My list of bugs/requests

[ProButcher]

I don't want to flood this board with topics so I'll post anything I can think of here!

Bugs:
Playing the MTG Plugin, I selected the option to move a card to the bottom of my deck and was unable to do so.. I eventually just dragged it there manually.

Not sure if its a bug, but on multiple instances, I draw my hand after shuffling, and find I have all three of one card and 2/3 of another... Shuffle spamming slows my computer (its a piece of crap) so I would like to request a better shuffle.. Resolved

On rare instances, someone will join a 3+ player game I'm in, and I won't see their avatar, name, life, or cards. I can see them talk in chat but that is it.. In the seat they claim to be in, I see: 'Empty seat', and it has 0 life. As opposed to an actual empty seat where it has the option to sit in it.

Requests:
Friend system.. of course..

ability to see who vacated me from my seat, or who moved my cards around..

spectators

kick people from game

remove the ability from all but the host of the game, to be able to kick, vacate, add/remove seats, and other options.




I know afew of these have already been mentioned, but I'll write them as they come to mind.

[mathman1550]

Not sure if its a bug, but on multiple instances, I draw my hand after shuffling, and find I have all three of one card and 2/3 of another... Shuffle spamming slows my computer (its a piece of crap) so I would like to request a better shuffle..

FYI the forum had a lengthy discussion on this quite a while ago and the following is the result (or at least among those with any logic in their brain):
The thing about true randomness is that sometimes you get clusters of cards, which may look un-shuffled, but if you are shuffling real cards without looking you will get these same clusters occasionally; and if you are looking as you shuffle, then its truly not random is it (because you will move cards around to get rid of clusters)?
The shuffle on Lackey has been tested and shown to be as random as computer randomness can be (meaning more random than if you took the physical cards and shuffled them well).
Only one shuffle is needed to make the cards randomized, and since the deck is shuffled automatically at the start of game, the spam shuffle is completely unnecessary, and people should only have to push the shuffle deck button if a card tells them to.
(Note that other Superzones besides a deck are not shuffled at start of game).

[Just Mick]

^Random number generators are not super great. If you want to achieve a more random shuffle, the more times you run them the better. Lackey should be able to shuffle the cards about 20 to 100 times in a row via it's algorithms, or however much the player thinks their computer can handle (it's a fast operation) so to spare them the manual shuffling.

Also if Lackey knows the deck starts in a state where like cards are back to back then it should begin by interleaving the cards so this is not the initial state. Shuffling music is a really involved topic of discussion, I'm sure you can find many papers on the topic. Cards are no different.

Personally I would not mind if Lackey would let you manually set the initial state of the deck before the shuffle. The way with MTG it is probably advantageous to space your lands out every x cards before shuffling.

A really good shuffle is not so easy. Again random number generators are not sophisticated pieces of hardware. They don't work on a quantum level that can be said to be actually random, and if you plot them on a graph they look anything but random. Lackey could also cut the deck several times between shuffles, and run the random number generator at several different scales to improve things.

Of course too much of this kind of randomness would defeat the purpose of letting players interleave their MTG Land cards for example. However a more natural approach could be for Lackey to not use random routines at all, but instead simulate a person's shuffle or a machines shuffle, cutting the deck several times and interleaving them with only minor randomness.

At any rate, there is a lot you can do in the shuffle dept.

[mathman1550]

Thats just the point I was making. If you have to space your lands out in your deck before you shuffle, then your shuffling method is flawed and therefore not a random shuffle. A random number generator is not super great, but it does give greater randomness than your method of stacking the deck before you shuffle. I'm a mathematician in real life and I know what I'm talking about. What are your references?

[picks-at-flies]

As I understand it, (traditional) random number generation has flaws when dealing with high level maths/physics problems.  Shuffling isn't particularly high level.

[Just Mick]

I am a software engineer; I deploy random routines all the time, in shuffling and sorting, and I shuffle my own mp3 players with GBs of music. One pass over a list with a subroutine like rand() will not yield a very random list. If you have 100s of songs you will see clusters where songs from the same album are clumped together for example. I use a lot of music playing software also, many with noticeably inferior shuffling capabilities. I tend to listen to discographies in random order.

In Lackey's case simulating a human's interleaved shuffle would probably be better than relying on rand.

not a random shuffle

Aside from the fact there's no such thing as a random shuffle. The word shuffle (or act of shuffling) implies nothing in terms of the initial state of the items to be shuffled. If you build a MTG deck for example with all your cards of the same type back to back then start shuffling you're going to have serious problems. It's best to pad out the deck first.

Indeed people have a legitimate complaint when they see 3 or 4 cards of the same type in a row on a regular basis.

EDIT: The Wikipedia article makes "Random number generation" sound like it's a lot more reliable than it is, because it talks about it in terms of generating unique IDs and patterns. I did not see any points regarding the spatial layout of the output. If you plot a RNG on a piece of paper there will be both clusters of points and a definite shape will emerge that will not appear at all random. When you have to shuffle say a 60 card deck you must map the output between 0 and 60. The way this is typically done is modulus (60) or the remainder of the number divided by 60. So if you then plot that out a lot of the randomness is lost/squashed into that range. And that's why you get clumps.

[mathman1550]

While it is true that a rifle shuffle will result in large amounts of clumps, etc when starting with all lands in a group, a true shuffle will not if there has been a sufficient number of shuffles (7). see http://www.dartmouth.edu/~chance/teaching_aids/books_articles/Mann.pdf for my proof.

In addition, LackeyCCG does not use just a single basic rand() to shuffle when you push the shuffle button. I remember Trevor stating this before.

