Thursday, March 23, 2023

Story Post: Watch Number 15

The voice from your wrist-screen says “Fifteen” at the same time that the number 15 shows up on the screen.

Proposal: Bump In

In the rule “The Grid”, subrule “Location”, replace “If no other Runner has this Cell in their Location at the time the message is processed, the Gridmaster sets the Location of the Runner to the requested Cell and replies with an acknowledgement of the request. Otherwise, the Gridmaster replies that the Cell is taken. ” with “The Gridmaster should then set the Location of the Runner to the requested Cell. If at least one other Runner has this Cell in their Location at the time the message is processed, the Gridmaster should also reply that the Cell is occupied.”

this could end up locking you out of a victory if you get eaten by a grue while on an exit cell. also just seems kinda antiquated tbh

Proposal: Level skip

As a subrule of The Lines, create a rule called “Downloading a new Stratum” with the text:

A Runner may Download by privately informing the Gridmaster that they are doing so, and that Runner is considered to be Downloading until the end of the next Tick action. If a Runner has Executed since the most recent Tick, they may not Download. If a runner is Downloading, they may not Execute.

In Running, replace the bullet point “If no Cells have a value of Battery, Load a new Stratum” with:

If no Cells have a value of Battery, or if the number of Runners that are Downloading is greater than 50% of Live Runners, Load a new Stratum

In the same rule, replace the bullet pont “Post a blog entry announcing the new Watch Number, and announcing any Runners whose Locations are cells in the Alpha Sector.” with

Post a blog entry announcing the new Watch Number, the number of Runners that are Downloading, and announcing any Runners whose Locations are cells in the Alpha Sector.

In case a stratum gets a little stale, this allows you to re-roll a new one - assuming you can get enough people to agree to give up their Execution to make it happen.

Story Post: Watch Number 14

The voice from your wrist-screen says “Fourteen” at the same time that the number 14 shows up on the screen.

Wednesday, March 22, 2023

Story Post: Watch Number 13

The voice from your wrist-screen says “Thirteen” at the same time that the number 13 shows up on the screen.

Proposal: CPU Benchmark

Reaches quorum with 4-0 and is enacted -SingularByte

Adminned at 23 Mar 2023 13:19:25 UTC

In the rule “Basic Grid Rules”, in the subrule “Status Report”, add the following bullet after the bullet “* Power”:

* Number-Crunches

Runners will probably want to know where they stand for Number-Crunches now that it’s part of achieving victory

Story Post: Watch Number 12

The voice from your wrist-screen says “Twelve” at the same time that the number 12 shows up on the screen.

Tuesday, March 21, 2023

Proposal: Pen Test

Reaches quorum with 5-0 and is enacted -SingularByte

Adminned at 23 Mar 2023 13:17:21 UTC

In the rule “Running”, replace this bullet:

If the Grue’s Location is in the same row or column as any other Runners (excluding those in the same Cell as it), change the Grue’s Heading to face a secretly random such Runner.

with this bullet:

If the Grue’s Location is in the same row or column as any other Runners (excluding those in the same Cell as it), select all of the Headings where the Grue would be facing such Runners, and where the orthogonally adjacent Cell to the Grue in the direction of each Heading does not contain “Firewall”, and change the Grue’s Heading to a randomly chosen Heading from this selection. If there are no such selections possible, instead select all of the Headings where the orthogonally adjacent Cell to the Grue in the direction of each Heading does not contain “Firewall”, and change the Grue’s Heading to a randomly chosen Heading from this selection if possible.

Should the Grue be aware of facing a cell containing “Firewall” and try to move in a different direction, or should it just bump against the Firewall and remain where it is?

Story Post: Watch Number 11

The voice from your wrist-screen says “Eleven” at the same time that the number 11 shows up on the screen.

