Automatic Balance Tester

Original Message From iGrok:
Analysis of the following data at the bottom

Abilities
* Conditions
` Effectiveness
- Negatives
^ Oneshot

Kills in the game
Alpha*````
Alpha*``^
Beta*````
Beta**``
Charlie****``^
One**``^
Two***`````^
Three**``--^
Four****``----^
Five*****```-^
Total: 2+7^

************************* 25 (+14 for ^)
```````````````````````````` 28
------- 7
Avg: 2.8* (4.3*^), 3.1`, 0.8-   
Alpha 9* 14` 2^
Numeric 16* 14` 7- 5^

Defenses in the game
Alpha`````^
Six`````^
Seven**```-
Eight**```
Total: 2+2^

**** 4 (+4 for ^)
``````````````` 15
- 1
Avg: 1* (2*^), 3.75`, 0.25-
Alpha 0* 5` 1^
Numeric 4* 11` 1- 1^

Lynch manipulation
Alpha*``-
Beta*``-
Charlie**``
One****`-
Two***--
Three*```
Four*``
Five`
Six**---
Seven*````
Total: 8

*************** 15
````````````````` 17
-------- 8
Avg: 1.9*, 2.1`, 1.0-
Alpha 4* 6` 2-
Numeric 12* 11` 6-

Information
Charlie*````--
One***````
Two```
Three*```
Total: 4

***** 5
`````````````` 14
------ 6
Avg: 1.3*, 3.5`, 0.5-
Alpha 1* 4` 2-
Numeric 4* 10` 

So, what does this show? Lets look at the averages.

Kills are the most common ability. However, they are also the most conditional abilities there are. If you include oneshot as +**, you're looking at a ridiculous 4.3 average conditional score on kills. Defenses, on the other hand, are the most effective abilities in the game, especially when matched against their conditions. This should balance out the high number of kills.

Lynch-manipulation is one of the most balanced ability types, though to be fair this one is the most difficult to score. The key here is that it has the highest -/` ratio, meaning that these abilities are tradeoffs. Combined with the anti-vote mechanic, and lynches likely will nolynch often, revealing only a bit of information regarding estimated Combat Powers.

And finally, Information abilities have (as they should) the highest `/* and `/- ratios

On December 01 2013 02:30 Xatalos wrote:
Automatic Balance Tester

I recently started studying computer science - and about a week ago I had the idea of automating the balancing process for creating a new setup in Mafia. I had several (pretty complicated) ideas for how to do it, but then I found this page: http://hamumu.com/forum/showthread.php?p=263954 It was a very simple, yet effective way of evaluating balance automatically.

On December 01 2013 21:39 Xatalos wrote:
AxleGreaser: oh, a fellow (former?) computer science student! I look forward to your opinion on the program.

iGrok: that's some pretty advanced methodology for balancing! I'll have to think of maybe remaking the whole balancing process with your method, although I think simplicity also has its benefits. Your method definitely takes role interactions better into account than simple +/- balancing.

Yeah, I guess it's unnecessary to ask for day/night start twice. I'll also have to consider adding some setup-saving support.

On December 01 2013 20:55 Xatalos wrote:
It's a tough call. I'd certainly like more feedback on if Goon should be -4 or -5. I see you thought that setup B was fairly unbalanced in favor of Mafia, right, Kita? So do you think the current value is OK or should it be adjusted?

On December 02 2013 20:18 iGrok wrote:
Hmmm....

• "How Many Players" window is opening at minimum size - it should probably appear as at least a 150x400 box, play around with the size until it feels right. Also, what exactly does it do? Attempt to load a balanced game for that #? I'm still not sure why there are two windows haha.
  
• RB should be demoted to +2.
  
• Being able to click a role on the list and have it removed that way would be nice. Actually, perhaps format it like so, where the [+][-] are clickable:
  

  [+][-] 4x Vanilla Townie        (+4)
  [+][-] 1x Doctor                (+3)
  [+][-] 1x Cop                   (+4)
  [+][-] 3x Mafia Goon            (-12)

  
  Then the clipboard format looks like this:
  

  4x Vanilla Townie
  1x Doctor
  1x Cop
  3x Mafia Goon

  
  
• Clipboard is good, I tried loading random gibberish and nothing loaded except Rolenames that had their own lines, so that's good.
  

On December 02 2013 21:03 AxleGreaser wrote:
Note i am pretty sure i am not helping with this, so you may be wise to ignore it.
At the very least mainly ignore it for now.



Id think (know) folishness and Igrok know about balance.
and the below is motherhood stuff
Thus the existence of the above question is a confusion for me as I just see answers not questions.
perhaps its because I have the other skillz.

TBMK. (GIVEN 1 NK per night not rounded(SCUM/2) )

A basic All vanilla setup that closeish to balanced.

is
9 players (7 Town 2 scum)
13 players (10 town 3 scum)

Ref POINT 1 (see below)

The reason is, you get one mislynch for each lynch.
At this point or shortly after that TBMK breaks.

