Rocksolid Light

Welcome to novaBBS (click a section below)

mail  files  register  newsreader  groups  login

Message-ID:  

What is research but a blind date with knowledge? -- Will Harvey


interests / rec.games.roguelike.nethack / Re: movement [was Re: starting monk vorpal blade]

SubjectAuthor
* starting monk vorpal bladeIsidore Ducasse
+* Re: starting monk vorpal bladeJanis Papanagnou
|`* Re: starting monk vorpal bladeJanis Papanagnou
| `* Re: starting monk vorpal bladeChris Bowers
|  `* Re: starting monk vorpal bladeIsidore Ducasse
|   `* Re: starting monk vorpal bladeJanis Papanagnou
|    `* Re: starting monk vorpal bladeChris Bowers
|     `* Re: starting monk vorpal bladeJanis Papanagnou
|      +- Re: starting monk vorpal bladeChris Bowers
|      `* Re: starting monk vorpal bladeJanis Papanagnou
|       `- Re: starting monk vorpal bladeJanis Papanagnou
+* Re: starting monk vorpal bladeKlaus Kassner
|`- Re: starting monk vorpal bladeJanis Papanagnou
`* Re: starting monk vorpal bladeIsidore Ducasse
 `* Re: starting monk vorpal bladeJanis Papanagnou
  `* Re: starting monk vorpal bladePat Rankin
   +* Re: starting monk vorpal bladeChris Bowers
   |`* Re: starting monk vorpal bladeJanis Papanagnou
   | `* Re: starting monk vorpal bladeChris Bowers
   |  `* Re: starting monk vorpal bladeJanis Papanagnou
   |   +* Re: starting monk vorpal bladeChris Bowers
   |   |`- Re: starting monk vorpal bladeJanis Papanagnou
   |   `* Re: starting monk vorpal bladeKlaus Kassner
   |    `* Re: starting monk vorpal bladeJanis Papanagnou
   |     `* Re: starting monk vorpal bladeChris Bowers
   |      `* Re: starting monk vorpal bladeKlaus Kassner
   |       `* Re: starting monk vorpal bladeChris Bowers
   |        `* Re: starting monk vorpal bladeJanis Papanagnou
   |         `* Re: starting monk vorpal bladeChris Bowers
   |          `* Re: starting monk vorpal bladeKlaus Kassner
   |           `* Re: starting monk vorpal bladeJanis Papanagnou
   |            `* Re: starting monk vorpal bladeKlaus Kassner
   |             `* Re: starting monk vorpal bladeChris Bowers
   |              `* Re: starting monk vorpal bladeJanis Papanagnou
   |               +* Re: starting monk vorpal bladeChris Bowers
   |               |+* Re: starting monk vorpal bladeKlaus Kassner
   |               ||`* Re: starting monk vorpal bladeJanis Papanagnou
   |               || `* Re: starting monk vorpal bladeKlaus Kassner
   |               ||  `* Re: starting monk vorpal bladeJanis Papanagnou
   |               ||   `* Re: starting monk vorpal bladeKlaus Kassner
   |               ||    `* Re: starting monk vorpal bladeJanis Papanagnou
   |               ||     +- Re: starting monk vorpal bladeKlaus Kassner
   |               ||     `* Re: starting monk vorpal bladeKlaus Kassner
   |               ||      +* Re: starting monk vorpal bladeIsidore Ducasse
   |               ||      |`* Re: starting monk vorpal bladeKlaus Kassner
   |               ||      | `* Re: starting monk vorpal bladeJanis Papanagnou
   |               ||      |  `* Re: starting monk vorpal bladeKlaus Kassner
   |               ||      |   +* Re: starting monk vorpal bladeJanis Papanagnou
   |               ||      |   |`* Re: starting monk vorpal bladeKlaus Kassner
   |               ||      |   | `* Re: starting monk vorpal bladeJanis Papanagnou
   |               ||      |   |  `* Re: starting monk vorpal bladeKlaus Kassner
   |               ||      |   |   `* Re: starting monk vorpal bladeJanis Papanagnou
   |               ||      |   |    `* Re: starting monk vorpal bladeKlaus Kassner
   |               ||      |   |     `* Re: starting monk vorpal bladeIsidore Ducasse
   |               ||      |   |      `- Re: starting monk vorpal bladeKlaus Kassner
   |               ||      |   `* Re: starting monk vorpal bladeIsidore Ducasse
   |               ||      |    +- Re: starting monk vorpal bladeJanis Papanagnou
   |               ||      |    `* Re: starting monk vorpal bladeKlaus Kassner
   |               ||      |     `* movement [was Re: starting monk vorpal blade]Pat Rankin
   |               ||      |      `- Re: movement [was Re: starting monk vorpal blade]Klaus Kassner
   |               ||      `- Re: starting monk vorpal bladeJanis Papanagnou
   |               |`* Re: starting monk vorpal bladeJanis Papanagnou
   |               | `* Re: starting monk vorpal bladeKlaus Kassner
   |               |  `* Re: starting monk vorpal bladeJanis Papanagnou
   |               |   `- Re: starting monk vorpal bladeKlaus Kassner
   |               `- Re: starting monk vorpal bladeChris Bowers
   `* Re: starting monk vorpal bladeIsidore Ducasse
    +- Re: starting monk vorpal bladeChris Bowers
    `- Re: starting monk vorpal bladeJanis Papanagnou

Pages:123
Re: starting monk vorpal blade

<t05dnm$1mve$1@gioia.aioe.org>

 copy mid

https://www.novabbs.com/interests/article-flat.php?id=1291&group=rec.games.roguelike.nethack#1291

 copy link   Newsgroups: rec.games.roguelike.nethack
Path: i2pn2.org!i2pn.org!aioe.org!f/jB1DHg78EOA1joKJ4uxg.user.46.165.242.75.POSTED!not-for-mail
From: Klaus.Ka...@gmx.de (Klaus Kassner)
Newsgroups: rec.games.roguelike.nethack
Subject: Re: starting monk vorpal blade
Date: Mon, 7 Mar 2022 18:00:39 +0100
Organization: Aioe.org NNTP Server
Message-ID: <t05dnm$1mve$1@gioia.aioe.org>
References: <ssgef2$u7$1@gioia.aioe.org>
<a0a7ea31-83df-4b5f-a272-44969acb1afdn@googlegroups.com>
<f4a06c4f-0f52-43ca-9e82-7e6aaf5cf67en@googlegroups.com>
<st5ppo$ef6$1@dont-email.me>
<5717570f-d862-44e3-b160-3a9ac6552107n@googlegroups.com>
<st68er$p5v$1@dont-email.me> <st6u3m$1nof$1@gioia.aioe.org>
<st6vqq$tui$1@dont-email.me>
<e41a45d6-413a-4389-aca5-c4298002bb27n@googlegroups.com>
<stbq4l$kk1$1@gioia.aioe.org>
<5a87bd52-eff2-4236-b491-1e5ea6aa68d9n@googlegroups.com>
<stcsvl$vbp$1@dont-email.me>
<1c95cb6a-93bb-41cd-a76a-f6d1589ed99dn@googlegroups.com>
<stdjua$n8q$1@gioia.aioe.org> <ste3e4$qv9$1@dont-email.me>
<stjjpf$adt$1@gioia.aioe.org>
<53544289-968c-4894-bb36-f51d1e7b26een@googlegroups.com>
<stroub$uf3$1@dont-email.me>
<fc5b3d03-0674-486e-970c-950e516d4975n@googlegroups.com>
<svvohg$sjh$1@gioia.aioe.org> <t012s9$mcs$1@dont-email.me>
<t02r2v$1g17$1@gioia.aioe.org> <t02u5m$t58$1@dont-email.me>
<t04n20$1idh$1@gioia.aioe.org> <t05b1v$dh3$1@dont-email.me>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Injection-Info: gioia.aioe.org; logging-data="56302"; posting-host="f/jB1DHg78EOA1joKJ4uxg.user.gioia.aioe.org"; mail-complaints-to="abuse@aioe.org";
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64; rv:91.0) Gecko/20100101
Thunderbird/91.6.1
X-Notice: Filtered by postfilter v. 0.9.2
Content-Language: en-US
 by: Klaus Kassner - Mon, 7 Mar 2022 17:00 UTC

Am 07.03.2022 um 17:14 schrieb Janis Papanagnou:
> On 07.03.2022 11:33, Klaus Kassner wrote:
>>
>> Where is the misinformation? What I was saying is that "teleport away"
>> always worked, not "self-teleport". "Teleport away" always refers to
>> "not self"... (the "away" is "away from the person causing the teleport").
>>
>> You are not saying anything different, but why then am I spreading
>> misinformation?
>
> Given that "teleport away" doesn't seem to say anything about what is
> teleported away, and given that the existing spell called "teleport
> away" is refering to self-teleports I misunderstood your intention.
>
> After the many repetitions of the other poster's misinformation saying:
> "Teleporting yourself on a non teleport level works 100% of the time,"
> I assumed you joined that "alternative facts".
>
> Thanks for clarifying and sorry that my post sounded harsh!

By the way, in the Wiki on the spellbook of teleport away, I found the
following statement: "however, note that although covetous monsters can
be affected by the spell, there is typically no point in doing so as the
monster will simply teleport back next to you as part of its next turn."

This seems to clarify that after being teleported away, a covetous
monster will be back *at* the next turn (so you can escape upstairs only
if you have one more move in the current turn).

If Chris's observation is right that after he teleports away from a
covetous monster, it *never* is back to next to him before he could make
two moves, then there is really a difference between the two cases in
terms of turns it takes the covetous monster to "find" him again. Even
if he has speed, the two moves will take at least one turn, so his
strategy would not work, if the covetous monster does not take more than
one turn to come back.

Re: starting monk vorpal blade

<t05ogr$182e$1@gioia.aioe.org>

 copy mid

https://www.novabbs.com/interests/article-flat.php?id=1292&group=rec.games.roguelike.nethack#1292

 copy link   Newsgroups: rec.games.roguelike.nethack
Path: i2pn2.org!i2pn.org!aioe.org!O03EZ9pIxsfIABQDHCwKzg.user.46.165.242.75.POSTED!not-for-mail
From: lautream...@inria.fr (Isidore Ducasse)
Newsgroups: rec.games.roguelike.nethack
Subject: Re: starting monk vorpal blade
Date: Mon, 7 Mar 2022 20:04:43 -0000 (UTC)
Organization: Aioe.org NNTP Server
Message-ID: <t05ogr$182e$1@gioia.aioe.org>
References: <ssgef2$u7$1@gioia.aioe.org>
<f4a06c4f-0f52-43ca-9e82-7e6aaf5cf67en@googlegroups.com>
<st5ppo$ef6$1@dont-email.me>
<5717570f-d862-44e3-b160-3a9ac6552107n@googlegroups.com>
<st68er$p5v$1@dont-email.me> <st6u3m$1nof$1@gioia.aioe.org>
<st6vqq$tui$1@dont-email.me>
<e41a45d6-413a-4389-aca5-c4298002bb27n@googlegroups.com>
<stbq4l$kk1$1@gioia.aioe.org>
<5a87bd52-eff2-4236-b491-1e5ea6aa68d9n@googlegroups.com>
<stcsvl$vbp$1@dont-email.me>
<1c95cb6a-93bb-41cd-a76a-f6d1589ed99dn@googlegroups.com>
<stdjua$n8q$1@gioia.aioe.org> <ste3e4$qv9$1@dont-email.me>
<stjjpf$adt$1@gioia.aioe.org>
<53544289-968c-4894-bb36-f51d1e7b26een@googlegroups.com>
<stroub$uf3$1@dont-email.me>
<fc5b3d03-0674-486e-970c-950e516d4975n@googlegroups.com>
<svvohg$sjh$1@gioia.aioe.org> <t012s9$mcs$1@dont-email.me>
<t02r2v$1g17$1@gioia.aioe.org> <t02u5m$t58$1@dont-email.me>
<t04n20$1idh$1@gioia.aioe.org> <t05b1v$dh3$1@dont-email.me>
<t05dnm$1mve$1@gioia.aioe.org>
Injection-Info: gioia.aioe.org; logging-data="41038"; posting-host="O03EZ9pIxsfIABQDHCwKzg.user.gioia.aioe.org"; mail-complaints-to="abuse@aioe.org";
User-Agent: slrn/1.0.3 (Linux)
X-Notice: Filtered by postfilter v. 0.9.2
 by: Isidore Ducasse - Mon, 7 Mar 2022 20:04 UTC

I'm sorry to interrupt, especially as, tbh, I don't understand most of
what is said here, because I'm far too newbie about NH, but there's one
thing I find surprising (probably because my guess about how NH works is
plain wrong):

> terms of turns it takes the covetous monster to "find" him again. Even
> if he has speed, the two moves will take at least one turn, so his

I had the feeling after reading the wiki that in NH36 the "moves per turn"
are not any more deterministic ?
I mean, the "speed" value is used as a prob threshold:
for instance, the program samples a random number between 0 and 100, and
if this number is smaller than the "speed value", then you get a move.
Well, it's likely more complex than that, because the number of
possible moves per turn also depend on the speed, although I didn't get
exactly how, but there's always a part of "randomness"; so we can never
be sure to get enough moves, can we ? We may only reason "on the
average", or "in the worst case" ?

Re: starting monk vorpal blade

<t06hvk$e36$1@dont-email.me>

 copy mid

https://www.novabbs.com/interests/article-flat.php?id=1293&group=rec.games.roguelike.nethack#1293

 copy link   Newsgroups: rec.games.roguelike.nethack
Path: i2pn2.org!i2pn.org!eternal-september.org!reader02.eternal-september.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail
From: janis_pa...@hotmail.com (Janis Papanagnou)
Newsgroups: rec.games.roguelike.nethack
Subject: Re: starting monk vorpal blade
Date: Tue, 8 Mar 2022 04:19:16 +0100
Organization: A noiseless patient Spider
Lines: 18
Message-ID: <t06hvk$e36$1@dont-email.me>
References: <ssgef2$u7$1@gioia.aioe.org>
<f4a06c4f-0f52-43ca-9e82-7e6aaf5cf67en@googlegroups.com>
<st5ppo$ef6$1@dont-email.me>
<5717570f-d862-44e3-b160-3a9ac6552107n@googlegroups.com>
<st68er$p5v$1@dont-email.me> <st6u3m$1nof$1@gioia.aioe.org>
<st6vqq$tui$1@dont-email.me>
<e41a45d6-413a-4389-aca5-c4298002bb27n@googlegroups.com>
<stbq4l$kk1$1@gioia.aioe.org>
<5a87bd52-eff2-4236-b491-1e5ea6aa68d9n@googlegroups.com>
<stcsvl$vbp$1@dont-email.me>
<1c95cb6a-93bb-41cd-a76a-f6d1589ed99dn@googlegroups.com>
<stdjua$n8q$1@gioia.aioe.org> <ste3e4$qv9$1@dont-email.me>
<stjjpf$adt$1@gioia.aioe.org>
<53544289-968c-4894-bb36-f51d1e7b26een@googlegroups.com>
<stroub$uf3$1@dont-email.me>
<fc5b3d03-0674-486e-970c-950e516d4975n@googlegroups.com>
<svvohg$sjh$1@gioia.aioe.org> <t012s9$mcs$1@dont-email.me>
<t02r2v$1g17$1@gioia.aioe.org> <t02u5m$t58$1@dont-email.me>
<t04n20$1idh$1@gioia.aioe.org> <t05b1v$dh3$1@dont-email.me>
<t05dnm$1mve$1@gioia.aioe.org>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Injection-Date: Tue, 8 Mar 2022 03:19:16 -0000 (UTC)
Injection-Info: reader02.eternal-september.org; posting-host="6c67cd80f66ada3c342cff97dfd101e8";
logging-data="14438"; mail-complaints-to="abuse@eternal-september.org"; posting-account="U2FsdGVkX1+ymbvnrR6QjyvrHa8fmrHK"
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:45.0) Gecko/20100101
Thunderbird/45.8.0
Cancel-Lock: sha1:EMx5WydURvbMDyfd8sE0qnx5agw=
In-Reply-To: <t05dnm$1mve$1@gioia.aioe.org>
 by: Janis Papanagnou - Tue, 8 Mar 2022 03:19 UTC

On 07.03.2022 18:00, Klaus Kassner wrote:
>
> By the way, in the Wiki on the spellbook of teleport away, I found the
> following statement: "however, note that although covetous monsters can
> be affected by the spell, there is typically no point in doing so as the
> monster will simply teleport back next to you as part of its next turn."
>
> This seems to clarify that after being teleported away, a covetous
> monster will be back *at* the next turn (so you can escape upstairs only
> if you have one more move in the current turn).