Story Post: Stratum 4

Your wrist-screen beeps, and a new notification in green appears among the random lines and dots:

INITIALISING GRID

New Features:
  • High-Security
  • Database

Monday, March 20, 2023

Proposal: Locked In

Times out 5-0 and is enacted -SingularByte

Adminned at 22 Mar 2023 17:33:06 UTC

Create a rule called The Exit:

The Exit consists of all cells with a value of “Exit”, and all cells with that value have a colour of Purple. Once a cell’s value is set to the value of “Exit”, that cell can never have its value changed, nor its colour changed.

Each Runner has a non-negative integer called Number-Crunches which is privately tracked by the Gridmaster. A Runner can spend any positive amount of Power to increase their Number-Crunches by that amount, though if that runner is in a non-empty cell, this increase is divided by four (rounded down to the nearest integer).

In the rule Running, add a new bullet point to the start of the list of bullet points describing a Tick:

* If the number of runners in the Exit has been at least 1 for the entirety of the last three ticks, and if one of those runners has the highest non-zero Number-Crunches out of all Runners in the Exit, that Runner has achieved victory. (If the Grue achieves victory in this way, the Gridmaster should create a Blogpost to confirm that the Grue has escaped. The Grue’s location should be blanked, and it can never have its location set to a value again, but otherwise its victory is ignored.)

Create a bullet point in the list in the rule Features with the following text:

* Passcoded Egress: If this is exactly the second time that the Passcoded Egress feature is being added to the Grid, set the cells D4, D5, E4 and E5 to have the value of Exit.

Here’s a version of the victory condition that should minimize RNG to a tolerable level. Now you know where the exit will appear, so being at the edges to use terminals has a whole risk/reward aspect to it even if you don’t know exactly when the Egress will arrive. Also, you can’t easily spend power to increase charge when you’re in a filled cell since it’s more interesting if you have to work out how much to keep back for disk activations once you’re at the exit.

Proposal: Finding A Way Out

Withdrawn and therefore failed -SingularByte

Adminned at 22 Mar 2023 06:51:27 UTC

If “Veni veni venias” is enacted, this Proposal has no effect.

Add a new rule called “The Beacon” and give it the following text:

The Beacon is a privately tracked variable with either a blank value or the partial or full identification of a Cell, defaulting to blank.

Whenever a Runner is the only Runner with a Location exactly matching the same Cell as the Beacon, and the Beacon is not blank, the Gridmaster should make a blog post indicating the Runner’s name and Location and that they found the Beacon. That Runner achieves victory.

In the rule “The Lines”, add this bullet just before the last bullet:

* Blank the Beacon’s value

In the rule “Disks”, add this row to the table:

|-
| signal.c || 3 || You may pay 3 Power. If you do, send a private request to the Gridmaster setting either the row letter or the column number of the Beacon, then remove this Disk. If honoring this request would result in the Beacon containing the same Location as the Runner executing this Disk, the Gridmaster should privately randomly select a row letter if the Runner requested a column number, or privately randomly select a column number if the Runner requested a row letter, and set the Beacon’s value to the randomly-selected value plus the Runner’s requested value. Otherwise, the Gridmaster should only set the Beacon’s row letter or column number value with the Runner’s choice. In either case, the Gridmaster should privately respond at their earliest convenience confirming only the setting that the Runner chose.

 

An alternative wincon to “Veni veni venias”. The Beacon changes location every time the Stratum changes, so the Runner(s) who know the Location of the Beacon want to try to keep the Stratum from changing, while other Runners without any information about the Beacon may want to change the Stratum as soon as possible.

Story Post: Watch Number 10

The voice from your wrist-screen says “Ten” at the same time that the number 10 shows up on the screen. A yellow notification appears:

WARNING

The Grue has been activated. Runners who occupy the same Cell as the Grue will be eaten.

Going Dark

Darknight idles out after seven days without any posts or comments.

Under the recently changed idling rule, this now means that they can’t be unidled within the next four days, and that for both this and the next dynasty they will idle out at four days rather than seven.

