Thursday, July 29, 2010

New Easier KavidiKali - Beta 1.1 Launched.

Hi Friends,

Thank you very much for your support for KavidiKali Beta 1.0.
We really appreciate all the valuable feedback received from you.

We had a tough time prioritizing them, and have included the most important ones in KavidiKali Beta 1.1 being released today.

Major features.

1. Easier to play with new difficulty level settings - Easy, Medium and Hard.
2. Tutorial to guide newbies.
3. Score display - see your standing in the game as it progresses.
4. Two new boards to choose from (Red Floor & Sand and Tile)

What else? U will know when U see it :)

So could you please have a look at kavidikali.com and let us know thoughts on New KavidiKali Beta 1.1?

Thanks,
Dhanan

Thursday, July 1, 2010

Why getting 4 or 8 is difficult - technical explanation.

Note: This post talks about an older version of KavidiKali (Beta 1.0).

Hi,

I'm getting a few complaints from the users of KavidiKali.com that sometimes it is taking too much time and throws to get 4 or 8.

First of all, thank you all for that valuable feedback; I really want to learn about your experience of playing the game.

Technical explanation:

There are two methods to determine a throw's result.

1. Since the result of a throw would be 1, 2, 3, 4 or 8, we could randomly choose one from these five possible results. In this way there is equal chance of getting either one of these results.

2. But in real life, the result of a Kavidi throw is determined by the state of the individual Kavidis, There are four possible combinations that will result in "1" as shown below:

Throw Value : 1

Throw Value : 1

Throw Value: 1

Throw Value: 1

But there is only one combination that will result in 8 or 4 as shown below

Throw Value: 8

:Throw Vlaue: 4

The probability of getting "1" is four times that of getting 4 or 8. The probability of getting "2" is even higher. We followed this second approach to give a real life Kavidi Kali experience.

Now how come computer is getting 4s and 8s when I am not getting it?

The algorithm is exactly the same, it's just a coincidence, the same can happen the other way around too, this is exactly how a real world Kavidi Kali between two Malayalis in God's Own Country will be.

Keep the feedback flowing in :)

Thanks,
Dhanan