I think there is a difference between "of _its_ next turn" and
"at _the_ next turn"; the former sounds as if the monster's speed
is a factor while the latter seems to imply an absolute time scale
(or relative to the player's speed).

Janis

Re: starting monk vorpal blade

<t0712v$v8u$1@gioia.aioe.org>

 copy mid

https://www.novabbs.com/interests/article-flat.php?id=1294&group=rec.games.roguelike.nethack#1294

 copy link   Newsgroups: rec.games.roguelike.nethack
Path: i2pn2.org!i2pn.org!aioe.org!f/jB1DHg78EOA1joKJ4uxg.user.46.165.242.75.POSTED!not-for-mail
From: Klaus.Ka...@gmx.de (Klaus Kassner)
Newsgroups: rec.games.roguelike.nethack
Subject: Re: starting monk vorpal blade
Date: Tue, 8 Mar 2022 08:37:03 +0100
Organization: Aioe.org NNTP Server
Message-ID: <t0712v$v8u$1@gioia.aioe.org>
References: <ssgef2$u7$1@gioia.aioe.org>
<f4a06c4f-0f52-43ca-9e82-7e6aaf5cf67en@googlegroups.com>
<st5ppo$ef6$1@dont-email.me>
<5717570f-d862-44e3-b160-3a9ac6552107n@googlegroups.com>
<st68er$p5v$1@dont-email.me> <st6u3m$1nof$1@gioia.aioe.org>
<st6vqq$tui$1@dont-email.me>
<e41a45d6-413a-4389-aca5-c4298002bb27n@googlegroups.com>
<stbq4l$kk1$1@gioia.aioe.org>
<5a87bd52-eff2-4236-b491-1e5ea6aa68d9n@googlegroups.com>
<stcsvl$vbp$1@dont-email.me>
<1c95cb6a-93bb-41cd-a76a-f6d1589ed99dn@googlegroups.com>
<stdjua$n8q$1@gioia.aioe.org> <ste3e4$qv9$1@dont-email.me>
<stjjpf$adt$1@gioia.aioe.org>
<53544289-968c-4894-bb36-f51d1e7b26een@googlegroups.com>
<stroub$uf3$1@dont-email.me>
<fc5b3d03-0674-486e-970c-950e516d4975n@googlegroups.com>
<svvohg$sjh$1@gioia.aioe.org> <t012s9$mcs$1@dont-email.me>
<t02r2v$1g17$1@gioia.aioe.org> <t02u5m$t58$1@dont-email.me>
<t04n20$1idh$1@gioia.aioe.org> <t05b1v$dh3$1@dont-email.me>
<t05dnm$1mve$1@gioia.aioe.org> <t05ogr$182e$1@gioia.aioe.org>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Injection-Info: gioia.aioe.org; logging-data="32030"; posting-host="f/jB1DHg78EOA1joKJ4uxg.user.gioia.aioe.org"; mail-complaints-to="abuse@aioe.org";
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64; rv:91.0) Gecko/20100101
Thunderbird/91.6.2
Content-Language: en-US
X-Notice: Filtered by postfilter v. 0.9.2
 by: Klaus Kassner - Tue, 8 Mar 2022 07:37 UTC

Am 07.03.2022 um 21:04 schrieb Isidore Ducasse:
> I'm sorry to interrupt, especially as, tbh, I don't understand most of
> what is said here, because I'm far too newbie about NH, but there's one
> thing I find surprising (probably because my guess about how NH works is
> plain wrong):
>
>> terms of turns it takes the covetous monster to "find" him again. Even
>> if he has speed, the two moves will take at least one turn, so his
>
> I had the feeling after reading the wiki that in NH36 the "moves per turn"
> are not any more deterministic ?
They were not fully deterministic even before (when you were burdened or
worse). In any case, all my experience refers to pre-NH3.6 games.

In principle, if I recall this correctly, if you have speed and are not
encumbered, then you get five moves per three turns, on average. And the
point system works such that if you did get only one move in two
consecutive turns each, you were certain to get two moves in the
following turn (which would still be only four moves in three turns, but
obviously that is precisely to make sure that the deviation from the
average five cannot become too large). So if you follow the turn counter
and find you have had only one move per turn for the last two turns, you
know to have two moves in the next turn. That is how I lost my
Necromancer in the quest to the nemesis Maugneshagaar (my only loss of a
character to a quest nemesis ever, but that was slash'em): I wanted to
teleport him away on a turn where I was sure to have two moves and go
upstairs (I was on the stairs), in order to heal. But I had not noticed
that he had cursed my bag of holding (so it became uncursed), hence I
was burdened and did not get the second move, which means he teleported
back to me immediately after I had telported him away and hit me while I
had only 2 HP left... DYWYPI?

> I mean, the "speed" value is used as a prob threshold:
> for instance, the program samples a random number between 0 and 100, and
> if this number is smaller than the "speed value", then you get a move.

I think it worked a bit differently, based on the accumulation of
movement points, but I could not explain how precisely. Maybe Janis
knows this.

In any case, you are right that the speed formula has changed in NH 3.6.1.

> Well, it's likely more complex than that, because the number of
> possible moves per turn also depend on the speed, although I didn't get
> exactly how, but there's always a part of "randomness"; so we can never
> be sure to get enough moves, can we ?

Well, in NH 3.4.3 and slash'em, you were sure to get two moves in
certain turns (if you were very fast), but you had to observe the turn
counter and that is prone to errors. In NH 3.6.1, a monster with speed
24 *always* gets two moves in one turn, but being very fast did not give
you speed 24 (rather 20) in earlier versions, and I suppose it will not
give you 24 in NH 3.6.1. So you are right that you can never be sure to
get two moves in a turn. But the probability to get two moves in a turn
is higher than 50% in each turn if you are very fast. (Not that this
would help in the situation considered. Teleporting away a covetous
monster is useful only if you are certain to have two moves in the turn
you are doing it and can protect yourself in the second move (e.g. by
moving up a staircase or by reading a scroll of earth)).

In slash'em, a hobbit can have speed 24 and higher while using the
blinking technique. If the speed formula of NH 3.6.1 were introduced in
slash'em, a hobbit might still use blinking to have a certain saving
throw. For example, if he turns round the corner on Demogorgon's level
and becomes visible to him, he might use his second move to teleport a
level up even before Demogorgon could use his first sickness attack. But
of course that is not a big deal as long as Demogorgon respects scrolls
of scare monster, so the hobbit does not have a decisive advantage here.

Re: starting monk vorpal blade

<t07t05$9hu$1@dont-email.me>

 copy mid

https://www.novabbs.com/interests/article-flat.php?id=1295&group=rec.games.roguelike.nethack#1295

 copy link   Newsgroups: rec.games.roguelike.nethack
Path: i2pn2.org!i2pn.org!eternal-september.org!reader02.eternal-september.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail
From: janis_pa...@hotmail.com (Janis Papanagnou)
Newsgroups: rec.games.roguelike.nethack
Subject: Re: starting monk vorpal blade
Date: Tue, 8 Mar 2022 16:33:25 +0100
Organization: A noiseless patient Spider
Lines: 34
Message-ID: <t07t05$9hu$1@dont-email.me>
References: <ssgef2$u7$1@gioia.aioe.org> <st5ppo$ef6$1@dont-email.me>
<5717570f-d862-44e3-b160-3a9ac6552107n@googlegroups.com>
<st68er$p5v$1@dont-email.me> <st6u3m$1nof$1@gioia.aioe.org>
<st6vqq$tui$1@dont-email.me>
<e41a45d6-413a-4389-aca5-c4298002bb27n@googlegroups.com>
<stbq4l$kk1$1@gioia.aioe.org>
<5a87bd52-eff2-4236-b491-1e5ea6aa68d9n@googlegroups.com>
<stcsvl$vbp$1@dont-email.me>
<1c95cb6a-93bb-41cd-a76a-f6d1589ed99dn@googlegroups.com>
<stdjua$n8q$1@gioia.aioe.org> <ste3e4$qv9$1@dont-email.me>
<stjjpf$adt$1@gioia.aioe.org>
<53544289-968c-4894-bb36-f51d1e7b26een@googlegroups.com>
<stroub$uf3$1@dont-email.me>
<fc5b3d03-0674-486e-970c-950e516d4975n@googlegroups.com>
<svvohg$sjh$1@gioia.aioe.org> <t012s9$mcs$1@dont-email.me>
<t02r2v$1g17$1@gioia.aioe.org> <t02u5m$t58$1@dont-email.me>
<t04n20$1idh$1@gioia.aioe.org> <t05b1v$dh3$1@dont-email.me>
<t05dnm$1mve$1@gioia.aioe.org> <t05ogr$182e$1@gioia.aioe.org>
<t0712v$v8u$1@gioia.aioe.org>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Injection-Date: Tue, 8 Mar 2022 15:33:25 -0000 (UTC)
Injection-Info: reader02.eternal-september.org; posting-host="6c67cd80f66ada3c342cff97dfd101e8";
logging-data="9790"; mail-complaints-to="abuse@eternal-september.org"; posting-account="U2FsdGVkX1+clarda+eRDnoDLZ+5nkSD"
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:45.0) Gecko/20100101
Thunderbird/45.8.0
Cancel-Lock: sha1:qZDSoVxoRDsvbkPXDW+vMxxjSnA=
In-Reply-To: <t0712v$v8u$1@gioia.aioe.org>
X-Enigmail-Draft-Status: N1110
 by: Janis Papanagnou - Tue, 8 Mar 2022 15:33 UTC

On 08.03.2022 08:37, Klaus Kassner wrote:
> Am 07.03.2022 um 21:04 schrieb Isidore Ducasse:
>>
>> I had the feeling after reading the wiki that in NH36 the "moves per
>> turn" are not any more deterministic ?
>
> They were not fully deterministic even before (when you were burdened or
> worse). In any case, all my experience refers to pre-NH3.6 games.

As far as I see they are deterministic in NH-343. The point is that
the various speeds have to be mapped onto a discretized scale, with
the effect that, depending on the speed of the participants, you
will occasionally get a "free turn" (sort of) if you are faster, or
suffer from an additional attack if the foe is faster. But there is
no (non-deterministic) random factor involved. Any burden will slow
you down, affecting your speed but not the principle how your actual
speed will be mapped onto the time scale.

> [...]
>
>> I mean, the "speed" value is used as a prob threshold:
>> for instance, the program samples a random number between 0 and 100, and
>> if this number is smaller than the "speed value", then you get a move.
>
> I think it worked a bit differently, based on the accumulation of
> movement points, but I could not explain how precisely. Maybe Janis
> knows this.

Above I wrote what I can tell for NH-343, I cannot say anything about
NH-36x where there's a change in the speed system implemented, as far
as I've heared, that reduces the predictability of free turns.

Janis

Re: starting monk vorpal blade

<t0810m$1dir$1@gioia.aioe.org>

 copy mid

https://www.novabbs.com/interests/article-flat.php?id=1296&group=rec.games.roguelike.nethack#1296

 copy link   Newsgroups: rec.games.roguelike.nethack
Path: i2pn2.org!i2pn.org!aioe.org!f/jB1DHg78EOA1joKJ4uxg.user.46.165.242.75.POSTED!not-for-mail
From: Klaus.Ka...@gmx.de (Klaus Kassner)
Newsgroups: rec.games.roguelike.nethack
Subject: Re: starting monk vorpal blade
Date: Tue, 8 Mar 2022 17:41:59 +0100
Organization: Aioe.org NNTP Server
Message-ID: <t0810m$1dir$1@gioia.aioe.org>
References: <ssgef2$u7$1@gioia.aioe.org> <st5ppo$ef6$1@dont-email.me>
<5717570f-d862-44e3-b160-3a9ac6552107n@googlegroups.com>
<st68er$p5v$1@dont-email.me> <st6u3m$1nof$1@gioia.aioe.org>
<st6vqq$tui$1@dont-email.me>
<e41a45d6-413a-4389-aca5-c4298002bb27n@googlegroups.com>
<stbq4l$kk1$1@gioia.aioe.org>
<5a87bd52-eff2-4236-b491-1e5ea6aa68d9n@googlegroups.com>
<stcsvl$vbp$1@dont-email.me>
<1c95cb6a-93bb-41cd-a76a-f6d1589ed99dn@googlegroups.com>
<stdjua$n8q$1@gioia.aioe.org> <ste3e4$qv9$1@dont-email.me>
<stjjpf$adt$1@gioia.aioe.org>
<53544289-968c-4894-bb36-f51d1e7b26een@googlegroups.com>
<stroub$uf3$1@dont-email.me>
<fc5b3d03-0674-486e-970c-950e516d4975n@googlegroups.com>
<svvohg$sjh$1@gioia.aioe.org> <t012s9$mcs$1@dont-email.me>
<t02r2v$1g17$1@gioia.aioe.org> <t02u5m$t58$1@dont-email.me>
<t04n20$1idh$1@gioia.aioe.org> <t05b1v$dh3$1@dont-email.me>
<t05dnm$1mve$1@gioia.aioe.org> <t05ogr$182e$1@gioia.aioe.org>
<t0712v$v8u$1@gioia.aioe.org> <t07t05$9hu$1@dont-email.me>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Injection-Info: gioia.aioe.org; logging-data="46683"; posting-host="f/jB1DHg78EOA1joKJ4uxg.user.gioia.aioe.org"; mail-complaints-to="abuse@aioe.org";
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64; rv:91.0) Gecko/20100101
Thunderbird/91.6.2
X-Notice: Filtered by postfilter v. 0.9.2
Content-Language: en-US
 by: Klaus Kassner - Tue, 8 Mar 2022 16:41 UTC

Am 08.03.2022 um 16:33 schrieb Janis Papanagnou:
> On 08.03.2022 08:37, Klaus Kassner wrote:
>> Am 07.03.2022 um 21:04 schrieb Isidore Ducasse:
>>>
>>> I had the feeling after reading the wiki that in NH36 the "moves per
>>> turn" are not any more deterministic ?
>>
>> They were not fully deterministic even before (when you were burdened or
>> worse). In any case, all my experience refers to pre-NH3.6 games.
>
> As far as I see they are deterministic in NH-343. The point is that
> the various speeds have to be mapped onto a discretized scale, with
> the effect that, depending on the speed of the participants, you
> will occasionally get a "free turn" (sort of) if you are faster, or
> suffer from an additional attack if the foe is faster.

