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Worms, sayeth Wikipedia, is a series of artillery strategy computer games developed by British company Team17. I've never played any of the Worms games, though I'm not entirely unaware of the genre—I'm old enough to have played some Artillery Duel, back in the day—so I imagine we'll be in for quite a treat seeing me jump in right at the beginning. Possibly earlier than that: the aforementioned Wikipedia article claims the first Worms game was released in 1995, but I've found a release a full two years earlier than that, for the Atari 800 and ported to the Commodore 64. Commodore fan I may be, but I've decided that, as long as I'm going old-school, I'm going to go all the way and play the Atari version. Now, as I understand it, this is a (preferably) multi-player game where your team of worms—  —now, hang on, that's not right. Team 17 was never bought out by EA. In fact, to this day they're—  Okay, hold it right there, mister. I demand an explanation for all this tomfoolery. Where is Worms?  Yes, Worms. Where is Worms?  Hm. This is not what I was expecting from what I've heard of the game. No matter. I'm sure a quick look at the manual will clear things up.  ...uh. All... all right.  Okay, I think I've worked out how to start a game. 'New' is for a new player, 'Auto' is the AI, there are 'Wild' and 'Same' options I'm not sure what they do, and I can leave a player out entirely with '----'. It appears turn order is fixed, left to right, and we choose to move one of six directions from our original... island? Platform? These low-res graphics are confusing me. And if someone goes one way, I have to choose a different way. So. It's pretty arbitrary at this juncture, but... which way should we go first? Spoiler policy: Yes, I know this isn't actually a long-lost game in the 'Worms' series. Also, professional wrestling is staged. But it's no fun for anyone if you point either out. I will get slightly more informative about the game once we've bumbled our way through a playthrough.
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Nov 21, 2015 05:41
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Edit: Actually, gently caress trying to get all analytical about this, go left.
Pittsburgh Lambic fucked around with this message at 05:51 on Nov 21, 2015 |
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Nov 21, 2015 05:49
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Pittsburgh Lambic posted:Edit: Actually, gently caress trying to get all analytical about this, go left. Easy enough!  Now we have some competition on the field! Competition for what, I'm not sure. We can't go back the way we came, but we can go any other direction, even to the dot Purple's on now...
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Nov 21, 2015 06:07
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Worm:  Are you a friend?Visit purple!
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Nov 21, 2015 06:20
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SystemLogoff posted:Worm: That is definitely a thing we can attempt!  Doesn't look like he was interested, though. Also of note: whoever last moved to or from a dot determines the color of the lines connected to it. That's why we're in the middle of three Purple segments right now, while Purple's in the middle of Blue segments and Blue is in the middle of Green segments. Looks like a line of unrequited love, except for Green, who's striking out on his own. Anyway. We can go west, southwest, and southeast. Got a preference?
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Nov 21, 2015 06:28
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Looks like a hexagonal variation on Go. I say we head to the upper right region and take over as much territory as we can.
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Nov 21, 2015 07:06
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Bobbin Threadbare posted:Looks like a hexagonal variation on Go. I say we head to the upper right region and take over as much territory as we can. Okay. But which direction should we go in to get there, given that (a) we can't move northeast right now and (b) the board wraps on all sides? Yes, things will get more interesting than 'take single move, wait for opponents to do same' soon. For instance, if we moved west right now, it would happen immediately.
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Nov 21, 2015 07:16
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Make it do something interesting. (not being snarky just you seem to have an idea of how to accomplish that)
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Nov 21, 2015 07:24
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Stalin-Chan posted:Make it do something interesting. As you wish! Let's move west from where we are.  ...huh. We appear to have moved twice without any input on the second move. I wonder what could have possibly caused that. Perhaps you can ponder that while I get some sleep. Perhaps, while you're at it, you can ponder the consequences of going west again here. Or, alternately, northeast. Or even southeast.
