MySpace

Down to the Bones ... [ A raw, truthful take on life from the perspective of VRBones ]

MySpace.com | rss | sign in
VRBones



Last Updated: 3/6/2007

Send Message
Instant Message
Email to a Friend
Subscribe

Gender: Male
Status: Married
Age: 37
City: Bargara
State: QLD
Country: AU

Blog Archive
[Older      Newer]
 /  / 
Saturday, November 04, 2006 

The thing that really floated my boat is labels. Been looking for a feature like that for aages. Not nearly as nice as Triumph, but free and available. Blogspot FTW!

3:54 PM 
0 Comments
(Add Comment) |
Translate
Friday, October 06, 2006 

Category: Games
Format definitions:
"Map Select" - In a best of 3 match, player A chooses the first map from the current pool of maps to play, then Player B chooses a map to play second. The third map if needed will be randomly drawn between the remaining maps.

"Map Concede" - In a best of 3 match, player A choose a map to eliminate from the pool, reducing the pool size by 1. Player B then also eliminates a map from the pool. If there are more than 3 maps remaining in the pool, the players continue to drop another map each until there is 3 maps left (or 2 maps in the case of an even amount of maps). These 3 maps are then played in either random order, or in the odrer of Player A's selection, player B's selection, map remaining. In the case of an even map count upon starting there will only be 2 maps remaining. Player A chooses the first, then the remaining map. If a 3rd map is required, reinstate all maps and run another round of map concede down to 2 maps, then randomly choose between those by a coin toss.


Eliminating potential bias:
The main reason for using map concede over map select is that any bias in the maps is reduced rather than being exploited. This gives the player a more balanced playing field to play on. As the aim of any tournament is to find the winner by merit alone, any methods of eliminating bias helps a player's true skill to shine through. This is why most grand finals for sport are played at a neutral venue, to eliminate any perceived bias due to the venue. In terms of map choice, ideally we would want all games to be played on the most neutral map possible. If players could mutually agree on a map to play on, this would also be acceptable as both parties are then comfortable that the map selected is not going to adversely affect the outcome. "Map Concede" formalizes the mutual map selection method by putting each player in the position of revealing which maps they believe WOULD affect the outcome, finally leaving the last map as the one with the least amount of perceived bias.

In contrast, "Map Select" allows players to exploit any maps in the pool that favour their particular play style, race or strategy. This creates the opposite effect where you are creating a "home & away" scenario, giving each player the ability to play in their back yard. Even though both players get the advantage of choosing where to play, the potential is there that the bias gained from playing on your preferred map overwhelms any other difference in skill. This leads to a greater chance that both players win their "home" games and you are no closer to finding a winner.

Eg: If each player is 60% confident in beating a player of his own skill on the map he selects, the chance of a draw after 2 rounds is:
draw chance = Player A wins first map AND Player B wins 2nd map OR PlayerB wins first map AND PlayerA wins 2nd map
50% home win = 0.5 * 0.5 + 0.5 * 0.5 = 0.50 => 50%
60% home win = 0.6 * 0.6 + 0.4 * 0.4 = 0.52 => 52% ***
70% home win = 0.7 * 0.7 + 0.3 * 0.3 = 0.58 => 58%
80% home win = 0.8 * 0.8 + 0.2 * 0.2 = 0.68 => 68%

So a 2% greater chance that it will be a draw after 2 rounds, jumping to 8% with 70% confidence that they can win on their preferred map. My guess would be that the player's favourite map would give confidence between these 2 values, so an average of 5% more times the match will go to a 3rd map.

