Non-determinism

Dr Colossus · 07-29-2009, 10:46 AM

I was initially optimistic for this game, having spent many hours attempting to conquer the Incrediable Machine, but the game has a single colossal flaw among many other major flaws - non-determinism.

A game such as this requires the precise interaction of several components, it becomes very frustrating when these interactions become randomised. The epitome of this was when I replayed the dev solution, but it failed because random chance threw the ball out of the front of the screen (which shouldn't really be possible either..)

My intuition suggests that a simplistic phyiscs engine should behave perfectly deterministicly (indeed, games like the Incredible Machine and Obulis do) so that suggests to me that this game was purposefully made random.
To which I can only say.. wtf?

NicoRey27 · 08-04-2009, 04:07 PM

Yeah, just noticed that today. That's the only remarkable negative aspect I can object of this game.
Dev's solutions shouldn't have this randomized physics.
If they fix that in an update with the bugs posted in the other thread, then the game will be perfect

Petrish · 06-27-2010, 07:19 AM

That makes the game incredibly hard or incredibly easy, depending on the map, because there's randomness between tries, even on equal solutions

freibooter · 07-05-2010, 03:37 AM

I absolutely agree with that (although there are even more annoying bugs, like the save-game error or the fact that the video options aren't correctly saved).

But when even the official solutions only work about one third of the time there certainly is a problem. The "One Click One Death" achievement is a matter of pure luck.

serieus1 · 09-07-2010, 10:21 AM

I definitely found that the random action when you press play was a strange change from normal puzzles. Usually if you don't touch anything and hit play again you'd get the exact same outcome, but in this game things do change. In a way it's kind of realistic, maybe too realistic, or maybe they added a chaos theory function to their game. Still I wouldn't say that this "non-determinism" and any other random bugs kill the game.

I was still able to get 100% achievements and also enjoy the game. It's not as good as The Incredible Toon Machine, but it fit the purpose, especially since I bought it for $0.81 during the summer sale.

07-29-2009, 10:46 AM	#1
Dr Colossus Join Date: Jun 2006 Reputation: 0 Posts: 691	Non-determinism I was initially optimistic for this game, having spent many hours attempting to conquer the Incrediable Machine, but the game has a single colossal flaw among many other major flaws - non-determinism. A game such as this requires the precise interaction of several components, it becomes very frustrating when these interactions become randomised. The epitome of this was when I replayed the dev solution, but it failed because random chance threw the ball out of the front of the screen (which shouldn't really be possible either..) My intuition suggests that a simplistic phyiscs engine should behave perfectly deterministicly (indeed, games like the Incredible Machine and Obulis do) so that suggests to me that this game was purposefully made random. To which I can only say.. wtf? Last edited by Dr Colossus: 08-01-2009 at 03:57 AM.

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08-04-2009, 04:07 PM	#2
NicoRey27 Join Date: Dec 2008 Reputation: 26 Posts: 407	Yeah, just noticed that today. That's the only remarkable negative aspect I can object of this game. Dev's solutions shouldn't have this randomized physics. If they fix that in an update with the bugs posted in the other thread, then the game will be perfect

06-27-2010, 07:19 AM	#3
Petrish Join Date: Jan 2010 Reputation: 55 Posts: 233	That makes the game incredibly hard or incredibly easy, depending on the map, because there's randomness between tries, even on equal solutions

07-05-2010, 03:37 AM	#4
freibooter Join Date: Oct 2007 Reputation: 756 Posts: 3,001	I absolutely agree with that (although there are even more annoying bugs, like the save-game error or the fact that the video options aren't correctly saved). But when even the official solutions only work about one third of the time there certainly is a problem. The "One Click One Death" achievement is a matter of pure luck.

09-07-2010, 10:21 AM	#5
serieus1 Join Date: Feb 2010 Reputation: 908 Posts: 2,065	I definitely found that the random action when you press play was a strange change from normal puzzles. Usually if you don't touch anything and hit play again you'd get the exact same outcome, but in this game things do change. In a way it's kind of realistic, maybe too realistic, or maybe they added a chaos theory function to their game. Still I wouldn't say that this "non-determinism" and any other random bugs kill the game. I was still able to get 100% achievements and also enjoy the game. It's not as good as The Incredible Toon Machine, but it fit the purpose, especially since I bought it for $0.81 during the summer sale.