At 10/3/06 08:24 AM, skooj-lik-chaah wrote: ...so we just decide that it's random when random is impossible.

I think you can have real randomness on some sort of quantum level. Don't quote me on that, though. I don't know shit about it.

no, nothing can really be random, ven when we're trying to be random, our mind goes through a series of steps.

the flip of a coin is determined by its initial velocity and rotation. and its just virtually impossible to move you thumb to flip the coin the same exact way twice

At 10/3/06 09:45 AM, ImpotentBoy2 wrote: no, nothing can really be random, ven when we're trying to be random, our mind goes through a series of steps.

the flip of a coin is determined by its initial velocity and rotation. and its just virtually impossible to move you thumb to flip the coin the same exact way twice

Quantum physics, look into it. Random exists just not in your mind or your computer. What you have is a close enough simulation so who cares :)

i will, but could i have a small example of whats random.

At 10/3/06 10:02 AM, ImpotentBoy2 wrote: i will, but could i have a small example of whats random.

[i]
Processes described by quantum physics
randomness revealed by simplicity
Contrary to classical physics, quantum physics is fundamentally random. It is the only theory within the fabric of modern physics that integrates randomness. This fact was very disturbing to physicists like Einstein who invented quantum physics. However, its intrinsic randomness has been confirmed over and over again by theoretical and experimental research conducted since the first decades of the XXth century.

When designing a random number generator, it is thus a natural choice to take advantage of this intrinsic randomness and to resort to the use of a quantum process as source of randomness. Formally, quantum random number generators are the only true random number generators. Although this observation may be important in certain cases, quantum random number generators have other advantages. This intrinsic randomness of quantum physics allows selecting a very simple process as source of randomness. This implies that such a generator is easy to model and its functioning can be monitored in order to confirm that it operating properly and is actually producing random numbers. Contrary to the case where classical physics is used as the source of randomness and where determinism is hidden behind complexity, one can say that with quantum physics randomness is revealed by simplicity.

Until recently the only quantum random number generator that existed were based on the observation of the radioactive decay of some element. Although they produce numbers of excellent quality, these generators are quite bulky and the use of radioactive materials may cause health concerns. The fact that a simple and low cost quantum random number generators did not exist prevented quantum physics to become the dominant source of randomness.

[/i]

At 10/3/06 10:06 AM, Inglor wrote:

At 10/3/06 10:02 AM, ImpotentBoy2 wrote: i will, but could i have a small example of whats random.

Until recently the only quantum random number generator that existed were based on the observation of the radioactive decay of some element.

\the rate of radioctive decay on an element? hmm.... i stil dont necesserily agree since theres alot of stuff with atoms that are based on probability. or am i missing something?

At 10/3/06 10:15 AM, ImpotentBoy2 wrote: \the rate of radioctive decay on an element? hmm.... i stil dont necesserily agree since theres alot of stuff with atoms that are based on probability. or am i missing something?

You're missing something and I'm too tired to explain, I just googled random number quantum and clicked I'm feeling lucky...

lol

basically it's just how quants act, it's kind of complicated, google it yourself :P

At 10/3/06 02:18 AM, jmtb02 wrote:

At 10/2/06 11:15 PM, 23450 wrote: What makes a good game???

That's a tricky question. By the standard of "good" for this post, I am going to relate "good" to what the Newgrounds audience is seeking in a game. So yes, where to be begin...

OH NOES MISTER JOHN, YOU ARE WRONG. Well not really, but newground's average population consists of mindless 'noobs'. They're stupid, they smell funny, and they don't know how to judge games by the quality. I think AG contests really need to improvise, Newgrounders aren't judges, and they don't know how to vote. Take for example the way score changes so fast. When you submit a fairly good game it could very possibly have a score above 3.8 even if it's not so great, because people are so desperate to keep the submission alive that they tell themselves there are more chances for it to live if they vote 5. Now I'm gonna turn this into a personal case, like I always do due to my attention whoreness and emoness. When I uploaded my last submission, JuicePlz, it had a score of around 4.5, and then 4.10-4.15 when it got out of judgement. Now I do think it's a bit high, but of course it wouldn't stay like that. After I got my award the score slightly went down, and then when it was showcased on the frontpage the score dropped like something falling from a cliff. I highly thank AG for the extra bonus and the frontpage bonus, but without that whole stupid ng voting I could have gotten way more awards. Of course I'm not complaining about AG's services, I think they're really great and will surely be producing more games for them.