17 players (13 town 4 scum)
is I believe thought to be hard on scum at 1 kp per night.

My mathematical modelling spidy senses tell me that is for a few reasons.

Firstly elapsed days matter: Which ever scum is trying to survive to the last day has too much trouble keeping all their ducks(lies) in a row for that long. Hence 1 for 1 mislynches and lynches does not go on forever.
Secondly, as each scum flips there are more and more scum scum interactions that can look wonky.

Apart from knowing what is valid by real world experience and simply modelling/fitting that with a function I am not sure there is much chance of guessing theoretically what the effects of Firstly and Secondly are.

---

AT Ref POINT 1 a plauible mathematical algorithm is to decide each goon is worth -4 and the FIRST VT is worth zero as you must survive with 1. ( ) and each subsequent VT is worth 1.
(or each VT is worth 1 but game set-ups start set at -1 scum favoured)

Note How valuable a doctor is in terms of VTs is not likely at all to be a fixed number. (for larger games)
TBMK 12 player setups with Doc are kinda balanced.
BUT adding a doc to an 8 player setup will make a different amount of difference. (I think less)

The reason is the number of days on which the Doc may save a player is lower in an 8 game than a 12.
However the odds that a doc will make it to 3 man LYLO and claim (maybe eliminating the patsy...) is lower.

While your question asks for an integer value for a goon, decimal fractions are not fatal.

Neither is it implausible to just use a Lookup Table that specifies for Each sized Town How many goons it should have.

Eg Town size 12 is 3 goons but is +1 goon favoured.
Eg Town size 13 is 3 goons but is +0 goon favoured.
Eg Town size 14 is 3 goons but is -1 goon favoured.
... but it might not quite follow that pattern later as the above discussion on larger games indicates.

---

There are yet other even finer distinctions.

Eg Town size 13 is 3 goons but is +0 goon favoured.
This game if it goes according to PAR and ends at a 3 man lylo, at one time it had
(2 scum nks for each town mislynch & scum lynch.) x 2
thus it gets to 5 townies 1 scum.
At that point there have been 4 scum controlled towny deaths and 2 town controlled ones.
Scum has twice as much control over whether skilled and keen to play townies wind up making the next decision.

Eg Town size 12 (1 doc) is 3 goons but is probably also about +0 goon favoured.
This game if it goes according to PAR and ends at a 3 man lylo, at one time it had
(2 scum nks for each town mislynch & scum lynch.) x 2 (-1 town nk if the doc saves 1 and is thus on par)
gets to 5 townies 1 scum.
At that point there have been 3 scum controlled towny deaths and 2 town controlled ones.
Scum has less than twice as much control over whether skilled and keen to play townies wind up making the next decision.

On December 03 2013 04:42 Alakaslam wrote:
This has my utmost thanks coming your way. When I finally earn the ability to host, this will be very valuable to me! I appreciate your work even not having used it yet! :D

Would this be able to account for nonstandard mechanics or is that like trying to determine the load characteristics of a one of a kind experimental aircraft?

On December 03 2013 04:49 Mid or Feed wrote:
I highly doubt non-traditional mechanics can be balanced like this.
Hell, it's almost impossible to balance them by hand.

On December 03 2013 20:33 iGrok wrote:
I probably won't have time to detail my system more until this weekend.

As far as values go, right now they seem decent to me. If you can't decide if goon is 4 or 5, make it 4.5 - don't limit yourself to integers for no reason.

On December 04 2013 06:44 kitaman27 wrote:


I wouldn't be too concerned about matching the poll results since I don't necessarily agree with them. A good basis would probably be commonly accepted mini-game setups like 2of4 or C9++, although even those have issues.

Here is my general thought process with balancing a serial killer. I'm sure I'm overlooking several factors and a lot of it is guesswork. It's tricky to define what a serial killer is, since it varies so often from game to game. Are they bulletproof or 1-shot bulletproof. Do they have 1 bullet or unlimited shots? Can a roleblocker block their kp? Are they compulsive? Is the setup open? How are win conditions handled at endgame? A serial killer's victory odds is probably going to be impacted more on these factors, rather than the setup itself, aside from the number of players.

Lets look at a possible C9++ setup. Suppose there are 13 players: 3 mafia, 9 town, 1 SK (Unlimited shot)

Serial Killer needs to reach night at 2v1 before they are lynched or mafia gains majority during the day.

Assuming there a no blue roles (a flawed assumption), the game is likely ending on night four. Even with blues, a n4 or d5 endgame is most likely.

d1: 13
n1: 12
d2: 10
n2: 9
d3: 7
n3: 6
d4: 4
n4: 3

Random lynching during these four cycles results in 1/13 + 1/10 + 1/7 + 1/4 = 57% odds of the serial killer surviving to n4.