Yes, I think they are deterministic in a technical sense. (But that is
true for pseudorandom numbers, too.)

I thought that when you are burdened, you lose moves randomly, but I may
be wrong in that, technically speaking.

In practice, moves per turn are *not* deterministic in the *standard
sense* of randomness: you do not have sufficiently detailed knowledge of
the deterministic mechanism and this creates (apparent) randomness.
(This is by far the most frequent way randomness appears outside of
quantum mechanics, which is the only physical theory with "true"
randomness.)

This may not be true if you are unburdened, because then it would be
easy, in principle (but not in practice), to follow the addition of
motion points and to know when you get moves. On the other hand, since I
do not know by which algorithm moves get lost when you are burdened or
stressed, moves are lost randomly (for me) in that case.

Re: starting monk vorpal blade

<t083gu$4a7$1@dont-email.me>

 copy mid

https://www.novabbs.com/interests/article-flat.php?id=1297&group=rec.games.roguelike.nethack#1297

 copy link   Newsgroups: rec.games.roguelike.nethack
Path: i2pn2.org!i2pn.org!eternal-september.org!reader02.eternal-september.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail
From: janis_pa...@hotmail.com (Janis Papanagnou)
Newsgroups: rec.games.roguelike.nethack
Subject: Re: starting monk vorpal blade
Date: Tue, 8 Mar 2022 18:24:45 +0100
Organization: A noiseless patient Spider
Lines: 63
Message-ID: <t083gu$4a7$1@dont-email.me>
References: <ssgef2$u7$1@gioia.aioe.org>
<5717570f-d862-44e3-b160-3a9ac6552107n@googlegroups.com>
<st68er$p5v$1@dont-email.me> <st6u3m$1nof$1@gioia.aioe.org>
<st6vqq$tui$1@dont-email.me>
<e41a45d6-413a-4389-aca5-c4298002bb27n@googlegroups.com>
<stbq4l$kk1$1@gioia.aioe.org>
<5a87bd52-eff2-4236-b491-1e5ea6aa68d9n@googlegroups.com>
<stcsvl$vbp$1@dont-email.me>
<1c95cb6a-93bb-41cd-a76a-f6d1589ed99dn@googlegroups.com>
<stdjua$n8q$1@gioia.aioe.org> <ste3e4$qv9$1@dont-email.me>
<stjjpf$adt$1@gioia.aioe.org>
<53544289-968c-4894-bb36-f51d1e7b26een@googlegroups.com>
<stroub$uf3$1@dont-email.me>
<fc5b3d03-0674-486e-970c-950e516d4975n@googlegroups.com>
<svvohg$sjh$1@gioia.aioe.org> <t012s9$mcs$1@dont-email.me>
<t02r2v$1g17$1@gioia.aioe.org> <t02u5m$t58$1@dont-email.me>
<t04n20$1idh$1@gioia.aioe.org> <t05b1v$dh3$1@dont-email.me>
<t05dnm$1mve$1@gioia.aioe.org> <t05ogr$182e$1@gioia.aioe.org>
<t0712v$v8u$1@gioia.aioe.org> <t07t05$9hu$1@dont-email.me>
<t0810m$1dir$1@gioia.aioe.org>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Injection-Date: Tue, 8 Mar 2022 17:24:46 -0000 (UTC)
Injection-Info: reader02.eternal-september.org; posting-host="6c67cd80f66ada3c342cff97dfd101e8";
logging-data="4423"; mail-complaints-to="abuse@eternal-september.org"; posting-account="U2FsdGVkX18Rs9OdaimUzqpPsnL4XW/a"
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:45.0) Gecko/20100101
Thunderbird/45.8.0
Cancel-Lock: sha1:iml2u5bF9HizLQM7mAanNb4dwEc=
In-Reply-To: <t0810m$1dir$1@gioia.aioe.org>
X-Enigmail-Draft-Status: N1110
 by: Janis Papanagnou - Tue, 8 Mar 2022 17:24 UTC

On 08.03.2022 17:41, Klaus Kassner wrote:
> Am 08.03.2022 um 16:33 schrieb Janis Papanagnou:
>> On 08.03.2022 08:37, Klaus Kassner wrote:
>>> Am 07.03.2022 um 21:04 schrieb Isidore Ducasse:
>>>>
>>>> I had the feeling after reading the wiki that in NH36 the "moves per
>>>> turn" are not any more deterministic ?
>>>
>>> They were not fully deterministic even before (when you were burdened or
>>> worse). In any case, all my experience refers to pre-NH3.6 games.
>>
>> As far as I see they are deterministic in NH-343. The point is that
>> the various speeds have to be mapped onto a discretized scale, with
>> the effect that, depending on the speed of the participants, you
>> will occasionally get a "free turn" (sort of) if you are faster, or
>> suffer from an additional attack if the foe is faster.
>
> Yes, I think they are deterministic in a technical sense. (But that is
> true for pseudorandom numbers, too.)

But pseudo-random numbers are nothing but a hypothesis here. I was
speaking about determinism without making any assumptions on the
random number generator. Whether the RNG used by NH is a PRNG or a
"real" RNG, there's just no RNG involved in this case.

>
> I thought that when you are burdened, you lose moves randomly, but I may
> be wrong in that, technically speaking.

You can count your moves; for example: step, step, step, free turn,
step, step, step, free turn, etc. - completely deterministic.

Being burdened will in NH-343 reduce the speed by a constant factor
that depends on the strictly quantified grade of your burden.

>
> In practice, moves per turn are *not* deterministic in the *standard
> sense* of randomness: you do not have sufficiently detailed knowledge of
> the deterministic mechanism and this creates (apparent) randomness.

There is no randomness here. (And that's all what has to be said.)

> (This is by far the most frequent way randomness appears outside of
> quantum mechanics, which is the only physical theory with "true"
> randomness.)

(Irrelevant here.)

>
> This may not be true if you are unburdened, because then it would be
> easy, in principle (but not in practice), to follow the addition of
> motion points and to know when you get moves. On the other hand, since I
> do not know by which algorithm moves get lost when you are burdened or
> stressed, moves are lost randomly (for me) in that case.

In combat situations where I have to be cautious I generally count
my moves to anticipate when I will not need to move away but where
I may place a hit without the danger of a counter-attack. I can do
that in any case (independent of my burden status), because it is
deterministic.

Janis

Re: starting monk vorpal blade

<t0a0iu$n7c$1@gioia.aioe.org>

 copy mid

https://www.novabbs.com/interests/article-flat.php?id=1298&group=rec.games.roguelike.nethack#1298

 copy link   Newsgroups: rec.games.roguelike.nethack
Path: i2pn2.org!i2pn.org!aioe.org!f/jB1DHg78EOA1joKJ4uxg.user.46.165.242.75.POSTED!not-for-mail
From: Klaus.Ka...@gmx.de (Klaus Kassner)
Newsgroups: rec.games.roguelike.nethack
Subject: Re: starting monk vorpal blade
Date: Wed, 9 Mar 2022 11:46:55 +0100
Organization: Aioe.org NNTP Server
Message-ID: <t0a0iu$n7c$1@gioia.aioe.org>
References: <ssgef2$u7$1@gioia.aioe.org> <st68er$p5v$1@dont-email.me>
<st6u3m$1nof$1@gioia.aioe.org> <st6vqq$tui$1@dont-email.me>
<e41a45d6-413a-4389-aca5-c4298002bb27n@googlegroups.com>
<stbq4l$kk1$1@gioia.aioe.org>
<5a87bd52-eff2-4236-b491-1e5ea6aa68d9n@googlegroups.com>
<stcsvl$vbp$1@dont-email.me>
<1c95cb6a-93bb-41cd-a76a-f6d1589ed99dn@googlegroups.com>
<stdjua$n8q$1@gioia.aioe.org> <ste3e4$qv9$1@dont-email.me>
<stjjpf$adt$1@gioia.aioe.org>
<53544289-968c-4894-bb36-f51d1e7b26een@googlegroups.com>
<stroub$uf3$1@dont-email.me>
<fc5b3d03-0674-486e-970c-950e516d4975n@googlegroups.com>
<svvohg$sjh$1@gioia.aioe.org> <t012s9$mcs$1@dont-email.me>
<t02r2v$1g17$1@gioia.aioe.org> <t02u5m$t58$1@dont-email.me>
<t04n20$1idh$1@gioia.aioe.org> <t05b1v$dh3$1@dont-email.me>
<t05dnm$1mve$1@gioia.aioe.org> <t05ogr$182e$1@gioia.aioe.org>
<t0712v$v8u$1@gioia.aioe.org> <t07t05$9hu$1@dont-email.me>
<t0810m$1dir$1@gioia.aioe.org> <t083gu$4a7$1@dont-email.me>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Injection-Info: gioia.aioe.org; logging-data="23788"; posting-host="f/jB1DHg78EOA1joKJ4uxg.user.gioia.aioe.org"; mail-complaints-to="abuse@aioe.org";
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64; rv:91.0) Gecko/20100101
Thunderbird/91.6.2
Content-Language: en-US
X-Notice: Filtered by postfilter v. 0.9.2
 by: Klaus Kassner - Wed, 9 Mar 2022 10:46 UTC

Am 08.03.2022 um 18:24 schrieb Janis Papanagnou:
> On 08.03.2022 17:41, Klaus Kassner wrote:
>> Am 08.03.2022 um 16:33 schrieb Janis Papanagnou:
>>> On 08.03.2022 08:37, Klaus Kassner wrote:
>>>> Am 07.03.2022 um 21:04 schrieb Isidore Ducasse:
>>>>>
>>>>> I had the feeling after reading the wiki that in NH36 the "moves per
>>>>> turn" are not any more deterministic ?
>>>>
>>>> They were not fully deterministic even before (when you were burdened or
>>>> worse). In any case, all my experience refers to pre-NH3.6 games.
>>>
>>> As far as I see they are deterministic in NH-343. The point is that
>>> the various speeds have to be mapped onto a discretized scale, with
>>> the effect that, depending on the speed of the participants, you
>>> will occasionally get a "free turn" (sort of) if you are faster, or
>>> suffer from an additional attack if the foe is faster.
>>
>> Yes, I think they are deterministic in a technical sense. (But that is
>> true for pseudorandom numbers, too.)
>
> But pseudo-random numbers are nothing but a hypothesis here. I was
> speaking about determinism without making any assumptions on the
> random number generator. Whether the RNG used by NH is a PRNG or a
> "real" RNG, there's just no RNG involved in this case.
But there is randomness without random number generators. You have
randomness whenever your knowledge is insufficient to determine the
outcome uniquely. You can then assign probabilities to the different
possible outcomes.
>
>>
>> I thought that when you are burdened, you lose moves randomly, but I may
>> be wrong in that, technically speaking.
>
> You can count your moves; for example: step, step, step, free turn,
> step, step, step, free turn, etc. - completely deterministic..
Yes. This is what I was not sure about.
>
> Being burdened will in NH-343 reduce the speed by a constant factor
> that depends on the strictly quantified grade of your burden.
O.k. So it is deterministic within the program, but random in practice,
as the player cannot really do the calculations in his head. But he can
know probabilities.
>
>>
>> In practice, moves per turn are *not* deterministic in the *standard
>> sense* of randomness: you do not have sufficiently detailed knowledge of
>> the deterministic mechanism and this creates (apparent) randomness.
>
> There is no randomness here. (And that's all what has to be said.)
There is. Have you ever thought about the meaning of randomness?

>
>> (This is by far the most frequent way randomness appears outside of
>> quantum mechanics, which is the only physical theory with "true"
>> randomness.)
>
> (Irrelevant here.)
No. Because there is no randomness in the sense that you seem to assign
to it outside of quantum mechanics.

But there is randomness in the standard sense: sufficiently chaotic
dynamics, and lack of knowledge to determine a unique outcome.
>
>>
>> This may not be true if you are unburdened, because then it would be
>> easy, in principle (but not in practice), to follow the addition of
>> motion points and to know when you get moves. On the other hand, since I
>> do not know by which algorithm moves get lost when you are burdened or
>> stressed, moves are lost randomly (for me) in that case.
>
> In combat situations where I have to be cautious I generally count
> my moves to anticipate when I will not need to move away but where
> I may place a hit without the danger of a counter-attack. I can do
> that in any case (independent of my burden status), because it is
> deterministic.
Only if you are good enough at the necessary calculations and know the
algorithm well enough.

Anyway, I am a theoretical physicist, and I know a bit about randomness,
because statistical physics required me to learn about it. The only true
randomness in a nethack game would be the input of the player, *if* his
decisions are somehow dependent on quantum mechanics. If quantum
mechanics does not play a role in the decisions of a -- after all
macroscopic -- player, then there is no randomness in a game of nethack,
since the non-quantum mechanical laws of nature are all deterministic.
The responses of the game are deterministic by it simply being an
algorithm that always gives the same results on the same input (which of
course means that the game must start with the same initialization of
its RNG, which probably includes that the game must be given the same
clock time when starting) and the input if the player is deterministic
unless somehow quantum effects influence him. A classical player may
have the impression of free will but cannot have free will. A quantum
player may have free will but cannot control it...

Obviously, the decision of whether something is random or not depends on
the precise notion of randomness. What I was saying and where we seem to
disagree is that in all but one cases (i.e. quantum mechanics)
randomness is an expression of lack of knowledge while the true dynamics
is always deterministic. So if you accept only "true" randomness as
random, then saying there is no randomness here is an empty statement,
because there is *never* randomness (as we excluded quantum mechanics).
But if you take the point of view of physics that randomness in practice
comes from lack of knowledge, then of course there is randomness -- for
the player -- in the way the number of moves per turn is determined,
even in NH3.4x. No RNG is involved, but the algorithm is complex enough
for the player not to be able to do the calculations (unless he is
unburdened, then the calculations may be simple enough), so he must rely
on probability statements. In the case of NH3.6x, an RNG is involved
which increases the complexity and makes it more random in the sense
that now even with step counting and a calculator at hand, the player
cannot determine the number of moves uniquely that he will get on his
next turn. But of course, with the right numerical equipment and
knowledge of the internal initialization procedures of NH, you could
determine this number uniquely (essentially you could write a program
that, given the right input, predicts exactly what the game will do next).

