Editing User:Reversedragon/Wavebuilder/2410-22 wave-score

{{BopCSS}}<!--
-->
= Can anyone help add my "wave score"? =

<div class="bop top">

<ins>[The following entry was "posted" (and automatically removed by moderator bots) on a subreddit for [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinite_Craft Infinite Craft].]</ins>

I've been idly working on a parallel combination game called "wavebuilder". That part mostly isn't important, but in the process I created a <strong>numerical scoring system for elements</strong>, and I'm wondering if anyone who is already familiar with Firefox extensions (or even Chrome, but I definitely want a Firefox one) could add this scoring system to an extension like Infinite Craft Helper. (It might also be neat to see on a database like InfiniBrowser.)

Basically it works like this:

* An element's <strong>sum</strong> starts at 1 and is calculated as the sum of the two elements that created it. If the same element is combined twice, one of them is considered to have a sum of 1.
* An element's <strong>moves</strong> count is simply the number of combinations required to create it, measured as the longest path from a parent element plus 1.
* An element's score is listed as <strong>sum:moves</strong>, like this: <code>Gargoyle 14:6</code>
** I also sometimes found it interesting to list elements with their largest possible <strong>sum</strong>: <code>Airship = 14:8 / 85</code>
* I usually just call this system the "wavebuilder score", although it could maybe be called the "wave score" or something.
* In my opinion the "canonical" score for an element is the lowest one — within reasonable limits of a palette of ~2000 elements or less.
** (This would mean that to be properly accurate, the extension would have to recalculate all the elements that depend on a given element, but that's a problem for whoever wants to code in JavaScript. I haven't actually coded this into my program yet.)

<hr class="dash" />

If you can understand Lisp, these are the exact algorithms currently used for sum and moves:

<pre>(defun hyle-sum-+ (a b)                  ; add up element sums to produce result sum
  (max                                    ; out of these two values...
     (if (equal (hyle-id a) (hyle-id b))  ; if the same element is used twice...
       (+ (hyle-sum a) 1)                 ; ...count one as a basic turn-1 element
       (+ (hyle-sum a) (hyle-sum b)))     ; ...otherwise add their scores
    1))                                   ; ...return either the sum or a number no less than 1

(defun hyle-moves-+ (a b)                ; add up element moves/turns/"plies"
  (+ 1                                    ; each new combination adds exactly one move to...
    (max (hyle-moves a) (hyle-moves b)))) ; the single element of the two with the greatest number of moves.</pre>

<hr class="dash" />

I think I'm most interested in seeing how ridiculously huge the sums on people's First Discoveries get, although this has many other possible uses, like finding the <em>smallest</em> sum or moves score for an element (which is basically what I designed it for).

If you have any thoughts on how to improve this scoring system such as other metrics to add — maybe there's some great insight from advanced mathematics on networks of combining elements that I missed? maybe there are crazy patterns to First Discoveries I didn't think about? — feel free to share them. I would gladly add a good metric to wavebuilder for what it counts for (the project is very unfinished), but in general I feel like Infinite Craft guides need better analysis tools so we can really start finding and discussing interesting patterns.

</div>

<div class="bop">
<h3><time datetime="2024-11-24T18:16:02Z">24-11</time></h3>

<ins>[This is taken from one of the prototype dictionaries within the Wavebuilder code repository.]</ins>

* the point value of every concept (<code>:sum</code>) is either 1 or the sum of the previous two concepts' point values.
* elements also have a <code>:moves</code> number shown after the colon, which is the raw number of actions required to reach the element after each previous element already exists.
* a concept's "canonical" point value is considered to be the <i class="line">lowest</i> sum required to create it, but I have also recorded the highest possible sums I know of to create particular concepts mostly just for fun.
* a third possible metric is "[https://github.com/expitau/InfiniteCraftWiki cost]", which is the total number of <i class="line">unique</i> elements required to create an element.
</div>

<div class="bop-foot">

<dl class="bop-meta">
{{BopRev|Ontology:P156| Wavebuilder: quilt score (cost) }}
{{BopRev|Ontology:P157| Wavebuilder: ply count (moves) }}
{{BopRev|Ontology:P158| Wavebuilder: wave sum }}
<!-- ; -->{{BopComment}}
{{BopCreated|2024-10-22T03:16:28Z}}
{{BopComment|   REJECTED from Reddit for karma.  post karma 1, comment karma 11}}
{{BopHandle|2410-22_wave-score}}
</dl></div><!--
-->[[Category:Wavebuilder]]  __NOTOC__