The writer got absolutely roasted in that article. LOL.
“Are you going to be paid for writing this story?” a Scottish player asked me. “Because I am losing three days’ wages to be here so that I can get screwed by you.”
> “Are you going to be paid for writing this story?” a Scottish player asked me. “Because I am losing three days’ wages to be here so that I can get screwed by you."
The leading > and italics make it clear that it's quoted and it avoids making the reader scroll horizontally. Not perfect but it's about the best you can do here, AFAIK.
> Text after a blank line that is indented by two or more spaces is reproduced verbatim. (This is intended for code.)
So that might be the answer to putting code on here.
function say(message: string, volume: number): void {
//do text to speech code here
}
but still markdown would be nicer. just do and depending on the phaser/styling it will even do code syntax coloring to increase readability.
```typescript
new line with the code
```
(Edit again: Without the 2 spaces, HN put my markdown example all on one line)
I guess moving HN to markdown could be done. Just say all posts after X date are markdown(or add a boolean to the post in the DB saying so. Then have the editor have like a preview button(but I know HN likes to be lite on JS stuff) but the md could be generated server-side, but do the preview client side.
I had read lots and lots of strategy articles on the web, planned all my deviant schemes in my head, and finally signed up to a newbie PBEM diplomacy game.
I'm probably the first Englishman in the history of the game who never even got off that damn island.
Apples and oranges. Might as well compare Go with the Universe and call it a day.
The right way to measure the skill required for a game is how many tiers you can construct where each tier reliably beats the one below it. I.e. ELO or something like it.
That said, who cares? They are both beautiful and deep in their own way.
I'm not surprised. I think games, especially board games, are infinitely better for developing strategic and tactical acumen than infinite seminars. Games actually have a feedback loop where you are rewarded for correct planning and sequencing and punished for mistakes.
I recall going on a 3-day course to a marine officer training camp somewhere in VA. There was a obstacle course which was hard, i.e. you had to swim in cold muddy waters (October time), climb fences, dig trenches etc. 80% of teams finished within the deadline of 4 hours. And then there was a exercise room which the Marine instructors said was designed by CIA. You're locked into a room with some instruments and are given an assignment to be completed under a deadline. The outcome was binary: yes/no. Success rate was like 10%. The odds were so that they can identify the best decile.
i heard something similar about designing questions for maths exams -- about half the questions should be pretty basic, so students who have studied and have a basic grasp of the concepts should be able to get them right and pass the course. then the rest are harder, with e.g. one or two questions being more difficult extensions of what was covered in the course.
it sounds like the structure of the marine officer training camp avoids the problems some students have with poor "exam technique" - if you are given a fixed block of time to use to attempt all tasks (e.g. the obstacle course, the exercise room) then there is the risk of students spending all their time on the hardest task, and not leaving enough time to succeed at the other easier tasks.
edit: on another hand, you could argue that "a student's poor exam technique" could equally well be called "poorly designed exam / measurement process"
Large corporations also do this with their more senior folks. They pay big bucks to consulting firms to get a custom designed game that is similar to their industry.
I love love love Diplomacy but will never ever play it with people I care about. This game is "the breakup". If you want to win you basically have to lie and betray. Trust is easy to break and hard to gain.
Best reply, thank you for that -- I forgot about that movie...
But, as this is HN and we aren't allowed the luxury of comedy in this state (I thought we were stateless) -- Ill have to go with the binary position of the fact that we are either funny or un-funny... I beleive myself to be funny, I believe you to be funny... but my funny logic turns to fuzzy logic here so I need you to be solid with me???
I'm a neophyte player (1250), actively learning. I can definitely see how learning chess to a respectable level (~1500) can help you make decisions in everyday life. I could elaborate a bit but this is a subject about which much has already been written.
I really don't think so. Getting really good at a game involving a discrete territory relies heavily on developing spatial intuitions that are specific to the game. Through experience and study of prior games, you get increasingly aware of the possibilities of positions many moves in advance; humans aren't built to exhaustively analyze game trees like the naive chess AIs of the 90s. If the game isn't a transparent metaphor for something else in life, then the intuitions won't apply either. Real life doesn't have things that move like knights, or shape the board like pawns.
An Elo score of 1500 is not considered being "really good" at chess.
In real life, you have to make choices. Some choices preclude certain futures while enabling others. Sometimes you can make a sacrifice now in order to "win" later. Etc.
I am not saying that memorizing complex mating patterns for example can be directly transposed to real life decision making. Rather, realizing these exist, and appropriating the patterns of thought that make such analyses possible is what is beneficial.
You are right that we aren't "built to exhaustively analyze game trees", but this is precisely what makes learning chess a good thing: you get to train your mind to do that. Transposing that skill in real life is, I believe, beneficial.
I had always assumed ELO was an acronym of some kind, turns out it's the surname of the system's inventor; Arpad Elo. [0]
And, according to Wikipedia, 1500 would be a mid-level player, so not really good, but certainly not beginner either.
> In general, a beginner is around 800, a mid-level player is around 1600, and a professional, around 2400.