To state it succinctly, randomness is in the eye of the beholder. Except
in quantum mechanics.

Re: starting monk vorpal blade

<t0c5g5$i0l$1@dont-email.me>

 copy mid

https://www.novabbs.com/interests/article-flat.php?id=1299&group=rec.games.roguelike.nethack#1299

 copy link   Newsgroups: rec.games.roguelike.nethack
Path: i2pn2.org!i2pn.org!eternal-september.org!reader02.eternal-september.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail
From: janis_pa...@hotmail.com (Janis Papanagnou)
Newsgroups: rec.games.roguelike.nethack
Subject: Re: starting monk vorpal blade
Date: Thu, 10 Mar 2022 07:23:01 +0100
Organization: A noiseless patient Spider
Lines: 212
Message-ID: <t0c5g5$i0l$1@dont-email.me>
References: <ssgef2$u7$1@gioia.aioe.org> <st68er$p5v$1@dont-email.me>
<st6u3m$1nof$1@gioia.aioe.org> <st6vqq$tui$1@dont-email.me>
<e41a45d6-413a-4389-aca5-c4298002bb27n@googlegroups.com>
<stbq4l$kk1$1@gioia.aioe.org>
<5a87bd52-eff2-4236-b491-1e5ea6aa68d9n@googlegroups.com>
<stcsvl$vbp$1@dont-email.me>
<1c95cb6a-93bb-41cd-a76a-f6d1589ed99dn@googlegroups.com>
<stdjua$n8q$1@gioia.aioe.org> <ste3e4$qv9$1@dont-email.me>
<stjjpf$adt$1@gioia.aioe.org>
<53544289-968c-4894-bb36-f51d1e7b26een@googlegroups.com>
<stroub$uf3$1@dont-email.me>
<fc5b3d03-0674-486e-970c-950e516d4975n@googlegroups.com>
<svvohg$sjh$1@gioia.aioe.org> <t012s9$mcs$1@dont-email.me>
<t02r2v$1g17$1@gioia.aioe.org> <t02u5m$t58$1@dont-email.me>
<t04n20$1idh$1@gioia.aioe.org> <t05b1v$dh3$1@dont-email.me>
<t05dnm$1mve$1@gioia.aioe.org> <t05ogr$182e$1@gioia.aioe.org>
<t0712v$v8u$1@gioia.aioe.org> <t07t05$9hu$1@dont-email.me>
<t0810m$1dir$1@gioia.aioe.org> <t083gu$4a7$1@dont-email.me>
<t0a0iu$n7c$1@gioia.aioe.org>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Injection-Date: Thu, 10 Mar 2022 06:23:01 -0000 (UTC)
Injection-Info: reader02.eternal-september.org; posting-host="c07b610fc713ea6522deaed4b6b28b45";
logging-data="18453"; mail-complaints-to="abuse@eternal-september.org"; posting-account="U2FsdGVkX18iQemkZwAVrHvA74QkHTjC"
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:45.0) Gecko/20100101
Thunderbird/45.8.0
Cancel-Lock: sha1:fJFNZXKAy9Cg+lw/mtadcIhMRZ8=
In-Reply-To: <t0a0iu$n7c$1@gioia.aioe.org>
X-Enigmail-Draft-Status: N1110
 by: Janis Papanagnou - Thu, 10 Mar 2022 06:23 UTC

On 09.03.2022 11:46, Klaus Kassner wrote:
> Am 08.03.2022 um 18:24 schrieb Janis Papanagnou:
>> On 08.03.2022 17:41, Klaus Kassner wrote:
>>> Am 08.03.2022 um 16:33 schrieb Janis Papanagnou:
>>>> On 08.03.2022 08:37, Klaus Kassner wrote:
>>>>> Am 07.03.2022 um 21:04 schrieb Isidore Ducasse:
>>>>>>
>>>>>> I had the feeling after reading the wiki that in NH36 the "moves per
>>>>>> turn" are not any more deterministic ?
>>>>>
>>>>> They were not fully deterministic even before (when you were
>>>>> burdened or
>>>>> worse). In any case, all my experience refers to pre-NH3.6 games.
>>>>
>>>> As far as I see they are deterministic in NH-343. The point is that
>>>> the various speeds have to be mapped onto a discretized scale, with
>>>> the effect that, depending on the speed of the participants, you
>>>> will occasionally get a "free turn" (sort of) if you are faster, or
>>>> suffer from an additional attack if the foe is faster.
>>>
>>> Yes, I think they are deterministic in a technical sense. (But that is
>>> true for pseudorandom numbers, too.)
>>
>> But pseudo-random numbers are nothing but a hypothesis here. I was
>> speaking about determinism without making any assumptions on the
>> random number generator. Whether the RNG used by NH is a PRNG or a
>> "real" RNG, there's just no RNG involved in this case.

> But there is randomness without random number generators. [...]

In Nethack? (Mind, only that is what we were talking about here!)

> You have
> randomness whenever your knowledge is insufficient to determine the
> outcome uniquely.

For Nethack, you can obtain that knowledge, though.

> You can then assign probabilities to the different
> possible outcomes.

Which is an unnecessary step if you just take the knowledge that is
available.

>>
>>>
>>> I thought that when you are burdened, you lose moves randomly, but I may
>>> be wrong in that, technically speaking.
>>
>> You can count your moves; for example: step, step, step, free turn,
>> step, step, step, free turn, etc. - completely deterministic..
> Yes. This is what I was not sure about.
>>
>> Being burdened will in NH-343 reduce the speed by a constant factor
>> that depends on the strictly quantified grade of your burden.

> O.k. So it is deterministic within the program, but random in practice,
> as the player cannot really do the calculations in his head. But he can
> know probabilities.

Why are you assuming that? If you know the underlying algorithms you
can simply determine it. And if you don't know the algorithm (by Wiki,
source code, or whatever) you can do the experiment on the fly; "step,
step, step, one-quare-space-gained" - remember? It suffices that you
know that there's no RNG involved and the experiment will provide you
the actual deltas. That's also what I do; I'm not doing calculations,
I am testing the delta once and apply it subsequently, and I do that
_in practice_.

>>
>>>
>>> In practice, moves per turn are *not* deterministic in the *standard
>>> sense* of randomness: you do not have sufficiently detailed knowledge of
>>> the deterministic mechanism and this creates (apparent) randomness.
>>
>> There is no randomness here. (And that's all what has to be said.)
> There is. Have you ever thought about the meaning of randomness?

As a computer scientist and big fan of physics; of course I did.
Why do you doubt that? (Because I pointed out that the algorithm
in this context is not RNG-controlled but deterministic?)

>
>>
>>> (This is by far the most frequent way randomness appears outside of
>>> quantum mechanics, which is the only physical theory with "true"
>>> randomness.)
>>
>> (Irrelevant here.)
> No. Because there is no randomness in the sense that you seem to assign
> to it outside of quantum mechanics.
>
> But there is randomness in the standard sense: sufficiently chaotic
> dynamics, and lack of knowledge to determine a unique outcome.

But that isn't the case here with the movement-scales. - Why do you
think it is?

For our given case, Nethack, we have algorithmic implementations for
some functions that are highly triggered by a RNG, and others that are
not, but are deterministic, like the one we are talking about here.

Whether other functions - off-topic here! - are truly random or not I
cannot tell. It could be that the various random functions in Nethack
rely on a PRNG algorithm, or it could rely on an RNG provided by the
operating system. In the latter case that could be retrieved from a
device that either relies on an OS-library algorithm that actually is
again a PRNG, or it can rely on some quantum effects of HW-circuits.

Here, for example, is a quote from my OS'es description, obtained by
the command 'man urandom':

random, urandom - kernel random number source devices
...
The random number generator gathers environmental noise from
device drivers and other sources into an entropy pool. The
generator also keeps an estimate of the number of bits of noise
in the entropy pool. From this entropy pool random numbers are
created.

> [...]

(Most of the expanded elaborations are (IMO) not contributing to the
concrete topic we had here, and they are known to me. So I skip most
of it. Continuing here...)

>
> Obviously, the decision of whether something is random or not depends on
> the precise notion of randomness. What I was saying and where we seem to
> disagree is that in all but one cases (i.e. quantum mechanics)
> randomness is an expression of lack of knowledge while the true dynamics
> is always deterministic.

Erm, no. That's not where we disagree. It appears to me that we disagree
that we could not tell what the RNG in an actual Nethack implementation
actually is. And we disagree in that it has any relevance in the given
case, where there's no dispute necessary what randomness actually is,
because there isn't any (neither a PRNG, nor an "unknown mechnics" RNG,
nor a RNG based on quantum mechanics effects), in the given case.

> So if you accept only "true" randomness as
> random, then saying there is no randomness here is an empty statement,
> because there is *never* randomness (as we excluded quantum mechanics).

I didn't exclude it. (Actually I assumed that the "noise" (that is above
mentioned in the man-page) would be a quantum effect. - I admit I may be
wrong with that assumption, since I haven't examined or read about what
physical effects generates the noise in the HW-circuits of that device.
I seem to recall to have heard, though, that this noise stems from a
quantum effect. If you know differently I'm curious to hear from you.)

But as said; whatever you consider random, the only relevant factor is
the determinism, so disputes about true randomness or about grades of
randomness is irrelevant. We have none here. (Not even the "randomness
by lack of knowledge", because an individual _personal decision_ to not
inform oneself can (IMO) not be a normative factor for the _term_.)

> But if you take the point of view of physics that randomness in practice
> comes from lack of knowledge, then of course there is randomness -- for
> the player -- in the way the number of moves per turn is determined,
> even in NH3.4x.

So for someone who has inspected the source code or informed himself
from the Wiki it's non-random and for others, uninformed folks, it's
random? - If that's what you are saying then this definition makes no
sense to me; it's certainly of no use here.

We spoke about the profane topic whether we can determine the free turns
or not - yes, we can! -, and whether the algorithm is deterministic or
not - yes, it is!

> No RNG is involved, but the algorithm is complex enough
> for the player not to be able to do the calculations

A calculation is unnecessary (as initially explained).

> (unless he is unburdened, then the calculations may be simple enough),

Yet still unnecessary.

> so he must rely on probability statements.

Nope, that is not necessary.

> In the case of NH3.6x, an RNG is involved
> which increases the complexity and makes it more random in the sense
> that now even with step counting and a calculator at hand, the player
> cannot determine the number of moves uniquely that he will get on his
> next turn.

Correct.

> But of course, with the right numerical equipment and
> knowledge of the internal initialization procedures of NH, you could
> determine this number uniquely (essentially you could write a program
> that, given the right input, predicts exactly what the game will do next).


Click here to read the complete article
Re: starting monk vorpal blade

<t0feu6$n6q$1@gioia.aioe.org>

 copy mid

https://www.novabbs.com/interests/article-flat.php?id=1300&group=rec.games.roguelike.nethack#1300

 copy link   Newsgroups: rec.games.roguelike.nethack
Path: i2pn2.org!i2pn.org!aioe.org!f/jB1DHg78EOA1joKJ4uxg.user.46.165.242.75.POSTED!not-for-mail
From: Klaus.Ka...@gmx.de (Klaus Kassner)
Newsgroups: rec.games.roguelike.nethack
Subject: Re: starting monk vorpal blade
Date: Fri, 11 Mar 2022 13:22:31 +0100
Organization: Aioe.org NNTP Server
Message-ID: <t0feu6$n6q$1@gioia.aioe.org>
References: <ssgef2$u7$1@gioia.aioe.org> <st6u3m$1nof$1@gioia.aioe.org>
<st6vqq$tui$1@dont-email.me>
<e41a45d6-413a-4389-aca5-c4298002bb27n@googlegroups.com>
<stbq4l$kk1$1@gioia.aioe.org>
<5a87bd52-eff2-4236-b491-1e5ea6aa68d9n@googlegroups.com>
<stcsvl$vbp$1@dont-email.me>
<1c95cb6a-93bb-41cd-a76a-f6d1589ed99dn@googlegroups.com>
<stdjua$n8q$1@gioia.aioe.org> <ste3e4$qv9$1@dont-email.me>
<stjjpf$adt$1@gioia.aioe.org>
<53544289-968c-4894-bb36-f51d1e7b26een@googlegroups.com>
<stroub$uf3$1@dont-email.me>
<fc5b3d03-0674-486e-970c-950e516d4975n@googlegroups.com>
<svvohg$sjh$1@gioia.aioe.org> <t012s9$mcs$1@dont-email.me>
<t02r2v$1g17$1@gioia.aioe.org> <t02u5m$t58$1@dont-email.me>
<t04n20$1idh$1@gioia.aioe.org> <t05b1v$dh3$1@dont-email.me>
<t05dnm$1mve$1@gioia.aioe.org> <t05ogr$182e$1@gioia.aioe.org>
<t0712v$v8u$1@gioia.aioe.org> <t07t05$9hu$1@dont-email.me>
<t0810m$1dir$1@gioia.aioe.org> <t083gu$4a7$1@dont-email.me>
<t0a0iu$n7c$1@gioia.aioe.org> <t0c5g5$i0l$1@dont-email.me>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
Injection-Info: gioia.aioe.org; logging-data="23770"; posting-host="f/jB1DHg78EOA1joKJ4uxg.user.gioia.aioe.org"; mail-complaints-to="abuse@aioe.org";
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64; rv:91.0) Gecko/20100101
Thunderbird/91.6.2
X-Notice: Filtered by postfilter v. 0.9.2
Content-Language: en-US
 by: Klaus Kassner - Fri, 11 Mar 2022 12:22 UTC

Am 10.03.2022 um 07:23 schrieb Janis Papanagnou:
> On 09.03.2022 11:46, Klaus Kassner wrote:
>> Am 08.03.2022 um 18:24 schrieb Janis Papanagnou:
>>> On 08.03.2022 17:41, Klaus Kassner wrote:
>>>> Am 08.03.2022 um 16:33 schrieb Janis Papanagnou:
>>>>> On 08.03.2022 08:37, Klaus Kassner wrote:
>>>>>> Am 07.03.2022 um 21:04 schrieb Isidore Ducasse:
>>>>>>>

>>>> I thought that when you are burdened, you lose moves randomly, but I may
>>>> be wrong in that, technically speaking.
>>>
>>> You can count your moves; for example: step, step, step, free turn,
>>> step, step, step, free turn, etc. - completely deterministic..
>> Yes. This is what I was not sure about.
>>>
>>> Being burdened will in NH-343 reduce the speed by a constant factor
>>> that depends on the strictly quantified grade of your burden.
>
>> O.k. So it is deterministic within the program, but random in practice,
>> as the player cannot really do the calculations in his head. But he can
>> know probabilities.
>
> Why are you assuming that? If you know the underlying algorithms you
> can simply determine it. And if you don't know the algorithm (by Wiki,
> source code, or whatever) you can do the experiment on the fly; "step,
> step, step, one-quare-space-gained" - remember? It suffices that you
> know that there's no RNG involved and the experiment will provide you
> the actual deltas. That's also what I do; I'm not doing calculations,
> I am testing the delta once and apply it subsequently, and I do that
> _in practice_.
I already agreed that this works for unburdened, but I still do not´know
that it is that simple for burdened. At one point, you seemed to say
that it depends on the degree of burden (by which I thought an internal
number depending on the actual overweight, not just on the three degrees
burdened, stressed, strained). Since I do not know the algorithm, I
cannot do the calculations, which makes it random for me, if the simple
pattern that you suggest does not work. I suppose, you will not get an
additional move after a fixed integer number of steps, but that number
will be rational, which means its determination by observation may take
a lot of time (if the denominator is not small). In practice, you simply
may not have the time to determine this when needed. In all these cases,
your lack of knowledge makes it random.

