branding oddity


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Mines Malingerer

Posts: 39

Joined: Saturday, 9th December 2017, 19:14

Post Monday, 11th October 2021, 19:26

branding oddity

This may be simple coincidence, but I have received NO results besides "freezing" as an ego, using scrolls of Brand Weapon in 0.27 and Trunk for about a month now.
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Ziggurat Zagger

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Joined: Wednesday, 23rd October 2013, 07:56

Post Monday, 11th October 2021, 22:55

Re: branding oddity

Interesting... I branded a broad axe in my current game (0.27), the result was freezing.
DCSS: 97:...MfCj}SpNeBaEEGrFE{HaAKTrCK}DsFESpHu{FoArNaBe}
FeEE{HOIEMiAE}GrGlHuWrGnWrNaAKBaFi{MiDeMfDe}{DrAKTrAMGhEnGnWz}
{PaBeDjFi}OgAKPaCAGnCjOgCKMfAEAtCKSpCjDEEE{HOSu
Bloat: 17: RaRoPrPh{GuStGnCa}{ArEtZoNb}KiPaAnDrBXDBQOApDaMeAGBiOCNKAsFnFlUs{RoBoNeWi

Ziggurat Zagger

Posts: 6454

Joined: Tuesday, 30th October 2012, 19:06

Post Monday, 11th October 2021, 23:52

Re: branding oddity

I pulled up a game in wizmode and read 12 scrolls of brand weapon
  Code:
As you read the scroll of brand weapon, it crumbles to dust.
Your +0 war axe acquires a faint afterimage.
a - a +0 spectral war axe (weapon)
As you read the scroll of brand weapon, it crumbles to dust.
Your +0 spectral war axe is covered with a thin layer of ice!
a - a +0 war axe of freezing (weapon)
As you read the scroll of brand weapon, it crumbles to dust.
Your +0 war axe of freezing emits a brilliant flash of light!
a - a +0 vorpal war axe (weapon)
As you read the scroll of brand weapon, it crumbles to dust.
Your +0 vorpal war axe drips with poison.
a - a +0 war axe of venom (weapon)
As you read the scroll of brand weapon, it crumbles to dust.
Your +0 war axe of venom is engulfed in flames!
a - a +0 war axe of flaming (weapon)
As you read the scroll of brand weapon, it crumbles to dust.
Your +0 war axe of flaming crackles with electricity.
a - a +0 war axe of electrocution (weapon)
As you read the scroll of brand weapon, it crumbles to dust.
Your +0 war axe of electrocution emits a brilliant flash of light!
a - a +0 vorpal war axe (weapon)
As you read the scroll of brand weapon, it crumbles to dust.
Your +0 vorpal war axe is engulfed in flames!
a - a +0 war axe of flaming (weapon)
As you read the scroll of brand weapon, it crumbles to dust.
Your +0 war axe of flaming is covered with a thin layer of ice!
a - a +0 war axe of freezing (weapon)
As you read the scroll of brand weapon, it crumbles to dust.
Your +0 war axe of freezing emits a brilliant flash of light!
a - a +0 vorpal war axe (weapon)
As you read the scroll of brand weapon, it crumbles to dust.
Your +0 vorpal war axe is covered with a thin layer of ice!
a - a +0 war axe of freezing (weapon)
As you read the scroll of brand weapon, it crumbles to dust.
Your +0 war axe of freezing is engulfed in flames!
a - a +0 war axe of flaming (weapon)
Spoiler: show
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Crypt Cleanser

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Post Tuesday, 12th October 2021, 11:19

Re: branding oddity

Clear case: Siegurt's experience is unquestionably coincidence, whereas OP's and Sprucery's is caused by dark and sinister forces trying to take control of the game in the name of Eternal Frost.
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Mines Malingerer

Posts: 39

Joined: Saturday, 9th December 2017, 19:14

Post Wednesday, 13th October 2021, 17:07

Re: branding oddity

Bozobub wrote:This may be simple coincidence

Was this unclear?
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Pandemonium Purger

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Joined: Monday, 24th October 2011, 06:13

Post Wednesday, 13th October 2021, 19:08

Re: branding oddity

this may be a coincidence, but i die to sigmund every time i play for about a month now. curious what is happening to everyone else cuz its straight murder going on here
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Slime Squisher

Posts: 377

Joined: Thursday, 12th June 2014, 06:56

Post Thursday, 14th October 2021, 09:59

Re: branding oddity

While Siegurt's test shows this to merely be a coincidence, I feel like people are being a little overly snarky here. Remember, there was once a bug that doubled all melee damage that made it into a stable release. A bug that causes a rarely-used scroll to always give the same reasonable result? I could totally see that flying under the radar for weeks or even months.

So yes, I agree this one is just a coincidence, but it's not absurd on its face that it might not be.

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Mines Malingerer

Posts: 39

Joined: Saturday, 9th December 2017, 19:14

Post Friday, 15th October 2021, 16:34

Re: branding oddity

ion_frigate wrote:While Siegurt's test shows this to merely be a coincidence, I feel like people are being a little overly snarky here. Remember, there was once a bug that doubled all melee damage that made it into a stable release. A bug that causes a rarely-used scroll to always give the same reasonable result? I could totally see that flying under the radar for weeks or even months.

So yes, I agree this one is just a coincidence, but it's not absurd on its face that it might not be.

Exactly so; that's why I asked, in fact. I'm aware of the prevalence of confirmation bias, so I wanted to know if it was coincidence or if someone else had noticed anything odd. I didn't think it's the only result, but it does feel a little...unrandom. Unintentional bias in pseudorandom results isn't rare at all.

Frankly, the response smacks of defensiveness. ;)

Slime Squisher

Posts: 377

Joined: Thursday, 12th June 2014, 06:56

Post Saturday, 16th October 2021, 14:04

Re: branding oddity

Bozobub wrote:Unintentional bias in pseudorandom results isn't rare at all.


Oh, you don't even need to go that far. That melee bug was due to something as simple as a developer putting a "+=" instead of a "==" somewhere in the code. NetHack had a bug that persisted for nine years that was due to a programmer forgetting to put a "break;" in a case statement. There are lots of ways for even an experienced programmer to slip up and introduce program-altering bugs - which is a big part of the reason that companies with millions of dollars riding on correctly-working code invest large amounts in automated and human bug detection.

Incidentally, Crawl's PRNG is actually one of its most solid areas. The motivation for this is the fact that it's played competitively at a semi-serious level (it's probably the roguelike that has the nearest thing to a competitive "scene" a la Super Smash Bros or League of Legends), and it turns out that sufficiently determined players can actually manipulate a weaker PRNG by observing large numbers of "random" occurrences. The general concept is that a PRNG is little more than a compact way to generate a long, cyclic list of numbers, with the "seed" just representing where you start on that cycle. Older RNGs (like NetHack's) would generate 2^32 (4 billion) 16-bit integers. It only takes 8GB of hard drive space to store that entire sequence, so by generating enough consecutive "random" integers, you can then search the whole 8GB sequence - once you know where you are, you can predict what numbers will come next. That's why Crawl (and I gather most new applications nowadays) use a PRNG with a period of 2^19937 -1, since the immense size of that sequence makes storing and searching it completely impossible (there aren't nearly enough particles in the universe to do so).

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