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Re: Programming Open-Ended Plots In Games

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"Chris Uppal" wrote:

> Patricia Shanahan wrote:
>> > [...] He also said that nothing
>> > is randomly generated in the main plot.  I asked him how he finitely
>> > programmed the infinite number of choices in the main plot without
>> > anything being randomly generated, but he said that is his secret,[...]
>>
>> There are well known structures that can generate an infinite set from
>> finite information. One of the most important is a formal grammar - you
>> can see examples in most programming language specifications.
>
> Also the code could use the system clock (current date-time, not 
> milliseconds since last boot) to provide "variety" without actually using 
> a [P]RNG ;-)
>
> Though if I were aiming for this, I'd probably use some sort of high 
> quality hash (SHA1 would be good enough) of the current gamestate and/or 
> history to provide fully determinate but not easily predicatable plot 
> twists.
>
> Not actually "infinite" though (except in the sense of arbitrary 
> extensibility that Patricia means) because a finite machine cannot provide 
> infinite behaviour without repeats[*].
>
>    -- chris
>
> [*] One caveat: if you allow (unrealistically) the machine to have an 
> arbitrarily extensible memory, bus width, etc, and you come up with some 
> scheme to replace the fixed hash with hashes from an infinite family with 
> unbounded bit-length, and kept switching the hash as the game ran (say 
> every 10^40 years ;-) then you might be able to make a convincing case 
> that your game was "potentially infinite"...

I think there is a needed but missing word in the English language to 
classify things that are, for all practical purposes, infinite but not 
infinite from the standpoint of a picky mathematician.  Does any language 
have such a word?   Peninfinte is as good as I could come up with in 
English.

And as a WAG, there are no non-picky mathematicians. In the same sense that 
there are no white crows. 

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Programming Open-Ended Plots In Games Brian <briansipler@yahoo.com> - 2013-05-18 18:13 -0700
  Re: Programming Open-Ended Plots In Games Patricia Shanahan <pats@acm.org> - 2013-05-18 19:31 -0700
    Re: Programming Open-Ended Plots In Games "Chris Uppal" <chris.uppal@metagnostic.REMOVE-THIS.org> - 2013-05-19 10:12 +0100
      Re: Programming Open-Ended Plots In Games "osmium" <r124c4u102@comcast.net> - 2013-05-19 05:43 -0500
        Re: Programming Open-Ended Plots In Games Jussi Piitulainen <jpiitula@ling.helsinki.fi> - 2013-05-19 14:22 +0300
        Re: Programming Open-Ended Plots In Games Daniel Pitts <newsgroup.nospam@virtualinfinity.net> - 2013-05-19 08:39 -0700
        Re: Programming Open-Ended Plots In Games "Charles Hottel" <chottel@earthlink.net> - 2013-05-19 13:45 -0400
        Re: Programming Open-Ended Plots In Games "Chris Uppal" <chris.uppal@metagnostic.REMOVE-THIS.org> - 2013-05-20 08:30 +0100
    Re: Programming Open-Ended Plots In Games Brian <briansipler@yahoo.com> - 2013-05-19 14:55 -0700
      Re: Programming Open-Ended Plots In Games Patricia Shanahan <pats@acm.org> - 2013-05-22 07:52 -0700
        Re: Programming Open-Ended Plots In Games Brian <briansipler@yahoo.com> - 2013-05-22 12:19 -0700

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