Anyway my point was that letting 'noobs' vote on people's hard work is a shame, and the voting system really needs more work.

At 10/3/06 10:06 AM, Inglor wrote: randomness revealed by simplicity

lolsimplicity. It's liek sooo easy to understand :P

newgrounds viewers might not be the best crowd, but they do represent the public, that's teh concept

Actionscript is so damn powerful.
http://www.flashsand..ces/1_1/demos/kitty/

http://www.custommedia.co.nz/swfz/

This is all AS3!
How cool is it! I don't even want to begin to think about how complicated that would be to make... I made a 3d cube with shiny faces and that took me a long long time.

At 10/3/06 10:26 AM, Inglor wrote: newgrounds viewers might not be the best crowd, but they do represent the public, that's teh concept

First time I argue with inglor, do I get a cookie?

First of all NG's crowd does not represent the public. They represent the lifeless people who search for games/adult material on google. Even in overall the net's population is below the average people you can find 'in the real world', do you often see many important scientists or successful country leaders on the internet? no. Only kids and people who browse the net all the day.

Secondly, even if NG perefectly represents the public, how would it be fair to be judged by the public if it is formed by idiots? It's just like you judge criminels with real judges, not people you randomly pick in the street.

Inglor, toasty needs to talk to you. Msn please kthx.

At 10/3/06 10:32 AM, Toast wrote: First of all NG's crowd does not represent the public. They represent the lifeless people who search for games/adult material on google. Even in overall the net's population is below the average people you can find 'in the real world', do you often see many important scientists or successful country leaders on the internet?

Funny you'd mention google... The people who made it are internet junkies and they're considered computer scientists and they're clearly "above" the average people in terms of financial success.

I wouldn't like some dumbass like George Bush on the net. His intelligence is inferior to a 13 years old on the grounds that "True intelligence is to admit that you know nothing." Bush thinks he knows everything and ends up making a complete fool of himself and the American people with scandals such as war against Iraq and his stupid laws.

At 10/3/06 10:32 AM, Toast wrote: Secondly, even if NG perefectly represents the public, how would it be fair to be judged by the public if it is formed by idiots? It's just like you judge criminels with real judges, not people you randomly pick in the street.

in anything higher than small-claims court, the judge doesnt call the judgement. he mediates the courtroom. the jury of peers judge the criminal. so YES, it is people randomly on the street.

NG might not perfectly represent the public, but they are your target demographic on this website, and if you want to be successful HERE, you had damn well better learn to play to your target audience.

At 10/3/06 10:32 AM, LolOutLoud wrote: Actionscript is so damn powerful.
http://www.flashsand..ces/1_1/demos/kitty/

http://www.custommedia.co.nz/swfz/

This is all AS3!
How cool is it! I don't even want to begin to think about how complicated that would be to make... I made a 3d cube with shiny faces and that took me a long long time.

Yeah, there are other (AS2 though) 3d stuff I've seen here.
That's truly amazing+open source. :)

At 10/3/06 10:32 AM, Toast wrote: 'in the real world', do you often see many important scientists or successful country leaders on the internet? no. Only kids and people who browse the net all the day.

I disagree. How many of us are in college, are doing well in school, or have great jobs right now?

I think your targetting demographics a bit too hard right now. Newgrounds may have those lifeless people, but it is not comprised entirely of.

At 10/3/06 11:46 AM, jmtb02 wrote:

At 10/3/06 10:32 AM, Toast wrote: 'in the real world', do you often see many important scientists or successful country leaders on the internet? no. Only kids and people who browse the net all the day.

I disagree. How many of us are in college, are doing well in school, or have great jobs right now?

I disagree. Maybe many people don't have great jobs but those who browse the internet and vote on games would most likely not have a job at all. Noobs don't act like noobs outside the internet anyway, just like you can't use abbreviations (u for you, etc) in essays.

I think your targetting demographics a bit too hard right now. Newgrounds may have those lifeless people, but it is not comprised entirely of.

