Well, down the pipe we go eh?
However, again, if we're talking about needing to rewrite the AI to actually sanely handle these things, then history has proven that time spent gaming out how, exactly, these sorts of interactions are likely to be broken, and demonstrating how to pre-emptively fix those problems would be time decently well-spent, and it would also help keep people down on the ground with realistic expectations.
There is no way in hell he will be able to think of every single edge case in a game this complex no matter how hard he tries to do it. The game is unfinished, and the community has stuck around through the craziness and the craziness is part of the experience. Toady does try to think of edge cases and he has talked about this in the past, but people will always find one he hasn't thought about. It will never be perfect right off the bat, these kinds of things never are, sure you can try to get him to push for that, but it is unreasonable to expect him to somehow think of every single edge case.
Sure the community can try to help, but there will most definitely be at least one completely crazy bug no one thought about.
You talk as though DF doesn't already "cheat". DF cheats when Toady has to give up on sieges being a challenge, and instead has to create 50-ton flying webbers backed up by fire-breathing T-rexes made of bronze just to keep players from steamrolling everything in the game with steel, training, and numbers that the AI can't hope to match, much less all the sundry automated traps players can throw at it. He adds amphibiousness, heat immunity, the ability to just plain make traps and pressure plates not apply to creatures, adds NO_STUN, and all sorts of other tokens that exist explicitly to counter common, easy methods of beating the AI. These are all cheats already, that all exist solely to prevent the trivialization of what few threats remain... And even that doesn't work, so the HFS has to rely upon literally infinite numbers of giant flying syndrome-spitters to keep players from trivializing colonizing the HFS.
How am I trivializing the AI cheating? Didn't you already say the best way to keep the game balanced is to allow them to have full access to all the spells, isnt that cheating? And isn't that exactly what I said aswell?
Either they always know how to use their powers (which would be put the player at a disadvantage until they learn the system, but be generally reasonable for gameplay balance,)
^
But letting them always know their powers does seem reasonable enough and is probably the only way to do it without a massive amount of work.
Its like you are arguing against yourself.
In that case I guess both of us are trivializing it eh?
But seriously.
I understand that toady needs to limit cheating but I also understand that the only way for a game to be actually challenging is to either create a genius AI or allow cheating for the AI and df will likely do the latter and does do the latter and I AM fine with that as long as the player still has a chance. And currently teh player does still have a chance (in fact the game is rather easy at this point) despite the AI cheating.
This isn't hyperbole. This isn't pessimism. This is pattern recognition. The AI for the new magic will be broken. It's just a question of how absurdly self-destructive it will be.
Yes it will be broken and yes I think we should avoid as much brokenness as possible.
Yes the ai shouldn't be blowing itself up in thermonuclear explosion every few minutes in your library.
(well I guess it would only happen once)
I think toady needs to start with combat only spells actually and move out from there as new mechanics are added, I think its probably the only way for him to create AI this reactive.
You trivialize letting DF cheat more than it already does, but what that does is ultimately make the game impossible to play without exploits. (At least, more than DF already does demand exploits...) Further, I have to ask how this could possibly be balanced when the game randomly will or won't have magic, or what magic is available is utterly random. Maybe some magic exists as a "hard counter" to another otherwise powerful magic... but just doesn't exist in this one world, so that powerful magic is now unstoppable. (To make an example using extant game mechanics, imagine if dwarves had the power to web, and no other webbing creature existed. Wouldn't that just slightly wreck game balance?)
...snip...
What I'm saying is that even "merely" asking for the AI not to kill itself with the new magic powers is still asking too much. The best we can even hope to do is find the most unavoidably self-destructive things and shout to Toady that he remember to forestall those cases and edge cases.
Didnt you already say that the ai has to be "completely sane" and in your previous post?
The AI needs to be completely sane, or the game as a whole breaks down. You're not appreciating how vital it is for the AI to be able to have at least some rough parity with the player in understanding how game mechanics work to make the game world have some sense of verisimilitude rather than dropping you out of it from the suicidally stupid dwarves finding more and more ways to kill themselves through things a toddler would understand not to do.
Which is the same thing I said when I said yes the AI needs to not kill itself at least most of the time here.
Yes he needs to make them really smart if he wants it to not break the game, which is why he mentioned he probably will rewrite the whole usage hints system to prevent these kinds of idiotic things I am not denying that.
^
Anyway, the thing about ai not doing really crazy instant suicide things as you stated is exactly what I meant in my last 3 or more posts on the subject. i'm not sure how you could interpret what I said any differently from that so lets move on. Yes we should limit this sort of thing, I agree about that.
It's not putting words in your mouth, it's an examination of the likely logical consequences of what is being talked about.
I didn't make up the notion of a spell to turn yourself into a plant being put into the game, I simply listed off the many, many ways such a spell could do more harm than good in an AI that, almost definitionally, cannot make the kinds of judgements that would be required to make such an extremely situational spell do more good than harm.
Getting excited to the point where you lose your critical thought as to the consequences is exactly what I'm chiding against. You're expecting the moon, and then waving your hand and saying Toady will somehow find a way to deliver the impossible in record time. (And you're so excited for what it does in Adventurer Mode, for that matter, you don't seem to stop to consider the consequences in Fortress Mode important.)
I never claimed you made the whole ridiculous plant argument up. And in fact I believe I addressed that kind of thing in my previous post aswell no?
When I admitted that this would be hard to program?
And toady addressed that in the FOTF reply aswell didnt he?
Yes I believe he did....
Players will use them more creatively than NPC magic users -- that's true of everything in the game already. If you find that you lost an NPC you were chasing because it had turned itself into a strawberry plant near some other strawberry plants (because they have a routine that goes that far in the use of such an effect), then that's cool. If (when hunger etc. is implemented) you find yourself feeding a starving companion by turning yourself into a strawberry plant in a way an NPC wouldn't have thought of, then that's cool. If you end up not having a finger when you change back, then that would be cool too.
I dont see anything wrong with expecting toady to accomplish all the tasks he has set out to do. And as are outlined in numerous places on his website.
No I don't play fort mode much and no I don't really care about the balance of fort mode , ill admit that., yeah I prefer adventure mode, and toady even said in this FOTF reply that there are alot of things he will put in that arn't practical in fort mode and you know what, i'm fine with it. Most of the three-toe stories are adventure mode related anyway.
Yeah, I realize strawberry plant is kind of (it is,) a really dumb spell idea for a game like DF, and I have said this in previous posts.
And I agree that you have to be really careful when making AI like this (as I stated earlier) , I understand that there are problems, But I want to see toady accomplish things that seem impossible (This game wouldn't exist if toady hadn't tried achieving the impossible) so encouraging it in my opinion isn't really that bad.
I essentially think we have reached an agreement of sorts, despite misunderstanding each others posts sometimes.Also yes, I do tend to get overly excited about things, but thats just how I am , I get excited easily. I dont see any reason people shouldn't be excited about these new systems either if they love dwarf fortress.