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Nov 21, 2015 07:48
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I had to wrap my brain around this one and I'm guessing the lines can form automated patterns based on the last two (or more?) inputs. If we head west again, it may just do that SE move automatically again.
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Nov 21, 2015 08:01
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Make a hexagon! Then we'll evolve into a bee and can assassinate purple. No one rejects "worm"!
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Nov 21, 2015 08:32
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Rather Watch Them posted:I had to wrap my brain around this one and I'm guessing the lines can form automated patterns based on the last two (or more?) inputs. If we head west again, it may just do that SE move automatically again. Let's give it a shot!  Okay, so what have we learned from this? And what will we do next?
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Nov 21, 2015 20:56
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Well as far as what we've learned is concerned, it looks like you get a point whenever you leave a node via its last remaining route. And that learned movement sequences can trigger other learned movement sequences, or at least recurse. It'd be worth finding out if going south-east will trigger the learned sequence midway or if we can only trigger it by going west, but it's not available to us here. I'll vote for going north-east to get into position for testing that, hopefully the purple worm doesn't end up getting in the way. (It's not going to be a very long test, but with what the blue worm has done there's not really much we can do about that from this position.)
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Nov 21, 2015 23:02
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It seems to me that when everyone chooses a direction, they just keep going that way until someone bumps into an existing line.
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Nov 21, 2015 23:44
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Try making a spiral or a circle. That seems to be good adivce.
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Nov 22, 2015 00:08
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Twilkitri posted:It'd be worth finding out if going south-east will trigger the learned sequence midway or if we can only trigger it by going west, but it's not available to us here. I'll vote for going north-east to get into position for testing that, hopefully the purple worm doesn't end up getting in the way. (It's not going to be a very long test, but with what the blue worm has done there's not really much we can do about that from this position.)  Well, we didn't make any automatic moves. Do we want to go northeast again and see what happens, or go another direction? Moving northeast or southeast will cause at least one automove. Moving east will not.
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Nov 22, 2015 00:22
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This looks neat, never seen a cellular automata game!  Let's go southeast and chase after blue.
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Nov 22, 2015 13:12
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Ptolo posted:This looks neat, never seen a cellular automata game!  Well, we only wind up chasing Blue a little way, but moving southeast again should put us on the trail. Moving northeast would also cause some automovement, as would moving west...
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Nov 22, 2015 18:14
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It looks like we're falling behind, and locking down points is how one scores. Let's see if west will get us there.
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Nov 22, 2015 18:59
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Rather Watch Them posted:It looks like we're falling behind, and locking down points is how one scores. Let's see if west will get us there.  It will indeed! And we're only stopped by running into Purple (literally, though sharing a node isn't fatal). We only have two options here, and either way Purple will claim this node, but we can determine which way Purple goes by determining which way we go: southeast or northeast? FredMSloniker fucked around with this message at 19:26 on Nov 22, 2015 |
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Nov 22, 2015 19:21
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Let's go northwest and maintain the status quo as much as possible. Edit: Yes, northeast. Sillyman fucked around with this message at 20:48 on Nov 22, 2015 |
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Nov 22, 2015 19:23
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I'm trying to decipher the auto-move learning logic. There's obviously not enough data, but for the moment, when we move in a direction our worm tries to replicate all the moves from the last time we chose that direction. (In alternative, it tries to replicate the next move from the last time and then recurses; same thing as far as I can tell). After iterating a single cycle and then you're allowed to change your mind or choose to keep it going until impossible. There's some complications if you repeat the same move before changing direction, see purple or green at the beginning: purple automated E E SW while green automated NE SE SE. Basically, we started W SE. The next W automated a SE. We accepted the cycle by moving W again and it kept going until the impact with blue's trail. If I'm right, if we go west, then ne, then SE our worm should then automate another W NE. Goiung SE at that point should make the cycle (SE NE W NE) repeat until impossible. E: gently caress what happened there? EE: ok, the learning AI is far more complex than my Try northeast? Omobono fucked around with this message at 19:46 on Nov 22, 2015 |
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Nov 22, 2015 19:34
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Sillyman posted:Let's go northwest and maintain the status quo as much as possible. I actually meant to say northeast, so I hope that's what you meant too.  Purple could have turned to pursue us, in which case we'd have needed to make another command pretty quickly, but it didn't, so here we are. Blue and Green have eliminated each other by running out of places to go! I presume you do not want to go southeast (though if you choose to do so, I'll honor that choice!), since we can only claim these three nodes if we act now, but it may matter later if we go west or northwest to do so, sooo...
