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Anonymous
11 years ago
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Sneaky algorithm

It seems to me that certain items only appear in GO HQ when either I don't need them, or I haven't got enough room in my storage to buy them. I have thought this for a while but thought I was probabl...
Anonymous's avatar
Anonymous
11 years ago
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@jeffk42 wrote:


Of course, I don't know how they've designed HQ. It could be that when you put something up for sale, a sale request is sent to the server, given an id and maintained in a pool (a huge hash? idk) until someone clicks on HQ, at which point the server sends back an id reference to 24 semi-random sales.  That may be over-simplifying it. But the overhead to filter those items for every single HQ click would be significant.  Rather than just (for example) grabbing 24 hash keys, you need to get the "type" of every item in the pool, determine the needed percentages based on weights so you don't just always get 24 of your highest weighted item, and then actively seek out that many of each type of item. If the only way to get to a sale is by hash key, this becomes an extremely expensive series of operations.  And it would have to be executed on every single HQ click!  A database would have more overhead, but would allow filtering on type.  You'd still probably need to do multiple queries to ensure a properly weighted result. (apologies to the EA devs for what is probably a gross over-simplification for something that certainly required a lot of effort to implement)

Looking to another source, I took a peek at EA's careers site to see what skills and experience they might be searching for.  Unfortunately, it isn't always possible to tell which jobs go with which games, but I did see a number of positions where experience with several different languages and database platforms was requested, so no help there.  Other than violating the Ts&Cs of the game, it might be possible to reverse engineer the client app (or packet-sniff the traffic) and gain insight into how the back end works, but it's not worth the effort for a free game! LOL.  I'd rather that they just implement a free-market commodities trading system that either has no caps on prices, or caps them very high (say, 999,999 Simoleons), effectively leaving them uncapped.  Daniel would not buy unsold items, but the sale could be cancelled and reposted with a different price.  (Discussed ad nauseam elsewhere so I won't explain it again here.)

Anonymous's avatar
Anonymous
11 years ago
Approved
@etamni103 wrote:

Looking to another source, I took a peek at EA's careers site to see what skills and experience they might be searching for.  Unfortunately, it isn't always possible to tell which jobs go with which games, but I did see a number of positions where experience with several different languages and database platforms was requested, so no help there.


Also, in the 15 years I've been a software engineer, I don't know that I've ever once seen a set of job requirements accurately match the "actual" job requirements, lol. :-)

  • Anonymous's avatar
    Anonymous
    11 years ago
    Approved

    I experienced this the other day with light bulbs.  Light bulbs are everywhere, easy ish to make and I usually have a few of them.  

    Yep... I needed one for a key and, despite trying for a LONG time I couldn't find one. "Odd? There's always ligh bulbs!"  I made one and, literally after completing the task, the GHQ listed light bulbs again.

    Grrrrr.

  • Anonymous's avatar
    Anonymous
    11 years ago
    Approved

    As a software developer myself, I'd say that if you found a JD that matches to a T everything you'll be doing to a T within software dev, then run, don't walk away from that offer. That has legacy/dinosaur system or plodding thinkers written all over it. (o:

    • Anonymous's avatar
      Anonymous
      11 years ago
      Approved
      @keithroby wrote:

      As a software developer myself, I'd say that if you found a JD that matches to a T everything you'll be doing to a T within software dev, then run, don't walk away from that offer. That has legacy/dinosaur system or plodding thinkers written all over it. (o:

      No doubt!  Again, was just hoping to see if the company was hinting at anything about the back end by posting job requirements that included references to particular platforms.  Alas, they have so many games (and so many previous acquisitions) that it is impossible to get that hint from their job announcements!

      If this helps resolve your issue, please click accept solution as this may help others with the same issue to find a resolution as well.  XP is appreciated but not required.

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