Showing posts with label Lazy blogger no picture. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Lazy blogger no picture. Show all posts
Sunday, July 22, 2012
Minor update
Worked on some tools that may or may not make it to Legend but have finally got a working a* path finding formula going. Maybe could update with something sometime soon but not much worth showing.
Sunday, July 15, 2012
Field of View
Reworking the basic display parts of my game as well as storage ideas for maps. What I currently have is far too cumbersome to work though what I am making may not be too efficent. Will work on it later but results are promising. Though side tracked by trying to figure out the ever elusive field of vision formula I always mess up. Completely pointless to anything I'm working on but I still want to get it licked if I ever use it in the future.
Currently working with something called the Bresenham's line algorithm. It's working for revealing all the squares I want revealed but I'm doing something wrong in pruning the blocked ones. Still working on it and learning from it and also may have something simpler to upgrade legends engine. Would just need some readjusting to work with the current generator though.
Currently working with something called the Bresenham's line algorithm. It's working for revealing all the squares I want revealed but I'm doing something wrong in pruning the blocked ones. Still working on it and learning from it and also may have something simpler to upgrade legends engine. Would just need some readjusting to work with the current generator though.
Tuesday, March 20, 2012
slow progress update.
Some progress that don't seem like progress is the standard at the moment. Legends and my other half played with testing grounds for things have hit some programing roadblocks. I have an idea of what's wrong with both but just not the time to sit down and really work it.
That said I am making progress on it. Legend has the very basic dungeon generation down, it's just the changing rooms that is odd at the moment. Best described as walking into the next corridor telports you back to starting room and the doorways aren't refreshing right. It took a while to figure that out as nothing made sense in my debug map and I couldn't walk through some doorways which were in reality walls. Still progress, I have hopes yet. If all else fails I'll just have to work on the items a bit to get them down.
That said I am making progress on it. Legend has the very basic dungeon generation down, it's just the changing rooms that is odd at the moment. Best described as walking into the next corridor telports you back to starting room and the doorways aren't refreshing right. It took a while to figure that out as nothing made sense in my debug map and I couldn't walk through some doorways which were in reality walls. Still progress, I have hopes yet. If all else fails I'll just have to work on the items a bit to get them down.
Tuesday, December 20, 2011
Revenge of the math
Some things just come back and bite you. The past few days I've felt the sting of things I've forgoten or ignored.
I'm horrid at math. Supposedly this is rare in computer science things but I just am. Through school I've generally programmed a calculator, which surprisingly I was allowed to get away with as somehow I knew the things by being able to program them, and just avoided those classes. College I jumped to a related degree that just plain had less math.
Last few days we needed some more graphical things set up. That required lines drawn between nearly the shortest points of some lines and some points, in other words everything I've been avoiding. The crash course has went alright, as this is not completely needed to be automated some corner cutting is needed but it is sad I've spent a lot of the past two days failing at math instead of being stuck on a programing problem. But I suppose that's life.
I'm horrid at math. Supposedly this is rare in computer science things but I just am. Through school I've generally programmed a calculator, which surprisingly I was allowed to get away with as somehow I knew the things by being able to program them, and just avoided those classes. College I jumped to a related degree that just plain had less math.
Last few days we needed some more graphical things set up. That required lines drawn between nearly the shortest points of some lines and some points, in other words everything I've been avoiding. The crash course has went alright, as this is not completely needed to be automated some corner cutting is needed but it is sad I've spent a lot of the past two days failing at math instead of being stuck on a programing problem. But I suppose that's life.
Wednesday, December 14, 2011
Still kicking post trip
Oh boy I haven't put anything up here in a while. I do have half an excuse though. Last week I was a timezone and a few states away from training and this week I have had work to deal with. The trip was interesting and we arrived in a below zero blizzard. Warmed up later though, other than that nothing to say beyond being somewhere else will ruin your ability to game as much as missing a flight home. That was an interesting 16 hours. For now though I still need to recover some more and get used to being in my native time zone and native work load.
Saturday, November 26, 2011
Neural network and work
The past week and leading up to thanksgiving has been a odd at work. They have decided to send me down to Colorado for some training as the software and my workload was sorta put on hold with preparing for this, they don't want me to start a project I can't finish before I leave, and some coworkers taking time off causing the things I could do to be a little less even though I'm at the tail end of most of the project I have. So this left me with a lot of time to think as I document and cleaned up the code and I decided to on break take up setting up some neural networks on my thumb drive.
