[MUD-Dev] "Doing a dungeon" (was: Permadeath or Not?)

[Travis Casey]

Tuesday, February 27, 2001, 10:51:18 AM, Koster, Raph
<rkoster at verant.com> wrote:

> Ben Hanson, formerly of Simutronics and Origin, told me a story
> about working on the combat system for DragonRealms. He knew that
> players reverse-engineered everything, and he was into interesting
> math, so he decided to use chaos theory to build the DR combat
> system. He used every variable he could think of--slope of the
> terrain, prevailing winds, reflectivity of the weapon causing
> distraction, whatever. Threw it all into an extraordinarily complex
> formula to try to get unpredictable results.

> In the end, though, he had to have a single constant in there
> somewhere. He knew players would assume it would be a power of two
> or a multiple of five, so he intentionally picked a number like 253.

> A few months later, he finds a spoiler site that purports to explain
> how to win any fight in DragonRealms. There, laid out completely, is
> his entire system--slope, wind, reflectivity, everything. And it all
> came down to one number. Said the author of the webpage, "Well,
> based on programmer proclivities, I'd guess that the number is
> either 250 or 256, since they will always think in powers of two or
> multiples of five--but my math shows that it's 253. So take that
> with a grain of salt."

No offense meant, Raph, but this story seems far too neat to me.  It
has the feel of an urban legend -- something that's been told and
retold by people until it's had a lot of the facts scraped out of it
and turned into something that fits mythological patterns.  (E.g., the
"he had to have a single constant in there" part feels especially
urban-legendish to me.  Why would a constant be needed?  And if a
constant is needed, why just one?)

Would you mind getting back in touch with Ben Hanson and
double-checking the story with him?  I'd be especially interested if
he could provide a pointer to the web site that has that detailed
description.

--
       |\      _,,,---,,_    Travis S. Casey  <efindel at earthlink.net>
 ZZzz  /,`.-'`'    -.  ;-;;,_   No one agrees with me.  Not even me.
      |,4-  ) )-,_..;\ (  `'-'
     '---''(_/--'  `-'\_)   


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