The lynches aren't going to be completely random due to mafia influence and the serial killer's ability to shoot threats at night. I'd think the survival percentage would be a bit less than random taking these two factors into account, but you could argue the other way. Either way, lets call this change in win percentage X.

There is a small possibility that the mafia team reaches day four at 3-0-1 or slightly higher possibility at 2-1-1. This is also going to decrease the survival percentage by a small amount. Lets call this Y.

We also have blues to consider. I'm not putting much thought into this part, but overall I'd think it's safe to conclude this would also decrease the serial killer's chances. Lets call this Z.

Assuming the serial killer is bulletproof, we have their win percentage as .57 - X - Y - Z

However, the c9++ serial killer is only 1-shot bulletproof.

If the mafia team shoots the serial killer on n1, n2, or n3 and is able to identify their target as the serial killer (not automatic, but likely), they will kill the serial killer on n4, before the SK is able to achieve victory.

I'm probably doing some fuzzy math, but shooting it random would be around 40%.

We would now be at .17 - X - Y - Z.

In theory, you want to create a setup where third party roles to have a chance of winning equal to the mafia or town factions. However, I'm not sure if this is ever very realistic. Obviously, .17 - X - Y - Z is going to be nowhere near the 33% we were hoping to achieve in the balancing stage, yet this is still considered one of the better setups, which shows how difficult balancing a setup really is.

Is it possible to apply a decent estimation to the value of X, Y, and Z that we can be confident about? Probably not.

Looking at Third Party win percentages at completed games might be your best bet, but the sample size is far too low and there are too many other external factors to consider.

As for a neutral survivor, looking at their odds of surviving the lynch and night shots at random is flawed because they can simply claim survivor at the beginning of the game. This won't always result in a victory, but it's tough to estimate a victory percentage, other than looking at completed games. Maybe I could take a look at the database of tl games to see how successful they have been in the past, since they are probably less reliant on setup.

On December 05 2013 02:54 iGrok wrote:
Kita, I think a better stat for T/M/3rd winrates would be to exclude themed games from the count. Just a thought.

Also, 15-20% sounds about right for 3rd parties, its what I aim for.

On December 05 2013 02:13 kitaman27 wrote:


Identifying the serial killer can be fairly difficult at times. If the mafia team does manage to develop correct suspicions that a player is the SK, the NK odds may go down, but then you have to account for the increased lynch odds since they would become the priority lynch target.

As mafia, I'd always consider the serial killer a greater threat than individual town members, even during the early game, though that's just my personal opinion.



I think the Win Percentage By Alignment statistic would be a bit closer to what you are looking for:
Town 40.6%
Mafia 52.1%
Third Party 30.3%

I'm not sure how reliable it is however since I haven't had the chance to update the query or verify the results. Based on another set of polls, most people consider themselves better at mafia than town. I'm don't know how much setup plays a role in the gap.



I'm not really sure to be honest. Your assassin calculation makes sense. For survivor, I'd be pretty confident that I'd be able to pull it off with a simple d1 role claim like I mentioned, so maybe something like 75%? This might not apply to everyone though?

Serial killer is much tougher, so it really would be a random guess not taking setup into account. Maybe aim for around 20%?



You should be able to go in and fix it yourself, though it may be a while before it is reflected in the OP

On December 04 2013 07:39 Xatalos wrote:

Mafia 108 (52%)
Third Party 19 (9%)
Town 79 (38%)

Doesn't seem exactly balanced :O

The very low chances of 3rd parties are probably also affected by the fact that not every game even has 3rd parties. Still, I think it's safe to say that if you're playing as a 3rd party, you're playing at a disadvantage (on average).

On December 11 2013 08:26 gonzaw wrote:
Nice!

Now that the tool is here, it'd would indeed be nice for more analysis to be made on what actually makes a "balanced" game. That's the most important part. With the ease of tweeking this tool, it will certainly make that task easier!

Although, the +X -X things do seem a little too arbitrary, even if they are made with "common sense". Dunno you can actually state with precision that town or scum will win Y% of the time, just by adding +3 or -2 to the setup in an arbitrary way.
If you add probabilities of winning, you need to model those win conditions, and the conditions in which they can happen (what actions town/scum can make, etc), and maybe do some statistical work.
...someone volunteer?

On December 14 2013 02:38 gonzaw wrote:
Ideally there shouldn't be modkills.

Maybe more ideally, when someone is "modkilled" for inactivity, what actually happens is that the game is re-balanced (somehow) as if that player didn't join the game in the first place. Eg if there are 12 townies and 3 scum, and a townie is "modkilled" for inactivity, then you rebalance the game as if there were only 11 townies and 3 scum all along. The game doesn't "lose" balance (i.e if a townie got modkilled, town doens't lose advantage, if scum was modkilled, scum doesn't lose advantage).
How? Beats me, that's why it's idealized

On December 30 2013 14:06 wherebugsgo wrote:
Cool, I was looking toward making something like this myself. I just got time this break so I'm going to try to make something independently (partly cause I hate java) and I'll see what I get.

