Schrodinger's Dragons - an Adventure enigma

[dark-aleph]

I've been playing Adventure for 25 years now, and it still manages to throw up surprises on a regular basis. But this one really got me thinking...

 

Like many Adventurers, I don't just try to get the chalice to the castle on game 3 - that's too easy. My preferred challenge is to set both difficulty switches to A, and then to have every object (including dragons, bat and microdot) in the castle when I finish (the flicker is astounding!). Since the dragons run from the sword on this setting, this requires more than a little planning and forethought, especially as I require that the dragons be alive at the conclusion.

 

So I was playing this variation and had every object in the castle, except the chalice and the bat carrying the gold key. I was about to release the bat in the castle, grab the chalice and win when the bat got away from me. It then flew into the castle, locking the door behind it. I was now standing outside the castle with the chalice, and every other object in the game locked inside. It makes locking your keys in your car look amateurish!

 

After I finished cursing, I started laughing, and after that I started thinking. I realised I had recreated the classic quantum mechanics thought experiment of Schrodinger's Cat. At some point, the bat will pick up a dragon, and at some point will fly over the sword with it - potentially killing the dragon. Eventually, all three dragons should end up dead - but without entering the castle there's no way to find out when. The conclusion is that that the castle contains partially dead and partially alive dragons! As time goes on, they are more and more likely to be dead, but to anyone outside the castle they will always be at least a little alive. A zombie Rhindle sounds even scarier than the real thing, even if she does look like a duck!

 

To anyone who understands quantum theory, is my interpretation correct? And to anyone who understands coding, can a dragon be killed in Adventure with the player off screen? I know the dragons and bat still move about independent of the player/character, but what interactions are they allowed with the various objects?

 

No wonder this game tops most favourite 2600 game polls.

[Lord Thag]

 

Schrodinger's dragons. That's great.

 

Yeah, you just about hit the nail on the head. See, who said video games rot your brain? Classical connundrums find new life on the 2600! Schrodinger would be proud.

 

It gets even worse though. What happens to Yorkle in there? It is a well established fact that Yorkle is terrified of the sword. How does this affect the experiment? Sure, they all run on the hard difficulty, but Yorkle is *afraid*. Poor guy. If we maintain that the probability of the dragons being dead given a sufficient amount of time, and we agree that they will always be partially alive to the outside observer, does that mean that Yorkle will be partially afraid, and if so, for how long? And, given his fear of it, does it make it more likely that Yorkle will survive longer, and is therefore partially more alive than the other two to an outside observer?

 

Then there's the whole principle in quantum mechanics that the observer directly affects the outcome of the expiriment with personal bias. Are the dragons more or less alive, given an observer's personal belief that they are?

 

Hmm. Deep. I need beer.

 

So, anyone else want to take a crack at the 'Dark-aleph's Castle' Connundrum?

[dark-aleph]

If it comes down to whether or not I believe the dragons are alive, then I choose to believe that they are. Just so I can think about Yorkle trying to run away from the gold key and the sword simultaneously, with nowhere to go! Partially afraid? I reckon Yorkle'd be blowing S.O.S. smoke rings from both ends.

[Godzilla]

AFAIK, adventure runs everything the whole time you are playing, whether its off screen, or on-screen. sort of an early virtual world gta type thing :-) with less pimps n ho's. (and obviously now with more quantum theory.)

[+batari]

If it comes down to whether or not I believe the dragons are alive, then I choose to believe that they are. Just so I can think about Yorkle trying to run away from the gold key and the sword simultaneously, with nowhere to go! Partially afraid? I reckon Yorkle'd be blowing S.O.S. smoke rings from both ends.

Actually, they are almost certainly 100% alive. If you want to test this theory, I think you can do a trick with a magnet, which the green dragon will try to guard, and then let loose the sword in this room, then leave and wait a while. Although the dragon and a sword are always in contact, the dragon will remain very much alive until you enter the room.

 

Well, I suppose I shouldn't forget the remote quantum possibility that perhaps 10^20 electrons might just happen to fail to tunnel through the energy well in a transistor in the TIA chip in the 2600 when they would normally be expected to, and in turn the 2600 unexpectedly registers a hardware collision between the sword and a dragon object. So the dragons are 99.9999999999999999999999999999999999999% alive and 0.0000000000000000000000000001% dead.

