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Post by chriscrawford on Dec 27, 2015 10:41:56 GMT -8
I have wrung my hands over the role of uncertainty in the knowledge of auragon counts for a long time. Here's an essay from 15 months ago on the subject: Erasmatazz essay on uncertainty
The central problem is the cognitive load put onto the player by uncertainty. Instead of saying "X has 2 red auragons", we say "X has 2 ± 0.3 red auragons" -- that, at least, is the technically appropriate way to say it. But how do we communicate this in SympolTalk? My original approach was to add a set of intensifiers representing uncertainty. Unfortunately, they suffered from the problem of being whole numbers: a sentence might read "X has 2 red auragons plus or minus 1 auragon." Not very useful. But while contemplating this essay, I had an inspiration: what if uncertainty is represented by fuzziness in the intensifier? Here's an example of what I mean:  This looks great, doesn't it? But it won't work: There are four intensifiers that can be used (0, 1,2, and 3), and if each one has eight versions, we'll need a menu with 32 sympols. That's too big. The obvious alternative is to add an "uncertainty quantifier", which might look like the first of the above sympols with one of the second group added to it. Perhaps I could shorten the list by making only four levels of uncertainty instead of eight, like so:  |
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Post by chriscrawford on Dec 27, 2015 12:59:44 GMT -8
Here's an example of what a sentence with uncertainty would look like:  I don't like it; the uncertainty image looks redundant. I would prefer to replace the first intensifier sympol with the second, but I can't fit it into the menu structure -- or could I? With four intensifiers, each with four levels of uncertainty, that would require 16 sympols in the menu for the speech bubble; can I make that fit? |
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Post by chriscrawford on Dec 27, 2015 13:21:35 GMT -8
Well, I have established that the display code can handle a pop-up menu with 16 sympols, and that they don't take an excessive amount of screen space. Now I have to look into the problem of actually making them scriptable. How do I classify them? As intensifiers? If so, then I need a two-dimensional system for quantifiers. The additional complexity of that frightens me.
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Post by chriscrawford on Dec 27, 2015 17:31:37 GMT -8
I have decided on a simpler solution: a single set of five "uncertainty" sympols. They modify quantifiers (I have earlier called them 'intensifiers', but discovered that they are labeled 'quantifiers' in the code, so I have to be consistent with that). I have designed a set, but I'm sure that Luc will come up with something better. The real problem is figuring out how to fit them into the overall programming system. I see two ways:
1. create a new type of word, the 'uncertainty' type. This is the cleanest overall solution, but I am nervous about implementing it. There are already nine word types:
Actor, Prop, Stage, Verb, ActorTrait, PropTrait, StageTrait, MoodTrait, and Quantifier. There are so many factors to consider. For example, how will they show up in scripts? What color will be used for them? Will they get into deep murk in the scripting system?
2. make them an extension to quantifiers. They're treated as quantifiers, but when we want 'real' quantifiers, we specify quantifiers less than 7, and if we want uncertainty values, we specify quantifiers greater than 6. That would probably be simpler to implement, but would be clumsier and more confusing to use.
More hand-wringing.
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Post by Chris Conley on Jan 12, 2016 15:23:51 GMT -8
Instead of displaying two icons forever in such a sentence, could the sentence-building code be modified to actually replace the certain image with the uncertain one? So the construction process would go: - "I tell you (red auragon count) ..."
- "I tell you (red auragon count) of Skordokott ..."
- "I tell you (red auragon count) of Skordokott is 1 ..."
- "I tell you (red auragon count) of Skordokott is (probably 1)."
Internally it would still be represented as "(I) (tell) (you) (red count) (1) (probably)". But this would be more understandable during the building process and clearer in the final displayed sentence. Clicking on the "1", or the "blurry 1", would jump back up to the start of step 3 for you to select the number followed by the certainty value. |
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Post by luctoupense on Jan 14, 2016 7:09:00 GMT -8
Agree with Chris Conley, it was the solution that came to me too. If you can add this in a clean way, I think it will be totaly fine. First select the quantity you want to say, then precise its degree of certainty. We could use an effect like this one (but better) to show it:  |
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Post by chriscrawford on Jan 14, 2016 15:11:49 GMT -8
If I understand the proposal correctly, it would entail a menu containing twenty icons: four values (0 through 3), each with five levels of uncertainty. I fear that will be an excessively large menu.
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Post by luctoupense on Jan 14, 2016 15:42:34 GMT -8
No, it would be like having a first menu to choose between -3 to 3, then we'd have a second menu appearing asking how much certainty for the value choosen. But there would be only one final symbol produced.
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Post by Chris Conley on Jan 14, 2016 21:52:03 GMT -8
As Luc said. Let me illustrate. If a picture is worth a thousand words, then an animated gif is worth a million, right?  |
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Post by chriscrawford on Jan 15, 2016 7:33:00 GMT -8
Ah, good; yes, that's exactly the way I had thought of it. We're on the same page now.
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