When combined with a player's true skill, it means that there is also less chance for the proper winner to win outright. If Player A has a 60% chance of winning each map due to skill, combining with the home and away effect gives:
win chance = PlayerA wins first map AND Player A wins 2nd map
win chance = PlayerA skill + Home map bias AND PlayerA - home map bias.
50% home win (+0% map bias) = (0.6 + 0) * (0.6 - 0) = 0.36 => 36%
60% home win (+10% map bias) = (0.6 + 0.1) * (0.6 - 0.1) = 0.35 => 35%
70% home win (+20% map bias) = (0.6 + 0.2) * (0.6 - 0.2) = 0.32 => 32%
80% home win (+30% map bias) = (0.6 + 0.3) * (0.6 - 0.3) = 0.27 => 27%

As the home ground advantage increases, it impacts on the chance of PlayerA to win the match in 2 maps. Considering that to win in 2 maps for a player in an even matchup is 25%, dropping from 36% to an average of 33.5% is substantial (~20% drop in effect of skill).

Placing all these effects into a real world scenario, lets assume that PlayerA has a 60% advantage over PlayerB, and that there are 4 maps on offer with PlayerA home advantages of +15% ('Ma'), +5%('Mb'), -5%('Mc') and -15%('Md').
Using "Map Select" we will have a map rotation of 'Ma', 'Md' and randomly 'Mb' or 'Mc':
win chance = (PlayerA wins 1st & 2nd map) OR (PlayerA draws AND PlayerA wins 3rd map)
           = (PlayerA wins 1st & 2nd map) OR (((PlayerA wins 1st & loses 2nd) OR (PlayerA loses 1st& wins 2nd)) AND (PlayerA wins 3rd map))
with 'Mb'  = ((0.6 + 0.15) * (0.6 - 0.15)) + ((((0.6 + 0.15) * (0.4 + 0.15)) + ((0.4 - 0.15) * (0.6 - 0.15))) * (0.6 + 0.05))
           = 0.3375 + ((0.4125 + 0.1125) * 0.65)
           = 0.3375 + ((0.525) * 0.65)
           = 0.67875 => ~68%
with 'Mc'  = ((0.6 + 0.15) * (0.6 - 0.15)) + ((((0.6 + 0.15) * (0.4 + 0.15)) + ((0.4 - 0.15) * (0.6 - 0.15))) * (0.6 - 0.05))
           = 0.3375 + ((0.4125 + 0.1125) * 0.55)
           = 0.62625 => ~62.5%

Using "Map concede" we will have a map rotation of 'Mb', 'Mc' and randomly 'Mc' or 'Md':
win chance = (PlayerA wins 1st & 2nd map) OR (PlayerA draws AND PlayerA wins 3rd map)
           = (PlayerA wins 1st & 2nd map) OR (((PlayerA wins 1st & loses 2nd) OR (PlayerA loses 1st& wins 2nd)) AND (PlayerA wins 3rd map))
with 'Mb'  = ((0.6 + 0.05) * (0.6 - 0.05)) + ((((0.6 + 0.05) * (0.4 + 0.05)) + ((0.4 - 0.05) * (0.6 - 0.05))) * (0.6 + 0.05))
           = 0.3575 + ((0.2925 + 0.1925) * 0.65)
           = 0.3575 + ((0.485) * 0.65)
           = 0.67275 => ~68%
with 'Mb'  = ((0.6 + 0.05) * (0.6 - 0.05)) + ((((0.6 + 0.05) * (0.4 + 0.05)) + ((0.4 - 0.05) * (0.6 - 0.05))) * (0.6 - 0.05))
           = 0.3575 + ((0.2925 + 0.1925) * 0.55)
           = 0.62425 => ~62.5%

As a baseline, if all maps had no home advantage:
win chance = (PlayerA wins 1st & 2nd map) OR (PlayerA draws AND PlayerA wins 3rd map)
= (PlayerA wins 1st & 2nd map) OR (((PlayerA wins 1st & loses 2nd) OR (PlayerA loses 1st& wins 2nd)) AND (PlayerA wins 3rd map))
with 'Mb'  = (0.6 * 0.6) + (((0.6 * 0.4) + (0.4 *0.6)) * 0.6)
           = 0.36 + ((0.24 + 0.24) * 0.6)
           = 0.648 => ~65%

What this shows, rather suprisingly, is that even though there is a greater chance for a map to go to a decider for "Map Select", the player's skill on the third map should shine through enough to give essentially the same odds. With a greater than 5% swing in the overall outcome, the map selection for the decider seems to be the biggest 'random' contribution to this whole scenario; one that "map concede" tries to avoid by winning in 2.