If you wanna collab on something let me know. I'm thinking of including past games and other types of data as well.

On December 30 2013 23:29 Xatalos wrote:
... Actually the logic of this program is pretty simple, and the hardest part has been to get the GUI working properly...

On December 30 2013 23:29 Xatalos wrote:


That sounds interesting. The approved setups here on TL Mafia have already gone through a manual balancing process, so they should be a good starting point for automatic balancing. Are you thinking of basing the whole balancing process on past games data or just showing them as some kind of a reference for the user? kitaman's TL Mafia Database would probably be helpful for both purposes.

Which language are you planning to use? How similar is it to my current balance tester? I could share the code I have currently on this one if you want. Actually the logic of this program is pretty simple, and the hardest part has been to get the GUI working properly (it still isn't working completely properly ), but it might still be helpful for you to glance at the logic portion. It might also be helpful for me if you find something to improve.

Depending on how similar our aims are, it might make sense to maintain two separate programs. If they're very similar, though, it might not make much sense. Currently my main goal is just to make the program easy to use and fairly reliable. I thought of using iGrok's balancing method for a bit, but ultimately I didn't know how to automate it. The +/- method is very simple, but its accuracy suffers in larger / more complicated setups. The best option would probably be to calculate every possible scenario each day/night for the whole game, but that gets very complicated very fast. How were you thinking of calculating the balance?

On January 01 2014 07:37 wherebugsgo wrote:


Probably at least partially based on past setups, though the sample size is incredibly small.

More likely what I'll be doing is encouraging the people on the balance team to run the setup randomizer I create lots of times. I'll probably put in some sort of rudimentary learning algorithm that will assign a balance rating, i.e. + for town, - for mafia similar to what you have. Based on what the tester inputs as his opinion the program will change its future predictions for the setups it creates/sees.

It'd hopefully become more effective as more games are added. I'll likely also include multiple options for balance calculation. I'm thinking the main ones would be:

1. Testers' inputted scores
2. Role balance based on game winrate when included
3. Balance based upon +/- scores given to different roles (manually, not through past games)

So there'd probably be a bunch of checkboxes or input boxes for each of the calculations, and the program would just keep track of a variety of different values to calculate scores to maintain versatility.

In other words, if I wanted to see what the program thought without including past games, there'd be an option to turn off #2. If I wanted to manually tune the score based on what I thought certain roles are worth, I could change scores on the fly for #3.

e: unfortunately I don't have a proper coding platform atm, I fucking hate Windows. So this'll probably be on the backburner for a bit.

also I'll probably write it in either Python or C++.

On January 01 2014 10:29 gonzaw wrote:
I think this would probably work better as web app. You could use a free cloud hosting system perhaps?

Also, how about making this open source? Msybe open a github proyect so people can cooperate

On January 01 2014 17:10 Xatalos wrote:


Yeah, I think a web app would be more convenient. It's just that I have basically no experience with web apps so far... It's definitely a possibility for the future, though.

I've also been thinking of making the program open source. It's not like I'm planning to make money off of it or to maintain it forever. However, I think there's still some work to be done before I'm ready to actually "launch" the program

On January 10 2014 10:54 gonzaw wrote:


Well....ok

With a web app, you'd have less "control" over the GUI (like you'd do with a desktop app), but you have more powerful frameworks to choose from to help you. E.g databases, hosting services, bla bla bla. Well, if you choose specific frameworks (which you have to research), and you know lots of javascript, or html5, etc, you can have a pretty bitching GUI. However that's harder than just creating an app with Swing. Although I think JavaFX may be better perhaps; I never really liked Swing.

Also you already have it hosted, nobody needs to install JRE or download the app or anything. Because it's hosted in a single place, you can have users, and statistics, and shit like that



Yeah, it's kind of a "tough" thing to do. If you are the project leader, you'll have to do lots of stuff, and basically learn a whole new industry setting and procedures, etc.
For instance here's a guide: http://producingoss.com/en/index.html
It does take a while to learn, and then get enough experience and practice and collaboration and shit (not that I ever did any open source project though lol).

If you do go open source though, you can gather the power from anybody ever that's relatively interested in tools to play mafia, instead of just doing it yourself. That has the potential of creating a super awesome tool, and hell maybe even advancing the "game theory" behind mafia (regarding balancing in this specific case for instance).


I'd volunteer and stuff.....but I'm lazy (you can notice I haven't done anything on that other project I wanted to do and made a thread about like one year ago lol).


