On Crate Weights?

General discussion about Multiwinia

Moderators: jelco, bert_the_turtle

mehoo462
level2
level2
Posts: 112
Joined: Wed Oct 04, 2006 3:59 am
Location: Long Beach, CA

On Crate Weights?

Postby mehoo462 » Sat Oct 04, 2008 7:57 am

Are the crates truly random? It seems that some maps favor some powerups, and some powerups simply don't appear on certain maps.

I understand that crates tend to drop closer to the person that's losing. I'm curious about more details here.
Will they drop exclusively towards the person that's losing? Will they drop closer to you the more your losing?

How does it determine who to weight the crate drop towards? Does it just look at the score when the crate is created and drop near the player on the bottom? Is there a more sophisticated calculation (perhaps based on current population? or spawn points?)

Does this mean crates will never drop near the players whose winning? I don't think this is the case, I just played a game of CTS. I was winning 2-0 and two or three consecutive crates just dropped right on top of me. But they were all bad. One was an infection outbreak (evilwinians) right by my spawn, i wound up permanantnly losing control of all my spawns due to eviliwinians.

What about crate contents? Are they truly picked at random? Or are they wieghted somehow based on what's going on in the game? Should I be more skeptical of opening crates when I'm winning? Does the quality of the create, or it's propensity towards good or bad have anything to do with how close it is to the losing player?


Just curious. I've seen the crates do some craizy shit and I was just curious if it's all luck or there's something under the hood encouraging the craziness.
User avatar
vanarbulax
level4
level4
Posts: 653
Joined: Mon Oct 01, 2007 8:51 am
Location: Sydney, Australia

Postby vanarbulax » Sat Oct 04, 2008 8:39 am

As far as I can tell crates seem to be weighted towards whoever currently has the lowest score with more weighting the farther behind you are. I don't know if it factors in how well your doing at the moment (e.g behind points-wise in KOTH but now have control over ever hill) or not since they tend to be the roughly similar to your overall points. This can weigh quite significantly as a KOTH game I played with 3 people on barely had any points and ended up having 4/5 of all the crates drop at his trunk port. I also think that the more behind you are the more the crate is inside your lines (though I'm not sure if that's just because your territory is usually smaller) because in that particular game all the crates to the guy who's behind dropped directly around his trunk port while the few I got were halfway between the trunkport and the hill. As far as I can guess your in the lead or behind your as likely to get good or bad but I'm pretty sure different powerups are set to different probabilities (futurewinians harder to get than gunturrets or magical forest) and I think bad powerups are generally less likely and fewer so it encourages you to get crates.

Anyway that's what I perceive to be the case, I think an IV member would be needed to confirm how ti actually calculates who gets what crates.
Pinky
level2
level2
Posts: 211
Joined: Wed May 21, 2008 10:23 am
Location: Darwinia
Contact:

Postby Pinky » Sat Oct 04, 2008 8:51 am

I thought the location was compeltely random.

The powerups have different probabilites of turning up.
User avatar
vanarbulax
level4
level4
Posts: 653
Joined: Mon Oct 01, 2007 8:51 am
Location: Sydney, Australia

Postby vanarbulax » Sat Oct 04, 2008 9:02 am

Pinky wrote:I thought the location was compeltely random.


If you have the weighted crates advanced option turned off then it is at random but normally it's turned on and gives an advantage to the loser.
User avatar
Pox
level5
level5
Posts: 1786
Joined: Sat Mar 03, 2007 11:23 am
Location: Melbourne

Postby Pox » Sat Oct 04, 2008 9:20 am

The contents of the crates are completely random and not effected by weighting, but the placement is - I'm not sure what the relationship between losing-ness and drop-closeness is though.
User avatar
Tricycle21
level2
level2
Posts: 169
Joined: Sat Oct 14, 2006 2:23 pm
Location: 3 meter above Japan

Postby Tricycle21 » Sat Oct 04, 2008 1:42 pm

Plagues, Futurewinians, and Evilwinians(and some other perhaps) are set to appear less frequently than the other powerups.
TRC21

Oh yes.
Image

3 meter above. I think.
User avatar
Snyyppis
level1
level1
Posts: 69
Joined: Mon Dec 19, 2005 7:49 pm
Location: Finland

Postby Snyyppis » Sat Oct 04, 2008 2:18 pm

I think that the crate weighting is calculated by population and not by score: In one game of CTS I had a great start and scored the first 2 statues, but after that my spawn was nearly overrun. Then, even though I was leading with 2 points, 2/3 of the crates landed at my spawn.

