Bell curves and randomization, and other cool stuff. =)

[usr-sbin]

So that's about where I am now. I am not passing judgement on behalf of everyone. However I don't feel the same sense of comraderie and friendliness around the Wesnoth community that I feel in the HOMM or Civfanatics communities, or the VCMI Project which I am involved in. I felt a bit sad that this suggestion thread inspired by another similar turn-based fantasy game was locked (although it was unlocked) because I think a lot of people do genuinely want to improve Wesnoth and get frightened away when they are told "that idea is just like every other previous idea on this topic" and "we don't need to waste time or energy on this".

I would strongly disagree with you there, I have personally found this community warm and inviting - ready to guide me along and correct my noobish errors. I haven't found anyone who has bitten my head off because I made a mistake. Lots of people do genuinely want to improve the game and you can find a lot in the SCenario and campaign development and art contributions. There have been many discussions about RNG in my short stay at this forum and they all end the same way. The community has explained why the mechanic is why it is and why it will stay that way.

Every person and community needs to make its own calls. But the vibe of a community can be felt as a tangible "thing" by interacting in the community a little while and reading the forum posts. And as I have said and experienced by being involved in a number of communities, open-source or not has little to do with the overall friendliness or vibe of a gaming community. There are many commercial games that have this and many open-source games that don't, and vice versa. And I know more and less "friendly" open-source project communities. I think it all comes down to the interreactions between the players and the developers.

I would say on the whole the developers are and continue to interact and talk with the players and being open source allows this to happen more easily and frequently.

[ahyangyi]

Here's something I want to say:

Adding two random numbers doesn't yield a bell curve. However, adding two random numbers does yield a curve which looks more like bell curve than the original two. This conclusion is correct, no matter what the distribution of the orginal random numbers is, as long as the expected value exists. So, you add a lot of uniform random numbers, or add a lot of coin toss results, or add a lot of biased coin toss results, all yield unbiased bell curves. Yes, our current scheme yields unbiased bell curves regardless of the defense, if the number of strikes is going to be infinity.

However OP's idea is never going to work: if you use some other method to decide the hit chance, whilst keep the number of strikes untouched, then i'd say it's simply non-sense, as Dave has explained. If you want that works like FFH does, you should average the actual damage instead of something else.

[StevenAus]

I must admit I got very emotional at that time - and it would have definitely helped if I had done a serious search of the forum, as I was not aware of Sauron's efforts. So for going a bit non-sequiteur on everybody, and confusing a lot of people, I would like to say, now, thank you for not making me more than simply embarrassed for what I wrote!

I think it was true that I was looking for a bit of a different rule-set to standard Wesnoth, and that may have coloured (Australian spelling ) my thinking. But a lot has changed in 3 months, and while I have not been playing standard Wesnoth for a while, just today I was thinking about a text file customisation of maps and campaigns for the fheroes2 project. And that of course lead back to Wesnoth and their customisable "overlay" text files for maps and campaigns. This would be a much easier way of allowing more customised maps *and* nifty campaigns, without requiring all the effort to create a new map editor and a fully new user campaign facility, which you might know did not come with the original HOMM2 game or expansion.

I think it's great that entirely open-source projects (such as Wesnoth), and open-source projects based on commercial games where the original creators are not around any more (fheroes2 or VCMI), *or* are highly mod-able as in the case of Civ4/FFH2 and its mod-mods (and the upcoming Civ5 which looks like it will be even more mod-able) can continue and prosper. And Wesnoth, fheroes2, VCMI and FFH2 would not still be played and enjoyed without a lot of hard work by all those contributing, and fans generally liking the game. =)

So I would like to have a look at Sauron's mode, think about a few things regarding Wesnoth, RNGs, variable damage, the latest stable version and text files expanding maps and creating campaigns in more games than one. =)

Many improvements from the Summer of Code! Multiplayer campaigns look pretty spiffy and there are many improvements. I look forward to trying some of these out!

Best regards,
Steven.

[Yogibear]

You might want to stop by at the newly created experimental corner subforum. This thread might be especially interesting for you:
http://www.wesnoth.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=36&t=29681

[oberon]

I would rather not play most of a scenario (45 min to an hour) and lose the scenario based on a few bad rolls. I'd rather lose early, or lose late only if I have made a number of bad miscalculations.

If that happens often, you are taking too many risks.

I am a comparative newbie, (finished the five easiest mainline campaigns on hard, one on medium as well) and I already find that is rare. I did not even complain that a scenario was too hard until yesterday (and that only because is was harder in 1.8 than in 1.6) because its a complex enough game that I feel you need to become some good before criticism is meaningful.

I like how lucks works in Wesnoth in terms of game play. Fine tuning it might make is more realistic - if that matters.

In real life you might not get hit, but the amount of damage varies as well, but adding that on top of multiple strike would make it too predictable. Some units would definitely suffer - a thunderer, for example, is interesting because it is an all or nothing risk.