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Nov 22, 2015 19:45
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Can you also include a screenshot/gif of only the decision point on long turns?
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Nov 22, 2015 19:48
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Omobono posted:Can you also include a screenshot/gif of only the decision point on long turns? Sure, I can do that. 
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Nov 22, 2015 19:52
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West.
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Nov 22, 2015 19:57
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Omobono posted:West. As you wish!  We're in the endgame now. Our next move won't necessarily end the game... but it could.
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Nov 22, 2015 20:14
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Well, since it's been over 24 hours, I'm going to go ahead and choose a move just to keep things moving. That move will be west. However, I don't have a GIF to show of the move. Why? Because I have this instead: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L6L-YXpUWyk So how does 'Worms?' work? Well, it's time to pull back the veil. Each of the four worms has a setting you can choose before the game begins. I already described what 'New', 'Auto', and '----' do. 'Wild' is also an AI player, but it chooses its moves at random instead of trying to form a strategy. And 'Same' is player-controlled, but retains the worm's training from the previous round. Obviously, if all four worms are set to 'Same', they'll repeat the previous round (which is how I got this video), but if you change up the other players, it's possible your worm will need more instructions. A few of you tried to figure out how the worms work, but none of you got it quite right. It's really quite simple. The worm looks at the arrangement of lines connected to its current location (including the one it just drew). If it's seen that arrangement before, it does whatever it did then. If it hasn't, the player is asked to choose a direction, and it adds that to its list of instructions. The game is based on Paterson's Worms, a family of cellular automata meant to model the movement and feeding behavior of prehistoric worms. Some of the possible movement patterns of these worms end very quickly, but others go on forever - and one is so complicated nobody knows if it ends or not. However, the game has two major differences from Paterson's Worms. One is, of course, the multiplayer aspect, but the other is that Paterson's Worms' rules are relative to the worm's current direction (so they're expressed as 'straight' or 'slight/hard left/right'), while 'Worms?' uses rules based on compass directions. I bumped into this game while trying to find an old DOS-based cellular automata engine I played with in high school. It looked neat, so I decided to give it a try as an LP. That said, where we go from here is up to you. Interested in trying some multiplayer action? I'd be happy to referee. Want me to record the AI going at it for a while? (The accompanying sounds are kind of soothing.) I can do that too. I can talk more generally about cellular automata, show off some other programs based on them. Or, since this is a programming game, I can cover some other programming games, like 'Omega' (a game about programming robot tanks). Or we can wrap this up neatly, and I can go do something else with my time. I leave it up to you!
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Nov 23, 2015 21:34
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FredMSloniker posted:(a game about programming robot tanks)
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Nov 23, 2015 21:44
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Pierzak posted:Please do these at some point. Not the specific game, but the whole genre of program vs program battles. Yeah, that sounds like it'd make for a fun set of videos!
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Nov 23, 2015 21:47
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I have to agree with the above, and also with your idea to let the AI run amok for a while. Watching Conway's Game of Life just play out from random starting positions is something I do sometimes for fun (in particular, an app called DroidLife can color nodes, which causes groups of colors to form in the beginning, it's interesting to see which color ends up with the biggest space by the end), so it'd be neat to see how it applies to this system instead.