Also, even though the contents of the crates may be somewhat random, I've noticed very bizarre cases where e.g. all 3 crates in a row are dark forests or rocket turrets... :?
User avatar
xander
level5
level5
Posts: 16869
Joined: Thu Oct 21, 2004 11:41 pm
Location: Highland, CA, USA
Contact:

Postby xander » Sat Oct 04, 2008 3:41 pm

Snyyppis wrote:Also, even though the contents of the crates may be somewhat random, I've noticed very bizarre cases where e.g. all 3 crates in a row are dark forests or rocket turrets... :?

That really isn't very bizarre at all. You noticed it because three in a row doesn't seem random, but in a truly random distribution, sequences of three or four are not that uncommon, especially given that turrets and dark forests are weighted more heavily than many other things that crates could give you.

xander
RabidZombie
level5
level5
Posts: 2414
Joined: Fri Nov 18, 2005 10:09 pm

Postby RabidZombie » Sat Oct 04, 2008 3:43 pm

What about three ants nests in a row. :P

Or 5 armours.

The fact I see repeats like this is most of my games suggest it isn't quite so random. :P
Mas Tnega
level5
level5
Posts: 7898
Joined: Sat Mar 02, 2002 11:54 pm
Location: Edinburgh
Contact:

Postby Mas Tnega » Sat Oct 04, 2008 4:16 pm

That, or you're just weird. All those what YOU PICK UP in a row, or what ARE PICKED UP in a row?
RabidZombie
level5
level5
Posts: 2414
Joined: Fri Nov 18, 2005 10:09 pm

Postby RabidZombie » Sat Oct 04, 2008 5:09 pm

What ARE picked up, not what I pick up.
mehoo462
level2
level2
Posts: 112
Joined: Wed Oct 04, 2006 3:59 am
Location: Long Beach, CA

Postby mehoo462 » Sat Oct 04, 2008 5:35 pm

Hm... lots of speculation here. Have any modders found anything concrete in the game files? Or perhaps an IV member can shed some light. I'm curious...
User avatar
bert_the_turtle
level5
level5
Posts: 4795
Joined: Fri Oct 13, 2006 6:11 pm
Location: Cologne
Contact:

Postby bert_the_turtle » Sat Oct 04, 2008 5:48 pm

In IVs tradition, all of this stuff is hardcoded in the executable. Unless you know a lot of assembler (the kind generated by C++ compilers...) and are willing to violate the EULA, there's no peeking at it.
User avatar
The GoldFish
level5
level5
Posts: 3961
Joined: Fri Mar 01, 2002 9:01 pm
Location: Bowl / South UK
Contact:

Postby The GoldFish » Sat Oct 04, 2008 5:55 pm

Well, I does appear that crates seem to be defined when they're captured, which means they could bias depending on whom captures them (the obvious flaw with definition on spawn is who would capture them). Obviously though, this tells us basically nothing.

Otherwise though, there's nothing in the game files that I'm aware of that tells us anything interesting.
User avatar
Greeba
level3
level3
Posts: 251
Joined: Wed Mar 23, 2005 10:34 pm
Location: London, UK
Contact:

Postby Greeba » Sun Oct 05, 2008 1:10 am

RabidZombie wrote:What about three ants nests in a row. :P

Or 5 armours.

The fact I see repeats like this is most of my games suggest it isn't quite so random. :P

Right, and the dice on Catan on XBLA are specifically engineered to piss me off :lol:
"Timmy... fetch me my tools..."

Return to “General”

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 11 guests