I'm not talking about lifeless people, I'm just saying most people can't vote. Nothing to do with whether they're idiots or not, they're simply not experienced voters. AG should have their own trusted judges.

At 10/3/06 12:17 PM, Toast wrote: I'm not talking about lifeless people, I'm just saying most people can't vote. Nothing to do with whether they're idiots or not, they're simply not experienced voters. AG should have their own trusted judges.

Im not gonna take any sides here, but i do have something to say.

Most of the n00bs take advantage of the internet anonimacy, so that they can vote 0 on everything they see and no one will do anything about it.

NG goes all out for halloween :)

At 10/3/06 12:17 PM, Toast wrote: I'm not talking about lifeless people, I'm just saying most people can't vote. Nothing to do with whether they're idiots or not, they're simply not experienced voters. AG should have their own trusted judges.

Thats retarded, whos to say they cant vote? What makes an experienced voter anyway? A vote at ng is ones opinion.. if i like the color blue do i need a degree in color theory to be able to vote on it. No.
Some people like claymation and thats all they like.. some like clocks and thats all they like .. some like video game spoofs.. etc. That doesnt make their votes wrong or them less experienced voters. Its their vote/opinion.

NG provides people with the satisfaction of allowing you to make your opinion at the click of a button, wether you are a flash viewer, author, someone who never uses the internet someone who always uses the internet, whatever.

-L

At 10/3/06 12:48 PM, Luis wrote: Thats retarded, whos to say they cant vote? What makes an experienced voter anyway? A vote at ng is ones opinion.. if i like the color blue do i need a degree in color theory to be able to vote on it. No.

Now I partly disagree with the original point of this. Of course everyone has the right to vote, but not in cases where you can lose a lot of money just because the stupid audience didn't understand your flash or didn't bother to read the instructions, etc. Voting on something and judging something by its quality is not the same thing.

Some people like claymation and thats all they like.. some like clocks and thats all they like .. some like video game spoofs.. etc. That doesnt make their votes wrong or them less experienced voters. Its their vote/opinion.

Then if that's the only thing they like they should go watch it only and not vote low on other stuff.

NG provides people with the satisfaction of allowing you to make your opinion at the click of a button, wether you are a flash viewer, author, someone who never uses the internet someone who always uses the internet, whatever.

That's fine. Sometimes it is annoying to have a game really underrated, though you never experienced that, you might understand that it's not fun having a really good game with a score around 3.2 and then see a lot of 'didn't get it so i voted 0 lol1!!' reviews. It's not catastrophical to get underrated, but it is very frustrating when the amount of money you get depends on the score. Not everyone here is rich, and some people are desperate for money and found out that if they work hard flash can be effective.

I totally agree with luis, just because you disagree with them doesn't make them any less right

At 10/3/06 01:02 PM, Toast wrote: That's fine. Sometimes it is annoying to have a game really underrated, though you never experienced that, you might understand that it's not fun having a really good game with a score around 3.2 and then see a lot of 'didn't get it so i voted 0 lol1!!' reviews. It's not catastrophical to get underrated, but it is very frustrating when the amount of money you get depends on the score. Not everyone here is rich, and some people are desperate for money and found out that if they work hard flash can be effective.

Well you wont survive in the business if you want people to pity you and vote high because you are desperate for money.

If people dont get it, its usually because there is something fundementally wrong with your submission. E.I the instructions werent written right, the buttons were too small, the type was hard to read, the controls were too touchy ETC ETC ETC.
Dont pin this on the audience, its your idea and you have to sell it.

You have to know your audience, beta your game to death, and beta it some more. Regardless of how hard you work if an idea was stupid it was stupid and people will not hold back just because you need the 100 bucks and they shouldnt have to.
Sometimes as developers we become so in love with an idea that you dont realize the audience you are pitching it to.
This isnt a worry for the artist/game developer that isnt out to make a buck but rather take a chance and go with what makes him/her happy. This is a worry for someone like you who sounds like your so desperately trying to make a dollar.

At 10/3/06 02:05 PM, Luis wrote: Well you wont survive in the business if you want people to pity you and vote high because you are desperate for money.

Is panhandling a business?..

There's probably a fucking program for it at my goddamn clown school.

