I think it's time to do something really different. Let's have a game of multi-player DROD! We'll put a bunch of smitemasters in one room and have them stab and slice until just one remains. How does it work exactly? You declare your intention to enter the tournament by replying to this topic. You can put in one or more bids for your placement too (explained below). The deadline for declaring yourself as an entrant and making bids is:
Local Time:10-08-2005 at 01:00 AM
After the deadline, no further bids or entrants will be accepted. I will then create a DROD room that will contain one swordsmen for each of the entrants. Your sword-wielding character will have all of the abilities of Beethro. The goal will be to eliminate as many of the other entrants as possible. I'll post an initial hold showing the starting positions of players. Here's an example room:
I'm going to make the room later based on the number of people entering, so this is just an example. The game progresses in repeating cycles of posting a current hold that shows the latest positions, accepting commands from players, posting an updated hold that shows results of commands, and so on, until there is only one swordsman left.
Bidding for Placement in Turn Sequence
It is helpful to have your swordsman move before others. If you are assigned the #1 placement, then you would always move before other players on each cycle.
Placement in the turn sequence is determined by how you bid before the game begins. You make a bid at the time you declare yourself as an entrant or any time between then and the first deadline. The bid will be for a number of kills that will be subtracted from your end score (described under "
Winning"
). A higher bid will give you better placement and make it easier to kill other players, but the handicap you give yourself with your bid may make your final score too small to win. You can bid as many times as you like, but each bid you make must be larger than the previous one you made.
If two players make the same bid, higher placement will be given to the one who made his bid sooner. Declaring yourself as an entrant without specifying a bid is considered the same as bidding 0. So it is helpful to declare yourself as an entrant sooner.
Example 1: You bid "
5 kills"
and nobody bids higher than that by time of deadline. You are player #1 and will move first on all cycles.
Example 2: You bid 5 after another person bids 5. By time of deadline, your two bids haven't changed, and nobody else has bid 5 or higher. He is player #1 and you are player #2.
Example 3: You bid 5. Another player bids 5. You raise your bid to 6 and the deadline ends further bidding. You are player #1 and he is player #2.
Issuing Commands
As an entrant, you would control one swordsman in the room. Every two days, you have an opportunity to submit 5 movement commands. To avoid ambiguity and make it simple for me to enter them, they should be submitted as five movement code letters separated by spaces, i.e. "
7 7 5 Q W"
. The available movement codes are:
7 - move northwest
8 - move north
9 - move northeast
4 - move west
5 - wait without moving
6 - move east
1 - move southwest
2 - move south
3 - move southeast
q - turn sword counter-clockwise
w - turn sword clockwise
If you don't submit your commands in time for an update, it's the same as submitting "
5 5 5 5 5"
and your swordsman won't move. If you're going to be out of town or busy or something, it could be a good idea to appoint an alternate to issue moves using his own judgment for times when you are unavailable. I imagine that after some entrants are removed from the game, some of these people will be interested in being alternates.
If you submit anything other than 5 valid command codes, your command codes for the cycle may end up being "
5 5 5 5 5"
(5 turns of waiting).
Turn Sequence
Going first or last will often change results dramatically. Turn sequence is determined by player bids (explained earlier) and assigned permanently at the game's beginning. For each turn, only one of the entrant's commands will be performed. So if you are assigned the #2 place in turn sequence with 10 entrants, and submitted "
3 2 Q Q Q"
for your commands, the first cycle would go like this:
Turn 1
Player #1's first command is performed.
Player #2's first command is performed. (You move southeast.)
Player #3's first command is performed.
...
Player #10's first command is performed.
Turn 2
Player #1's second command is performed.
Player #2's second command is performed. (You move south.)
Player #3's second command is performed.
...
Player #10's second command is performed.
...and then for turn 3, 4, and 5, everyone's 3rd, 4th, and 5th commands are performed.
Resolving Movement
The results of movement will be determined by the DROD game itself. Your character will be a scripted guard NPC. Your commands will be added to the script without any thought given to their consequences. If moving up makes you hit a wall, you'll simply bump into that wall and not move. There won't be any chance for us to correct the command you gave us, even if it is obvious you intended something else than what you submitted. So it is very important for you to doublecheck your commands before submitting.
One related question that has come up a few times: What if you walk into another player's sword? Your movement would be blocked and it would be the same as pressing "
5"
(wait) for that turn. Note that this follows from the "
physics"
of guard NPCs. Adding a script command for a guard to walk onto a square containing another guard's sword will cause the guard to stay in his square without moving.
There is no simultaneous movement. Two players can't kill each other on the same turn. The sequence of movement is described in the previous section.
Dieing
If another player's sword enters your square, you die and are removed from the game. You can die and still win the game, as we'll see next.
Winning
Entrants are scored by their number of kills with their bid for turn sequence placement subtracted from it. So by kill count, first place winner will receive 100 rank points and any item of his choosing from
the Prize Pile, second place winner takes 50 rank points, and the third place winner gets 25 rank points. If you've never participated in any DROD contest before, and this is your first contest, then you'll get a 10 rank point "
rookie"
bonus for trying something new.
What if people have the same kill count? In that case, of those having the same kill count, whoever survived longer will be ranked higher.
No Private Sharing of Game Information
You can talk about all aspects of the game at any time, but it must be done
publicly on the board. Collusion makes the game political instead of tactical. A political game with hidden alliances might be great fun to try sometime but this contest wasn't designed that way. Don't provide game information privately to anyone else or offer to--that will disqualify you. And for the sake of the game, if anyone approaches you with private game information, please tattle on him to me and I'll disqualify him. Simply
asking someone if they would like to coordinate movements with you in private or exchange any form of private game information is going to disqualify you. It's important that people aren't allowed to put feelers out, i.e. "
Do you feel like cheating? No? Okay, no problem! Never mind, it was probably a bad idea, anyhow."
And unfortunately, ignorance of the rule can't excuse you, or the rule may not be effective.
Strategy
Do you remember the scene in
the Princess Bride where Vizzini, the criminal mastermind from Sicily tries to determine into which of two cups the hero, Westley, has placed poison?
"
Now, a clever man would put the poison into his own goblet, because he would know that only a great fool would reach for what he was given. I am not a great fool, so I can clearly not choose the wine in front of you. But you must have known I was not a great fool, you would have counted on it, so I can clearly not choose the wine in front of me."
Vizzini, with his dizzying intellect, basically overthought the situation. Could he really know which cup Westley put the poison in? After one or two layers of guessing about who thinks what, it gets pretty silly and you have to admit that you just don't know. I think there may be many places in the game where you'll run into this Sicilian problem, and no doubt luck will play a large part in your success. But don't throw up your hands in despair. Just because there is a lot of hidden information that can't be deduced doesn't mean one move is always as good as another. You can analyze what moves are possible to you and your fellow entrants. You can decide that certain moves of other entrants are very likely or not likely. You can find the moves that put you in positions where luck is on your side, i.e. avoiding a square that is close to two or more player's swords. You can look for patterns from previous moves, i.e. a certain player is consistently aggressive, so perhaps a sidestepping attack is in order.
By the way, please, don't spoil that scene from
the Princess Bride for anyone who hasn't seen the movie. Everybody deserves to see for themselves the surprising outcome of Westley and Vizzini's test of wits.
So who's signing up to play? Also, if anyone would like to volunteer to help me update the hold for cycles, we could figure some kind of kickback for you.
-Erik
____________________________
The Godkiller - Chapter 1 available now on Steam. It's a DROD-like puzzle adventure game.
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[Last edited by ErikH2000 at 10-05-2005 06:08 AM]
