The Mersenne Twister . . . Gone Insane

Discussion in 'The Temple of Elemental Evil' started by Gaear, May 2, 2005.

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  1. taltamir

    taltamir Established Member

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    its funnier when everyone misses on both sides...

    From a real table top experience:
    "ok... so the 7 PCs all miss the wounded dying goblin, again, for the 5th round in a row.... except for you, you hit it for 1HP... 4 more to go... lets see, goblin attacks, and yes, it misses too.... goblin gets so frustrated it falls on its sword"

    At which point as a joke I rolled to see if it hit himself... It got it by a point, but I wasnt going to say otherwise because the way everyone glared at me.
     
  2. Shiningted

    Shiningted I changed this damn title, finally! Administrator

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    Thats funny!
    Fruella is a jinx... u know what to do...
     
  3. taltamir

    taltamir Established Member

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    heh... whenever i try to level my rogue she rolls a 1 on her HD.

    I keep reloading and releveling her... and she keeps doing it.

    The most times in a row she did it so far was 9. 9 times she in a row she got a 1 for her roll, then she got a 6.

    Then there was this one time where she got 1 for her HP 4 times in a row, then a 2, then she got 7 ones in a row.

    I just cant explain it.

    I'd like a constant 75% of HD gain if I could, but barrying this I just reroll them until they get at least HALF the HP they can per level. (ie, if they are getting 1-10, then I want somewhere between 5 and 10)
     
  4. Rook Hudson

    Rook Hudson Member

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    A series of bad rolls is bad, but eventually things get better ... eventually

    I too have noticed that with my characters, in a crucial battle situation, where every swing matters, I sometimes get three critical misses in a row, for example, for one of the fighters in the party, or a series of really low numbers for everyone. It can lead one to think that Troika really did meddle with game in some way to balance out the power hitters, as Gaear suggests, but I then tell myself that this is conspiracy theory stuff and reject it. But who knows, maybe its true.. and maybe there really are aliens out there ... somewhere.

    The truth is out there.

    In space no one can hear you cream (oops, scream) !

    Seriously though sometimes I do get a lot of really bad to-hit rolls and this can really make me want to throw my monitor out the nearest window. Thankfully however I have enough common sense to realise that the bad rolls will pass, ... eventually.

    And they do.
     
  5. Cujo

    Cujo Mad Hatter Veteran

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    I made two identical fighters except for the hair colour, the blond one was awesome and gets lots of critical and hardly ever misses and gets good hps onlevel up, the white haired one sucks, almost always misses, gets hit alot and has really low hp. So it looks like blonds do have more fun, or luck
     
  6. Shiningted

    Shiningted I changed this damn title, finally! Administrator

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    the other guy's hair is probably white from the stress <makes mental note to avoid white-haired characters in future>
     
  7. taltamir

    taltamir Established Member

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    I just think they have a crappy random number generator.

    I wonder if that is something that can be modded. (ie, make it use an external ramdom number generator, and include a high quality one)
     
  8. Gaear

    Gaear Bastard Maestro Administrator

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    From what I understand, the Mersenne Twister is thought to be pretty good. They replaced the original with it in patch 2, I believe. The original was thought to be crappy indeed.

    Here's an admittedly anecdotal example of a suspicious rolls history for the battle with the Skeleton Priest and Skeleton Guards at Emridy Meadows. Just plain old rolls here:

    Them: 19, 18, 15, 14, 17, 19, 20, 20, 11, 7, 14, 19. Average roll of 16.1.

    Us: 16, 10, 16, 2, 1, 15, 6, 2, 16, 17, 7, 10, 5, 16, 7, 12, 5, 6, 17. Average roll of 9.8.

    I don't see anything particularly wrong with my rolls, but their rolls? Awesome. Only 1 roll out of 12 under 10. Two 20s. Three 19s. All rolls but two 14 or over. <shakes head>

    Edit: Sorry, this wasn't the Skeleton Priest fight, it was one preceding it versus 2 skeletons with bows and 1 skeleton gnoll.
     
    Last edited: May 8, 2005
  9. elith daan

    elith daan Member

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    A thing i have definatly noticed, I had a selection of characters, and through the game as i gained feats and ensorcelled weapons, the only character i had that seemed to hit better, more criticals etc was a rogue/ranger. every other character got worse. from a normal glaive my fighter got a magic glaive, immediatly his hit rate hit the floor. I dont think feats had anything to do with it, but i have noticed that crafted items whilst seeming to get a better chance to hit often times in play act worse. I have had highish level characters still get protracted fights with lizardmen and skeletons as they miss 10 times in a row. The first time i got to hezrou, i never hit him at all!!!! i reloaded went with different weapons and kicked him.
     
  10. Cujo

    Cujo Mad Hatter Veteran

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    Its the hair colour that you pick at char' creation, it makes all the difference ;)
     
  11. Firestrand

    Firestrand Member

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    The random number generator can't be modded. It is hard coded, you can turn it off with a command line option. -norandom

    The twister algorithm ensures that you won't get repeated values, and it does seem suspicious that you would get so many rolls that are favorable to anyone. I don't know how they implimented the rng, but I would imagine it isn't the algorithm, but the implimentation.

    -Firestrand
     
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