Thread: Games by Coda
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Coda Coda is offline
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Default   #41  
Welllllll... you can play any of them from links I posted here, does that count? XD

In more seriousness, I do have games for Trisphee in the works, but none of the games I've linked here are really good for hooking in with the Pandora Tokens. It would be too hard to make sure that they're fair, well-balanced, resistant to cheating, and have a good prize structure.

Cheat Resistance: The crane game is cheat-resistant; at best, a cheater who knows what he's doing could potentially skip the process of actually using the crane, but he wouldn't be able to get any better rewards than anyone else. If I were to style up Gravity Runner, Invader, or Shells in such a way that it fit the Trisphee style, though, there would be no way for the server to tell the difference between a really good player and a cheater. (Also Shells would be legally problematic because I don't actually own the commercial rights to that particular piece of code since I wrote it for hire.)

Balance and Fairness: I could make Same Game and Lights Out cheat resistant without TOO much difficulty. But would they actually be fair and balanced? I don't think so. Lights Out isn't balanced; some puzzles are way easier than others. I can't even solve some of them and I wrote it so I KNOW that there's always a solution. And Same Game isn't fair -- not every initial board configuration is solvable, and the maximum possible score varies rather widely from board to board even if you could have perfect play.

Prize Structure: It's also hard to derive ways to give prizes to players that's reasonable. The Crane Game is a good example of the RIGHT way to do it. You know what the prizes are before you spend a Pandora Token, and the prizes are worth the price of admission but not worth TOO much. If we added another game we'd want to make sure that the prizes are good enough that you would WANT to play the game, but not TOO good or else no one would ever play the Crane Game anymore. I honestly can't think of a way to give out prizes for Lights Out or Same Game that would make them feel like they're worth playing, except to give out aurum based on your score in Same Game and that would be TOO good compared to the Crane Game. (I CAN think of how to do it for Gravity Runner and Invader, but I've already established that those games wouldn't work for other reasons.)

Now, this isn't all doom-and-gloom here. I actually DO have ideas for games that would actually be able to address all of these requirements. I've got the writers working on one already.

I've got two other Trisphee games in the works as well, but neither of them would be played with Pandora Tokens so they're under a different set of needs. They still have to be fair, balanced, cheat-resistant, and have good prize payouts, but they don't have to be balanced for playing with limited resources.
Games by Coda (updated 4/15/2024 - New game: Call of Aether)
Art by Coda (updated 8/25/2022 - beatBitten and All-Nighter Simulator)

Mega Man: The Light of Will (Mega Man / Green Lantern crossover: In the lead-up to the events of Mega Man 2, Dr. Wily has discovered emotional light technology. How will his creations change how humankind thinks about artificial intelligence? Sadly abandoned. Sufficient Velocity x-post)
Old Posted 05-28-2014, 07:39 PM Reply With Quote