[yb2-meta] Generator Talk

[reiella]

Think it is getting close to time to possibly consider having another generator discussion and work at cleaning it up again...

The level of duplication in the conjugation table, the oddities of some of the special phrases (blood of the sun...) some of the descriptors for the field just not reading well at all.

In theory hopefully it'll be similiar to when KD and others had their talks about the new generator... I not too sure of there being all too much to talk about for this either... We hopefully won't be changing any of the fields with real meaning as a result of this, just the fluff/specials tables to help the moves read better.

In anyevent, need to come up with a timeframe and some volunteers for this...

 

[graydoom]

As always, I'll be able to help. IMO, a discussion on this topic is needed.

 

[Lady Diamond]

A discussion that includes the higher-ups would be cool. Wicht and the Master Judges and the javascript experts.

I'm holding off from making any more changes to the web generator without their input and support.

 

[reiella]

The current changes made and the ones that will be discussed at least will have no rules based effect one way or the other.

And all others times I have attempted any sort of discussion of the generator issues, they've disappeared off the board ignored, or with no comments either way.

 

[Lady Diamond]

I Am sorry to hear that. It must be extremely frustrating, seriously. I'd love to be able to have a kickass YB/YBA generator and backup gen, and IRC bot that did so many wonderful things that folks would be amazed, and I think you can do that Meowth.

But I feel we're trying to move too fast, that's all. There are lots of very intelligent folks here who don't understand the jargon and acronyms (myself included on some of them), and it'd be nice to be able to have agreement and understanding about things. Since I don't mind "looking dumb" and asking questions I do that kinda thing. You can help us have that understanding Meowth. If you'd just take a bit more time to explain what you propose.

I can reel off commercial aircraft and programming acronyms too. but it's better to be understood than not.

 

[reiella]

Then they need to ask, instead of ignoring the post, and at least make comments as their opinions. Unless they truly don't care either way.

Ask instead or be silent... Or just say nothing and let people assume you don't care...

[ s/of/or ]

 

[Lady Diamond]

Lots of folks care (at least as much as they can or time permits them to care). They care or else they wouldn't have stuck with YB for so long. Everybody has their own niche or "comfort zone" I've found, and contributes where they can, IMO.

Anywho, I'm here, and I'm asking. Please explain to me in terms that I can understand.

 

[reiella]

Which don't you understand?

And I'm not saying they don't care about the game, I simply said they don't care either way about the changes to the generator or any possible bugs/quirks.

[]

1: Second location potential.
There is a somewhat rare potential for a 'turf' location (ie, signature location) to come up in a second field. Wicht at least did not realize this when creating it, and it also causes something of a problem when judging. Does it result in an extra point or no? Currently, they should gain the extra point in that situation, but I know more than a few judges who are adamant about unless it occurs in the expected (and single) field, it doesn't count. Easy enough to just remove this potential all together, and possibly replace with something else.

2: Named Locations are meaningless currently.
They were added to account for Sash, and then removed because the power they gave sash was pretty weak. It might be nice to just have them see some appearance in the generator (related to above, just do a straight replacement of the location potential with the named location potential).

3: Spelling Errors/Grammar Errors
These are just annoying to see, and I splot them out at sight, I do hope I don't have to explain them though .

4: Styles and Locations in other fields (notably the 'noun' table).
Specifically Thorn and River respectively. Technically by current rules, a move with thorn in the defensive portion (ie '; shields against the quickening of the thorn') or in the attack special (ie ' so fast that it obliterates the thorn') it would be considered for terms of immunity and an extra point for style... Although this is not how it is 'supposed' to be, and most judges don't consider it. This was also a problem with the first generator that the generator talks back then aimed to fix (it was confusing). These two were missed apparantly. As a result I changed them with meowthbot and the web-gen to be less confusing (thorn->plant, river->lightning).

5: Duplicated entry in the x table
There are multiple entries that are the same in a table from which moves are generated. Specifically the swarms of 'and's in the conjunction table, and 'spirit' in the noun table. Of these I really only fixed spirit (spirit->mind) with MeowthBot and my test-gen.

6: Stale changes from generator talks
Vacuum was supposed to be removed afaik and replaced with void because it just simply sounded better for the wuxia/MA feel we're going after. Vacuum just was a bit to 'sciencey'... Not too sure why it never made it through though, prolly just KD forgot about.

7: special oddities
"blood of the sun"."blood of the stars"."kick of the scythe"."kick of the armor", "rising of the teardrop",etc odd moves.
Just move traits that look odd. Not a real problem, but also easy enough to fix by changing some of the table entries to be less specific.

