15,000 Coin Limit?

[Old Scratch]

I seem to have run into an arbitrary coin limit: 15,000 (I'm registered, so it can't be that). This gets to be a severe inconvenience when I have a lot of loot to sell, almost 15,000 coins, and nothing nearby to spend my excess cash on to make room!

 

I assume most Avernum 3 players will know about this already. Is there a way around it? It's getting to be really annoying.

[Dikiyoba]

Whenever I hit the limit, I just make note of it and use the character editor to set my coins down to zero. Then if I ever need money, I edit some of it back.

 

Dikiyoba calls it the First Avernum Bank.

[Dintiradan]

In the demo, there isn't too much to spend money on. When/If you get the full version, you can do many fun things with excess money: buy a mansion, augment all your mundane items, etc.

 

--------------------

IF I EVER BECOME AN EVIL OVERLORD:

If the beautiful princess that I capture says "I'll never marry you! Never, do you hear me, NEVER!!!", I will say "Oh well" and kill her.

[Kelandon]

Buy spells in the middle of selling your items. You're going to be buying them anyway, and if your gold is maxing out, it's not like you're strapped for cash.

[Old Scratch]

Quote:

Originally written by Dikiyoba:
Whenever I hit the limit, I just make note of it and use the character editor to set my coins down to zero. Then if I ever need money, I edit some of it back.

Dikiyoba calls it the First Avernum Bank.

I did think of something similar to that after I started this topic. The only problem in my case is that I often employ the "spray and pray" method when selling large quantities of unneeded loot, simply mashing the "$" sign on all the loot items without even noting their cost first. (I usually try to find a merchant that gives a good resale price, but after that, it's all button-mashing.)

However, your method is more sophisticated than what I had envisioned (simply recording all the excess over 15,000 and awarding myself the proper amount later after spending a bunch of cash), and should be sufficient for my needs. Thanks!

Quote:

Originally written by Kelandon:
Buy spells in the middle of selling your items. You're going to be buying them anyway, and if your gold is maxing out, it's not like you're strapped for cash.

Oh, trust me, I have done exactly that on many occasions . . . I've bought all the spells I can currently find and all of the potion recipes, too, not to mention a lot of alchemical herbs. (There are a few simple mage spells I still need to upgrade, but I'm currently not sure where their teacher is located.)

*****

Why is the limit set so low? It's kind of a pain.

[Randomizer]

I found it's just better to stash items for later sales to keep away from the limit. By the end of the game you don't need the money anyway.

 

Each game has a different limit.

 

In Blades of Exile I found a bug where I actually exceeded the limit and got a negative money amount. I had to use the character editor to fix it.

[Micawber]

Well, the 15000 limit in A3 is at least less miserly than the 9000 limit in A1.

 

The most expensive things to buy are the special skills - anatomy, parry, blademaster, magery, etc. Generally I get around the gold cap by buying every level of these skills as soon as they are available which brings my gold rapidly down to zero every time. By the time I've got as far as 5 levels of all the skills available, it's pretty much the end of the game. If you don't need the money, don't pick up the loot.

[Old Scratch]

Yes, but from a game designer's standpoint, why have a cap at all? I've found Avernum 3 to be wonderfully open-ended, and was unpleasantly surprised when a few hundred of my coins vanished into the post-15,000 abyss . . . no warning, no explanation, just BAM. It took me a moment to realize what must have happened.

 

The "First Bank of Avernum" idea is great, and it's easy to implement, too, so I don't mind the cap that much. And there's another mystery: One can open up the character editor to get one's self out of a tight spot or to cheat shamelessly. (I only use it for "storing" coins and extricating myself from truly insurmountable situations.) Since one can give oneself lots of money for free if one wanted, why bother with an in-game cap?

 

As with the number of licks it takes to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop, the world may never know. Actually, I've heard that someone did an experiment to discover the secret of Tootsie Pops, but I forget how many licks they came up with.

[Dikiyoba]

Originally by Old Scratch:

 

Quote:

As with the number of licks it takes to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop, the world may never know. Actually, I've heard that someone did an experiment to discover the secret of Tootsie Pops, but I forget how many licks they came up with.

Dikiyoba did that once. It's zero. Just stick it in your mouth and keep it there until it dissolves and you've never truly licked it at all.

[Publicly Displayed Name:]

Quote:

As with the number of licks it takes to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop, the world may never know. Actually, I've heard that someone did an experiment to discover the secret of Tootsie Pops, but I forget how many licks they came up with.[/QB]

This page is full of lies , as we all know the answer is three.

