## probability – Whether a dice game is profitable in the long run

As part of a course, I came across this question

“A player is offered to play against a dealer who rolls 6 dice simultaneously. If there’s a ‘street’ (each of the numbers from $$1$$ to $$6$$ appears on each of the dice), then the dealer wins $$60$$, else, the player wins $$1$$. Is this game profitable in the long run?”

For this, I tried writing the expression for the expected value after $$n$$ plays and tried to examine the expression in the limit, and whether it is always positive. What I got is the following

$$E(n,p) = sum_{i=0}^n (n-61i)p^i(1-p)^{n-i}$$

Where $$p$$ is the probability of a street occuring (which would be $$frac{1}{6^6}$$)

I am stuck on this expression, don’t know how to make any conclusions from this. Another interesting side note is to quantify the effect of changing the winning/losing amounts on $$E$$, to design a game where it is break even in the long run

## motherboard – Smoke came out of my wii game console

Yes it’s a dumb question but I don’t know how to ask. So this is what happened:

I am from India and I bought a wii game console when I went to USA. So I need to use a power converter so the console works in India. It worked well until my younger cousin inserted the powersupply directly without converter and the smoke came out of the console and it doesn’t work anymore.

Any idea what parts are damaged and how to repair it?

It will be a great help to me thank you.
I don’t know where else to ask the question. Any help is appreciated

## game design – Names for specific regions on earth for global RTS

I am developing a global real-time strategy game that uses Google Maps to represent the earth. I am cutting up the globe into 32 squares with each square exactly 45 degrees latitude and longitude. The squares are also aligned to the grid starting from 0,0.

I would like to give each square a nice name that meets the following criteria (in order of priority):

• Every square name must be unique
• Best representation of the land and water contained in the square. Any name is acceptable (country, continent, significant geology, significant body of water) but it must be the most prominent thing in that square
• A combination of names is acceptable if there are 2 or more prominent / recognisable elements in the square
• As short as possible so it can be easy to remember / type
• Exacting precision is not important – this is a game, so the names should be major things in those squares that most lay people on earth would immediately recognise or at least be familiar with
• If possible, the least offensive / non-contested / most globally accepted name of the main region in the square

I have come up with the following, but I would like to know if there is a system already out there that better meets my needs (note that I’ve accidentally swapped my lat/lngs – sorry!). Alternatively, if anyone has much more knowledge of geology/geography than I do, please suggest a better naming convention and names as some of the names are too long and many contain more country names than I’m happy with (I’d prefer neutral region names):

Here is a map of the world with the 45 degree grid squares shown to help you to visualise the problem:

## game design – 3D World; how do I deal with the thickness of walls on a grid to create a tile based building system

I want to develop a tile based 3D building system as a foundation for an game. But there is a question which is cracking my mind a bit.

I am grateful for every thought, hint, link or book suggestion.

How do I deal with the thickness of walls on a grid, respectivelly how should I realize walls?

I used the search engine, watched at other games on steam & youtube, but the result & my conclusion is not really satisfying.

What is the most common way, which causes the least problems in your oppinion?

The game-engine i want to use is Godot.

This are the 3 options which I have, at least I think this are the 3 I have:

(1) Wall as a plane

I think this option causes not much problems, but it is also the least attractive option because it doesn’t look that great to a player.

The wall is flat, the positioning of items in front of the wall, on both sides shouldn’t make problems because. The wall has no thickness, so there is no offset related to the grid.

(2) Wall in size of the grid

I think this option causes the least problems, but probably you get really thick looking walls if your grid is to big & with a smaller grid you maybe get other problems (performance issues or something else).

The wall doesn’t affect the positioning of items in front of the wall, on both sides. The wall has thickness, but the thickness doesn’t results in an offset related to the grid.

Currently I think this is the option I should stick with, but to get walls which are not that thick, I believe I should create a grid with a size of .5 or .25 when you relate 1 to an meter (walls in germany are about 25 till 50 cm).

Maybe I worry too much about the size of the walls?

(3) Wall overlapping the grid

I think this option makes the most headache, at least for me. With this option you have a offset resulting from the thickness of the wall. Because it’s overlapping the floor tiles half the walls thickness, so you have to deal with the placement of items in front of the wall & currently I have no idea to deal with.

## gm techniques – How do I get a new player to stop rewriting my game to match his favorite fiction?

I have a D&D 5e game that I’ve been running for a year that is on pause because some players don’t want to play online or go outside (stupid plague ruining my tabletop). So I offered my son and the player who still does small gatherings a filler game. My son picked Star Wars, I agreed. He told his adult sister, who wanted to come over with her boyfriend to join. During session zero I warned that Star Wars canon, for me, is the original trilogy and the original rulebooks from West End Games (1987).

