Thoughts on chaos in game design and its implications for TASing:
Chaos as a Tool for TAS Disruption
1. Feeding Player Inputs into Chaos:
- Using player inputs as a seed for chaotic functions ensures unpredictability tied to the player's specific actions.
- This would make it impossible for TASers to create a universal pre-computed solution, as any slight deviation in input would lead to completely different future states.
2. Short-Term Predictability, Long-Term Chaos:
- Allowing locally accurate predictions (e.g., 5 seconds ahead) while ensuring global divergence over longer durations creates a scenario where computational brute force becomes ineffective.
- TASers might achieve short-term success but would fail when trying to "stitch together" sequential short-term optimizations, as their first few choices would influence chaotic divergence downstream.
3. Impossible by Definition:
- By making the game logic depend inherently on chaotic dynamics and player-specific variables, any deterministic "looking ahead" becomes fundamentally flawed.
- The chaotic divergence ensures that even with infinite computation, accurate long-term TASing isn’t feasible.
Redefining "Skill" in the Context of Chaos
1. Skill as Deontological Maxims:
- In a chaotic system, "skill" becomes less about precise calculation or deterministic prediction and more about qualitative heuristics:
-- Making choices that ensure favorable conditions for survival or success.
-- Relying on wisdom and adaptability rather than brute computation.
Skill vs. Computational Advantage:
- TAS relies on precise, mathematical optimization—a form of "computational foresight."
- A chaotic system undermines this foresight, leveling the playing field between humans and machines.
- "Skill" becomes about following general principles that work across a range of chaotic outcomes, not exact predictions.
TASing in a Chaotic Game
1. Minimizing TAS Advantage:
- This design minimizes TAS's traditional advantages by ensuring:
-- Save states and replays don’t afford extra insight into future states.
-- The only viable path to success is through strategies equally available to human players.
2. Blurred Line Between TAS and Human Play:
- When TAS loses its "godlike foresight" advantage, its output becomes indistinguishable from human play:
-- Both rely on short-term adaptations and general heuristics.
-- The TAS is effectively "just another player."
3. Philosophical Consequences:
- Saying "it can’t be TASed" reflects the impossibility of computationally optimizing play.
- Saying "a TAS isn’t very good" acknowledges that a TAS might exist but won’t perform meaningfully better than human play.
- Saying "the player can TAS too" reframes the discussion, making TAS tools fair game as they no longer confer an unfair advantage.
The phrases "It can’t be TASed" and "TASing the game is the same as playing the game" are not incompatible. They represent two perspectives on the same reality:
- "It can’t be TASed": TAS as traditionally understood (computational dominance) is impossible in this game.
- "TASing is the same as playing": TASing loses its distinction because the chaotic system removes the computational edge, leaving only skill and adaptability—qualities intrinsic to human play.
These perspectives unify when we recognize that chaos by design eliminates TAS as a separate category, forcing it to merge conceptually with standard gameplay.
The Ontology of Chaos-TAS Games
- By designing a game where chaos beats computational foresight:
1. TASing is redefined into something indistinguishable from human skill.
2. The "godlike TAS" no longer exists; all success stems from adaptive wisdom and happenstance.
3. A framework is created where "playing the game" and "beating the game" rely on universal principles of skill, rendering traditional TAS irrelevant.
This achieves a philosophical and practical unification: the TAS and the player are one.