[danwinslow]

Then there's the whole principle in quantum mechanics that the observer directly affects the outcome of the expiriment with personal bias

 

This is a common misconception. The belief or bias of the observer has nothing to do with the quantum state either before or after observation. The only thing that matters is the observation, or lack of it, itself. People usally mix this up due to what they think they know about Heisenberg's Uncertainty principle. The Heisenberg U.P. demonstrates that you can never observe BOTH the velocity and the position of a subatomic particle ( specifically an electron, although its a general principle ) with the same accuracy. The more you know about one, the less you know about the other. While this seems strange, the truth is even stranger. Most people assume that the particle is disturbed by the measurement device in such a way as to produce the H.U.P., but this is not true. What produces the H.U.P. is that the particle actually does not have both a velocity and a position at the same time. Velocity and position are two complimentary phases of some other quality that we really don't have any way to think about directly. The fact that we think everything has to have both of these is an illusion formed by the way the quantum world collapses up to our macro world through observation and statistics.

 

The upshot is that our idea of what a 'thing' is, is incorrect. The further down you go into the quantum world, the less 'thingness' things have, and the stranger it all gets.

Edited April 19, 2006 by danwinslow

[D.Yancey]

With the amount of flicker the occurs when you enter that room, I'm not so sure you could kill the dragons if you tried. Of course, the room is not flickering when it's not being drawn on screen....or is it?

[dark-aleph]

That's a well constructed experiment, Batari, and indeed it does not result in a dead dragon. Taking D. Yancey's suggestion that flicker may hamper proceedings, I refined the experiment by reducing it to only the dragon and the sword. Switching difficulty back to B, I got a dragon to chase me while I carried the sword, and then dropped the sword immediately prior to moving on to the next screen. In this way I ensured that the dragon would cross the sword's path offscreen... and still, no dead dragon. I think that we can declare this myth busted! I will, however, take to heart your idea that there is still a microscopic chance of some absurd quantum failure - applying this to the real world, whenever someone is elsewhere they're a tiny, tiny bit less alive... or in other words *clears throat and sings* "Every time you say goodbye, I diiiee a little...!"

 

Dan, thanks! That's the clearest explanation of the Uncertainty Principle I think I've come across. Whichever theoretical physicist it was who said "if quantum theory doesn't terrify you, you haven't understood it" was certainly correct. And next time I overhear undergraduate philosophy students rambling about the 'thingness of things' I'll be a lot more tolerant.

[Robert M]

How do you get the dragons to stay in the castle with the sword in there with them?

 

Cheers!

[dark-aleph]

How do you get the dragons to stay in the castle with the sword in there with them?

 

Cheers!

 

Aye, there's the rub! It would be good if folk could try to figure this out themselves first, so...

 

*SPOILER WARNING*

 

First you have to get the bat carrying a live dragon - then you can use the sword to kill it without it running away. Then get the bat to carry the corpse into the castle, and swap it for an object in the middle of the screen. Do this for all three dragons, and afterwards take all other objects bar the bat and chalice to the castle. Leave the chalice just outside the door and release the bat inside (release the bat from the bottom of the screen so that it flies up - otherwise it might leave the castle again). Go outside, then press reset and carry the chalice in before the now alive dragons can get to the edge of the screen!

 

I've tried to figure a way of doing it without pressing reset, but have so far failed... Any takers?

[Robert M]

How do you get the dragons to stay in the castle with the sword in there with them?

 

Cheers!

 

Aye, there's the rub! It would be good if folk could try to figure this out themselves first, so...

 

*SPOILER WARNING*

 

First you have to get the bat carrying a live dragon - then you can use the sword to kill it without it running away. Then get the bat to carry the corpse into the castle, and swap it for an object in the middle of the screen. Do this for all three dragons, and afterwards take all other objects bar the bat and chalice to the castle. Leave the chalice just outside the door and release the bat inside (release the bat from the bottom of the screen so that it flies up - otherwise it might leave the castle again). Go outside, then press reset and carry the chalice in before the now alive dragons can get to the edge of the screen!

 

I've tried to figure a way of doing it without pressing reset, but have so far failed... Any takers?

 

 

Have you tried living the sword outside with the chalice, and then stack them up and do the old double push into the castle?

[A.J. Franzman]

Have you tried living the sword outside with the chalice, and then stack them up and do the old double push into the castle?

It would have to be a triple push, including the gold key (plus sword and chalice), otherwise Yorgle will leave. I don't know if the flicker will even let you do this.