[Micawber]

Quote:

Originally written by Old Scratch:
Yes, but from a game designer's standpoint, why have a cap at all?

From a programming point of view, the numerical values are finite and have a fixed length. In the Avernum code I think I am right in saying that no number can exceed 64,000 values. The game enforces a cap in order to avoid weird errors - like negative gold (which has been known to happen in the Exile games).

[Old Scratch]

Quote:

Originally written by Micawber:
From a programming point of view, the numerical values are finite and have a fixed length. In the Avernum code I think I am right in saying that no number can exceed 64,000 values. The game enforces a cap in order to avoid weird errors - like negative gold (which has been known to happen in the Exile games).

Does that mean my characters can't accrue more than 64,000 experience points? That worries me a bit, since all of them have sizeable experience point penalties -- 35%, 30%, 30%, and 25%, to be exact. I thought that you gained a level for every 1,000 experience points, but the numbers don't seem to add up. Instead of docking XP as they are distributed, the game seems to give you full XP and simply increase the number of XP needed to reach the next level; that is, I'll have 44,000 XP but the character's level will be in the late thirties (instead of 44).

If 64,000 is the value limit, then that really sucks, because all of my characters will only be able to get to level 40-something. The game documentation says that the number of levels you can attain are effectively unlimited . . . was that untrue?

[Alorael at Large]

You run out of enemies that give experience before you hit a cap. I'm not sure the 64,000 is true, but it's not worth losing sleep over either way.

 

—Alorael, who doesn't understand why the limit is so low. 15,000 is small change by the end of any Avernum game. 30,000 would make far more sense and still leave a comfortable margin of 34,000 (35,514?) to prevent errors.

[Micawber]

Yeah, the 64k was illustrative rather than precise; if the limit was indeed of this magnitude it would be 65536 (=2^16).

 

In terms of game experience, my PCs in Avernum 3 have definitely exceeded 70,000 experience, so I would guess that this particular number has a maximum ~128k or even higher. Whatever.

 

To get back to the original question, for purely practical reasons there does have to be a limit of some sort, but I do think the limit Jeff has set in all three Avernum games is annoyingly and unnecessarily low.

[Old Scratch]

Quote:

Originally written by Micawber:
Yeah, the 64k was illustrative rather than precise; if the limit was indeed of this magnitude it would be 65536 (=2^16).

Is that hexadecimal? I'm great at practical/intuitive mathematics (calculating distances, tabulating finances, conversion formulas, et cetera), but my skill at advanced math and especially my knowledge of mathematical terminology leaves much to be desired.

I know that the formula above translates to "two to the sixteenth power", or "two multiplied by itself sixteen times in a row", but I'm not sure how that fits into computer programming or what category of mathematics it falls under.

In any case, you seem pretty knowledgeable about the subject.

Quote:

In terms of game experience, my PCs in Avernum 3 have definitely exceeded 70,000 experience, so I would guess that this particular number has a maximum ~128k or even higher. Whatever.

Of course . . . because the next power of 2 after (2^16) would be (2^17), or ~128k. Heck, I guess I learned something in school after all!

Quote:

To get back to the original question, for purely practical reasons there does have to be a limit of some sort, but I do think the limit Jeff has set in all three Avernum games is annoyingly and unnecessarily low.

I know! I have never -- NEVER -- exceeded 50,000 coins in the bank. And I sell every piece of loot I can get my hands on (unless it's too cheap to bother with). I make multiple trips, carting it all to the highest bidder (usually Grove the magical weaponsmith). A limit of 100,000 -- or even 50,000 or 60,000 -- would have been more than sufficient.

[Kelandon]

That's binary. The question is how many bits (ones and zeros) Jeff allotted to store the numbers. If he allotted 16 binary spaces, the numbers can go up to around 64,000. If he allotted 17 spaces, the numbers can go up to around 129,000.

 

This makes a little more sense if you think about it with fewer numbers. If you've got two spaces allotted, your numbers can go up to (2^2)-1=3.

00 = 0

01 = 1

10 = 2

11 = 3

 

If you've got three spaces allotted, your numbers can go up to (2^3)-1=7:

000 = 0

001 = 1

010 = 2

011 = 3

100 = 4

101 = 5

110 = 6

111 = 7

 

The pattern continues.

[Old Scratch]

Quote:

Originally written by Kelandon:
That's binary. The question is how many bits (ones and zeros) Jeff allotted to store the numbers. If he allotted 16 binary spaces, the numbers can go up to around 64,000. If he allotted 17 spaces, the numbers can go up to around 129,000.