Also, as for suggestions, I would suggest:
-Include a database of the games it's being used on. Whenever the user chooses to balance a game, you can ask for the name of the game and that kind of stuff, and save it for later (for example, to later check how that previous game was balanced once it's over).

-Migrate kita's database of games into this new database of yours. That way we can see how every single game from TL is balanced....and well that's nice. It's not hard work as long as you create a compatible infrastructure and create a script to migrate kita's database

On January 11 2014 04:38 kitaman27 wrote:
I know this is kinda outside the realm of what you have currently, but something that I find really helpful is knowing the cycle the game would end in worst case scenario for each faction.

For example, 2 Goons/7 VT would end D3 at the earliest for a mafia win or D2 at the earliest for a town win.
2 Goons/6 VT 1 Vig would end D2 at the earliest for a mafia win or N1 at the earliest for a town win.

If you're looking for a feature to add at any point, it would probably be fairly simple to come up with a formula for this for mini games.

On January 11 2014 06:05 gonzaw wrote:
I think....we could just use good ol' probabilities and statistics, based on all possible scenarios.

For example, you can balance a game, knowing that in the worst case scenario for town, town loses on D3 after 2 misslynches and 2 NK going through. Then you have the worst case scenario for scum, where town lynches scum 3 days in a row, the medic saves shots 2 nights in a row, cop gets checks 2 nights in a row, etc.
But what about the stuff in between? You can't balance JUST using worst case scenarios, because those will NEVER happen, they are just a rough guide on what "could" happen.
I think it's more important to balance according to what WILL indeed happen.

Maybe the best way to model that, is just count all possible scenarios, assign a probability to them, or maybe some other factor (like a Balance Number perhaps?), and then determine the overall balance of the game, knowing the probability of each of these scenarios.
Most likely there would be heuristics to determine these probabilities/factors, or some other theory that can help.

For instance, yes, the worst case scenario for scum is if the Town Vig shoots scum on N1, the medic saves 2 townies on N1 and N2, and town lynches scum on D1, D2 and D3. Good, but that will surely NOT happen at all. What will most likely happen, is town misslynches on D1, town vig shoots a townie on N1, town lynches scum on D2, medic saves townie on N2, bla bla bla. THAT is the "normal" flow of the game you should be balancing. If town has it so easy, that in that scenario they win almost all the time, then the game is balanced wrong, even if there exists a "worst case scenario" for town that seems it can fuck them up pretty badly. The point is that it's more probable that the "normal" flow of the game happens than that worst case scenario.

Different roles have different balancing factors as well, that's not just a +1 or -1. A town vig can shoot a townie or a scum, he has the power to greatly favor scum or town. That has a lot of variance, so when a vig is inserted in a game, it should introduce variance on the chances each faction can win, and thus balance.
Idem when you have a cop and a framer or GF for instance. It introduces variance, since the cop may check the GF. That greatly changes the game, since the GF could be considered almost confirmed town. Or maybe town is good and catch him nevertheless. That's even more variance (how town can react to it).

I think something like that might work better: introduce the average chance each faction has to win the game, and the variance of it, and balance (somehow) according to that).

Seems to me there can be better ways to handle balance, to be as accurate as possible.

On January 11 2014 06:48 kitaman27 wrote:


I think considering worst case scenarios is helpful because it allows you to eliminate undesirable scenarios. In mini games, the worst case (or close to worst case) scenarios aren't so uncommon that you never see them play out that way since you're usually only dealing with 1-2 roles.

Suppose you come up with a setup that is 55/45 in balance and each faction must pull off three correct lynches before they have a chance of winning.

You have a have another setup that is 50/50 in balance, but once out of every ten times, a game snowballs with a night one loss for a faction.

I'd probably want to run the first setup where you can ensure you aren't going to end up with the occasional dud, even if it is slightly less balanced.

It's difficult to calculate the average chance each faction has to win. You could try to calculate out every single scenario and take an average of all outcomes, but that's assuming lynches and night actions are randomized, which isn't the case. You could try to come up with odds of each lynch going a certain way based on past games, but I don't think the sample size is large enough for it to give us an accurate weighting.

On January 24 2014 05:53 HiroPro wrote:
Merc Micro isn't a normal setup. The players start out with items (so they aren't actually VTs) and money to buy other items.

On January 27 2014 00:43 raynpelikoneet wrote:
I think the optimal/suboptimal play is the most decideing factor in a game. Agreed, probably impossible to balance since you can't know or predict where the suboptimal play happens (is it going to be mafia, town??) and it's impossible to calculate.

If you look at Really Small mini mafia for example: 1 doctor, 4 VT vs 2 goon (+ instant majority lynch which usually favors mafia). Your program gives the following chances:
Town 45.16 %
Mafia 54.84 %
-> Overwhelming town victory

After the game i talked with Mocsta about the game. He asked me "how is mafia supposed to win that game?". I don't know, if we assume all the players played as optimally they did in that game, regardless who was mafia i think mafia wouldn't have stood a chance. When townies look town there are no mislynces. So what do you do? You most likely lose because you need to make up things as there is no bad play to punish and good players will see through your bullshit.