I won't go too far into neural networks explanation as there are wikis for this. I have a bit of story on my interest in neural networks and other such research based programing though. In college I sat in on a Genetic Algorithm class for fun. I had an interest in it as I actually did some of my own exploration of it in middle or highschool after reading something in some magazine. I was using game maker way back then and doing some messing around in that that actually had some minor results, most of them being the agents evolving to find holes in my test area or simulation. Either way back at the class I was sitting in I learned a lot about them and learned the basic feed forward neural network. I had taken to making one and trying some things that hadn't been done before to my knowledge and have the neural networks learn to play tic tac toe by "learning" off each other.
This wasn't typical neural network training as I was just using the neural network to preform the work and because the concept of them seemed neat. The workhorse was a genetic algorithm picking and mutating wining agents every generation. This didn't quite work, there was something akin to subspecies in the code that more or less played rock paper scissors with each other. lets say there was 3 groups (that's what I sorta came to believe watching the games) group A would try and win diagonally, group B would try and win horizontally, and group C would try and wind vertically. The game was more or less decided on the first piece as each group had a very entrenched first move after an A agent would place it's move a B agent was basically give up and just fill in the board in a pattern that let A win, a group C would continue as normal and end up blocking the A agent while winning. similar relationship between group C and B. This let each group get enough representation in the genetic algorithms choice of fittest agents to have them represented in the next generation, which just leads to the same not really solving the problem and keeping the agents in equilibrium.
I haven't touched this problem in years but I was thinking about it on work, and decided to get some neural networks programed on break. Took a week with a lot of messing around but I got the agents to solve XOR and inverting the input which is my standard for a working neural network as I don't know too much about standards for these. I also made a "produce key" feature which allows a string to be made based on the weights and thresholds of the agent. This is actually very important to what I'm going for. While not completely versed in the genetic algorithm or neural network programing I've seen that it's kind of been leaning far to a naturalistic side of survival of the fittest. The fittest agent is taken and it has offspring that may be exactly the same or slightly different than it which does work but seems to be inefficient and leads to cycles of not solving anything as I've seen before with the tic tac toe test. So with this key I'm able to keep a "gene pool" and see if the offspring is worthwhile of being put in the next generation in regards to solving the problem. I may be wrong on this but my learning years ago didn't go on about pruning the genepool and making sure every agent is unique. So right now I have a working neural network and a will to try and revisit an old experiment and possibly produce something of worthwhile research which is some fun I haven't had in programing in a while.
I won't go too far into neural networks explanation as there are wikis for this. I have a bit of story on my interest in neural networks and other such research based programing though. In college I sat in on a Genetic Algorithm class for fun. I had an interest in it as I actually did some of my own exploration of it in middle or highschool after reading something in some magazine. I was using game maker way back then and doing some messing around in that that actually had some minor results, most of them being the agents evolving to find holes in my test area or simulation. Either way back at the class I was sitting in I learned a lot about them and learned the basic feed forward neural network. I had taken to making one and trying some things that hadn't been done before to my knowledge and have the neural networks learn to play tic tac toe by "learning" off each other.
This wasn't typical neural network training as I was just using the neural network to preform the work and because the concept of them seemed neat. The workhorse was a genetic algorithm picking and mutating wining agents every generation. This didn't quite work, there was something akin to subspecies in the code that more or less played rock paper scissors with each other. lets say there was 3 groups (that's what I sorta came to believe watching the games) group A would try and win diagonally, group B would try and win horizontally, and group C would try and wind vertically. The game was more or less decided on the first piece as each group had a very entrenched first move after an A agent would place it's move a B agent was basically give up and just fill in the board in a pattern that let A win, a group C would continue as normal and end up blocking the A agent while winning. similar relationship between group C and B. This let each group get enough representation in the genetic algorithms choice of fittest agents to have them represented in the next generation, which just leads to the same not really solving the problem and keeping the agents in equilibrium.
