Simulating and Balancing Games - Game Mechanics: Advanced Game Design - page 171

ChAptEr 8

simulating and
Balancing Games

With simple games, you can compute the odds that a given player will win without
ever actually playing the game. This is commonly true of gambling games that have
trivial mechanics, such as blackjack or roulette. With more complex games, especially
those that include random factors, you have to play the game many times to find
out whether it is fairly balanced. In several of the examples in the earlier chapters,
we stated that the chance that a particular player might win or lose a game could
be simulated in a digital Machinations diagram. We arrived at the number we gave
based on data from thousands of simulated play tests. As you might guess, we didn't
run through all those play tests manually. The Machinations Tool allows you to
define artificial players and run multiple sessions automatically to collect this type
of data. These techniques are especially helpful when you are balancing your game.
In this chapter, you will learn all about them.

Simulated Play Tests
As you learned in Chapter 5, “Machinations,” interactive nodes in Machinations
diagrams don't operate until the user clicks them. (Interactive nodes are drawn with a
double line instead of a single one.) To simulate large numbers of play tests without
human intervention, the Machinations Tool offers a special feature that can act as an
artificial player. In a diagram, an artificial player is represented by a small square with
the letters AP inside ( Figure 8.1 ). It should not be connected to anything. An artificial
player allows you to define a simple script to control other nodes in the diagram. This
way, you can automate the actions of a player; an artificial player can “virtually click,”
or activate, a node for you. (Artificial players are not limited to controlling interactive
nodes, however. An artificial player can activate any named node.) While running a
diagram with an artificial player, you can simply sit back and watch the action.

T IP The online
appendix c contains
a detailed tutorial
that shows you how to
create diagrams in the
machinations Tool.

FIGURe 8.1
a sample diagram with
an artificial player

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