 

There's another possible problem with it, too. Yorgle will only guard the chalice. If Yorgle is in the gold castle, with the gold key and chalice outside, will he stay inside? Or will he pop out the gate, then run away from the key without going back inside? The reset switch method may indeed be the only way to do the "everything in the castle, with 3 live dragons" trick.

 

BTW, the dragons do only die while onscreen. I noticed this a long time ago, when leaving the sword on the magnet for Grundle to find - he only dies when the player enters the room.

Edited April 19, 2006 by A.J. Franzman

[iguana]

Schrodinger's theory states that the dragons are BOTH dead AND alive at the same time inside the castle. it is not about probability, it relies on your actual observation in the castle. The real question though are do the Dragons exist if you are not in the room? In which case the dragons are not inside the room as there is no room to be inside.

this is pretty funny though.

Edited April 19, 2006 by iguana

[Room 34]

Didn't Schroedinger come up with the concept of the cat as an argument AGAINST the Uncertainty Principle?

 

I've never quite gotten what he was up to with the cat, but the fact is that you don't need a sentient observer to force particles into a state...

 

Anyway, back to the Adventure scenario. The dragons are 100% (and no less) alive, because AFAIK although the game keeps track of the positions of the objects at all times, it doesn't do anything to detect collisions between the dragons and the sword when they're off-screen. (Hence the scenario someone described earlier where the dragons aren't killed by the sword until you come into the room.)

 

Of course, the real question here is why is anyone spending the kind of time it takes to get every object (including the dragons) into the gold castle? Who has that much time on their hands? (And if you do, why not at least play a modern adventure game with some more depth? And I say this as a 2600 lover, and even an Adventure fan.)

Edited April 19, 2006 by Room 34

[+FujiSkunk]

Anyway, back to the Adventure scenario. The dragons are 100% (and no less) alive, because AFAIK although the game keeps track of the positions of the objects at all times, it doesn't do anything to detect collisions between the dragons and the sword when they're off-screen. (Hence the scenario someone described earlier where the dragons aren't killed by the sword until you come into the room.)

 

Someone else also described earlier why the dragons are most likely alive. This same someone also mentioned there is that microscopically miniscule chance that a few electrons jumped where they weren't supposed to, resulting in a collision detection where there wasn't supposed to be one. This same someone thus concluded the probability of the dragons being alive is roughly 99.9999999999999999999999999999999999999%, just a wee bit less than 100%.

 

You did read all the posts prior to answering, right?

 

 

Of course, the real question here is why is anyone spending the kind of time it takes to get every object (including the dragons) into the gold castle? Who has that much time on their hands? (And if you do, why not at least play a modern adventure game with some more depth? And I say this as a 2600 lover, and even an Adventure fan.)

 

Why don't you take up skydiving? Practice firewalking? Become a professional wrestler? Learn to needlepoint?

 

We spend our time doing what appeals to us.

Edited April 19, 2006 by skunkworx

[Room 34]

This same someone also mentioned there is that microscopically miniscule chance that a few electrons jumped where they weren't supposed to, resulting in a collision detection where there wasn't supposed to be one. This same someone thus concluded the probability of the dragons being alive is roughly 99.9999999999999999999999999999999999999%, just a wee bit less than 100%.

Yeah, well those are about the same odds that all of the molecules in my body will be in perfect alignment for me to walk through this wall right here...

 

*BONK*

 

Damn it!!!

 

[mos6507]

I was going to suggest running the game on Stella and then simply entering the debugger and interrogating memory to see if the dragons are alive, but it does appear that the answer has already been solved.

 

While the bat can rearrange objects off-screen, it looks like the sword relies on hardware collision detection (which flicker interferes with, as in Defender) which would not be applicable off-screen.

 

Nevertheless, Adventure is the poster-child for "emergent behavior" in videogame.

[+FujiSkunk]

This same someone also mentioned there is that microscopically miniscule chance that a few electrons jumped where they weren't supposed to, resulting in a collision detection where there wasn't supposed to be one. This same someone thus concluded the probability of the dragons being alive is roughly 99.9999999999999999999999999999999999999%, just a wee bit less than 100%.

Yeah, well those are about the same odds that all of the molecules in my body will be in perfect alignment for me to walk through this wall right here...

 

*BONK*

 

Damn it!!!

 

 

Keep trying. You'll get it some millenium.