Difference between revisions of "Wind"

Revision as of 14:43, 12 August 2008

This article currently only has information for Worms Armageddon. It is likely that this information also applies to Worms World Party, but this has not been confirmed.

Worms Armageddon

Precise information about the wind and the code behind it is not publically available, but tests reveal a few interesting things about how the wind is generated at the start of each turn, and how it is displayed in the wind indicator.

The wind indicator

The length of the red or blue wind bar in the wind indicator represents the strength of the wind. The longer the bar, the stronger the wind. Although it may appear as though the wind indicator can display a continuous spectrum of lengths, there are in fact only 21 distinct lengths that it will actually display (10 for each direction and 1 for no wind at all). It is possible that the actual wind as applied to the game environment is continuous - or at least has more possible values - and that the wind indicator just displays an approximation, but this is purely speculation. A simple test can be conducted to find out.

In pixels, the complete range of possible lengths for the blue and red wind bars and their corresponding wind strengths are as follows (this table is in the process of being completed)

Wind generation

Tests reveal two things about how the wind is generated:

• The wind will never be the same for two consecutive turns. This is unfalsifiable, but statistically probable - for 50 consecutive turns, there is a 91% chance that the wind will be the same for two consecutive turns on at least one occasion. Since this did not happen in the one test for it, it can be said with at least 91% certainty that the game's code prevents it from happening. This is the only piece of evidence to suggest that the wind for any given turn is in any way influenced by the wind generated for the previous turn.

• The direction and strength of the wind generated for a given turn is influenced by the position of the active worm at the start of that turn (this has been confirmed by Deadcode and CyberShadow but details remain secret). A worm standing at the far right edge of the map is far more likely to experience a leftward wind, and vice versa.

Tests for wind bias In these tests, the wind direction and strength was recorded for 50 consecutive turns for a lone worm standing in a fixed position on a 1920-pixel wide map. On the left, the results are shown for a worm standing in the middle of the map. On the right, results are shown for a worm standing on the rightmost pixel. The middle For a worm in the middle of the map, the winds are fairly balanced: Rightward wind occurs 20 times Leftward wind occurs 26 times Windless turns occur 4 times The edge But for a worm on the rightmost pixel, the winds are heavily biased in the leftward direction: Rightward wind occurs 10 times Leftward wind occurs 38 times Windless turns occur 2 times Not only is leftward wind more frequent, but also stronger. In fact, it hits maximum strength 20 times (over half all instances of leftward wind). Rightward wind is generally weaker, and in this test never once reached maximum strength, or even half-maximum. Note also that, despite occurring 20 times, the maximum leftward wind strength never occurs consecutively - adding further weight to the idea that wind will never be the same for two consecutive turns.