At 10/3/06 08:21 AM, Paranoia wrote: The thing you have to remember, though, is that although there's a big difference between complexity and randomness, if something is complex enough it gains the appearence of something random.

Randomness in a game tends to detract from the experience, but does present a challenge occasionally. By random, I mean an outcome with a fixed range of results. I don't mean someone rolling a pair of dice and a moose landing on the game board (that kind of randomness must be removed from games at all costs).

It all lies on a skill/random scale - a game with total reliance on randomness (like RPS, or coin flipping, or dice rolling) has nothing you can be skilled at. If you remove cold calling your opponent and cheating from the equation, your odds of winning are exactly the same as your opponent.

Snakes and Ladders is boring as sin because it relies on randomness. If you hit the exact right combination of throws, then there is nothing your opponents can do to counter it (and vice versa, other than summoning the aforementioned moose). And it's very close cousin Monopoly also lacks skill once you study probability a bit and know that the Orange, Pink and Red sets are the single most landed on properties in the game thanks to Bell Curve probability. But they amuse because everyone has an equal shot of winning.

Chess is a game of skill. So is Go. Or Stratego. An even number of pieces between you and your opponent. Removing cheating and freak occurances from the mix leaves you with a game without chance. These games amuse because they tax the brains, and the person best suited to the game should always win. Naturally, those of us who go up against Kasparov know we're doomed from the moment we start, since there's no way Gary will fail to move his pawns properly because he rolled a double-one...

Balancing between the middle are most other games. Football is a fairly skill focussed game - the better team should always win. But since Football's not a perfect environment, injuries happen, pitch conditions change, players get tired, the ball bounces off an irregular field (despite the best efforts of the groundsman) - the factors grow like Paranoia said until something exceptionally complex becomes a matter of random chance. Whilst the better team should win consistantly over a worse team, the game has enough element of random chance so that if Lady Luck decides that the Star Goalie's laces are undone during the penalty kick, then so be it.

Poker is a game that skews towards random chance (assuming no one's card counting or deck rigging). Varient games of poker (like Texas Holdem) force the players into games of psychological warfare with each other, bluffing each other down. There's enough of an element of skill there to make Poker a televised sport, and a favourite of professional gamblers everywhere. Ask those same gamblers if they want to bet the amounts on poker on whether the next card will be Red or Black, and they'll tell you to take a hike.

At the extremes we have games so difficult to play they require seventy different game modes to be all revised to a fine art, with no margin for error. No one wants a game that gives them worthless hoop after worthless hoop after worthless hoop to jump through, to never be jumped through again. And no one wants thier game to radically throw the worst of luck at them and hold them accountable. Random Maze Generators that generate mazes without endings, or other unsolvable puzzles, are just that kind of thing (and interestingly, they're in the guise of "skilled" games, where we all know you can find the exit to a maze by just sticking to one of the walls all the way around it)

The key for any good game design is finding a balance between chance and skill. No one wants to be beaten by a rank ametuer at a game they're perfecting, but no one wants a game so stagnant that they should instead play pu-sticks. So balance between skill and chance must be finalised. It's when someone finds this optimum balance during play, being able to hone thier skills to perfection whilst taking into account the elements of chance, that they become uber at the game and achieve optimum enjoyment from it. Counterstrike level de_dust owes a lot of it's success to the fact that each side is perfectly balanced for environment, leaving it down to skill of the teams and the random jerking of the weapon to see them through.

i'm trying to catch up from page 14

so.....much....reading

At 10/3/06 02:49 PM, fenix wrote: i'm trying to catch up from page 14

so.....much....reading

Seconded.

I agree with Luis in the fact that the majority of voters on Newgrounds know how to vote, and vote fairly.

With that said, I've said this before, the Newgrounds voting system is VERY flawed and can use improvements.

There are certain authors that have a ton of Flash, and can get anything they want into the portal with an average score. They either mass vote with a lot of their alts, or carry out other unethical practices.

If the voting system is used correctly, it works great. It's fair, balanced, and can give you a good scale to see how you're doing with Flash.

But when you throw in the people who manipulate the voting process, it needs improvement, and that's the bottom line.

At 10/3/06 02:58 PM, DFox wrote: They either mass vote with a lot of their alts,

I cant see that working, dosent it go by IP addresses?