Friday, May 26, 2017

Markeen - Equal opportunity for first ring

One of the problems remaining in Markeen is that the first position consulted in the spiral sets the starting weights for the space under consideration. This would not be a problem if the consultation of the other first-ring (immediately adjacent) positions each diluted that contribution so that all four weigh equally. That is, unfortunately, not how the algorithm currently works. So today I tried to fix that and allow other positions to have a fair say in the selection.

First I tried rewriting the scoring algorithm to add up all the possibilities for the first ring, then whittle down the chance of those that don't appear in later rings, but something didn't work out and it just made a huge mess, filling the level with disjointed vertical stripes. Unable to understand the issue, I opted to adjust the previous algorithm instead. Now it averages the weights from each first-ring position and goes back to the old behavior once past that. I'm not yet convinced that it actually makes better levels, but at least it doesn't look too bad for deep profiles, which used to be very broken.

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