Faster tournament play:
Due to the reduction of the 3rd map being played (by ~4% in the example scenario), this also helps tournaments become less prone to running over time by having extended best-of-3 matches. Although it is ancilliary to providing an unbiased result, it is still an issue that helps tournament organisation.

Improvement of the meta-game:
With "Map Select" the player is rewarded by having a specific map that they practice hard on so that they can maximize their chances of winning at least one game. The map selected is chosen more by the player's efforts on the map than by looking at the specific map advantages for an individual matchup. This is essentially inward looking and stagnates the metagame.
With "Map Concede", it is detrimental to focus on one map as this opens the opportunity for your opponent to concede the map, either by luck or by knowing the player's preferences. This encourages players to not only spread their own practice across different maps and playing styles, but also enhances the meta-game by encouraging players to seek out opponent's strategies and weaknesses to use in the map concede process. As a player you can choose to use the "map concede" process to simply not practice the maps you know you are going to drop, however this gives an advantage to your opponent that knows your decision because they can drop maps from the remaining pool, knowing you are forced to drop your own bad ones. Against a person with good meta-game skills, you are likely to play on your worst map of the remaining maps that you did practice.

Map Pool Selection:
Using a "Map Select" method, the tournament organisers need to be very careful with the maps provided for the players in the map pool as any map with an inherent bias toward a specific play style will be exploited. Eg: If there is a map pool of 3 balanced maps and one biased map toward a certain race, the players of that race gain an advantage while others do not. Using "Map Concede", the map pool can be arbitrarily large as the players eventually shrink the map pool down to the most neutral maps on offer. This allows some leeway for experimental maps or new maps to be brought in without a major impact on the final outcome. As a tournament director you still need to consider balance, and all maps should be as balanced as possible, however there is the flexibility that some maps can be in the pool as the best balanced for specific matchups without being used for every match. A pool of 5 or 7 is common for map concede.

Positive Play:
One thing that can hinder "map concede" is that it has a negative connotation. "Concede", "drop", "eliminate" are all negative words and it seems unintuitive to a beginner (or a spectator) that players should start with a negative mentality. Even though the players are emulating the natural process of selecting an even battlefield, this is not obvious from the name. Added to this is that "Map Select" has a better feel toward players when someone does win 2-0 (even though it is less likely). If your opponent has beaten you on your own home map, it is more likely that you will concede they are the better player. During a tournament players can have heated exchanges if they think they are being treated unfairly, so having a method that causes less stress in a tournament is helpful. If the match does go to a decider though, this effect is negated.

Conclusion:
Personally I prefer the "Map Concede" method for its ability to find a neutral playing ground and it's ability to enhance the meta-game. I'm surprised that the statistics didn't back up what feels like an obvious advantage for playing on neutral soil, however this scenario of 4 maps with best-of-3 is possibly the worst for the format. If there is only one map required (due to time restraints) from a pool, this method is still available whereas map select is not. with 5 maps on offer, "map concede" offers 3 matches on the 3 most neutral maps while "map select" continues to widen the gap.

I'm working on a tournament format evaluator at the moment, so I'll have some figures for the other map pool sizes shortly. Hopefully I can also use it to demonstrate the anticipated stablility of "map concede" when introducing new maps. I've also looked at moving it to Ruby on Rails to let anyone be able to construct different tournament formats and see the results of the different tournament biases.

4:45 PM 
0 Comments
(Add Comment) |
Translate
Thursday, October 05, 2006 
Well the competition is heating up in the Blogsphere. I've also set up a Blogger account to test other functionality on offer. Nice, clen interface with minimal interruption from ads. No real sense of community though, so it's a bit of a close one at the moment.
1:49 AM 
0 Comments
(Add Comment) |
Translate
Wednesday, October 04, 2006 

It's that time of the year again. WCG is only 2 weeks away now and will be hosted in Monza,Italy. Yep, monza the racetrack.