Sunday, March 19, 2023

Proposal: Veni veni venias

Withdrawn and therefore failed -SingularByte

Adminned at 20 Mar 2023 17:39:42 UTC

Create a new dynastic rule named “The End” with the following body:

Each Runner has a Chance, which is a publicly tracked value defaulting to False.

If the current date and time is on or after the 10th of April, 00:00:01 UTC, 2023, then the game is in Endgame. While the game is in Endgame, the Gatemaster may not Load a New Stratum and the Location of Runners whose Location is set to blank cannot be changed.

If the game is in Endgame and they haven’t done so already, the Gatemaster should, at their earliest convenience, Load the Final Game, which is an atomic action with the following steps:
* Set the Location of all Runners whose Chance is set to True to A1
* Blank the Location of all Runners whose Chance is set to False

A Runner has achieved victory when their Chance is set to Fulfilled.

In the rule Disks, add a new entry to the list of Disks:

| mark.c || 5 || Set your Chance to True

Creating some semblance of a wincon. I’ve left the final game action barebones so that we can maybe flesh it out a bit more later

Proposal: Woops, we were idle

Reached quorum 5 votes to 0. Enacted by Kevan.

Adminned at 20 Mar 2023 10:17:27 UTC

If Proposal: Woops, we were muted enacted, In the rule Short-Distance Comms, change “Any two Runners who share the same Location” to “Any two Runners who are Nearby each other”.

If Proposal: Woops, we were muted was not enacted, create a new dynastic rule named “Short-Distance Comms” with the following body:

Any two Runners who are Nearby each other may privately communicate with each other as if the special case rule “No Collaboration” is not active.

Fix suggested by Kevan

Saturday, March 18, 2023

Proposal: Woops, we were muted

Fails at 1-5, as it cannot achieve quorum -SingularByte

Adminned at 19 Mar 2023 16:07:54 UTC

Add the following rule to the ruleset, known as “Short-distance Comms”:

Any two Runners who share the same Location may privately communicate with each other as if the special case rule “No Collaboration” is not active.

Just seeing what the response to this might be. Could open up a bit of ‘paths crossing and saying hi’ sorta thing.

Story Post: Watch Number 9

The voice from your wrist-screen says “Nine” at the same time that the number 9 shows up on the screen.

Proposal: Copy-Paste

Reached quorum 5 votes to 0. Enacted by Kevan.

Adminned at 18 Mar 2023 10:32:34 UTC

In the rule “Disks”, replace this text for the Effect of yank.c:

You may add a copy of a Disk from the Heap which shares a row or column with your Location to your own Stack

with this text:

You may add a copy of a Disk from the Heap which shares a row or column with your Location to the rightmost end of your own Stack

For any dynastic action taken where yank.c was Executed and the copied Disk was not placed at the rightmost end of the Runner’s Stack, move that Disk to the rightmost end of that Runner’s Stack if it is still present in their Stack.

We have a solid definition of where disks go in a push, but the Effect for yank.c says “add”, which does not have any such definition. Everywhere else that “add” is used, it is explicitly called out where the disk goes in the Stack, so I think we just need to clarify it here. Also added a fix for any case (which I think there is none so far) where yank.c was used to put a Disk somewhere other than the rightmost end of a Stack.

Story Post: Watch Number 8

The voice from your wrist-screen says “Eight” at the same time that the number 8 shows up on the screen.

Proposal: Singularity

Reached quorum 7 votes to 0. Enacted by Kevan.

Adminned at 18 Mar 2023 10:25:02 UTC

In the “Warped” entry of “Features”, replace “Set the Location of all Live Runners to a random Cell” with:-

Simultaneously move each Live Runner to a different random Cell

Uphold the Gridmaster’s earlier application of the Warped Feature on March 12.

“all Live Runners to a random Cell” arguably puts everyone in the same Cell, which will be bad news once the Grue arrives. And a 1/64 chance of instantly joining the grue with no chance to react to it is maybe worth avoiding.