8: Modifiers making 'moves worse'
Not something I really have an opinion of either way myself, but something I've seen complained about on the chatroom at least. However seeing as this has 'real' results (changes something that affects character points etc) would perfer some talk before touching this. Again, I don't really see this as a problem, and would probably perfer to see modifiers and other specials adjusted so that they don't always make for a 'better' move.

[ Another add here so the explanations are in one place ]
9: Clustering

Originally from GrayDoom
<GrayDoom> "when multiple moves are generated at the same time, the moves tend to either be all normal or have multiple specials, with little inbetween"?

This is just a quirk of the psuedo-random number generator... It's more obvious to notice with the hand-generation functions. Mostly obvious with the 5hand functions are that most hands tend to be pretty normal (ie, no specials at all in any of the moves) or there to be two or three that are bundled together. It also results in a slightly greater probability of pulling moves with multiple specials than is represented in the code. It is easiest to fix with the specials as the determination for each of the specials is (if RandomNumber is 1 then AddThisSpecial), to at least shift the clustering out slightly, I changed it to (if RandomNumber is 2), (if RandomNumber is 3), etc so that each special checked against a different fixed random number. This at least seems to reduce the apparant clustering on meowthbot and the web-gen. Fixing it for styles, locations, nouns, etc is alot more difficult however. I have an idea of how to approach it, but won't be starting on it for a while (System Programming sucks... write an assembler... yay).

 

[Lady Diamond]

Okey doke, I had a couple threads to go through and some of the terms used seem kinda hard to define.

The level of duplication in the conjugation table, the oddities of some of the special phrases (blood of the sun...) some of the descriptors for the field just not reading well at all.

How does duplication in the conjugation table affect things? And in simpler terms for those who haven't looked at the tables, what's a "conjugation table" and how does it work?

What are the oddities you've seen in the special phrases? How can that be fixed if needed?

Things I've seen: sometimes styles appear in the generated strategy hands more than once. Can we fix that and how?

More questions later. These are the ones I can think of right now.

Goin' to go play for awhile with the educational version of 3DS Max I just bought. I'll check back later.

 

[reiella]

Conjugations are just that... Conjunctions (k I keep getting that word wrong).

And it means just that... there are duplicate entries in it.

[ In all truth, not too sure the duplication is really a problem, just means there are fewer 'so fast that', etc. ]

/* ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- */
/* Chart 08 -- Conjunction Phrases */
/* ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- */
var xmtab08 = new Array(
"and so it", "before it", "for it", "and in addition it", "so fast that it",
"so it", "then it", "when it", "where it", "while it",
"and", "and", "and", "and", "and",
"and", "and", "and", "and", "and",
"and", "and", "and", "and", "and",
"as it", "as it", "as it", "as it", "as it",
"as it", "as it", "as it", "as it", "as it",
"as it", "as it", "as it", "as it", "as it");

Clustering: psuedo-random behavior that becomes obvious when multiple random calls are made within the extremely short timeframes (very much obvious with the hand gen functions). This has two results, typically that a given hand will have no specials at all, or result in 2 or 3 specials right around each other. How I addressed this with MeowthBot and the test-gen is simple... I changed the fixed random numbers that the specials check against so they shouldn't suffer as strongly from a 'cluster'. Fixing this for table/list field entries (styles, locations, modifiers, etc) is not as easy, and would require a minor shift in general layout of the generator code (notably moving the style, etc tables to be globally declared and shift the values with each move-gen).

One oddity at least... which I also mentioned in my post, blood of the sun, 'ell blood of just about of the structures. Simply put a few of the nouns (defensive targets as I said earlier) are too specific for all the descriptors. Easy enough to fix by either removing the ones that cause the blatant 'err what' factors, either by adjusting the nouns table or the descriptor (okie I screwed up here , that is actually called the defensive target table, but not really all too appropiately imo but oh well).

For your question, yes, and I actually did mention I had an idea of how to approach the clustering problem with the listfields and will probably start work on that over the coming week(aspects of a move that come from one of the lists or tables, not strictly 'is there a special or not' type things... that is easy to account for).

Another minor change that was made to test-gen at least...

I formatted it so it's more readable to see and understand at a glance (at least in my opinion). This has no actual effect on the generator code-side except being easier to read for terms of making changes if necessary and for looking at the code in these discussions.

[ and now it is my sleep time ]