarkSteere
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Re: Essay by Christian Freeling on inventing games
« Reply #786 on: Dec 22nd, 2011, 11:45am » |
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Intelligent life forms in the universe undoubtedly play variations of Chess and Go. The capture-by-replacement of Chess and the capture-by-surround of Go are just as fundamental as the Hex principle, and more obvious.
The Oust principle was obvious to me, an intelligent life form.
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MarkSteere
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Re: Essay by Christian Freeling on inventing games
« Reply #787 on: Dec 22nd, 2011, 12:43pm » |
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on Dec 22nd, 2011, 10:24am, christianF wrote:
The only difference is that she would probably have less trouble understanding Symple's balancing rule.
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She would certainly be the first to understand it.
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SpeedRazor
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Re: Essay by Christian Freeling on inventing games
« Reply #788 on: Dec 22nd, 2011, 6:39pm » |
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Thanks for pointing out that Edward Lasker quote about Hex, Christian, I was just thinking that! (Essentially, that any intelligent extraterrestrial civilization would likely also have discovered Hex; hey, it was discovered independently twice here on Earth.)
As simple as it is, I wonder if Hex is the most complex ASG that would be universally discovered in totality - not a variation? Let's hope not...
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| « Last Edit: Dec 22nd, 2011, 6:47pm by SpeedRazor » |
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MarkSteere
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Re: Essay by Christian Freeling on inventing games
« Reply #789 on: Dec 22nd, 2011, 8:33pm » |
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on Dec 22nd, 2011, 6:39pm, SpeedRazor wrote:
As simple as it is, I wonder if Hex is the most complex ASG that would be universally discovered in totality - not a variation?
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Flume is universal. First comes Dots and Boxes. Then comes Flume - a related but distinct game.
It's a question of arbitrariness, a function of complexity.
Hex is very non-arbitrary, although it can be played on a variety of tessellations. Flume is more complicated than Hex and more arbitrary, though still clearly universal.
Lariat is universal. It's the ugly sister in the HYL triad because of its unbalance, but it's also arguably the simplest of the three.
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Eltripas
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Re: Essay by Christian Freeling on inventing games
« Reply #790 on: Dec 22nd, 2011, 8:37pm » |
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I used to think that this thread should be closed for the sake of the Arimaa Forum, now I think that it should be closed for the sake of humanity.
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MarkSteere
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Re: Essay by Christian Freeling on inventing games
« Reply #791 on: Dec 22nd, 2011, 8:58pm » |
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lol
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christianF
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Re: Essay by Christian Freeling on inventing games
« Reply #792 on: Dec 23rd, 2011, 7:14am » |
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4.
on Dec 22nd, 2011, 9:13am, christianF wrote:| So, given that the long term behaviour Chess type games, Draughts type games and Mancalas is difficult to predict and has often been shaped by past modifications, and that the same behaviour of Hex and Go is far easier to predict, while these games are not subject to modifications, or at most peripheral, what's the difference? |
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I don't think there's an easy answer, and certainly not a universal one. Despite speculations to the contrary, I'd like to keep it down to earth. Also, I'd like to discuss predictability of game behaviour on structural grounds rather than on the behaviour of known games that may be related. One might make some tentative predictions regarding Grand Chess or Dameo, because of their similarity to Chess and Draughts, but that's not all that interesting in general terms.
Chess type games are easy to invent, 'assemble' might be a better word, and can easily be made to behave in a satisfactory way in the short run. At the same time they're hard to make even remotely interesting and long term behaviour may reveal unforeseen problems. Of course most will never suffer 'long term behaviour'. If we may call Arimaa 'chess type', then it will be one of the very few games that actually gets to that point, which makes it all the more interesting.
The predictability of Draughts type games ... may I leave it at the swamp of draws Draughts eventually got stuck in, after many decennia of satisfactory behaviour? The problem is that Draughts variants more often than not feature men and kings. They're not uniform (that is: with only one kind of pieces). Make one uniform, like Ossetian Draughts and it's predictably finite and drawless. Predicting the behaviour of finite and drawless games is easier, but the games themselves are not necessarily better or the International Draughts community would be playing Ossetian. Draughts, despite its current problems, is still a far better game than Ossetian.
Mancala's are mostly uniform but not organic, even if 'organic' isn't precisely defined. Their behaviour depends on how a particular ruleset aligns with the calculus involved and how happy the players are with it. Many of the various rulesets will probably have evolved through trial and error. Predicting whether a new mancala will behave at least interestingly would seem very difficult.
Only games that are both 'uniform' and 'organic' seem to align favorably with a certain degree of long term behavioural predictability. This set would include most but not all quintessential games, that is, games that have a mechanism that suggests its own theme and provides the essential implementation of it.
Chess games are never quintessential, and for Draughts, only Checkers might be considered as such (Turkish Draughts has too many aspects that are not 'essential' to the implementation of 'orthogonal' draughts, like the method of capture or the long range kings). And Checkers in fact happens to be fairly predictable, including of course its cycles and draws (not to mention fairly solved, but that's another matter).
But take Hex, Go, Othello, Emergo, Yodd, Symple or Oust, all uniform and organic game systems, and long term perdictability can be based on the observation that these games have nowhere to go but deeper.
The same holds for many more that are uniform and organic but not quintessential. Among games that were discussed in this very thread only recently, Ketchup, Volo and Sygo comply: one can clearly see the contours of deepening strategy and refinement of tactics even though one inevitably faces all appropriate beginner's hurdles in actual play.
The one thing that has been flagrantly disregarded here is turn-order balancing rules and mechanisms. There are a lot of those, and different ones at that, even in the above selection of games.
Which games need them and which don't, interesting questions, and no, I don't know all balancing mechanisms, let alone all the answers.
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| « Last Edit: Dec 23rd, 2011, 7:56am by christianF » |
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Boo
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Re: Essay by Christian Freeling on inventing games
« Reply #793 on: Dec 23rd, 2011, 8:07am » |
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Quote:| I used to think that this thread should be closed for the sake of the Arimaa Forum, now I think that it should be closed for the sake of humanity. |
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Oh no! Just let the trolls fight it out! Who is the king of arimaa forum?
FIGHT! FIGHT! FIGHT!
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christianF
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Re: Essay by Christian Freeling on inventing games
« Reply #794 on: Dec 23rd, 2011, 8:31am » |
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on Dec 23rd, 2011, 8:07am, Boo wrote:
Oh no! Just let the trolls fight it out! Who is the king of arimaa forum?
FIGHT! FIGHT! FIGHT! |
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I'm sorry, but this isn't the Arimaa forum but a small niche. Though I didn't start the thread, it has my name in the subject line. I try to provide some interesting content, but if I fail, reading it isn't compulsory, and if you feel it doesn't matter all that much, so do I.
I'm not interested in fights, even less in posters who indulge in them or try to fuel them.
If you want to share some insights regarding predictability of game behaviour, a subject that would naturally interest game inventors, you're welcome.
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| « Last Edit: Dec 23rd, 2011, 8:48am by christianF » |
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