[MUD-Dev] Cognitively Interesting Combat (was Better Combat)

[Paolo Piselli]

--- David Kennerly <kennerly at finegamedesign.com>
wrote:

> doesn't matter in practice.  For example, Chess is a game of zero
> uncertainty and perfect information.  Reasoning implies a solution
> exists.  But combinatorics implies that the solution is
> intractable.

<snip>

> What is necessary seems, as best as I have found any (always)
> necessary trait, is NP-hardness.  That is, no polynomial-time
> complexity algorithm exists to solve it.  According to a
> researcher, Tetris is NP-complete.  But I am wildly generalizing.
> Is Puzzle Fighter NP-hard?

This guy agrees with you:

  http://www.ics.uci.edu/~eppstein/cgt/hard.html

However, I do not.  There is a difference between the size- and
time- complexity of an algorithm, and the complexity of the steps
involved in executing that algorithm.  Just because I have to expand
B^D nodes of a search tree does not mean that I'm having fun
expanding those nodes.  Solving 3-SAT problems always seemed pretty
boring to me because the search process is mechanical.  Tic-tac-toe
is NP-hard, isn't it? Does that make it interesting?

But can't a well-made Quakebot destroy even the best human players
in O(log(polynomial))?  It doesn't take exponential complexity for a
card-counting Blackjack AI, but people have fun playing this game.
Is Dragon's Lair NP-hard?  I do think it would be trivial to write a
linear-time AI to play Dragon's Lair (detect leftwards arrow,
activate left directional input), yet I've seen plenty of humans
enjoy the game.


Ultimately, I think the examination of the player experience needs
to depart from complexity and general game theory and focus more on
the workings of the human mind and modelling the experience from the
player's point of view.

-Paolo


=====
Paolo Piselli
ppiselli at yahoo.com
www.piselli.com , www.bestcoastswing.com
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