This makes a little more sense if you think about it with fewer numbers. If you've got two spaces allotted, your numbers can go up to (2^2)-1=3.
00 = 0
01 = 1
10 = 2
11 = 3

If you've got three spaces allotted, your numbers can go up to (2^3)-1=7:
000 = 0
001 = 1
010 = 2
011 = 3
100 = 4
101 = 5
110 = 6
111 = 7

The pattern continues.

Ah yes, I see! Because each time you add a slot, the number of possible combinations doubles. This is one aspect of mathematics which I'm very good at. I play tabletop roleplaying games, and I also design them -- which means that I need to be able to calculate the percentage chance of getting any given number combination on a given set of dice.

Take three six-sided dice (3d6), for example. When you roll them, you can get any result from 3 to 18, but what are the odds of getting any specific number from 3-18? Figuring that out is complicated, and I have it all written down. Suffice it to say that 10 and 11 will be the most common numbers rolled, while 3 and 18 each have ~1% chance of appearing (because there is only one combination of all three dice that gives these numbers). The closer you get to 3 or 18, the lower your chances of rolling the number.

[Alorael at Large]

You get a perfect bell curve and your chance of getting a 3 or an 18 is 1/216, or less than half of a percent. But, moving right along, each binary digit is called a bit, and each bit has to be stored somewhere. The more information you want to store, the more memory you have to allocate to do it. Thus, most programs you encounter will have limits on accepted numerical values, although in many cases those limits are so large that you'll never notice.

 

I don't think memory is really a problem for Avernum, but for whatever reason Jeff is stingy with his bits.

 

—Alorael, who is a little bit embarassed that he misremembered his powers of two. Or his powers of two minus one, actually, which makes that even value even more suspicious.

[Old Scratch]

Quote:

Originally written by Subliminal Message Here:
You get a perfect bell curve and your chance of getting a 3 or an 18 is 1/216, or less than half of a percent.

Correct. The total number of combinations possible on 3d6 is, of course, (6 * 6 * 6), or (6^3). Since there is only a single combination that wil give you 3 or 18 (111 or 666), it's safe to assume that the ratio is 216:1, or a .4629% probability (1 divided by 216).

That's the easy part. The challenge is in deciphering how many combinations are possible for 4 and 17, 5 and 16, 6 and 15, et cetera. Unless you know a convenient formula (I don't), you have to figure it out by trial and error.

Or you can look it up online. After I did all of the math for 3d6 probabilities myself, I discovered that a Web site had a page up that listed them all . . .

[Kelandon]

Systematic listing usually isn't so bad as far as figuring out individual probabilities:

 

4

1 1 2

1 2 1

2 1 1

 

5

1 1 3

1 3 1

3 1 1

1 2 2

2 2 1

2 1 2

 

After a certain point, though, using a computer program — one exists, but I'm not sure which one it is — is probably better than listing out probabilities, though. Especially if you ever have to work with, say, 6d6.

[Mivayan]

Quote:

Originally written by Old Scratch:
If 64,000 is the value limit, then that really sucks, because all of my characters will only be able to get to level 40-something. The game documentation says that the number of levels you can attain are effectively unlimited . . . was that untrue?

My fighter/priest singleton ended the game at lvl 71, with 118.000 xp. So a team of 4 wont have to worry about running into any limit at all.

[Meeshka]

Nice thread to remember some Theory of Chances. I used to have a good point in it studing in in the University. For those who are really interested -there is a formula for the case of 3d6 to calculate a probability percent of a certain result. The scientific method to calculate for example the chance to have 8-sum of 3 dices is simply to calculate all the variants, giving you this result this way:

1 1 6 |

1 2 5 |

1 3 4 |

1 4 3 |=>6 variants for 1st fixed 1

1 5 2 |

1 6 1 |

 

2 1 5 |

2 2 4 |

2 3 3 |=>5 variants for 1st fixed 2

2 4 2 |

2 5 1 |

 

... 4 - 1st 3; 3 - 1st 4; 2 - 1st 5; 1 - 1st 6.

So it is summ of 1+2+3+4+5+6 = 21. Chance is 21 to 216.

And for a any result X in this case chance is:

double Chance(X)

{

Res = 0;

Basement = 6*6*6;

for (i=1;i==X-2;i++) Res += i;

return Res/Basement*100;

}

 

I hope that wasn't TOO far from the thread's theme