[Trevor]

^Random number generators are not super great. If you want to achieve a more random shuffle, the more times you run them the better. Lackey should be able to shuffle the cards about 20 to 100 times in a row via it's algorithms, or however much the player thinks their computer can handle (it's a fast operation) so to spare them the manual shuffling.

Also if Lackey knows the deck starts in a state where like cards are back to back then it should begin by interleaving the cards so this is not the initial state. Shuffling music is a really involved topic of discussion, I'm sure you can find many papers on the topic. Cards are no different.

Personally I would not mind if Lackey would let you manually set the initial state of the deck before the shuffle. The way with MTG it is probably advantageous to space your lands out every x cards before shuffling.

A really good shuffle is not so easy. Again random number generators are not sophisticated pieces of hardware. They don't work on a quantum level that can be said to be actually random, and if you plot them on a graph they look anything but random. Lackey could also cut the deck several times between shuffles, and run the random number generator at several different scales to improve things.

Of course too much of this kind of randomness would defeat the purpose of letting players interleave their MTG Land cards for example. However a more natural approach could be for Lackey to not use random routines at all, but instead simulate a person's shuffle or a machines shuffle, cutting the deck several times and interleaving them with only minor randomness.

At any rate, there is a lot you can do in the shuffle dept.

Random number generators like the one I use are not super great only in the sense that a computer algorithm can crack them easily enough. But for the purposes I am using the RNG, it does the job perfectly. No human could discern a pattern in the randomness, so the cards are effectively random. People have complained about shuffling algorithm a lot, and I have researched it very thoroughly. The current algorithm is as good a random shuffle as you would want. If your real life decks seem more or less "random", then YOU aren't shuffling well enough with your real life deck.

If anyone has any statistical evidence that a single shuffle doesn't provide truly randomization, please present it.

[Tokimo]

I just want to point out that interleaving your lands in magic before you shuffle is illegal in tournaments and can get you disqualified...

Trevor: I assume you provide a random number to each card and then sort by those numbers correct? Or do you use a random result comparison when you shuffle?

[Trevor]

I just want to point out that interleaving your lands in magic before you shuffle is illegal in tournaments and can get you disqualified...

Trevor: I assume you provide a random number to each card and then sort by those numbers correct? Or do you use a random result comparison when you shuffle?

I forget exactly what algorithm I used. It was thoroughly tested though.

[Just Mick]

Well about 19/20 players will swear the shuffle is not good and spam shuffle. I used to see on a regular basis 3 or 4 cards of the same kind back to back after shuffle. Spam shuffling does seem to make that less common. I'm a very skeptical person but I do see patterns in the shuffle that do not appear so random.

There may be a little bug in the algorithm or something. Even when everything seems thorough/complex enough you can always start snooping around and unearth a little logical inconsistency in some code and say aha, that's what that was.

I'm an awful shuffler. I think when the opponent gets to cut your cards that's their opportunity to make your deck as random as they need it to be. I always pull my lands off the table and slide each in a few cards between the other cards on the table and sandwich them in. If you just cleaned up the table and slapped them on top I think you'd run into problems. At the tournaments I play in (locale fair for fun) people would rather I do that than try to shuffle the cards 7 times. Even when a card says shuffle I just cut the deck up pretty good and offer it to the opponent. Needless to say I'm not the MTG (card playing) freak in the family.

[Trevor]

Well about 19/20 players will swear the shuffle is not good and spam shuffle. I used to see on a regular basis 3 or 4 cards of the same kind back to back after shuffle. Spam shuffling does seem to make that less common. I'm a very skeptical person but I do see patterns in the shuffle that do not appear so random.

There may be a little bug in the algorithm or something. Even when everything seems thorough/complex enough you can always start snooping around and unearth a little logical inconsistency in some code and say aha, that's what that was.

There is no reason for people to spam shuffle, and it annoys me when people do. I may even block multiple shuffles in the code. It really serves no purpose. It is an illusion of more randomness.

When the shuffle seems random, people don't remember it. When the shuffle results seem nonrandom, people tend to remember it. That's confirmation bias.

I have used the algorithm on very large sets of data and the results are statistically exactly what you would expect perfect randomization would do. I have thoroughly tested the algorithm. If ANYONE can produce statistical EVIDENCE that there is a problem, I will look into it further. But no one has done so, and I only hear baseless anecdotal claims that things don't "feel" random.

A perfect and effortless shuffle is something that is actually done better with virtual cards. I wish I could get as random a shuffle with real cards so effortlessly.

[Tokimo]

A perfect and effortless shuffle is something that is actually done better with virtual cards. I wish I could get as random a shuffle with real cards so effortlessly.

Props to that. It's so easy to search and shuffle a deck in Lackey my initial set of Mahoujo had WAY too many tutor class effects. Then I realized how nightmarish it was going to be to play with real cards and removed most of them.

[Just Mick]

I recommend disabling the spam shuffling if you're confident about it. You could at least release the algorithm. Or alternatively you could have a preference that asks how many times you want to shuffle your cards whenever the zone is shuffled. That's easy to do and people would feel more confident about the shuffle even if it's psychosomatic and the opponent would not have to deal with the annoying spamming side effects.

I play a lot of shuffle cards myself, which is why I just cut/fold the deck a few times and offer it to the other player to cut it or shuffle it if they want to. There are some truly annoying cards in MTG like Haunting Echos which I would feel bad about playing.

[Tokimo]

If I were trevor I would try to make redundant shuffles show only to the player who initiated them...