>>>
>>>>
>>>> In practice, moves per turn are *not* deterministic in the *standard
>>>> sense* of randomness: you do not have sufficiently detailed knowledge of
>>>> the deterministic mechanism and this creates (apparent) randomness.
>>>
>>> There is no randomness here. (And that's all what has to be said.)
>> There is. Have you ever thought about the meaning of randomness?
>
> As a computer scientist and big fan of physics; of course I did.
> Why do you doubt that? (Because I pointed out that the algorithm
> in this context is not RNG-controlled but deterministic?)
Yes. Because even if it is not RNG-controlled, it may be random,
depending on your knowledge.

>>>
>>>> (This is by far the most frequent way randomness appears outside of
>>>> quantum mechanics, which is the only physical theory with "true"
>>>> randomness.)
>>>
>>> (Irrelevant here.)
>> No. Because there is no randomness in the sense that you seem to assign
>> to it outside of quantum mechanics.
>>
>> But there is randomness in the standard sense: sufficiently chaotic
>> dynamics, and lack of knowledge to determine a unique outcome.
>
> But that isn't the case here with the movement-scales. - Why do you
> think it is?
Because I do not know of a simple algorithm for the case of burdened,
stressed, etc. In the case of unburdened I agree that it is not random,
once I take the care of observing the sequence of two and one moves --
because that sequence is repetitive enough for a human brain to make the
prediction. If the sequence has a period of, say, 20 steps, I may
already need paper and pencil to ascertain the periodicity. And then the
knowledge becomes essentially useless, so I won't care for it -- which
makes the sequence random again. (The only difference with a PRNG is
that its periodicity is not 20 but 10^30 or higher.)

> For our given case, Nethack, we have algorithmic implementations for
> some functions that are highly triggered by a RNG, and others that are
> not, but are deterministic, like the one we are talking about here.
Well, if you *define* deterministic to be not triggered by the RNG, then
you are of course right. But I define deterministic as being determined,
given the knowledge of the player. Your notion of deterministic would be
"truly deterministic" or "absolutely deterministic" in my book.

> Whether other functions - off-topic here! - are truly random or not I
> cannot tell. It could be that the various random functions in Nethack
> rely on a PRNG algorithm, or it could rely on an RNG provided by the
> operating system. In the latter case that could be retrieved from a
> device that either relies on an OS-library algorithm that actually is
> again a PRNG, or it can rely on some quantum effects of HW-circuits.
>
> Here, for example, is a quote from my OS'es description, obtained by
> the command 'man urandom':
>
> random, urandom - kernel random number source devices
> ...
> The random number generator gathers environmental noise from
> device drivers and other sources into an entropy pool. The
> generator also keeps an estimate of the number of bits of noise
> in the entropy pool. From this entropy pool random numbers are
> created.
A PRNG would be deterministic, of course, having a finite period.

Any RNG that does not use the random effects of quantum mechanics in
some way would be deterministic, not necessarily by having a periodicity
that could be determined, but by its random numbers being predictable by
an appropriate computer program that gets all the input data of the RNG.
(More simply, take a second RNG of the same kind, make sure it receives
the precisely same input and starts with the same internal state, then
it will give you the same sequence of random numbers. If you run the
second RNG in a way that gives you the random nubers a minute earlier
than those of the first, then you can predict the latter with certainty
a minute ahead of time. So they are clearly deterministic.)

>>
>> Obviously, the decision of whether something is random or not depends on
>> the precise notion of randomness. What I was saying and where we seem to
>> disagree is that in all but one cases (i.e. quantum mechanics)
>> randomness is an expression of lack of knowledge while the true dynamics
>> is always deterministic.
>
> Erm, no. That's not where we disagree. It appears to me that we disagree
> that we could not tell what the RNG in an actual Nethack implementation
> actually is.
No. I never claimed an RNG was involved in the move calculation of a
player in NH3.4x. Still, whether I have two moves or one move in a given
term is random for me, as long as my knowledge is insufficient for its
determination. But I can indicate probabilities. (If I am very fast, the
probability of getting two moves in a given turn is 2/3 and that of
getting a single move 1/3.)

> And we disagree in that it has any relevance in the given
> case, where there's no dispute necessary what randomness actually is,
> because there isn't any (neither a PRNG, nor an "unknown mechnics" RNG,
> nor a RNG based on quantum mechanics effects), in the given case.
Yes, there we disagree, because you can have randomness without an RNG.
The algorithm acts as an RNG, if your knowledge is sufficiently restricted.

>> So if you accept only "true" randomness as
>> random, then saying there is no randomness here is an empty statement,
>> because there is *never* randomness (as we excluded quantum mechanics).
>
> I didn't exclude it.
Yes, in saying that it is irrelevant here. If it is irrelevant, it can
be excluded from the discussion. Otherwise, the proviso has to be made
that there may be true randomness, independent of knowledge.

> (Actually I assumed that the "noise" (that is above
> mentioned in the man-page) would be a quantum effect. - I admit I may be
> wrong with that assumption, since I haven't examined or read about what
> physical effects generates the noise in the HW-circuits of that device.
> I seem to recall to have heard, though, that this noise stems from a
> quantum effect. If you know differently I'm curious to hear from you.)
I am less knowledgeable here than you. I simply assumed that NH uses a
PRNG and additional random effects occured by it using the date and time
in several occasions. Using true random effects may lead to
uncontrollable probability distributions. When I am programming noise
myself, I often use a PRNG, in order to make the program output
reproducible in the testing phase.
> But as said; whatever you consider random, the only relevant factor is
> the determinism, so disputes about true randomness or about grades of
> randomness is irrelevant.
Here I do not agree. If everything is deterministic, the determinism is
not a relevant factor in discussing randomness. True randomness must be
discussed to *exclude* that everything is determinstic. Nontrue
randomness, the standard randomness, is of course possible also in
deterministic systems. So NH can be random even if its internal
mechanisms are completely deterministic (which would be the case, if its
RNG does not use quantum mechanics to generate random numbers).


Click here to read the complete article
Re: starting monk vorpal blade

<t0g82q$1o8t$1@gioia.aioe.org>

 copy mid

https://www.novabbs.com/interests/article-flat.php?id=1302&group=rec.games.roguelike.nethack#1302

 copy link   Newsgroups: rec.games.roguelike.nethack
Path: i2pn2.org!i2pn.org!aioe.org!O03EZ9pIxsfIABQDHCwKzg.user.46.165.242.75.POSTED!not-for-mail
From: lautream...@inria.fr (Isidore Ducasse)
Newsgroups: rec.games.roguelike.nethack
Subject: Re: starting monk vorpal blade
Date: Fri, 11 Mar 2022 19:31:38 -0000 (UTC)
Organization: Aioe.org NNTP Server
Message-ID: <t0g82q$1o8t$1@gioia.aioe.org>
References: <ssgef2$u7$1@gioia.aioe.org>
<5717570f-d862-44e3-b160-3a9ac6552107n@googlegroups.com>
<st68er$p5v$1@dont-email.me> <st6u3m$1nof$1@gioia.aioe.org>
<st6vqq$tui$1@dont-email.me>
<e41a45d6-413a-4389-aca5-c4298002bb27n@googlegroups.com>
<stbq4l$kk1$1@gioia.aioe.org>
<5a87bd52-eff2-4236-b491-1e5ea6aa68d9n@googlegroups.com>
<stcsvl$vbp$1@dont-email.me>
<1c95cb6a-93bb-41cd-a76a-f6d1589ed99dn@googlegroups.com>
<stdjua$n8q$1@gioia.aioe.org> <ste3e4$qv9$1@dont-email.me>
<stjjpf$adt$1@gioia.aioe.org>
<53544289-968c-4894-bb36-f51d1e7b26een@googlegroups.com>
<stroub$uf3$1@dont-email.me>
<fc5b3d03-0674-486e-970c-950e516d4975n@googlegroups.com>
<svvohg$sjh$1@gioia.aioe.org> <t012s9$mcs$1@dont-email.me>
<t02r2v$1g17$1@gioia.aioe.org> <t02u5m$t58$1@dont-email.me>
<t04n20$1idh$1@gioia.aioe.org> <t05b1v$dh3$1@dont-email.me>
<t05dnm$1mve$1@gioia.aioe.org> <t05ogr$182e$1@gioia.aioe.org>
<t0712v$v8u$1@gioia.aioe.org> <t07t05$9hu$1@dont-email.me>
<t0810m$1dir$1@gioia.aioe.org>
Injection-Info: gioia.aioe.org; logging-data="57629"; posting-host="O03EZ9pIxsfIABQDHCwKzg.user.gioia.aioe.org"; mail-complaints-to="abuse@aioe.org";
User-Agent: slrn/1.0.3 (Linux)
X-Notice: Filtered by postfilter v. 0.9.2
 by: Isidore Ducasse - Fri, 11 Mar 2022 19:31 UTC

> (This is by far the most frequent way randomness appears outside of
> quantum mechanics, which is the only physical theory with "true"
> randomness.)

;-) I wasn't thinking that far about the definition of randomness :)
But I get what you mean; may be I should have said "NH devs have used
pseudo-random numbers generator in the method that determines the number
of turns", more precise :)

Anyway, thanks to both for all your informations (and opinions) about
NH, interesting !

Re: starting monk vorpal blade

<t0gcho$8jb$1@dont-email.me>

 copy mid

https://www.novabbs.com/interests/article-flat.php?id=1304&group=rec.games.roguelike.nethack#1304

 copy link   Newsgroups: rec.games.roguelike.nethack
Path: i2pn2.org!i2pn.org!aioe.org!eternal-september.org!reader02.eternal-september.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail
From: janis_pa...@hotmail.com (Janis Papanagnou)
Newsgroups: rec.games.roguelike.nethack
Subject: Re: starting monk vorpal blade
Date: Fri, 11 Mar 2022 21:47:52 +0100
Organization: A noiseless patient Spider
Lines: 28
Message-ID: <t0gcho$8jb$1@dont-email.me>
References: <ssgef2$u7$1@gioia.aioe.org> <st68er$p5v$1@dont-email.me>
<st6u3m$1nof$1@gioia.aioe.org> <st6vqq$tui$1@dont-email.me>
<e41a45d6-413a-4389-aca5-c4298002bb27n@googlegroups.com>
<stbq4l$kk1$1@gioia.aioe.org>
<5a87bd52-eff2-4236-b491-1e5ea6aa68d9n@googlegroups.com>
<stcsvl$vbp$1@dont-email.me>
<1c95cb6a-93bb-41cd-a76a-f6d1589ed99dn@googlegroups.com>
<stdjua$n8q$1@gioia.aioe.org> <ste3e4$qv9$1@dont-email.me>
<stjjpf$adt$1@gioia.aioe.org>
<53544289-968c-4894-bb36-f51d1e7b26een@googlegroups.com>
<stroub$uf3$1@dont-email.me>
<fc5b3d03-0674-486e-970c-950e516d4975n@googlegroups.com>
<svvohg$sjh$1@gioia.aioe.org> <t012s9$mcs$1@dont-email.me>
<t02r2v$1g17$1@gioia.aioe.org> <t02u5m$t58$1@dont-email.me>
<t04n20$1idh$1@gioia.aioe.org> <t05b1v$dh3$1@dont-email.me>
<t05dnm$1mve$1@gioia.aioe.org> <t05ogr$182e$1@gioia.aioe.org>
<t0712v$v8u$1@gioia.aioe.org> <t07t05$9hu$1@dont-email.me>
<t0810m$1dir$1@gioia.aioe.org> <t0g82q$1o8t$1@gioia.aioe.org>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=windows-1252
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Injection-Date: Fri, 11 Mar 2022 20:47:52 -0000 (UTC)
Injection-Info: reader02.eternal-september.org; posting-host="2800b24672c4d9d6c9712b39e8ccc87b";
logging-data="8811"; mail-complaints-to="abuse@eternal-september.org"; posting-account="U2FsdGVkX19iOA46lSbRAAQZWwM3T6ad"
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:45.0) Gecko/20100101
Thunderbird/45.8.0
Cancel-Lock: sha1:wZAmXOeKFSyTX+oRTOtst34lvbE=
In-Reply-To: <t0g82q$1o8t$1@gioia.aioe.org>
X-Enigmail-Draft-Status: N1110
 by: Janis Papanagnou - Fri, 11 Mar 2022 20:47 UTC

On 11.03.2022 20:31, Isidore Ducasse wrote:
> But I get what you mean; may be I should have said "NH devs have used
> pseudo-random numbers generator in the method that determines the number
> of turns", more precise :)

That is true only for the movement in NH-36x, where you find the
movement calculation affected by randomness, while movement in NH-343
and Slashem isn't affected by randomness.[*]

Generally note that the basic random function used in Nethack differs
amongst platforms and system capabilities!

But all platform specific code references in Nethack seem to actually
lead only to PRNGs (pseudo-random numbers generators), even if more
sophisticated random number sources exist (nowadays) on some platforms
(like the Linux' urandom device that I mentioned elsethread).

I suppose that is the case because of two reasons; the code base is
extremely old and the better non-pseudo random number generators were
not supported at that time, and also because "true" (non-pseudo, based
on physical effects) randomness is not necessary for the given purpose,
so there's also no need to change the code for support of the better
random sources available on some contemporary system platforms.

