Competition 75

[rdermyer]

You're right; no book. I had accidentally reloaded my save after I died but then realized that I had to copy over the file again instead.

[PowerDiver]

Originally Posted by murphy

The main gauche is slightly better, but I needed to free up some money for my other purchases. Gotta cut back somewhere in these tough economic times!

The real question is whether to go down barehanded. In 3.0, I would often go barehanded, but it is harder now to survive until you find a weapon. That 40 gp would buy another ?dObj or 2 ?phase with cash left over.

[fizzix]

I have a question about these competitions. Not sure if this has come up before, but I didn't see it on the main topic. I didn't go searching through all the individual competitions though

Since we're all starting from the same save file each game, the flavors remain the same. After playing several attempts you remember what certain important flavors are. What's the etiquette for this? Do you have to pretend that you don't know that you're holding a potion of speed? On the flip side, can you record all the scroll flavors to use in a future attempt?

I guess the best would be if there was some sort of 'randomize all flavors now' option, but since, really, this is the only use for it, I don't see why there would be.

[Psi]

Originally Posted by fizzix

Since we're all starting from the same save file each game, the flavors remain the same. After playing several attempts you remember what certain important flavors are. What's the etiquette for this? Do you have to pretend that you don't know that you're holding a potion of speed? On the flip side, can you record all the scroll flavors to use in a future attempt?

Obviously if you die enough times, you are going to start to remember a few flavours - that can't be helped. I don't think it is in the spirit of the competition to start recording them though. I'd also suggest that any 'list flavours in descriptions' option is off (assuming it exists in the variant in question). Then you won't see the flavour name again in the game so are less likely to remember it and you won't get other people learning flavours via your dump.

[Rizwan]

Originally Posted by Psi

Obviously if you die enough times, you are going to start to remember a few flavours - that can't be helped. I don't think it is in the spirit of the competition to start recording them though. I'd also suggest that any 'list flavours in descriptions' option is off (assuming it exists in the variant in question). Then you won't see the flavour name again in the game so are less likely to remember it and you won't get other people learning flavours via your dump.

Or instead of starting from the original savefile everytime, start from your dead character that will randomize all flavors etc.

[Psi]

Originally Posted by Rizwan

Or instead of starting from the original savefile everytime, start from your dead character that will randomize all flavors etc.

But then you are not playing the same 'game' as everyone else as you will have different shops etc - which is particularly important in an ironman comp. Other comps also start with a partially developed char.

[fizzix]

Originally Posted by Psi

Obviously if you die enough times, you are going to start to remember a few flavours - that can't be helped. I don't think it is in the spirit of the competition to start recording them though. I'd also suggest that any 'list flavours in descriptions' option is off (assuming it exists in the variant in question). Then you won't see the flavour name again in the game so are less likely to remember it and you won't get other people learning flavours via your dump.

That's kind of what I thought.

Thinking about it a little more, it'd be pretty easy to write a standalone program to randomize the flavors.txt edit file If I understand the code correctly, this should have no effect on gameplay besides matching the flavors to different numbers. The program can be rerun on each restart. This probably goes above and beyond the call of duty, and for now, I'm going to assume that knowing certain flavors helps make up for not having pb1 in down.

(pretty easy for me means that an incompetent coding bub like myself could write something for it. Granted, not in a language usable to anyone else...)

[NiJabbieJabba]

It seems like the turncount/XP ratio is incredibly dependent upon the luck one has in finding speed items. Obviously, there's a lot of skill involved in diving quickly - I'm not a particularly rapid player, and I'm impressed by those who are. This comes to my attention as I just passed Murphy up on the competition ladder - I have a HUGE unfair advantage due to my +30 or so permanent speed. In terms of player turns, I'm sure I've played more than he did, but he never found any permanent speed items.

Permaspeed is already enough of a bonus for survival. Doesn't seem like it also ought to be factored so heavily into competition scoring.

[Psi]

Originally Posted by NiJabbieJabba

This comes to my attention as I just passed Murphy up on the competition ladder - I have a HUGE unfair advantage due to my +30 or so permanent speed. In terms of player turns, I'm sure I've played more than he did, but he never found any permanent speed items.

Yes, permaspeed and particularly an early find of such is a huge advantage in terms of turncount. However you are both the highest level and deepest descended character in the competition and are therefore rightly in the top spot anyway.

As angband is a random game, you really can't factor for luck when ranking a competition and XP/turncount is probably the best measure for skill (as opposed to pure XP which favours grinding).

[Nick]

Originally Posted by Psi

As angband is a random game, you really can't factor for luck when ranking a competition and XP/turncount is probably the best measure for skill (as opposed to pure XP which favours grinding).

Yeah, it's hard to get a really good measure of performance, and I keep coming back to XP/turncount. It usually comes out OK (at least as a means of picking the winner) by the end anyway.