So all in all i think the play of players is the biggest factor in games, regardless of the roles, but it is impossible to balance as you can't predict the "level of play" beforehand.

On January 27 2014 04:56 Xatalos wrote:


That's an interesting example.

I agree that it gets harder for Mafia if everyone is playing "perfectly". On the other hand, if everyone *is* playing perfectly, then Mafia should be favored, since it would be just random chance to hit Mafia (which is more unlikely). But it's a lot harder for Mafia than for town to really appear town in an environment where every townie appears townish.

Setup balance does still play a role and should be focused on - since it's the only truly predictable part of game balance. Another way might be to somehow balance the players (an equal share of "good" players for both teams?), but then that would create a new area of setup speculation Maybe some hosts already do balancing like this and I'm just not familiar with it. It doesn't actually seem like that bad of an idea considering the fairness/balance of games.

On February 14 2014 11:32 Promethelax wrote:


Some hosts do balance that way, more often with vets rather than good players but the idea remains the same, I don't condone it but some do.

On February 16 2014 20:03 Xatalos wrote:


Hm. Isn't it better if not all the veteran players are on the same team? Pure randomness could produce games where one of the teams never stood a chance, I'd think?

On February 17 2014 11:58 Promethelax wrote:


You would think that but individual play is what wins and loses games, sometimes vets rotfl stomp newbies (fruity) and sometimes newbies destroy vets (les mafia). I prefer these random draws because it gives town one less thing to game, there is already setup speculation and I personally find vet balance speculation totally worthless because it is not mafia.

On February 17 2014 11:58 Promethelax wrote:


You would think that but individual play is what wins and loses games, sometimes vets rotfl stomp newbies (fruity) and sometimes newbies destroy vets (les mafia). I prefer these random draws because it gives town one less thing to game, there is already setup speculation and I personally find vet balance speculation totally worthless because it is not mafia.

On February 18 2014 03:04 Blazinghand wrote:


Also because RNG is king and we must bow down to it

On March 05 2014 07:05 gonzaw wrote:
1) Cool!
But yeah, it seems like a big project. If you manage to do it alone then awesome!
You already have the automatic balance tester written in java. You could use a Java backend, and just integrate the code you already have, and put the same balance tester into the web app.

2)

a)The simple balance tester would be better off in a web app yes I believe. Hell, you can even include links and stuff so hosts and players can easily refer to it in the middle of the game, or in pregame, or stuff like that!

b)Yeah, like Prome said, I dunno how much useful it will be in TL mafia.
However, if you talk with other hosts, Foo and shit, it might be the starting point into seeing more vanilla C9++ setups in here, and then it might be more powerful

c)This would be awesome. However, it would need some innovative features and the like if you want to override spreadsheets for the same purpose (or notepads like I use).

d)This might be nice, but I'm not sure exactly how it would work...?
This kind of stuff seems too subjective to me. You'd have to come up with a way to configure this "algorithm" to use all the personal subjective tells you use. If not, the algorithm may tell you stuff about certain pairs, that you disagree with. In that case it'd be useless, and maybe annoying ("Damn, this thing keeps telling me these 2 are scumbuddies because they have a town read on each other when it's obviously bullshit, get the fuck off here!")


3) I'd say it's important to have a minimal "visual pleasure". At least in a way that it makes it easier to use.
You can use frameworks and stuff that already exist, like Twitter Bootstrap, Foundation 4, HTML Boilerplate, JQuery UI, etc.

On March 06 2014 06:26 Xatalos wrote:


1) Yeah, it's a big project (and I'm not certain if it will come true). It'll especially take more work since I've barely touched web technologies and I already had some experience with Java when I started making the Java program... But I'll have a course about web technologies (among other things) soon and that should help a bit too.

I'm not really familiar with using Java in that way. Would the user still need to install JRE? Or would the Java code be only on the background? Naturally it would be easier to use anyways without needing to install the Java program itself.

c) Yeah, it's not that easy to make it the "ultimate" solution - and if it's not, then what's the point? I guess the advantage would be to be the only "specialized" tool, but still, it would have to be made from scratch compared to the long histories of the existing tools.

d) This is surely the hardest idea to implement It would require a very intelligent algorithm to work (and preferably one that would develop based on the user as well) so it might just be a theoretical idea.

By the way, I'd appreciate completely new ideas as well. I'm not sure what all could be possibly needed in a multi-purpose Mafia tool

On March 06 2014 07:26 gonzaw wrote:


1)The user only interacts with the web app via the browser. He doesn't need anything else. The Java stuff is in your own server (YOU would need JRE in there, as well as maybe some web server and stuff like Tomcat/Jetty/JBoss/Glassfish/etc)
That is if you made your code so the logic is independent of the UI. In that case you just copy+paste the code to your server. If you made it intertwined with the UI (if you make calls like "button.AddCallback(..)" and stuff in the middle of the code), then either you refactor it...or yeah start over in another language or whatever.