Janis

[*] See: https://nethackwiki.com/wiki/Speed

Re: starting monk vorpal blade

<t0ghec$35u$1@dont-email.me>

 copy mid

https://www.novabbs.com/interests/article-flat.php?id=1305&group=rec.games.roguelike.nethack#1305

 copy link   Newsgroups: rec.games.roguelike.nethack
Path: i2pn2.org!i2pn.org!eternal-september.org!reader02.eternal-september.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail
From: janis_pa...@hotmail.com (Janis Papanagnou)
Newsgroups: rec.games.roguelike.nethack
Subject: Re: starting monk vorpal blade
Date: Fri, 11 Mar 2022 23:11:23 +0100
Organization: A noiseless patient Spider
Lines: 224
Message-ID: <t0ghec$35u$1@dont-email.me>
References: <ssgef2$u7$1@gioia.aioe.org> <st6vqq$tui$1@dont-email.me>
<e41a45d6-413a-4389-aca5-c4298002bb27n@googlegroups.com>
<stbq4l$kk1$1@gioia.aioe.org>
<5a87bd52-eff2-4236-b491-1e5ea6aa68d9n@googlegroups.com>
<stcsvl$vbp$1@dont-email.me>
<1c95cb6a-93bb-41cd-a76a-f6d1589ed99dn@googlegroups.com>
<stdjua$n8q$1@gioia.aioe.org> <ste3e4$qv9$1@dont-email.me>
<stjjpf$adt$1@gioia.aioe.org>
<53544289-968c-4894-bb36-f51d1e7b26een@googlegroups.com>
<stroub$uf3$1@dont-email.me>
<fc5b3d03-0674-486e-970c-950e516d4975n@googlegroups.com>
<svvohg$sjh$1@gioia.aioe.org> <t012s9$mcs$1@dont-email.me>
<t02r2v$1g17$1@gioia.aioe.org> <t02u5m$t58$1@dont-email.me>
<t04n20$1idh$1@gioia.aioe.org> <t05b1v$dh3$1@dont-email.me>
<t05dnm$1mve$1@gioia.aioe.org> <t05ogr$182e$1@gioia.aioe.org>
<t0712v$v8u$1@gioia.aioe.org> <t07t05$9hu$1@dont-email.me>
<t0810m$1dir$1@gioia.aioe.org> <t083gu$4a7$1@dont-email.me>
<t0a0iu$n7c$1@gioia.aioe.org> <t0c5g5$i0l$1@dont-email.me>
<t0feu6$n6q$1@gioia.aioe.org>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
Injection-Date: Fri, 11 Mar 2022 22:11:24 -0000 (UTC)
Injection-Info: reader02.eternal-september.org; posting-host="2800b24672c4d9d6c9712b39e8ccc87b";
logging-data="3262"; mail-complaints-to="abuse@eternal-september.org"; posting-account="U2FsdGVkX18kmMD3t8onz9t6jW7DPEAB"
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:45.0) Gecko/20100101
Thunderbird/45.8.0
Cancel-Lock: sha1:qRfuiB0Zp5oj3ZZIUOSsg5LGT8w=
In-Reply-To: <t0feu6$n6q$1@gioia.aioe.org>
X-Enigmail-Draft-Status: N1110
 by: Janis Papanagnou - Fri, 11 Mar 2022 22:11 UTC

On 11.03.2022 13:22, Klaus Kassner wrote:
> Am 10.03.2022 um 07:23 schrieb Janis Papanagnou:
>>
>> Why are you assuming that? If you know the underlying algorithms you
>> can simply determine it. And if you don't know the algorithm (by Wiki,
>> source code, or whatever) you can do the experiment on the fly; "step,
>> step, step, one-quare-space-gained" - remember? It suffices that you
>> know that there's no RNG involved and the experiment will provide you
>> the actual deltas. That's also what I do; I'm not doing calculations,
>> I am testing the delta once and apply it subsequently, and I do that
>> _in practice_.
>
> I already agreed that this works for unburdened, but I still do not´know
> that it is that simple for burdened. At one point, you seemed to say
> that it depends on the degree of burden (by which I thought an internal
> number depending on the actual overweight, not just on the three degrees
> burdened, stressed, strained).

Have a look at the Wiki (https://nethackwiki.com/wiki/Speed) for that.

> Since I do not know the algorithm, I
> cannot do the calculations, which makes it random for me, [...]

It's hard to get rid of the idea that a calculation would be necessary?

> In practice, you simply
> may not have the time to determine this when needed.

This is indeed true for tight situations (getting surrounded, standing
with your back at the wall, etc.).

Where I apply it are the more common standard situations that you have
a route to escape, so you can make a few steps to check that "delta"
and then make use of the free turn.

>>> But there is randomness in the standard sense: sufficiently chaotic
>>> dynamics, and lack of knowledge to determine a unique outcome.
>>
>> But that isn't the case here with the movement-scales. - Why do you
>> think it is?
>
> Because I do not know of a simple algorithm for the case of burdened,
> stressed, etc.

The focus on the "algorithm" might make the simple solution appear to
be more difficult than it actually is.

> In the case of unburdened I agree that it is not random, [...]

There's no algorithmic difference between unburden and burden here;
it's just another scaling factor. But the concrete factors are only
necessary for the algorithmic computation, not for the tests on the
fly that I had described, where it is irrelevant whether your speed
has internally a value of 16 or 12; you just observe and count steps.

> once I take the care of observing the sequence of two and one moves --
> because that sequence is repetitive enough for a human brain to make the
> prediction. If the sequence has a period of, say, 20 steps, I may
> already need paper and pencil to ascertain the periodicity. [...]

It is not that bad; one typically needs to count only up to 4 or 5.

>
>> Whether other functions - off-topic here! - are truly random or not I
>> cannot tell. It could be that the various random functions in Nethack
>> rely on a PRNG algorithm, or it could rely on an RNG provided by the
>> operating system. In the latter case that could be retrieved from a
>> device that either relies on an OS-library algorithm that actually is
>> again a PRNG, or it can rely on some quantum effects of HW-circuits.
>>
>> Here, for example, is a quote from my OS'es description, obtained by
>> the command 'man urandom':
>>
>> random, urandom - kernel random number source devices
>> ...
>> The random number generator gathers environmental noise from
>> device drivers and other sources into an entropy pool. The
>> generator also keeps an estimate of the number of bits of noise
>> in the entropy pool. From this entropy pool random numbers are
>> created.
>
> A PRNG would be deterministic, of course, having a finite period.
>
> Any RNG that does not use the random effects of quantum mechanics in
> some way would be deterministic, not necessarily by having a periodicity
> that could be determined, but by its random numbers being predictable by
> an appropriate computer program that gets all the input data of the RNG.

The point is (IMO) that whenever you use external physical sources you
often can't really tell. (Even if we make a philosophical difference
between randomness of chaotic systems vs. quantum mechanic randomness.)

Say, you use the urandom device mentioned above, the "noise" stems from
a hardware device, the noise is affected by eg. temperature, radiation,
etc., - while you may argue that temperature is just a chaotic but not
a quantum effect, which I doubt since it's also influenced eg. by solar
activity - the radiation is affected by solar wind particles, the
particles are from nuclear fusion processes, these processes are based
on QM-effects.

> (More simply, take a second RNG of the same kind, make sure it receives
> the precisely same input and starts with the same internal state, then
> it will give you the same sequence of random numbers. If you run the
> second RNG in a way that gives you the random nubers a minute earlier
> than those of the first, then you can predict the latter with certainty
> a minute ahead of time. So they are clearly deterministic.)

For that definition we would (IMO) need no quantum effects to support
non-deterministic behavior. The problem I see with this view is that
it assumes an "internal state". While in the simple case of a PRNG we
clearly have such a state (unless it is seeded non-deterministically),
but using any external source it just depends, we cannot tell.

>
>> And we disagree in that it has any relevance in the given
>> case, where there's no dispute necessary what randomness actually is,
>> because there isn't any (neither a PRNG, nor an "unknown mechnics" RNG,
>> nor a RNG based on quantum mechanics effects), in the given case.
>
> Yes, there we disagree, because you can have randomness without an RNG.
> The algorithm acts as an RNG, if your knowledge is sufficiently restricted.

I think the point to get confidence is not the knowledge of algorithm
(which seems to imply again the mental model of players calculating
the effects based on probabilities), but knowing that what we want to
know can be simply observed by usually possible ad hoc tests together
with the meta-knowledge about the algorithm that it's deterministic.

>
>>> So if you accept only "true" randomness as
>>> random, then saying there is no randomness here is an empty statement,
>>> because there is *never* randomness (as we excluded quantum mechanics).
>>
>> I didn't exclude it.
>
> Yes, in saying that it is irrelevant here. If it is irrelevant, it can
> be excluded from the discussion.

Yes, for NH-343 (where the algorithm is deterministic) we can exclude
it, but for NH-36x case (where the algorithm is influenced by a PRNG)
we cannot exclude it. And with the reference to the external physical
"noise" effect based mention of the urandom device I have explicitly
not excluded it.

> I am less knowledgeable here than you. I simply assumed that NH uses a
> PRNG [...]

This is true. (I have described details just recently in a reply to
Isidore.)

>
>>> But if you take the point of view of physics that randomness in practice
>>> comes from lack of knowledge, then of course there is randomness -- for
>>> the player -- in the way the number of moves per turn is determined,
>>> even in NH3.4x.
>>
>> So for someone who has inspected the source code or informed himself
>> from the Wiki it's non-random and for others, uninformed folks, it's
>> random?
>
> Yes. Randomness is not absolute.

My question was whether you consider randomness is a subjective term
based on the information grade of the subject.

Whenever we can show a causal deterministic relation you can't say it
is random just because any subject isn't aware of that. A subjective
definition is of no [general] use, it makes no sense for a normative
defined term.

>
>> - If that's what you are saying then this definition makes no
>> sense to me; it's certainly of no use here.
>
> So you are saying it is useless that throwing dice gives you a sequence

No, I was saying what I repeated above.

> of random numbers, even though each single result could be predicted by
> a physicist with an appropriately sophisticated experimental apparatus,
> [...]

As there's enough money to make with such an apparatus, and since no
one did so far, I'm continuing to look James Bond films to see such
devices and listen to physicists talking about the possibility. :-)

>
>> We spoke about the profane topic whether we can determine the free turns
>> or not - yes, we can! -, and whether the algorithm is deterministic or
>> not - yes, it is!
>
> No. We were talking about whether there is randomness involved,
> requiring a probabilistic description, and that does not depend solely
> on whether the algorithm is deterministic. If it is not, we surely have
> randomness, but if it is, randomness depends on the knowledge state of
> the person/entity dealing with the problem. [...]


Click here to read the complete article
Re: starting monk vorpal blade

<t0nevm$85r$1@gioia.aioe.org>

 copy mid

https://www.novabbs.com/interests/article-flat.php?id=1310&group=rec.games.roguelike.nethack#1310

 copy link   Newsgroups: rec.games.roguelike.nethack
Path: i2pn2.org!i2pn.org!aioe.org!f/jB1DHg78EOA1joKJ4uxg.user.46.165.242.75.POSTED!not-for-mail
From: Klaus.Ka...@gmx.de (Klaus Kassner)
Newsgroups: rec.games.roguelike.nethack
Subject: Re: starting monk vorpal blade
Date: Mon, 14 Mar 2022 14:12:22 +0100
Organization: Aioe.org NNTP Server
Message-ID: <t0nevm$85r$1@gioia.aioe.org>
References: <ssgef2$u7$1@gioia.aioe.org>
<e41a45d6-413a-4389-aca5-c4298002bb27n@googlegroups.com>
<stbq4l$kk1$1@gioia.aioe.org>
<5a87bd52-eff2-4236-b491-1e5ea6aa68d9n@googlegroups.com>
<stcsvl$vbp$1@dont-email.me>
<1c95cb6a-93bb-41cd-a76a-f6d1589ed99dn@googlegroups.com>
<stdjua$n8q$1@gioia.aioe.org> <ste3e4$qv9$1@dont-email.me>
<stjjpf$adt$1@gioia.aioe.org>
<53544289-968c-4894-bb36-f51d1e7b26een@googlegroups.com>
<stroub$uf3$1@dont-email.me>
<fc5b3d03-0674-486e-970c-950e516d4975n@googlegroups.com>
<svvohg$sjh$1@gioia.aioe.org> <t012s9$mcs$1@dont-email.me>
<t02r2v$1g17$1@gioia.aioe.org> <t02u5m$t58$1@dont-email.me>
<t04n20$1idh$1@gioia.aioe.org> <t05b1v$dh3$1@dont-email.me>
<t05dnm$1mve$1@gioia.aioe.org> <t05ogr$182e$1@gioia.aioe.org>
<t0712v$v8u$1@gioia.aioe.org> <t07t05$9hu$1@dont-email.me>
<t0810m$1dir$1@gioia.aioe.org> <t083gu$4a7$1@dont-email.me>
<t0a0iu$n7c$1@gioia.aioe.org> <t0c5g5$i0l$1@dont-email.me>
<t0feu6$n6q$1@gioia.aioe.org> <t0ghec$35u$1@dont-email.me>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Injection-Info: gioia.aioe.org; logging-data="8379"; posting-host="f/jB1DHg78EOA1joKJ4uxg.user.gioia.aioe.org"; mail-complaints-to="abuse@aioe.org";
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64; rv:91.0) Gecko/20100101
Thunderbird/91.7.0
Content-Language: en-US
X-Notice: Filtered by postfilter v. 0.9.2
 by: Klaus Kassner - Mon, 14 Mar 2022 13:12 UTC

Am 11.03.2022 um 23:11 schrieb Janis Papanagnou:
> On 11.03.2022 13:22, Klaus Kassner wrote:
>> Am 10.03.2022 um 07:23 schrieb Janis Papanagnou:

> Have a look at the Wiki (https://nethackwiki.com/wiki/Speed) for that.

I have. With interesting results below.
>
>> Since I do not know the algorithm, I
>> cannot do the calculations, which makes it random for me, [...]
>
> It's hard to get rid of the idea that a calculation would be necessary?
The point is not calculation, that just stands in for *any* way of
*certain* prediction.

>> In the case of unburdened I agree that it is not random, [...]
>
> There's no algorithmic difference between unburden and burden here;
> it's just another scaling factor. But the concrete factors are only
> necessary for the algorithmic computation, not for the tests on the
> fly that I had described, where it is irrelevant whether your speed
> has internally a value of 16 or 12; you just observe and count steps.
Well, that would not work 100% as I deduce from the Wiki. But the Wiki
may be incorrect.

>> once I take the care of observing the sequence of two and one moves --
>> because that sequence is repetitive enough for a human brain to make the
>> prediction. If the sequence has a period of, say, 20 steps, I may
>> already need paper and pencil to ascertain the periodicity. [...]
>
> It is not that bad; one typically needs to count only up to 4 or 5.

O.k. Here is the issue about randomness vs determinism in a nutshell and
then I will discuss the perplexing results from the Wiki.

Mathematically, you can of course define a process to be deterministic
or nondeterministic and would call only the latter random. But before
the discovery of quantum mechanics, say, between 1850 and 1920, a
classical world view prevailed that would claim *all* physical processes
to be deterministic. From that it emerges that the *only* source of
randomness is lack of knowledge. The question whether a physical process
is deterministic is irrelevant for the question of its randomness, as
all physical processes are deterministic anyway. If indeterminism were
necessary for randomness, then the notion of randomness would be futile.
There exists no "true" randomness... But of course, you still need
probabilities and "apparent" random processes to describe systems where
you either don't know the initial conditions completely or the dynamics
(equations, algorithm, step counting, you name it).

With the advent of quantum mechanics, things changed a bit, but not for
everyone! Suddenly there seemed to be a completely new kind of
probabilities, absolute ones, leading to true indeterminism. You could
know the state of a quantum system completely (i.e. have maximum
knowledge about it according to quantum mechanics) and still not be able
to predict the outcome of a measurement on it with 100% certainty. This
led some phycisists, even prominent ones (Einstein) to believe that
quantum mechanics was an incomplete theory.

