[MUD-Dev] Re: let's call it a spellcraft

[Michael.Willey at abnamro.com]

     ____________________Reply Separator____________________
     Subject:  [MUD-Dev] Re: let's call it a spellcraft
     Author:   mud-dev at kanga.nu (James Wilson <jwilson at rochester.rr.com>)
     Date:          9/24/98 11:32 PM

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>Perhaps the following is obvious to you, but I had to
>do a bit of math to see how different these are:
>
>if the cost of moving from p pips to p+1 pips is about
>e^p experience points, then if you define p (x) :=
>attribute pips when experience is x you can get a good
>simulation of the derivative with p' (x) = e^(-x) so
>p (x) = C - e^(-x) (where C is some constant). As
>x->infinity, e^(-x)->0, so p(x)->C. Thus p(x) is
>asymptotic to the horizontal line C.
>
>Translation: difficulty proportional to e^(current
>stat) implies that there is an upper bound on the stat
>value.

Hmm.  I'm not seeing that, probably because we're not
tracking your x value.  Instead of an experience cost,
skill advancement is based on use so that the base chance
to advance from p to p+1 is 1 in e^p per use, modified
as appropriate.  There are no experience points, so x
is worked out of the equation.  There doesn't appear to
be an upper bound here, although advancement becomes
incredibly slow very quickly and eventually also bumps
up against maxint.

However, if I'm missing something in the math here,
please feel free to thump me over the head with it before
I implement this.