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Nov 23, 2015 22:22
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Oblivion4568238 posted:I have to agree with the above, and also with your idea to let the AI run amok for a while. Watching Conway's Game of Life just play out from random starting positions is something I do sometimes for fun (in particular, an app called DroidLife can color nodes, which causes groups of colors to form in the beginning, it's interesting to see which color ends up with the biggest space by the end), so it'd be neat to see how it applies to this system instead. As it happens, I have a copy of Golly, which can do that sort of thing. And I might just work up some videos of that. But first, have a video of the computer playing itself for a while! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4JASQ7EsFY
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Nov 24, 2015 03:16
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I love the music those little bastards make.
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Nov 24, 2015 03:44
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It took me a while into the video to realise that the AI usually died when it ran into itself (another worm)
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Nov 24, 2015 12:11
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thedaian posted:It took me a while into the video to realise that the AI usually died when it ran into itself (another worm) In a four-player game, worms dying off in pairs is inevitable. (The proof: after the first turn, the points where the worms are have an odd number of connections, and every other point has an even number of connections. When a worm enters or leaves a point, they change whether the number of connections is odd or even; under nearly all circumstances, they make it odd when they enter and even when they leave. A worm dies when it enters a point that has five connections, and therefore has nowhere to go, but the only circumstances under which a node has an odd number of connections when a worm enters is when another worm is already there. Therefore, at least two worms will die (the one entering, which will find no exit, and the one already there, which will also find no exit). In order for three worms to die at the same point, one of two things would have to be true. If the fourth worm is not nearby, then the third worm would be entering at five connections, meaning the second would be entering at four connections, meaning the first would be entering at three connections, which, as we've established, is impossible. However, we can consider the case where the fourth worm is involved and manages to flee the impending collison. This would mean that the fourth worm would be leaving when there are five connections, which means it would be entering when there are four connections. The third would be entering at three connections, the second would be entering at two connections, and the first would be entering at one connection... which, again, is impossible. It would be possible for a four-way death to happen (as the first worm would be entering when there are two connections), but I imagine it'd be pretty rare to happen in practice. A two-player game will likewise end when the two worms collide with each other. In a three-player game, two of the worms will collide with each other, and the third will die completing the center point (the only point that has an odd number of connections after the first turn but doesn't have worms on it). Anyway. Working on getting things organized for the next game, but if you have any more requests, let me know!
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Nov 24, 2015 21:31
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I was seriously wondering whether this was the lp equivalent of Sword of the Bastard Elf. 
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Nov 25, 2015 00:43
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Anticheese posted:I was seriously wondering whether this was the lp equivalent of Sword of the Bastard Elf. You mean you didn't think this was a real game? No, yeah, Electronic Arts did a lot of crazy stuff back in the day.  Specifically, the day when they would put this on a game box with a straight face. Hell, they made a game about trying to keep the world's least stable hardware running (D-Bug), a game so obscure it doesn't even merit a Wikipedia page. I could do an LP just about Electronic Arts releases for the Commodore 64 and get everything from the famous (the Bard's Tale Trilogy, Starflight, Wasteland) to the offbeat (Neuromancer, an adventure game based on the book, or Adventure Construction Set, an infant form of RPG Maker) to the downright strange (Mind Mirror, a program to help you be introspective, or Make Your Own Murder Party, a program that, when fed details about your friends, would print out individualized books you could use to do one of those 'dinner and a murder' shows in your own home). And then there's this.
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Nov 25, 2015 03:44
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I remember this from when I was like 6. Of course I never figured out what was going on and just watched four AIs make pretty patterns.
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Nov 25, 2015 04:46
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This game looks really neat! Thank you for sharing and explaining how it works
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Nov 25, 2015 07:07
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Sindai posted:I remember this from when I was like 6. Of course I never figured out what was going on and just watched four AIs make pretty patterns. Pretty sure that means you knew exactly what was going on.
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Nov 25, 2015 16:03
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