Subject: Re: [MacroNomic] Votes and more

From: "Brian Campbell" <[email-masked]>
Date: 9 Jun 98 21:20:12 -0400

As I have already said to Towsner, I think that a better way to deal with
the paradox problem would be to keep the initial gamestate and a log of
every modification of the gamestate, and be able to regenerate the
gamestate from before the paradox happened. This is how version control
systems work for large programming projects, in which a small change may
break the whole thing long after that small change was made. As long as we
are taking ideas from object oriented programming, we may as well use a
version control system as well. (And how about actually writing a "Nomic
Compiler" while we're at it? Now that's an idea... :)

--- Brian Campbell (AKA lambda)
Visit my webpage: http://world.std.com/~campbell/Brian/
Visit the Latin Club webpage: http://world.std.com/~lambda/

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Nihil sub sole novum.

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From: JT <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 9 Jun 1998 18:28:48 -0700 (PDT)

>gamestate from before the paradox happened. This is how version control

That begs the question of 'when' did the paradox happen?  did it happen at
the time it was exploited?  Backing up to there doesn't solve it from
happening again.  Did it happen at the time the first rule which is
involved was created? the last?  What if it went unnoticed for 2 years but
then was noticed an exploited.  Do you thus lose 2 years of play?
These are the types of questions that a backup and archive system cannot
answer.
The correct solution for the above hypothetical situation woud be to pause
the game, fix the exploit and continue wihtout losing any game state
(IMHO).  That is the basic proceedure I want to see instituted in the
rules.

>Compiler" while we're at it? Now that's an idea... :)

*shudder* While the heirarchical nature of derived definitions is
appealing in some respects (as it lends to a brevity of rules), I do not
want a completley OO type of game, as I said at least once beore, i write
C++/Java code for work.. I play games like Nomic to relax and have fun.
if the game starts feling to much like work it loses some of the fun
aspect (not all because i enjoy my work and therfore it has some fun
still, but it changes form in some ways for me)

I certainly think a 'codable' nomic is interesting.  I also know that it
has been proposed in the past on the Nomic BB (cf discussions about Perl
Nomic and  (if I recall) Java Nomic)

--JT

[-------------------------------------------------------------------------]
[ Practice random kindness and senseless acts of beauty.                  ]
[ It's hard to seize the day when you must first grapple with the morning ]
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From: Towsner <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 10 Jun 1998 16:33:26 -0400

>Nomic and  (if I recall) Java Nomic)
	Indeed it has.  I think I even have the definition for Java Nomic
on my hard drive somewhere.

--
-Henry Towsner

	<[email-masked]>

	Success is the child of audacity.
		-Benjamin Disraeli