Of course you are right, vut part of getting good in chess is learning to think ahead in the first place, to stop thinking just about what you want to do, but about what your opponent wants to do...I think up to ELO 1500 is just learning to basic discipline in your thinking
There are some basics, like thinking about your goal, thinking about your opponent's goal. A newish player will start realizing that they can advance their goal and foil their opponent's goal. A few shades beyond simply missing basic moves, and actively exploiting pins, forks, and skewers. That level, competent but far from elite, i think generalizes reasonably well.
I think you're at a much more specialized level. You need to see many moves ahead, and predict your opponent effectively. That won't generalize so well, because it's purely focused on the rules of chess.
Would you consider mathematics to help you in everyday life? I'm wondering because I know some people who argue that it doesn't, while I argue that it does. We might be confronted to a similar issue here?
> I'm a neophyte player (1250), actively learning. I can definitely see how learning chess to a respectable level (~1500) can help you make decisions in everyday life.
It won't. Chess is a game, you can learn chess to play a better game of chess and maybe you'll find other games where you can use the knowledge gained (but less likely), but you will rarely - if ever - be in a position where you apply a lesson learned in chess to a real life situation. And if you did you probably would end up making a mistake.
If you like heavy strategy games based in historical events, you should take a look at the COIN series (COunterINsurgencies) by GMT http://www.gmtgames.com/. Actually, their whole catalog is full of great historical games, including the the highest-ranked game on BoardGameGeek for many years Twilight Struggle. They are definitely NOT party drinking games though, and require both time and dedicated study.
If you're looking for a 20min party game on the same vibe, I can't recommend The Resistance: Avalon highly enough. A more recent take on the hidden role and voting genre is Secret Hitler, but I didn't try that yet.
A buddy of mine bought me a copy of the Steam version of Twilight Struggle. If you have a willing friend to play with, the PC digital version is just fine.
Matchmaking is there as well as async play, so you can get a game going with a stranger. but, it might take awhile.
I've played it (with a friend) about 30 hours so far, it really is a great game. After a few brutal losses I started to get the hang of it. There is depth, sacrifice and tough decision making. I'm definitely a fan of the game, now.
https://twilightstrategy.com/ This blog features a detailed analysis of each card in the game. It's a useful reference if you want to become a true pro.
While the CIA games may not be readily available, Volko Ruhnke , the CIA game designer mentioned in the article is well known for designing commercially available games, many of which have the flavor of the CIA game mentioned in the article, such as Labyrinth: The War on Terror, 2001 – ? and Andean Abyss. See his full list of games in [1].
I'm excitedly telling someone about this and reading the comments on the ars website where people say this was done before in the military and the thought suddenly came to me that we really need to find more excuses to play games like this in our tech jobs.
Is there some kind of training we need that awesome board games could help with?
When you're working on a problem having a short break and thinking about something unrelated allows you to return to the problem with a fresh mind. People often report this kind of short break is a powerful tool in problem solving. This short break could easily be a game of something.
When you're working in a company sometimes people are in different silos. Opportunities to discuss things across the company are lacking. But these discussions are often useful; a problem in one department might be a simple fix from another department. People hate meetings. People like games. A games afternoon once a fortnight would help people discuss this stuff.
There used to be a PC game genre called Real-Time-Strategy (RTS). Former famous game series were Age of Empires, Command and Conquer, War Craft, Empire Earth (and some more). The genre was very popular in 1997-2005. Sadly casual Free2Play Facebook games, mobile touch and console gamepad destroyed the genre. Today no Triple-A game worth mentioning gets released in the RTS genre.
You can play old games for many years yes. But after a while it gets boring anyway.
Some of the 10-20 year old RTS games got released as HD-editions recently. But they are just the same old games. What is really needed are new games with new content. Not just lame cheap re-releases named "HD". The world needs new Triple-A RTS games, that are not clones of Star Craft 2. Star Craft 1, Age of Empires and Command and Conquer series were better games in many respect and this is what is missing today - non-causul non-F2P new RTS games with realistic scenarios like in C&C Generals and Age of Empires or Empire Earth series.
Aoe2 has got a couple of expansions that added more factions, however from my perspective I don't really look for more content in updates as much as better features... Spectating a game in aoe2 is a joke and watching the casters struggle with disconnects and having to synchronize replays is kinda sad.
I think you've been out of the loop for quite a while - RTS games were the absolute premier competitive ("esports") game type (see twitch.tv for more recent evidence) probably through 2014, being eclipsed by MOBA games (like League of Legends).
The rise of "casual" games was essentially irrelevant, actually, but that's another story.
Total War is a computer series of strategy games developed by The Creative Assembly. These combine turn-based strategy and resource management, with real-time tactical control of battles.
It's not a Real-Time-Stragey (RTS) game series like Age of Empire, Command and Conquer or War Craft.
Also, to put yourself in the shoes of a country (in terms of crisis). Imagine you're a guy with several women:
Some women are chill with being friends and understand that.
Some women want you to settle, but you don't or can't.
Some women just hate you. Some women share no interest but could be converted depending on time, resource allocation (e.g. time or else), etc.
After a while things seem simple, then you notice time conflicts, argument conflicts. Then you begin to think: "What if they're doing the same thing I'm doing?"
Then comes in the role of intelligence collection and plausible deniability as well of minimizing evidence showing alternative events of the same story.
Then, of course will come a time when alliances are formed. Are you with them, or are you not? Intel sharing? What if they compare the metadata of x and y event and see an outlier?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diplomacy_(game)