Like last year, I'll be going over as the head referee for Warcraft3. Getting in a little early to get my barings and to be introduced to the Italian culture by Claudio, the head FIFA ref. Hopefully that involves lots of local yeast culture too.

It's been a wierd old year not being a part of the scene as much as the last couple of years. There is new stuff brewing though ...

Watch this space ...
 

2:45 AM 
0 Comments
(Add Comment) |
Translate
Tuesday, September 12, 2006 

As an initiation to the site I thought I'd bring over some of the more useful posts from Virtual Dreaming just in case the whole thing implodes. Might even do double posts for a while since it's a doddle to cut&paste your way onto here. I wonder if I can syndicate Triumph ?

  

3:48 PM 
0 Comments
(Add Comment) |
Translate
Tuesday, September 12, 2006 

Category: Goals, Plans, Hopes
A useful feature for ROAM is that it relies on importance of triangles in a scene to determine the amount of triangles to use. Further away objects can be represented by less triangles and still retain an element of accuracy to the viewer. A mountain in the distance may only be represented by 50 Triangles while a tree in front of you is also represented by 50 triangles, even though the mountain is covered with trees. My aim is to use this property of ROAM to represent deterministic events in a randomly generated world.

Actions leading to events are almost entirely causal. This means that events are directly determined by previous events: A child hitting his head causes pain, then causes crying, then causes help from parents, etc. You can also look at events in reverse by using a causal tree. The king declares war because of his son being killed, because the son lost a jousting match, because the duke was more capable on horseback, because the duke grew up on the border regions, etc.

All previous events leading to an action can be enclosed inside an event cone stretching back through time where the apex is the event itself. This means that something that took place 5 minutes ago in the same spot can affect the current action, but something occuring 5kms away at the same time cannot. Somewhere between these extremes there will be a border that defines the edge of the event cone. Theoretically this is along the speed of light since nothing can travel faster than this speed, so there is no way of knowing what took place before this time, so you cannot react to it. If the Sun blew up we would not be able to immediately react because we would have to wait the 6 minutes it takes light to get to us so that we could actually see the sun exploding. In practical terms it means anything in visual range or earshot is more or less instantly known, but other events outside our sensory range relies on some form of information dissemination. In today's age we can find out major events happening around the world in less than a day, whereas in colonial times it could be months. The event cone can be defined as:
I = Information dissemination factor
D = Distance
T = Time
ID = T <-- Event cone border
ID < T <-- All events within the event cone

Events also have a personal importance for us. Trivial events actioned by us and those around us can have as much impact on our next action as major events happening a long way from us. A good example is watching a news bulletin on TV. Regional news usually involve stories that would have been ignored if they occured in another state, and state news would have been ignored if it occured in another country. We would be interested in the size of Mrs Brown's tomatoes if she lived next door, but not if she was in Uganda.

The importance of events also has time dependant properties. Whether we had a shower 5 years ago or 5 nights ago is not as important as whether we had a shower last night. Events occuring a long time ago can affect our actions as long as it is of high importance to us. A family fued reaching back generations may have more impact on the way we talk to a person from that family than the direct events leading up to us being at the same place.

By utilising the same ROAM techniques as encapsulating determinism into random map generation, I hope to achieve the same result for events to bring life into the random world. The aim is to create a bubble of events from the main character's position that stretches away along the event cone. This would mean that there needs to be an algorithm to develop historical events that can be self replicating to sit on top of ROAM. Given a 'Diamond' of space/time and all parents of this diamond, the algorithm needs to split both 'event triangles' to create 4 event triangles. For convenience it can be assumed that an event triangle can give an accurate account of the most important event within its boundaries, and also holds the data required to develop all other events that occured.

To create an algorithm to build deterministic events we need to know how events occur and how they fit together. First of all, events have participants and an action that took place. The participants could be people, monsters, cities, kingdoms, buildings, ground, weather systems, etc. Participants are directly involved in the creation of the action, so even though there may be onlookers they aren't participants. Onlookers will remember the event and carry it with them disseminating it to others as a reference. This dissemination also occurs if you tell another person of a previous event you either experienced or heard of yourself.

