Forcing a certain outcome

[John]

I think I narrowed down the problem.

I declared this in an initial InLine object (outside of the trial
loop): FirstTrial = true

Then I negated that in an InLine object within the loop: FirstTrial =
false

It seems that negating it within the loop lead the program to ignore
my If statement, but only for issuing the outcome of the trial. The
code:

If FirstTrial Then
c.SetAttrib "ActorValue", "50/50"
c.SetAttrib "PartValue", "Bad"
took = true
End If

always seemed to be read though (it does come before the FirstTrial =
false statement though).

After reading this, does anyone have any idea what I'm talking about?
I think that my design may be too complicated to communicate on the
forum!

On Jun 16, 10:37 am, John <manutd... at gmail.com> wrote:
> First, I apologize if I haven't given enough information to solve this
> problem. Please let me know if you need more information!
>
> I am trying to force an outcome in this game I've designed, but only
> for the very first trial.
>
> Basically I have the program randomly choose a number 0-99 and for
> that to decide the outcome, but for the first trial I want to make
> sure that the initial choice and then outcome is always the same. I
> have created some code that usually leads to the outcome I want, but
> 1/10 times it seems to not work.
>
> More specifically, sometimes both the "actor" and "participant" are
> gaining points, which I don't want. Instead, I want the "actor" to
> always gain points and the "participant" to always lose points, but
> just for the very first trial. After that, I want to use the code I've
> created to determine the subsequent decisions.
>
> My failed solution: instead of allowing the computer to randomly
> generate a number, I tried to force it to use 0, but only for the
> first trial. This doesn't seem to work in about 1/10 times for some
> reason.
>
> So in an initial InLine object I state:
>
> FirstTrial = true
>
> Then in the Procedure I have:
>
> If FirstTrial Then
> c.SetAttrib "ActorValue", "50/50"
> c.SetAttrib "PartValue", "Bad"
> took = true
> End If
>
> Then in the general User script I have:
>
> Dim FirstTrial as Boolean
> 'Calculates how much someone's points will change if they took
> Function PointMod(Value as String, FirstTrial as Boolean) as Integer
> Randomize
> Dim percent as Integer
> percent = Random(0, 99)
> If FirstTrial Then
>         percent = 0
> End If
> Select Case Value
>         Case "Good"
>                 If percent < 85 Then
>                         pointMod = 10
>                 Else
>                         pointMod = -10
>                 End If
>         Case "Bad"
>                 If percent < 85 Then
>                         pointMod = -10
>                 Else
>                         pointMod = 10
>                 End If
>         Case "50/50"
>                 If percent < 50 Then
>                         pointMod = 10
>                 Else
>                         pointMod = -10
>                 End If
> End Select
> End Function

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