And that is what many still believe today! Then a quantum state (aka
wave function) would not be a complete description and probabilities
could be "normal" again, i.e. only an expression of lack of knowledge.
And indeed, there are interpretations of quantum mechanics, such as
Bohmian mechanics, claiming that the world *is* deterministic, a
complete state encompassing, besides the wave function, so-called hidden
variables (in Bohmian mechanics simply the particle positions), the
knowledge of which would allow to predict the outcome of each experiment
with 100% certainty. Within such an interpretation, quantum mechanical
randomness is not essentially different from classical randomness, it is
entirely due to a lack of knowledge and not absolute in any way. The
only difference between quantum and classical systems regarding
randomness then is that for a classical system, you may be able, via a
sequence of precise measurements to determine everything you do not know
about the system, in order to be able to predict its behavior without
any use of probability theory, i.e. to reveal the actual determinism. In
quantum mechanics this is not possible due to the limitations on
measurements produced, e.g., by Heisenberg's uncertainty relation, so
some hidden variables must forever remain hidden and you cannot assign
more than probabilities to certain outcomes. Randomness is necessary,
because there are necessary limitations on the knowledge of a complete
state (that completely determines the future evolution of the system, in
a fully deterministic way).

This is why I emphasized that to exclude randomness, it is insufficient
to observe determinism. The determinism must also be "simple enough".
Anyway, this discussion has become pretty off-topic. So let's get back
to nethack.

Here is a table from the article "Speed" in the nethack wiki.

Encumbrance Normal speed Fast Very fast
Unencumbered 12 16 20
Burdened 9 12 15
Stressed 6 8 10
Strained 3 4 5
Overtaxed 1.5 2 2.5

That indeed suggests that the cases "Burdened", "Stressed", etc. are
derivable in a simple way from the case "Unencumbered", applying factors
of 3/4, 1/2, etc. But of course the table does not give a complete
description. If, the situation were simply that you get 20 movement
points each turn when very fast and unencumbered, because a move costs
12 points, you would have 1,2,2 moves on three consecutive turns and
then the sequence would repeat. That is so simple that even I could
remember it and would certainly not consider it random. For burdened and
very fast, you would, if you start with 0 movement points, get 1 move in
the first turn, leaving you with 3 points, then 1 move again in the
second turn (6 points), another move in the third (9 points) and finally
2 moves in the fourth turn. That periodic sequence 1,1,1,2 would apply
also with a different initial balance of movement points, only you might
start elsewhere in the sequence (if you have initially 5 movement
points, the sequence is 1,1,2,1, and repeats then).

But things are not quite that simple, because you do not get the full 20
or 15 points each turn, you get them only on average. And the simplicity
of the result will depend on *how* this average comes about. If the
"burdened" case arose from the "unencumbered" one by *randomly* losing a
quarter of the movement points (which is what I believed before), then
it might have a much longer period than 4, again making prediction
impractical at in-game situations.

I had to find out the precise algorithm. The following code piece is
from Source:NetHack 3.4.3/src/allmain.c in the nethack wiki.

{
moveamt = youmonst.data->mmove;

if (Very_fast) { /* speed boots or potion */
/* average movement is 1.67 times normal */
moveamt += NORMAL_SPEED / 2;
if (rn2(3) == 0) moveamt += NORMAL_SPEED / 2;
} else if (Fast) {
/* average movement is 1.33 times normal */
if (rn2(3) != 0) moveamt += NORMAL_SPEED / 2;
}
}

switch (wtcap) {
case UNENCUMBERED: break;
case SLT_ENCUMBER: moveamt -= (moveamt / 4); break;
case MOD_ENCUMBER: moveamt -= (moveamt / 2); break;
case HVY_ENCUMBER: moveamt -= ((moveamt * 3) / 4); break;
case EXT_ENCUMBER: moveamt -= ((moveamt * 7) / 8); break;
default: break;
}

youmonst.movement += moveamt;
if (youmonst.movement < 0) youmonst.movement = 0;

So this is how it is done for "very fast": NORMAL_SPEED usually is 12,
so you add -- deterministically -- half of this, i.e. 6 to your movement
points, which gives 18. Next you add another 6 points with probability
1/3, making a call to a random number generator! Of course, this gives
20 points on average, but it gives them randomly! So the algorithm is
*not* deterministic (according to the in-game notion of determinism).
Note that the claim is that this is NH 3.4.3, not NH 3.6.x...

Strange.

In any case, it means that you can be certain that after a turn where
you got only one move you will get two in the next turn, because you
obtain 36 movement points at least in two turns. But you could also get
a total of 48 movement points in two consecutive turns, then you would
have two moves in both of them. And that does not mean that you will
necessarily have only one move in the next turn, because whether you get
the additional 6 points after having obtained 18 is random. No
observation of your steps will help you guess the sequence of moves per
turn exactly.

Re: starting monk vorpal blade

<t0nfch$f5o$1@gioia.aioe.org>

 copy mid

https://www.novabbs.com/interests/article-flat.php?id=1311&group=rec.games.roguelike.nethack#1311

 copy link   Newsgroups: rec.games.roguelike.nethack
Path: i2pn2.org!i2pn.org!aioe.org!f/jB1DHg78EOA1joKJ4uxg.user.46.165.242.75.POSTED!not-for-mail
From: Klaus.Ka...@gmx.de (Klaus Kassner)
Newsgroups: rec.games.roguelike.nethack
Subject: Re: starting monk vorpal blade
Date: Mon, 14 Mar 2022 14:19:12 +0100
Organization: Aioe.org NNTP Server
Message-ID: <t0nfch$f5o$1@gioia.aioe.org>
References: <ssgef2$u7$1@gioia.aioe.org> <st68er$p5v$1@dont-email.me>
<st6u3m$1nof$1@gioia.aioe.org> <st6vqq$tui$1@dont-email.me>
<e41a45d6-413a-4389-aca5-c4298002bb27n@googlegroups.com>
<stbq4l$kk1$1@gioia.aioe.org>
<5a87bd52-eff2-4236-b491-1e5ea6aa68d9n@googlegroups.com>
<stcsvl$vbp$1@dont-email.me>
<1c95cb6a-93bb-41cd-a76a-f6d1589ed99dn@googlegroups.com>
<stdjua$n8q$1@gioia.aioe.org> <ste3e4$qv9$1@dont-email.me>
<stjjpf$adt$1@gioia.aioe.org>
<53544289-968c-4894-bb36-f51d1e7b26een@googlegroups.com>
<stroub$uf3$1@dont-email.me>
<fc5b3d03-0674-486e-970c-950e516d4975n@googlegroups.com>
<svvohg$sjh$1@gioia.aioe.org> <t012s9$mcs$1@dont-email.me>
<t02r2v$1g17$1@gioia.aioe.org> <t02u5m$t58$1@dont-email.me>
<t04n20$1idh$1@gioia.aioe.org> <t05b1v$dh3$1@dont-email.me>
<t05dnm$1mve$1@gioia.aioe.org> <t05ogr$182e$1@gioia.aioe.org>
<t0712v$v8u$1@gioia.aioe.org> <t07t05$9hu$1@dont-email.me>
<t0810m$1dir$1@gioia.aioe.org> <t0g82q$1o8t$1@gioia.aioe.org>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Injection-Info: gioia.aioe.org; logging-data="15544"; posting-host="f/jB1DHg78EOA1joKJ4uxg.user.gioia.aioe.org"; mail-complaints-to="abuse@aioe.org";
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64; rv:91.0) Gecko/20100101
Thunderbird/91.7.0
X-Notice: Filtered by postfilter v. 0.9.2
Content-Language: en-US
 by: Klaus Kassner - Mon, 14 Mar 2022 13:19 UTC

Am 11.03.2022 um 20:31 schrieb Isidore Ducasse:
>> (This is by far the most frequent way randomness appears outside of
>> quantum mechanics, which is the only physical theory with "true"
>> randomness.)
>
> ;-) I wasn't thinking that far about the definition of randomness :)
> But I get what you mean; may be I should have said "NH devs have used
> pseudo-random numbers generator in the method that determines the number
> of turns", more precise :)
>
> Anyway, thanks to both for all your informations (and opinions) about
> NH, interesting !
>

According to the Wiki, even in NH 3.4.3 there is a random component in
the determination of the number of moves per turn for a fast or very
fast player. I have put the relevant code snippet in my answer to Janis.
I was surprised, because I did not think that was the case.

It is, however, a possibility that this is actually already NH 3.6.x
code and that it is erroneously posted under the NH 3.4.3 heading. I
don't know as I never looked up the code before. I believed, before,
that the code for "unencumbered" was without the use of an RNG but that
you were losing moves randomly, if you were "burdened" or worse.

movement [was Re: starting monk vorpal blade]

<2533abe8-5746-42ad-a805-7bcb154cc4e7n@googlegroups.com>

 copy mid

https://www.novabbs.com/interests/article-flat.php?id=1313&group=rec.games.roguelike.nethack#1313

 copy link   Newsgroups: rec.games.roguelike.nethack
X-Received: by 2002:a05:622a:10d:b0:2e1:db41:66d with SMTP id u13-20020a05622a010d00b002e1db41066dmr2362016qtw.670.1647284117411;
Mon, 14 Mar 2022 11:55:17 -0700 (PDT)
X-Received: by 2002:a05:620a:2487:b0:67b:3113:f83f with SMTP id
i7-20020a05620a248700b0067b3113f83fmr15937497qkn.604.1647284117207; Mon, 14
Mar 2022 11:55:17 -0700 (PDT)
Path: i2pn2.org!i2pn.org!weretis.net!feeder6.news.weretis.net!news.misty.com!border2.nntp.dca1.giganews.com!nntp.giganews.com!news-out.google.com!nntp.google.com!postnews.google.com!google-groups.googlegroups.com!not-for-mail
Newsgroups: rec.games.roguelike.nethack
Date: Mon, 14 Mar 2022 11:55:17 -0700 (PDT)
In-Reply-To: <t0nfch$f5o$1@gioia.aioe.org>
Injection-Info: google-groups.googlegroups.com; posting-host=75.51.93.154; posting-account=PWiXPAoAAABrA15ZgKdYDhP2ItsYPeoJ
NNTP-Posting-Host: 75.51.93.154
References: <ssgef2$u7$1@gioia.aioe.org> <st68er$p5v$1@dont-email.me>
<st6u3m$1nof$1@gioia.aioe.org> <st6vqq$tui$1@dont-email.me>
<e41a45d6-413a-4389-aca5-c4298002bb27n@googlegroups.com> <stbq4l$kk1$1@gioia.aioe.org>
<5a87bd52-eff2-4236-b491-1e5ea6aa68d9n@googlegroups.com> <stcsvl$vbp$1@dont-email.me>
<1c95cb6a-93bb-41cd-a76a-f6d1589ed99dn@googlegroups.com> <stdjua$n8q$1@gioia.aioe.org>
<ste3e4$qv9$1@dont-email.me> <stjjpf$adt$1@gioia.aioe.org>
<53544289-968c-4894-bb36-f51d1e7b26een@googlegroups.com> <stroub$uf3$1@dont-email.me>
<fc5b3d03-0674-486e-970c-950e516d4975n@googlegroups.com> <svvohg$sjh$1@gioia.aioe.org>
<t012s9$mcs$1@dont-email.me> <t02r2v$1g17$1@gioia.aioe.org>
<t02u5m$t58$1@dont-email.me> <t04n20$1idh$1@gioia.aioe.org>
<t05b1v$dh3$1@dont-email.me> <t05dnm$1mve$1@gioia.aioe.org>
<t05ogr$182e$1@gioia.aioe.org> <t0712v$v8u$1@gioia.aioe.org>
<t07t05$9hu$1@dont-email.me> <t0810m$1dir$1@gioia.aioe.org>
<t0g82q$1o8t$1@gioia.aioe.org> <t0nfch$f5o$1@gioia.aioe.org>
User-Agent: G2/1.0
MIME-Version: 1.0
Message-ID: <2533abe8-5746-42ad-a805-7bcb154cc4e7n@googlegroups.com>
Subject: movement [was Re: starting monk vorpal blade]
From: r.pat.ra...@gmail.com (Pat Rankin)
Injection-Date: Mon, 14 Mar 2022 18:55:17 +0000
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8"
Lines: 70
 by: Pat Rankin - Mon, 14 Mar 2022 18:55 UTC

On Monday, March 14, 2022 at 6:19:16 AM UTC-7, Klaus Kassner wrote:
> [...] It is, however, a possibility that this is actually already NH 3.6.x
> code and that it is erroneously posted under the NH 3.4.3 heading.

In general that's a possibility. In this case, it hasn't happened.

Prior to 3.3.0, being Fast increased hero's movement by 1/3,
being VeryFast doubled the normal speed. Unused movement
points, if any, carried over to the next turn so that the 1/3
increase accumulated enough for an extra move every third
turn.

Starting in 3.3.0, that was changed. Being Fast had a 2/3
chance to get the non-Fast number of movement points and
1/3 chance to get 50% more than normal, for an average
movement allotment of 33% faster than normal. So the
average stayed the same but it was no longer predictable
when you would receive an extra move. At that same time,
VeryFast was changed to have 2/3 chance for 150% movement
and 1/3 chance for 200%, giving an average of 67% more
movement than normal speed. So both less than the doubling
effect it had before and also not predictable.

It stayed that way up through 3.6.0, inclusive. That version
left the hero's movement alone but changed monster
movement so that it was no longer predictable and also
slightly faster on average. For monsters which moved at
normal human speed, sometimes they would lose a turn
relative to a normal speed hero, other times they would
gain a turn and that was a little more likely than the chance
to lose one. So a hero trying to run away from a monster
that nominally had the same speed would sometimes get
caught and hit. Or fighting toe-to-toe, sometimes the
monster would get two hits instead of just one. (Other
times it would get none but players didn't seem to notice
that aspect.) A lot of people complained, or more likely it
was a smaller number of people complaining loudly.

In 3.6.1 the movement system was changed for both the
hero and for monsters. The slight boost for monsters in
3.6.0 was removed. For both hero and monsters, unused
movement no longer carries over but instead gives a
percentage chance for extra moves. Being Fast has 2/3
chance for 1 move and 1/3 chance for 2 moves, so is
still 33% faster than normal speed. VeryFast gives 1/3
chance for 1 move and 2/3 chance for 2 moves, same 67%
increase over normal speed as 3.3.0 through 3.6.0.

An actual move requires 12 points of movement. Anyone
with normal human speed gets 12 points per turn, so
makes 1 move per turn. If a monster gets only 4 points
per turn, its first turn it wouldn't move and 4 points would
carry over. On its second turn it would get 4 new points
and add to the carried over 4 points, it still wouldn't be able
to move but this time 8 not-yet-used points would carry
over. Then on its third turn, it would have 12 points and
make a move, with nothing to carry over. That was the old
system. Starting in 3.6.1, if a monster has 4 movement
points it has a 1/3 (4 out of 12) chance to move. If it
doesn't move, the unused points are thrown away rather
than carried over. On its next turn it will again have a 4/12
chance to move. For a fast monster that gets 18 points
per turn, it will always move at least once, using 12 of the
18 points, and have 50% (6/12) chance to move twice. For
either slower than human or faster, the average movement
is the same as it was prior to 3.6.0 but actual movement
is no longer predictable.