In no time the boyfriend was saying his character is the cousin of Dash Rendar (who?) because that’s his favorite character. He defends his expectation because he bought himself a Dash Rendar miniature. Then, 4 sessions in, he wanted me to replace his ship, despite my effort to give him stats, background, drawings and floorplan, with Dash Rendar’s ship, because he bought a miniature for it (after having the other ship for a couple sessions). There is also the expectation that I make Dash a major NPC in my game, and give him Dash’s guns and equipment, and something about a planet; I stopped listening. I’ve never had a player like this (in 35 years). He’s not belligerent when I point the lines of ‘few’, ‘minor’ or ‘cosmetic’, or session zero. He just repeats the requests endlessly. And argues that they are still few, minor and cosmetic. And that’s just the character he wants to play. And he doesn’t see how making the game “enjoyable for him” should be such a hassle for me. It’s completely poisoning the game for me, I don’t even want to judge it anymore.

So to resolve it (dodge it entirely), I asked them if they would like to join my D&D game when social distancing stops or pauses or lightens or whatever. I thought it would help because they don’t have history with Forgotten Realms, so there wouldn’t be the crossed expectations. Since my son and his uncle are in both games, we could do some side adventures to level them up to toward the existing party, learn the rules and explain their characters’ relationships with the existing party. They said yes, and made D&D Beyond accounts to join my campaign. The boyfreind made a Warlock Hexblade. I was stoked to have eliminated the problem.

But now he doesn’t want to have anything to do with the Raven Queen, he wants me to replace her with some guy named Leoric from Diablo 2 because that’s his favorite console game. And I need to modify Shadowfell to be more like Diablo 2. And ALL of his spells and features and feats need a necromantic effect that mimic his favorite spells from the video game. I don’t want to hardline him, because I made concessions for every player, they just stopped demanding additional changes somewhere around ‘totally reasonable.’ And like my experience in the Star Wars game, a few concessions have already resulted in the expectation of more, more, MORE!

I pushed back, and he said that he wants to replace him with a Necromancer like Raistlin from DragonLance. Head:0, Brick Wall: Infinity

I am teetering on the edge of just telling him that I don’t try to play his PC, so he shouldn’t try to rewrite my game, and he’s welcome to go find another table where he can play Dash Leoric or whatever. Am I actually wrong, does this fall under the umbrella of ‘the judge’s first job is making the game fun for the players’ or is this guy hijacking my agency as creator and judge? If I am right, and discussing it does not work, what’s the next thing to try?

It does NOT help that it was my own dumb ass that invited my daughter’s boyfriend into my game in the first place. 🙂

## game mechanics – What colour should healing be?

Thanks for contributing an answer to Game Development Stack Exchange!

But avoid

• Making statements based on opinion; back them up with references or personal experience.

Use MathJax to format equations. MathJax reference.

## game maker – When updating app from Google Play will the app data be deleted?

My question is pretty simple.

I developed a game, uploaded it on the store. In order to keep player level record and UI prefs it writes an ini file.

When the next update is up on the store and the users will update will they lose their progress? Will the file be deleted?

Thanks

## networking – Multiplayer game server headerless (Unreal/Unity) vs Custom Maps

I’ve been pondering about different approaches that a multiplayer game server can be managed and programmed.

For instance some of the big engines like UE4 & Unity provide a ‘build’ flag that can enable them to run headless meaning it’ll just be the calculations that are enabled for that mode and will handle a ton of the game state sync, object references, hit detection, cool downs etc..But what I’m wondering is if this is the best approach? From my current understanding for each game running there would need to be a new instance of the headless game.exe running that will then create new connections for users into the game, sync up the players and start. This sounds very resource heavy (I might be overthinking it).

EDIT:
In the case of custom game server what would be a good approach into integrating the map data so that UE4 client map can be simulated on the back-end?

I can think of a simple solution looking at it from a 2D prospective, since it’s just X,Y we can create a bitmap/grid of position that are available, where walls are etc via simple tile tools that can be easily mapped 1:1 to the client and use that information. However when it comes to 3D I don’t see a solution on how to have a 3D map, collision detection and physics simulation.

## Is there a way to setup a notification from Unreal Engine when it finishes packaging / building my game?

In Unity I was able to use a post build script to send myself an email when Unity finishes building a game. Is there a way to make a script run when Unreal Engine is done packaging a game?

Or any other way to set up a notification sound or visual prompt in my Windows PC to alert me when it finishes packaging?

## What is the purpose of the beginning of HL1, from the perspective of game design?

At the beginning of Half Life 1, player is locked into watching an introductory film that can’t be skipped and doesn’t teach anything about game mechanics. Player can only move their camera around. A similar technique was applied in Deus Ex 4. Given that it’s irritating not to be able to skip it on subsequent gameplays, what is the purpose of those?