Monday, July 23, 2012

Of Feast & Famine Simulation and other Updates

I just wanted to give a quick update on the simulation for Of Feast & Famine.  I have written the first version of it, but I not yet convinced it's all correct.  I've only run one game at a time so far... and in total it's probably been something like 40-50 runs.  So far, every game has been a loss... so clearly this doesn't yet represent a realistic simulation (at least not a realistic simulation of the game as I would like it to be).  Keep in mind that not every run is equal.  I've been finding bugs in the simulation so the earlier runs are less representative of the state of the game than the last ones. 

Right now, the hard part is determining how much of the results are due to more bugs and how much is due to the weak player AI.  As I said in the previous post, every player decision (or nearly every one) has an interface and an implementation (later it will be multiple implementations).  Most of the implementations are very simple.  The hardest one is one I call the "ActionStrategy."  It basically decides what action a player takes.  This turns out to be tricky. :)  From a game design standpoint, that's good!  But it does make the simulation kind of hard.  I might end up breaking that Strategy into smaller parts.

In other news...
I failed to mention this earlier, so I'll bring you up to date now.  I had a crazy idea a couple of weeks ago...  It was one of those ideas that starts out being no more than a joke in your head  until you keep thinking about it and then reach a point of saying... "You know, why not?!"  I was reading the blog of Patrick Rothfuss (Author of a couple of really great Fantasy Novels: The Name of the Wind and The Wise Man's Fear and if you're not familiar with them I highly recommend them) when I saw a reference to board gaming.  And I thought that maybe I had seen another reference to board gaming in his blog a while back.  I actually did a search to validate that he is, in fact, a board gamer.  So I thought, "Hey, why don't I send him a copy of my game?"  If you're asking what I expect to happen, all I can say is that he is a fantasy author with a big following and a like (or maybe love) of board games...  if he were to like my game "something" good may come of it.  What's that something?  I have no idea, but it couldn't hurt!

Anyway, so I wrote him an email...  correction an embarrassingly star-struck email.  I basically asked him if he would like a copy.  And he wrote back and said yes!  So I ordered a copy.  I'm guessing he'll get it in a few days.  It may not result in anything real, but it's kind cool anyway knowing someone famous has a copy of my game.

I'll let you know if something comes of it.  Later!

No comments:

Post a Comment