In theory a slow monster could move every single turn
or never move at all but a reasonable RNG should result
in matching the average expected movement over time.

Re: starting monk vorpal blade

<t0qp8f$1bam$1@gioia.aioe.org>

 copy mid

https://www.novabbs.com/interests/article-flat.php?id=1315&group=rec.games.roguelike.nethack#1315

 copy link   Newsgroups: rec.games.roguelike.nethack
Path: i2pn2.org!i2pn.org!aioe.org!O03EZ9pIxsfIABQDHCwKzg.user.46.165.242.75.POSTED!not-for-mail
From: lautream...@inria.fr (Isidore Ducasse)
Newsgroups: rec.games.roguelike.nethack
Subject: Re: starting monk vorpal blade
Date: Tue, 15 Mar 2022 19:26:07 -0000 (UTC)
Organization: Aioe.org NNTP Server
Message-ID: <t0qp8f$1bam$1@gioia.aioe.org>
References: <ssgef2$u7$1@gioia.aioe.org> <stbq4l$kk1$1@gioia.aioe.org>
<5a87bd52-eff2-4236-b491-1e5ea6aa68d9n@googlegroups.com>
<stcsvl$vbp$1@dont-email.me>
<1c95cb6a-93bb-41cd-a76a-f6d1589ed99dn@googlegroups.com>
<stdjua$n8q$1@gioia.aioe.org> <ste3e4$qv9$1@dont-email.me>
<stjjpf$adt$1@gioia.aioe.org>
<53544289-968c-4894-bb36-f51d1e7b26een@googlegroups.com>
<stroub$uf3$1@dont-email.me>
<fc5b3d03-0674-486e-970c-950e516d4975n@googlegroups.com>
<svvohg$sjh$1@gioia.aioe.org> <t012s9$mcs$1@dont-email.me>
<t02r2v$1g17$1@gioia.aioe.org> <t02u5m$t58$1@dont-email.me>
<t04n20$1idh$1@gioia.aioe.org> <t05b1v$dh3$1@dont-email.me>
<t05dnm$1mve$1@gioia.aioe.org> <t05ogr$182e$1@gioia.aioe.org>
<t0712v$v8u$1@gioia.aioe.org> <t07t05$9hu$1@dont-email.me>
<t0810m$1dir$1@gioia.aioe.org> <t083gu$4a7$1@dont-email.me>
<t0a0iu$n7c$1@gioia.aioe.org> <t0c5g5$i0l$1@dont-email.me>
<t0feu6$n6q$1@gioia.aioe.org> <t0ghec$35u$1@dont-email.me>
<t0nevm$85r$1@gioia.aioe.org>
Injection-Info: gioia.aioe.org; logging-data="44374"; posting-host="O03EZ9pIxsfIABQDHCwKzg.user.gioia.aioe.org"; mail-complaints-to="abuse@aioe.org";
User-Agent: slrn/1.0.3 (Linux)
X-Notice: Filtered by postfilter v. 0.9.2
 by: Isidore Ducasse - Tue, 15 Mar 2022 19:26 UTC

> This is why I emphasized that to exclude randomness, it is insufficient
> to observe determinism.

May I add that, the more randomness you have, the more deterministic you
are ? ;-)
Thinking of central limit theorem for instance, where you can be pretty
sure of what you obtain after all this randomness occurs;
so determinism emerges from randomness, doesn't it ? ;-)

> Anyway, this discussion has become pretty off-topic. So let's get back
> to nethack.

Well, you do have quantum mechanics in NH... You may even kill it
if you don't like it, to please Bohm & De Witt...

Re: starting monk vorpal blade

<t0qqit$mg$1@gioia.aioe.org>

 copy mid

https://www.novabbs.com/interests/article-flat.php?id=1316&group=rec.games.roguelike.nethack#1316

 copy link   Newsgroups: rec.games.roguelike.nethack
Path: i2pn2.org!i2pn.org!aioe.org!f/jB1DHg78EOA1joKJ4uxg.user.46.165.242.75.POSTED!not-for-mail
From: Klaus.Ka...@gmx.de (Klaus Kassner)
Newsgroups: rec.games.roguelike.nethack
Subject: Re: starting monk vorpal blade
Date: Tue, 15 Mar 2022 20:48:45 +0100
Organization: Aioe.org NNTP Server
Message-ID: <t0qqit$mg$1@gioia.aioe.org>
References: <ssgef2$u7$1@gioia.aioe.org> <stbq4l$kk1$1@gioia.aioe.org>
<5a87bd52-eff2-4236-b491-1e5ea6aa68d9n@googlegroups.com>
<stcsvl$vbp$1@dont-email.me>
<1c95cb6a-93bb-41cd-a76a-f6d1589ed99dn@googlegroups.com>
<stdjua$n8q$1@gioia.aioe.org> <ste3e4$qv9$1@dont-email.me>
<stjjpf$adt$1@gioia.aioe.org>
<53544289-968c-4894-bb36-f51d1e7b26een@googlegroups.com>
<stroub$uf3$1@dont-email.me>
<fc5b3d03-0674-486e-970c-950e516d4975n@googlegroups.com>
<svvohg$sjh$1@gioia.aioe.org> <t012s9$mcs$1@dont-email.me>
<t02r2v$1g17$1@gioia.aioe.org> <t02u5m$t58$1@dont-email.me>
<t04n20$1idh$1@gioia.aioe.org> <t05b1v$dh3$1@dont-email.me>
<t05dnm$1mve$1@gioia.aioe.org> <t05ogr$182e$1@gioia.aioe.org>
<t0712v$v8u$1@gioia.aioe.org> <t07t05$9hu$1@dont-email.me>
<t0810m$1dir$1@gioia.aioe.org> <t083gu$4a7$1@dont-email.me>
<t0a0iu$n7c$1@gioia.aioe.org> <t0c5g5$i0l$1@dont-email.me>
<t0feu6$n6q$1@gioia.aioe.org> <t0ghec$35u$1@dont-email.me>
<t0nevm$85r$1@gioia.aioe.org> <t0qp8f$1bam$1@gioia.aioe.org>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Injection-Info: gioia.aioe.org; logging-data="720"; posting-host="f/jB1DHg78EOA1joKJ4uxg.user.gioia.aioe.org"; mail-complaints-to="abuse@aioe.org";
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64; rv:91.0) Gecko/20100101
Thunderbird/91.7.0
X-Notice: Filtered by postfilter v. 0.9.2
Content-Language: en-US
 by: Klaus Kassner - Tue, 15 Mar 2022 19:48 UTC

Am 15.03.2022 um 20:26 schrieb Isidore Ducasse:
>> This is why I emphasized that to exclude randomness, it is insufficient
>> to observe determinism.
>
> May I add that, the more randomness you have, the more deterministic you
> are ? ;-)
Not quite. That is true only for systems with very many degrees of
freedom. If you consider a system with randomly moving particles and
the number of particles increases from 1 to 2, 3, 4,...100, ...10000,
the overall randomness (measured in terms of predictability) will
increase. That is, no matter how good your computer is at solving the
equations of motion, it will be able to solve it (accurately) only for a
time that decreases as the particle number increases.

On the other hand, if you go up to 10^23 particles, then you can make
pretty deterministic predictions. But not by letting the computer try to
solve 6*10^23 (first-order) equations of motion. You have to introduce
completely new variables, such as temperature, pressure, entropy, etc.

> Thinking of central limit theorem for instance, where you can be pretty
> sure of what you obtain after all this randomness occurs;
> so determinism emerges from randomness, doesn't it ? ;-)
Yes.

>
>> Anyway, this discussion has become pretty off-topic. So let's get back
>> to nethack.
>
> Well, you do have quantum mechanics in NH... You may even kill it
> if you don't like it, to please Bohm & De Witt...

Yes. And they can make your speed uncertain...

Re: movement [was Re: starting monk vorpal blade]

<t0vnc6$q7f$1@gioia.aioe.org>

 copy mid

https://www.novabbs.com/interests/article-flat.php?id=1317&group=rec.games.roguelike.nethack#1317

 copy link   Newsgroups: rec.games.roguelike.nethack
Path: i2pn2.org!i2pn.org!aioe.org!f/jB1DHg78EOA1joKJ4uxg.user.46.165.242.75.POSTED!not-for-mail
From: Klaus.Ka...@gmx.de (Klaus Kassner)
Newsgroups: rec.games.roguelike.nethack
Subject: Re: movement [was Re: starting monk vorpal blade]
Date: Thu, 17 Mar 2022 17:24:39 +0100
Organization: Aioe.org NNTP Server
Message-ID: <t0vnc6$q7f$1@gioia.aioe.org>
References: <ssgef2$u7$1@gioia.aioe.org> <st6vqq$tui$1@dont-email.me>
<e41a45d6-413a-4389-aca5-c4298002bb27n@googlegroups.com>
<stbq4l$kk1$1@gioia.aioe.org>
<5a87bd52-eff2-4236-b491-1e5ea6aa68d9n@googlegroups.com>
<stcsvl$vbp$1@dont-email.me>
<1c95cb6a-93bb-41cd-a76a-f6d1589ed99dn@googlegroups.com>
<stdjua$n8q$1@gioia.aioe.org> <ste3e4$qv9$1@dont-email.me>
<stjjpf$adt$1@gioia.aioe.org>
<53544289-968c-4894-bb36-f51d1e7b26een@googlegroups.com>
<stroub$uf3$1@dont-email.me>
<fc5b3d03-0674-486e-970c-950e516d4975n@googlegroups.com>
<svvohg$sjh$1@gioia.aioe.org> <t012s9$mcs$1@dont-email.me>
<t02r2v$1g17$1@gioia.aioe.org> <t02u5m$t58$1@dont-email.me>
<t04n20$1idh$1@gioia.aioe.org> <t05b1v$dh3$1@dont-email.me>
<t05dnm$1mve$1@gioia.aioe.org> <t05ogr$182e$1@gioia.aioe.org>
<t0712v$v8u$1@gioia.aioe.org> <t07t05$9hu$1@dont-email.me>
<t0810m$1dir$1@gioia.aioe.org> <t0g82q$1o8t$1@gioia.aioe.org>
<t0nfch$f5o$1@gioia.aioe.org>
<2533abe8-5746-42ad-a805-7bcb154cc4e7n@googlegroups.com>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Injection-Info: gioia.aioe.org; logging-data="26863"; posting-host="f/jB1DHg78EOA1joKJ4uxg.user.gioia.aioe.org"; mail-complaints-to="abuse@aioe.org";
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64; rv:91.0) Gecko/20100101
Thunderbird/91.7.0
X-Notice: Filtered by postfilter v. 0.9.2
Content-Language: en-US
 by: Klaus Kassner - Thu, 17 Mar 2022 16:24 UTC

Am 14.03.2022 um 19:55 schrieb Pat Rankin:
> On Monday, March 14, 2022 at 6:19:16 AM UTC-7, Klaus Kassner wrote:
>> [...] It is, however, a possibility that this is actually already NH 3.6.x
>> code and that it is erroneously posted under the NH 3.4.3 heading.
>
> In general that's a possibility. In this case, it hasn't happened.

Yes, I realized that by looking for and finding the corresponding code
part in NH 3.6.1. Since it was different, it was clear that a random
component was already present in the algorithm for moves per turn of NH
3.4.3.
> Starting in 3.3.0, that was changed. Being Fast had a 2/3
> chance to get the non-Fast number of movement points and
> 1/3 chance to get 50% more than normal, for an average
> movement allotment of 33% faster than normal. So the
> average stayed the same but it was no longer predictable
> when you would receive an extra move. At that same time,
> VeryFast was changed to have 2/3 chance for 150% movement
> and 1/3 chance for 200%, giving an average of 67% more
> movement than normal speed. So both less than the doubling
> effect it had before and also not predictable.

Right. And this allowed to conclude that you were sure to get 2 moves in
a turn, if you had gotten only 1 in the preceding turn, provided you
were very fast and unencumbered. The sequence of moves per turn was a
random sequence with 1/3 ones and 2/3 twos, but it was not an
uncorrelated sequence. Ones were anti-correlated -- i.e. you never had
only one move on two consecutive turns each, and clusters of m times 2
moves per turn (after the occurrence of a single move per turn) had a
probability of slightly higher than (2/3)^m for small m. (The exact
formula is prob{m consecutive 2} = prod_k=1^m (2/3 -(-1/3)^k. That can
be derived with the help of recurrence relations.)
> In 3.6.1 the movement system was changed for both the
> hero and for monsters. The slight boost for monsters in
> 3.6.0 was removed. For both hero and monsters, unused
> movement no longer carries over but instead gives a
> percentage chance for extra moves. Being Fast has 2/3
> chance for 1 move and 1/3 chance for 2 moves, so is
> still 33% faster than normal speed. VeryFast gives 1/3
> chance for 1 move and 2/3 chance for 2 moves, same 67%
> increase over normal speed as 3.3.0 through 3.6.0.

Yes, now it is as random as it can be with the probabilities 1/3 and
2/3. The number of moves in two consecutive turns is uncorrelated.
Clusters of m times 1 move (after a 2-move occurrence) have probability
(1/3)^m and clusters of m times 2 moves have (2/3)^m.

I must say that I liked the old system better, because it gives you an
additional option for improvement of your game via skillful action
rather than by a random decision. It could be a life-saver in situations
where you wish to escape a covetous monster while being on the upstairs.
If you zap it with a wand of teleport in a turn where you are sure to
have 2 moves, you should be able to escape upstairs, before it returns.
Provided, of course, the moves are not obtained alternatingly with those
of the monster. I presume, the player first gets his moves and then all
the monsters get theirs and then the turn ends?

> An actual move requires 12 points of movement. Anyone
> with normal human speed gets 12 points per turn, so
> makes 1 move per turn. If a monster gets only 4 points
> per turn, its first turn it wouldn't move and 4 points would
> carry over. On its second turn it would get 4 new points
> and add to the carried over 4 points, it still wouldn't be able
> to move but this time 8 not-yet-used points would carry
> over. Then on its third turn, it would have 12 points and
> make a move, with nothing to carry over. That was the old
> system. Starting in 3.6.1, if a monster has 4 movement
> points it has a 1/3 (4 out of 12) chance to move. If it
> doesn't move, the unused points are thrown away rather
> than carried over. On its next turn it will again have a 4/12
> chance to move. For a fast monster that gets 18 points
> per turn, it will always move at least once, using 12 of the
> 18 points, and have 50% (6/12) chance to move twice. For
> either slower than human or faster, the average movement
> is the same as it was prior to 3.6.0 but actual movement
> is no longer predictable.

I don't mind that for monsters, but I would prefer the player's moves to
have this extra bit of predictability that would make the above strategy
a viable one.

> In theory a slow monster could move every single turn
> or never move at all but a reasonable RNG should result
> in matching the average expected movement over time.

For a very slow monster, it is certainly better not to have it
predictably stay unmoving a long time...

Pages:123
server_pubkey.txt

rocksolid light 0.9.7
clearnet tor