I tried doing a super ambitious project like a year ago, and knew little of web development like you did (although I did know about Java web technologies). I didn't even start it because it was just so fucking big, and I could not possibly do it alone.
Be careful with this kind of stuff, don't make it super ambitious if you are not confident you can pull through. Starting with "baby steps" like you are doing is fine, and I think might be the best option, specially as you get more comfortable with the technologies and the like.

If you are gonna make it, I can help you with advice, telling you how to start, how to set up shit, and the like. Dunno if I can help programming and the like though, I have to see how much free time I have after I get into all my uni courses in the next few weeks.
I had planned on investigating some technologies, requirements, etc, to kind of "kickstart" my previous "enormous" project (here: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/mafia/383168-mafia-system-updates-and-suggestions ). I kind of got "hooked" reading some documentation, examples, guides and the like of some stuff, so I haven't really started anything yet lolol (I have like 15 tabs of different documentation for stuff, which I kind of made my inner goal to read ALL of it before starting ).
Dunno, maybe some of that stuff may interest you. Although most of it is heavy read, and heavy "get your hands dirty" kind of stuff if you really want to "get" it.

If you want to make a web application, think about how you want the user to interact with it.
You have basically 4 possibilities:

1)It's just static stuff, like a blog (i.e you make the web page beforehand, and nothing changes, there is no interaction with the user, barring some links)
2)It has basic interaction. The user goes to a page, fills a form, then goes to another page and sees the info.
3)Heavy interaction with the user. The user clicks stuff, and other stuff instantly appears in the page. He sees live changes he makes in the page, like having lists and tables and grids and slideshows and insta-loading content, etc
4)You basically have a desktop application running on the web. You have everything you'd ever want as an application: menu, tooltips, context menu (right clicking and getting the popup menu), lots of popup windows, etc. Basically, something like Gmail, Outlook, Google Drive, or "online applications" (online editors, etc)

I think it's kind of important which one you choose, because it basically determines what framework, or models you can choose.
If you just want static stuff [1], just go with PHP and some static pages (if you want easy), or ANY other framework
If you want the basic stuff [2], you can go with Ruby on Rails, or other frameworks like JEE (the Java one, you could use JSP or JSF), ASP.NET, Play, any MVC framework, etc
If you want the more "rich application" stuff [3], you can go with client-side frameworks, like AngularJS, KnockoutJS, Backbone, Ember, etc. You can integrate these ones with the frameworks from [1] or [2]. You could also just use the frameworks from [2], but include lots of AJAX, maybe REST web services, and lots of client-side libraries (like jQuery), to deal with that "dynamism". There are also frameworks that rely on the server more than the client (GWT, Wicket, Lift, JSF works a little bit like it too) that work similarly (i.e, it's more "user interaction" oriented).
If you want the "full desktop application look", you can go with ExtJS, and others (basically a huge fucking framework where everything is done for you, and you basically develop it like a desktop application and everything else is done "behind your back").

As you can see, depending on what you want, there are a lot of stuff you may use, and stuff you can and CANT use (at least without some headaches, and lots of time and effort in figuring out how to do so).

Anyways, in terms of where you'd want to start, I'd say [2] fits the bill perhaps. For example, I see the balance tester, the "notes" thing, etc, as a user just filling forms and the like. Not much interaction needed. Plus, these frameworks are the "friendliest" ones, for example Rails. They have bigger communities, more examples, more guides, more walkthroughs, more intuitive designs, are easier to figure out, etc.
Stuff from [3] and [4] I believe might be too much out of your comfort zone (they basically are new paradigms and ways to look at web development, and you may need to learn OTHER technologies on top of those to make any use of them, and learn how to integrate them, and that's harder than the [2] frameworks).
Also stuff from [4] (like ExtJS)....basically costs a lot. Although if you have 1000 dollars to spare, then be my guest and try it! :D

...anyways meh now you notice why I read so much of this stuff and do so little




If you are interested in the "spreadsheet for players to use notes, and maybe other stuff", you might be interested in my Mafia Spreadsheet project:
http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/mafia/445046-the-mafia-spreadsheet

I plan on having that kind of "ability for players to take notes" stuff into it in the future (when in the future....I don't know). Wouldn't mind new people to help me with it

But other than that, yes, I think you'd need a specific idea you want to implement to make use of that "stuff for players to take notes".
Notice that you have to keep track of all games, all players from each game, what happens in each cycle (if a player dies, you should not allow another player to make notes on him for instance). Also you need to make sure your users (guys that log in to the system) are the players of the game perhaps.
Or alternatively just leave everything as vague as possible, like just a plain text sheet for them to write. But then again the more vague and "feature-less" you go, the less power your solution has over other "plain" solutions (like any normal spreadsheet or notepad file).