Participants may view the actual event differently depending on internal biases and also communicate this perspective, not the actual event. Participants also rate the importance of the action to themselves and to other entities. An action could be important, but private, so that they definately do recall the event, but will not tell others freely.

Each action that participants can take is determined by the type of event. A King and Queen may have a marriage event, a child born event, a dinner event, etc. A participant attempts to initiate the event by requesting an action from the other. If the response is positive, the action takes place. This request/response mechanism allows the internal biases for each action to be conveyed by all parties.

An Event may also be constrained by when and/or where an event can take place between parties. This is an enforcement of the event itself, not the will of the participants. A King Participant must have had a birth event and coronation event before the time he is linked as king, and then potentially a death event afterward. This allows the event structure to describe itself and outline the way the events come together to form the living world.

In a top-down approach, the events are used to generate the entities used as participants. In the beginning the world creation event brings into existance essential entities like the world, the continents, the weather systems, etc. Later on Nation events bring into existance Nations populating the world, which then in turn spawn Kings, which then in turn spawn battles, which then in turn spawn heroes etc. Each division of the event bubble gives the opportunity for more entities to be brought in purely by the existance of the event they are going to participate in. The events and participants available for selection are constrained by existing events, the event cone, and participant's internal biases. This will lead to a consistent and cohesive world that can be torn down and rebuilt from scratch if need be.

Enter into this the player .....
And that's a dicussion for another time.

3:35 PM 
0 Comments
(Add Comment) |
Translate
Tuesday, September 12, 2006 

Category: Games

Card Chess
I was reading through some game design websites a while back and hyperlinked my way through to a discussion on creating board games and card games. I'd thought those areas were pretty much dead, but it seems there is still games being dreamed up all the time; even Settlers of Catan was only developed in '95. It prompted me to thinking about writing up the game that I made up in my teenage years when looking for something to do with a pack of cards handy. I started out thinking about how you could play chess with cards, and it eventually grew from there. Even though the game may not play exactly like chess in its current incarnation, the working title 'Card Chess' is still appropriate as the chesslike moves are enough for people to feel comfotable with the basic concepts. You can certainly apply your chess mind to it, as thinking several moves ahead and setting up multiple attack points are still core strategies. So here goes, Card Chess v1.1 ...

CARD CHESS GAME CONCEPT
- A game for 2 players with a standard pack of cards inspired by chess.
- One player is 'red', the other 'black'
- Each player has an army of 2 Kings, 2 Queens, 2 Jacks and 2 tens of the colour they are playing.
- Players take turns to move one of their units in any allowable direction, as in chess.
- Instead of 'capturing' pieces, an attacking move is to simply 'cover' your card over an opponents. A covered card cannot move. If the card on top moves off to another position, the uncovered card is now back in play and can move freely once again.
- Since there are 2 kings, the game ends when one side has covered both kings.

THE PLAY SURFACE
- The remaining 36 cards are aligned in a 6x6 grid to form the playing surface. It is broken up into 3 6x2 areas; Black's starting area, the terrain, and Red's starting area.

BBBBBB
BBBBBB
TTTTTT
TTTTTT
RRRRRR
RRRRRR

B = Black starting area
T = Terrain
R = Red starting area

- Cards making the startup areas of the playing surface are played face down.
- To create the middle Terrain, shuffle all 2,3 & 5 cards (12 cards in total) and deal into place. This should give 6 red terrain segments and 6 black terrain segments.

MOVING AND ATTACKING
- A King's movement is similar to a King in chess (one space in any direction). A queen moves like a queen in chess (horizontally, vertically or diagonally). A Jack moves like a bishop (diagonally). A Ten moves like a castle (horizontally & vertically).
- When moving in a direction (horizonally, vertically or diagonally), your unit may stop at any card on the playing surface in that dirction up to and including the first card of the opposing colour. EG: Playing Red would mean that Black terrain cards and black unit cards stop further movement. As a reverse of this, you can pass over or land on any turned over card on the playing surface, any terrain of your colour, or any card of your army.

SETUP
2 modes of setup are currently used; one for beginners and quicker play, and one for a more competitive, balanced start.

1. Fixed starting positions
- Each player sets out their army in the same format as below:

TJKKJT <--- Black army
..QQ..
......
......
..QQ..
TJKKJT <--- Red army

T = Ten
J = Jack
Q = Queen
K = King

- You may wish to have cards of the same suit together (EG Diamons on left, Hearts on Right), but as there is no distinction between suits in the game, it is not important)
- This method give the players a known starting position with a random terrain in the middle to give slight variablity (you can even play without the terrain in the middle for training purposes with people that may not be familiar with chess movement)
- As with chess, the player starting first has a slight advantage.

2. Progressive starts
- Each player starts with all unit cards in hand and the playing surface completed.
- Decide who will play first, via coin toss or mutual consent
- Players take turn placing any unit in hand anywhere in their starting area that has not already been occupied. Players should keep in mind the terrain in play and also currently placed cards to judge the most effective position for the placed card.
- When all cards are placed, the starting player can now move units.
- The starting player's advantage of moving first is balanced by their opponent who places the last card in the setup phase

3:18 PM 
0 Comments
(Add Comment) |
Translate
Tuesday, September 12, 2006 

Current mood:  apathetic
Category: Blogging

Well, I've finally set up a myspace account. The last straw was seeing sigames head over this way for a spot of blogging. FM07 sure does look the part, but I can't help but wonder if the genre is now maturing to the point where the only thing left is to tidy up the graphics.

FM06 still has a happy home on my hard drive, and the current game is well into the 5th year with me once again at the helm of Rochdale. The difference this time was that, as a consequence of them now allowing part-time clubs, I started out at Barrow in Conference North. A humble beginning but all the greater story as the cellar dwellers punched through to division 2 in their 2nd year. Rochdale sacked poor old Parkin on queue as barrow were leading division 2 and were kind enough to offer me the job. It was possibly the first time I'd moved clubs without restarting from scratch and it felt wierd leaving a lot of work behind. Possibly more annoying was once again hunting for some coaching staff to fill out the ranks. Most of the great, cheap scandinavian imports had been snaffled by Barrow, so most of my beginning budget was drained by pulling them over.

Barrow remained high enough to get through into div1, but the rejuvinated Rochdale joined them and are now leading the table quite comfortably. A promotion again next year seems to be a formality with only 1/3 of the season gone. I still catch myself looking over the Barrow squad with envious eyes as a lot of players would still slot right into my current squad.

So ... MySpace ...

Not sure how long this will last, but I had a thought as I drove home fom touch tonight that a good site name might be "Down to the Bones", a raw, truthful look at life from VRBones himself .. haha .. er ...   

Lo and behold I find myself creating a new site. Prophetic? No?

Had a scare with Virtual Dreaming the other day when all of the Ausgamers hosteds were taken down due to old, exploitable bulletin board systems. I'm surprised how many people used forum software when Triumph was sitting underneath everyone's site waiting to be used. Man, Triumph, so many things it was destined to do that was planned. Heh, getting misty.

Reminds me that me and Saint had run into Guv and some other OldSchool QGL sorts at the WCG Australian finals down at the Gold Coast. It was great catching up with them, but all had agreed that the LANning scene had changed. Grumpy old men syndrome I reckon...

Italy still looks the go though. I've been called back to be the Warcraft 3 head referee for WCG international again this year, and after thinking that there were just too many things going on to make this year a no-go, things just fell into place. I'm even getting full-paid time off work to go!

Well, better get to looking around at some other features and getting on the viral marketing bandwagon. Go MySpace! Hope you live long enough to eek another post out of me!

     

Currently playing:
World of Warcraft Collector's Edition
Release date: 23 November, 2004
1:15 PM 
0 Comments
(Add Comment) |
Translate