Re: Seeds in games

["Richard Hoelscher" <rah rahga com>]

Callum McKenzie said:
> 2) Challenging a friend (say via email) to get a better score. This is a
> valid reason, but I suspect it is a very limited audience. Using high
> scores are just as good as a means of resolving who is better, although
> that looses some of the fun of a direct challenge .

The design of mahjongg tiles and playing cards are all about random
gameplay. Seeds make sense for analyzing the playability of new, unsolved
solitaire games, and I don't think Freecell counts anymore... I'm all for
UI seed removal.

Oddly enough, Bugzilla's seed bugs seem to deal with Same Gnome. I think
it's an odd target: You can get the maximum score of 22904, or a minimum
score of 0 points, in just one click after the game starts. It's
coffee-table game design, and the fact that skill can potentially have no
impact on game play is a good reason not to add seeds or color-counting.

[Reply to David Hoover:]
In the world of games, where you probably won't be shuffling any more than
312 items (Blackjack), random number generation tends to be more than
adequate. The issues you mentioned are really only a problem in
cryptography, where knowing those inadequacies could shave years off of
cracking time. Generally, it won't help you at the blackjack table. :)

-Richard Hoelscher
richardhoelscher mudsprings com