Seems to me it's quite heavy on the theoretical side yes.
Hmm, my best bet would be to leave it be for now. I mean, you are treading onto AI territory here. Not only that, but on Mafia AI territory and theoretical analysis.
That's like.....a sector that there is ZERO info, development, etc about in the whole universe. If you do something like that you'd be the first one in history to do so and would be a fucking pioneer lol.
But you'd need to post like 10 research papers to MIT and Harvard before proceeding I believe

I mean, if you want to make a simple one then it's okay, go ahead. I mean stuff like kita's "Combinatronics" or whatever, where you just pair up players, and let the player himself determine what he thinks of those pairs ("is it a likely scum pair or not?"). That works.
Hell, kita will love you if you make a formal hosted Combinatronics thing.

But if you start getting into automated analysis on that kind of stuff (I guess based on posts it automatically reads from the thread? Or from specific input from the user you have to define), then it gets a LOT harder, and yes, maybe too ambitious.



You can check my "Mafia System" thread for ideas if you want ( http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/mafia/383168-mafia-system-updates-and-suggestions ). I posted lots of crazy shit in there lol (like having a self-regulating "TL admin circle" that included the game queue and I dunno what other crazy ambitious obviously-never-going-to-work-unless-I-bring-1000-developers ideas lol).

On March 06 2014 07:27 gonzaw wrote:
EBWOP:

Also, please don't use PHP

I hate PHP.

Well...you can use it.....but I won't touch it with a 10 foot pole (I seriously hate it. Hell I never even touched PHP code and hate it just by reading about it).

On March 07 2014 03:31 Xatalos wrote:.
The logic classes and the UI classes are separate from each other, yeah. Good to hear that JRE isn't required by the user in that situation. I'll have to take a closer look at how it all works later.

That's indeed a big project you had there :D Did something "usable" come out of it?

I'm not sure if [2] is the way to go. It seems easier, yeah, so it might be a good way to start... But the balance tester basically requires constant changes by the user and it would be harder to use if you had to make a new page for every change. So [3] seems the most fitting choice. Although we'll see, maybe I could try a simpler approach as well (like choosing the roles on the first page and then showing the balance stats on the next page) But then that would be inferior to the desktop application... :/ I guess using the existing program as a Java backend qualifies under [3]?

Haha, I didn't really mean to go too far into AI research with that idea... It was just a vague thought about possibly helping in scumhunting (new connections between players, new perspectives etc. based on your own input). What's that kita combinatronics thing? Sounds interesting haha

But yeah, for now this is just more of a possible project and not a concrete plan like I had with the Java program. So that means that its chances of coming true are much, much lower, but you never know, maybe I'll really get into it and learn all that new stuff at the same time

Btw you talked earlier about making an algorithm to find out the "average" result of a chosen setup. Currently I have an algorithm to find out the "best" results for both sides, which wasn't too hard, but it's quite complicated to find out the average result. Like... 100x more complicated than the best results. At least with more complicated setups. It might be possible for an all vanilla setup, but power roles really make it difficult :D I'm not sure if I'll even be attempting that after all, but maybe some day.

I'll send you the source code of the Java program too. It might be easier for you if you see completely how the program works currently. At least the method names should be well named, but it's probably a bit hard to immediately grasp how everything works, so feel free to ask And suggestions are of course welcome.

On March 07 2014 03:33 Xatalos wrote:


LOL Actually the course I'm about to take soon is mostly about PHP and stuff... Well, it's not certain that I will be using it even so

On March 07 2014 07:07 kitaman27 wrote:


I think we can all agree that this forum needs more pre-flip association analysis. Don't listen to the haters.

case class Role(name: String, balanceValue: Double, team: Int) extends Ordered[Role] {
def compare(that: Role) = if (this.team == that.team) (this.balanceValue - that.balanceValue) else (this.team - that.team)
}

On March 07 2014 11:56 gonzaw wrote:
Python can work.

The problem is that (I assume) he doesn't know Python and needs to learn it, but he does know Java.
He also already has the logic written in Java. I checked his code, and the only thing he needs to do is basically keep a "Balance" object in session while the user works on it, and that's it (or if he goes with JEE keep a Balance object in some scope).
The only thing he would need to do is create the HTML, set up the server, create a servlet/controller, and add actions that correspond to the actions from the UI he already made.
That's it, he only does that and he has everything else done. I think getting to know a little bit of the Java backend ecosystem is worth it just for that "the web app is already made" feeling.

Also, checked your code...
.....ahh, the "implement everything from 'equals' to 'hashcode' to 'toString' just to have a minimal class" problems of Java.
And to think that in Scala you could use just 3 lines: