Split topic - Not hitpoint discussion

[Snoopymcc]

Someone told me I might could find out why my primary character could find Heidi's but my alt can't. Can somone point me to that thread?

[Snoopymcc]

did I mention I LOVE burning the blue candles???

[Lanya]

did your alt opt PvP off? I never tried it and thought that would only stop the blue candle but not the other heidi things...
Are you sure you looked in the right village?

[JCP]

Someone told me I might could find out why my primary character could find Heidi's but my alt can't. Can somone point me to that thread?

Feel free to petition, post in other threads, or start your own.

This is most likely due to the character not having the minimum DK requirements to access the shop.

[Northstar]

I lost 44 & 37 Gems to Lonestrider yesterday.

I know I originally missed him (earlier post). I must have been out of my mind.

Anyway, since getting to Level 30 on Saturday (6 Game days ago) I have only encountered 1 ClockWork creature and this one did not suit my strategy.

Are you allowed to tell me what are the odds of them appearing in the Stables in Romar or Degloburgh?

I still have 500 gems and want to spend them before i lose them

P.S. I have all my Jeweley and Tatoos

Thanks

[Ohtaren]

I recommend you think about NOT buying any of the top 6 mounts the second they become available. There are better choices at that point.

Incidentally, they are set at 25%, which means on any given day, there is only a 25% chance of seeing each new mount.

[Northstar]

Thanks Ohtaren

I Have a Gryphon right now and it is good.

I just hate losing Gems.

[Gargoyle]

I am seeing Lonestrider a lot these days. Five times two days ago, twice yesterday and three time today. That seems like a lot of encounters ... and it far out weighs the combined number of times I saw Cerebus, the Gorgon, Smythie, etc.

Did you guys up the chances of an encounter with Lonestrider and his band of dirty rotten scoundrels?

[JCP]

Did you guys up the chances of an encounter with Lonestrider and his band of dirty rotten scoundrels?

No.

[Pwyll]

I have noticed a tendency for forest specials to show up in "clusters" - for a few days I was landing in the grassy field three to five times each game day, then it just stopped happening. I didn't see Lonestrider at all for two DK cycles, then he started appearing. The same with the riddle gnome and the ferryman. I don't know if it's a glitch in the logic or the RNG, or if it's pure chance.

[Qwyxzl]

I have noticed that you get a lot of back to back specials that are the same. All I can say is that the RNG is the only thing more evil than JCP's avatar.

[JCP]

If you're not commenting about the new hitpoint stuff, please make a new topic.

And the specials are RANDOM.

That is the final word on the subject. There are no patterns except the ones your mind imagines as it tries to make sense of the RANDOM specials.

[Furion]

There are no patterns except the ones your mind imagines as it tries to make sense of the RANDOM specials.

Except for that Dragon in Glukmoore incident, of course. :D

I like the way you guys modified the fairy and Stonehenge hitpoints. They are just the right amount.

[Syrius]

If you're not commenting about the new hitpoint stuff, please make a new topic.


Done and done.

[Gargoyle]

There are no patterns except the ones your mind imagines as it tries to make sense of the RANDOM specials.

Except for that Dragon in Glukmoore incident, of course. :D Yes, it's that one that came to mind when Lonestrider started to show up more frequently. Especially given he was less frequent there for a while as the new hitpoint stuff settled it.

[Snoopymcc]

I had also thought some of the specials were cropping up. The last 4 game days I played I got 3 forest specials in a row on my last fight. JCP has taken care of that allusion.....

[Qwyxzl]

If you're not commenting about the new hitpoint stuff, please make a new topic.

And the specials are RANDOM.

That is the final word on the subject. There are no patterns except the ones your mind imagines as it tries to make sense of the RANDOM specials.

Us imagine things ? *wanders off chasing pink elephants

[Crowley]

The trees! They eat my mind!

*bibble wibble*

[Pwyll]

And the specials are RANDOM.

Except when they're not... :wink:

Sorry, but the Dragon was favoring Glukmoore at one point, and the player's perceptions were found to be accurate. True randomness is an elusive thing in programming, and the forest specials do tend to cluster and/or repeat in a way that seems inconsistent with pure chance. I'll be happy to keep track of the ones I encounter to see if it's all in my mind or not...

[JCP]

That's all very cute and clever, but the dragon location was not a special and therefore not appropriate to bring to the discussion.

Your chances of encountering any special event in the forest are random.

Anything else in the game, such as the outcomes of specials, the location of the dragon, etc., etc., does need to be reviewed if the results do not appear random, since it's different code and may not be correct.

However, your chances of encountering any special event in the forest are random. We have reviewed this code several times. It is random.

If you want to try and prove this wrong, fine, but it won't be easy. Either provide us with a reproducible trigger for an event or a statistical analysis showing a signficant bias.

Until then, consider me too upset to discuss this topic further.

[Sneakabout]

I'd also like to note that the problem with the dragon locations was not in out code, but rather in the PHP function itself. We don't use that function for the forest specials.

