Moving!

I suppose I should mention this here: I've restarted my blogging efforts, but under a new address. Please check out http://sanns-life.blogspot.com/ !

Weekly Review: "Handlebars" Music Video

I wasn't going to do back-to-back music videos, but this one really impressed me:



"Handlebars", by the Flobots. The tone is a little hip-hoppish for my taste, but it's a very poetic song and its well reinforced by the music video. The underlying message is "just because I can do something doesn't mean I should", and its satirically expressed through some very colorfully metaphors. For brownie points: the music video is actually a school project by a friend of the band. (I would have never guessed; it's quite well done.)

Focus Fire Stage 2: Playing with Fire

Now, to define a mathematical strategy for the Focus Fire game... As defined last time, there will only be two types of units in this game, and there will be nine units total per team. Since its an odd number, that means my team will be dominated by one type of unit--let's say Fire for the sake of discussion, because the exact inverse discussion would hold true if it was Ice.

Intuitively, I know all the Fire units will be most optimal attacking the same target. I also know that target should be an Ice unit (if any exist), because Fire has an attack bonus against Ice and Ice has an attack bonus against Fire. In other words, Ice opponents are both the most vulnerable and the most threatening. (This would be a little more complicated using the Paper-Rock-Scissors architecture where vulnerability and threat were divided between different units; perhaps I'll run that scenario for the next game.)

So, with the majority of the team--the Fire units--properly assigned, the only open question is: what do the minority? Do the remaining Ice units assist the Fire units so that the team maximizes its focus, or do they attack their own counterparts (enemy Fire units) so they gain their attack bonus and the team maximizes its gross damage? It's a simple binary decision, but I can't see a definite advantage to one or the other. Which has the best effectiveness? Does that depend upon team makeup at all?

Since it is only a binary decision and since it could possibly vary across teams, I'm going to make strategies for both options. Then, I'll program computer algorithms to play each option against the other across several different team permutations and see what happens. Hopefully, that should answer some questions!

Focus-Fire Stage 1: Whadda We Shoot?

As you may recall in Paper-Rock-Scissors, I made all the units attack all opponents simultameously. There's a big reason for this: the strategy of choosing which unit to attack is a major strategy in and of itself.

The Battle of Trafalgar was a naval battle between the French and the British during the Napoleonic Wars. It's significant because the British won the battle, even though the French had superior numbers. The clever British commander Admiral Lord Nelson decided to divide his fleet into two flanking forces and focus on sinking one ship instead of wounding several. This was contrary to conventional naval warfare. As a result, his ships were able to down French ships at a much quicker rate, which caused the French fleet's firepower to decrease exponentially while the British suffered only linear loses. Because of this unusual outcome, the Battle of Trafalgar is often used as a case-study for mathematical modeling military encounters.

Today, most gamers already know this strategy--if you "focus fire" your attacks on a single unit, you can decimate your opponents at an exponential rate. I wanted to incorporate this into Paper-Rock-Sciscors, but I still had the problem of which unit to attack. Should pure teams focus on attacking the units they are strongest against (agressive) or should they focus on the units that are strongest against them? Should the minorities in hybrid teams attack the same target as the majority, or should they play to their own optimal target? I didn't want to compound the experiments, so I made everyone attack everything. But now, I'm going to analyze those questions independantly.

The Game:
To simplify, let's define the RTS game to only have 2 classes--let's say, Fire and Ice. Each unit has equal effective against itself. However, Fire is twice as effective against Ice, and Ice is twice as effective against Fire. Two teams will face off, each with a combination of Fire and Ice that equals 9 total. The game will be: what is the most effective target solution for each of the nine units? Does this change as a function of team makeup, or is the best strategy universal?

Weekly Review: "Why Does My Heart Feel So Bad" Music Video

I feel a little bad putting this in because Moby is so mainstream and this is one of his more famous works. Still, I found out the other day that my self-proclaimed "techno-loving" friend didn't even know who Moby is, so maybe it this will still be new to someone.

"Why Does My Heart Feel So Bad" is one of those melancholy unresolving songs that most people would distainfully describe as "emo". Personally, though, I don't feel like it is being melancholy just for the sake of being melancholy--which I think is characteristic of emo--plus it's a very pretty song, so it doesn't phase me. The video component is also very clever--the innocent cartoon appearance masks the underlying tone, plus the character's expressions are very well done. His mouth isn't directly shown, so at times it looks like he is smiling and at other times it looks like he is frowning but you can never quit tell.

Cha-cha-changes...

A few changes in the works...

I'll be doing game-theory articles as a series of distinct stages from now on. Those stages will be:

1. Defining the problem and the associated rules


2. Estimating an effective set strategy for an antonymous player (e.g., a "bot")


3. Implementing the problem, rule set, and strategy into a model or simulation


4. Run the model/simulation and analyze the results


5. (Optional) Revise the strategy and rerun the results, if necessary

This should allow me to cover a topic better, as well as encourage me to take my time and do a good job.

Another change is how I do the labels. Labels let you automatically chain topics together. Up until now, I've been using them somewhat haphazardly, however going forward I intend to use them as a sort of archiving system. It's hard to describe write now because I don't have a lot of posts, but I think it will clear up as things go along.

I've also discovered how to schedule a post. For those of you using Blogger: it's a little tricky, because you need to log into the beta version of Blogger and enter your post in there. Once you do, though, you can schedule a "Post Date and time" under the options, and it will automatically post whenever you schedule it. I'm working on that so I can write a bunch at once and then schedule things to post in scheduled intervals.

Finally, I've been working on a new layout! Unfortunately, I don't have that layout done yet, but it is in the works! I was going to wait until it was finished before writing this, but I really don't want a reason to procrastinate on posting this. Especially since tomorrow is Wednesday, so tomorrow's post will be a review. But I already have another post game-theory post scheduled for Friday, and that will give me time to start write the following stages. Stay tuned!

Weekly Review: IrfanView Freeware

Whenever I am given a new computer, there's a few things I always do. I turn up the mouse speed and off that annoying auto-hide taskbar. I check to see what manufacturer-installed bloatware I can uninstall. I delete those annoying manufacturer-installed shortcuts on the desktop. I create a new folder entitled C:\Downloads to store all my Internet DLs. And I install IrfanView, graphics viewing program of the gods.

I was never really happy with my image viewing programs before I found IrfanView. They tended to take a while to load, consume a fair amount of disk space, only support a limited number files, and most of them were shareware so they would perpetually pester me to purchase them. Enter IrfanView. IrfanView is fast. In short, it is exactly everything that all those whiny freeware and bloatware Windows apps should be doing (IMHO). I cannot recommend it highly enough.

In game-theory related news: I've been meaning to get back on track to my original subject, but it's been tough. I was having trouble seeing how to expound on my last topic, and I had a second topic but I wasn't quite sure how to implement it. Luckily, though, I've thought of a third topic that I think will give some options to both the other two topics (as well as be interesting in and of itself). Stay tuned!