[Crowley]

If I had a penny for every "it's not random!" argument I've had, I'd have.... well, 3 pennies. But that's not the point.

[JCP]

And this current series of posts has caused us to review the code again.

We are exceptionally confident that we are getting random specials.

[Snoopymcc]

You know, I know less than nothing about programming and coding and such, and if JCP and the crew say the specials are not random then what is going on? I did not even mean to start this thread so I don't want anyone thinking I have a problem with the specials or the randomness of them :?

[Acemaster]

One time I flipped a coin 13 times, and every single time it came up heads! The coin was not biased, that was just the luck of the draw.

[Sergei]

I'll be honest, but I have not seen Smythe in ages (like 6-7 DK's) and the Mercs only once in the same time span. It may be some other change, but that does not seem all that random to me.

[Acemaster]

That's because Smythe is a travel-only special now. The mercenaries are a travel special, but I don't know if they can show up in the forest or not.

[Sergei]

I now consider my question anwsered. Thanks, Ace.

[Acemaster]

Any time.

[Furion]

Speaking of travel only specials, was any thought given to making Gorgon/Cerebus forest only specials, so people don't have to fight them, get left with 1 HP, then get immediately waylaid (death in a bottle, basically :twisted:)?

[SaucyWench]

That was actually fixed a while back... if you are encountering them in travel PLEASE whack me with a wet noodle and I will check the code again.

[Elessa]

I'll be honest, but I have not seen Smythe in ages (like 6-7 DK's) and the Mercs only once in the same time span. It may be some other change, but that does not seem all that random to me.

hmmmm...now that ye mention it, i haven't seen either of these specials for about 4 dks when travelling. i use all my travels each time i play.

[Furion]

That was actually fixed a while back... if you are encountering them in travel PLEASE whack me with a wet noodle and I will check the code again.

Oh no, I was just asking because I saw it suggested in the HP Discussion thread and there didn't seem to be a response to it. Sounds good.

[Moonchilde]

Okay.. Just to *hopefully* set this thread to rest once and for all on the randomness, let me clue you in on how it all works. For some this might be far to highly technical, and I apologize in advance.

In PHP there are two random functions. There is rand() and there is mt_rand(). Rand() is a very poor random number generator and has been for a while. Mt_rand() is a random number generator based on the Merseinne Twister (spelling?). This is a *statistically proven* random number generator. You can find out more information about both of these by reading the php.net documentation.

The dragon location code was using a third function called array_rand() which picks (or purports to) a random element from an array. It turned out however, that this code was NOT very random (and appears that the random function in it was based on rand(), not on mt_rand()). I rewrote the picking code to use something based on mt_rand() (namely e_rand()).

ALL of the other random values in the code are generated by e_rand(). E_rand() is a small wrapper which eric wrote ages ago which fits around mt_rand() and makes sure that if you give arguments in the wrong order that it corrects them (ie, if you mt_rand(2, 1) it would explode. If you say e_rand(2, 1) it'll swap the args and call mt_rand(1, 2) which is pretty obviously what you intended. e_rand() returns an integer value and has ALSO (since it's just a call to mt_rand()) been shown to be statistically random. Basically if you wrote a module which called e_rand(1,10) 1000 times in succession and counted the times you saw each number you would end up with ~100 of each of the values. This is what random means. It does *NOT* mean that if you call it two (or 3 or 5) times in succession that the numbers will be different. It's *improbable* that they would all be the same, but it *is* possible.

Now, the random event code. Each event has a base probability (the raw chance). The code takes all of the raw chances and normalizes them. (what this means if that if you have two events which each have 100% raw chance, each of them would have a normalized chance of 50%). If you have two events, one which has 100% chance and one which has 50%, then then normalized chance would be 66.6666 and 33.333333.

Basically normalization retains the frequency relationship between any two items, so if event A is twice as likely to occur as event B in raw chance, then it will be twice as likely to occur in the normalized chance.

Now, given these normalized values (which I keep signifigant to a couple of decimal places), I generate a REAL value (rather than an integer) between 0 and 100. To do this, I use a slightly different function called r_rand().

r_rand() is related to e_rand() and does basically the same sanity checking. However, when it starts, it multiplies the input values by 1000 and then divides the resulting random value by 1000. So when I call it as r_rand(0, 100), what it really does is return a random value from 0 to 100000 which is then divided by 1000.. (let's say it picked 7500, divided by 1000 would be 7.5). Hence it (because it used mt_rand()) is statistically valid and would return a 3 digit precision floating point number between the two values you requested.

(you can prove the statistical randomness by induction. mt_rand() is statistically random (proven above). multiplication and division by a constant (as long as you aren't rounding the values which we are not) will not affect the probability of any value occuring. Therefore, r_rand() is statistically random.

Since r_rand() is statistically random, the chance of any event occuring is random based on it's normalized chance.

[Gargoyle]

Thank you for writing out this explaination. Much appreciated Moonchilde.