I haven't touched this problem in years but I was thinking about it on work, and decided to get some neural networks programed on break. Took a week with a lot of messing around but I got the agents to solve XOR and inverting the input which is my standard for a working neural network as I don't know too much about standards for these. I also made a "produce key" feature which allows a string to be made based on the weights and thresholds of the agent. This is actually very important to what I'm going for. While not completely versed in the genetic algorithm or neural network programing I've seen that it's kind of been leaning far to a naturalistic side of survival of the fittest. The fittest agent is taken and it has offspring that may be exactly the same or slightly different than it which does work but seems to be inefficient and leads to cycles of not solving anything as I've seen before with the tic tac toe test. So with this key I'm able to keep a "gene pool" and see if the offspring is worthwhile of being put in the next generation in regards to solving the problem. I may be wrong on this but my learning years ago didn't go on about pruning the genepool and making sure every agent is unique. So right now I have a working neural network and a will to try and revisit an old experiment and possibly produce something of worthwhile research which is some fun I haven't had in programing in a while.
Wednesday, October 12, 2011
Pythonic and work
Work has been intersting. First the whole new environment and people to interact with. Second is the work itself which is a lot of python. So I'll rant on a little bit about it while I try to get the urge to figure out something more entertaining hopefully for this weekend.
I was left with a lot of code to "roll back" to an earlier version of a program that runs python script. Some clients get sick of updating you see and getting one of these clients caused the entire library of the person I was replacing to break. It seems he was sent to actually get trained from people who made the program we patch and make our own scripts for behind the scenes instead of fumbling through documentation.
Using some old cold snippets and newer code that works with a lot of guessing has lead to some finally functioning programs. Somewhat slow large and cumbersome programs but workings ones none the less. All this somewhat ugly and done as fast as I could work got me looking into efficiency and good writing style for python and I come across something called "pythonic".
Pythonic is deemed "what experienced python programers expect to see" which sounds snobish, but it seems under that surface is some good things. Though first lets show off a "pythonic" philosophy that's so used in development most programs in Idle will show it jsut by executing the line "import this". The little bit is as follows.
The Zen of Python, by Tim Peters
Beautiful is better than ugly.
Explicit is better than implicit.
Simple is better than complex.
Complex is better than complicated.
Flat is better than nested.
Sparse is better than dense.
Readability counts.
Special cases aren't special enough to break the rules.
Although practicality beats purity.
Errors should never pass silently.
Unless explicitly silenced.
In the face of ambiguity, refuse the temptation to guess.
There should be one-- and preferably only one --obvious way to do it.
Although that way may not be obvious at first unless you're Dutch.
Now is better than never.
Although never is often better than *right* now.
If the implementation is hard to explain, it's a bad idea.
If the implementation is easy to explain, it may be a good idea.
Namespaces are one honking great idea -- let's do more of those!
A lot of pythons implementation and development follows a lot of this if you look through it. The entire idea of white space indenting is defiantly for readability and some other things can easily be seen in there. Other things such as list comprehension and other advanced programing techniques you don't really discover till you look for them and those were the sort of things that were hitting me over the head. For the past two weeks I've learned a lot about programing in python and got more than a few tricks to use. Mostly called Idioms. While I feel it's bad style to link out of the website if you got a grasp of python heading over to here will show a good amount of them.
It also seems a lot of their techniques are a bit faster than my C/java learnings tend to get me to create. Hopefuly I'll put more of the idioms to use in teh future though for right now I'd settle for being able to import my own modules under the program I work with. You don't miss functions until you have to cut and paste while updating the same functions over and over again.
I was left with a lot of code to "roll back" to an earlier version of a program that runs python script. Some clients get sick of updating you see and getting one of these clients caused the entire library of the person I was replacing to break. It seems he was sent to actually get trained from people who made the program we patch and make our own scripts for behind the scenes instead of fumbling through documentation.
Using some old cold snippets and newer code that works with a lot of guessing has lead to some finally functioning programs. Somewhat slow large and cumbersome programs but workings ones none the less. All this somewhat ugly and done as fast as I could work got me looking into efficiency and good writing style for python and I come across something called "pythonic".
Pythonic is deemed "what experienced python programers expect to see" which sounds snobish, but it seems under that surface is some good things. Though first lets show off a "pythonic" philosophy that's so used in development most programs in Idle will show it jsut by executing the line "import this". The little bit is as follows.
The Zen of Python, by Tim Peters
Beautiful is better than ugly.
Explicit is better than implicit.
Simple is better than complex.
Complex is better than complicated.
Flat is better than nested.
Sparse is better than dense.
Readability counts.
Special cases aren't special enough to break the rules.
Although practicality beats purity.
Errors should never pass silently.
Unless explicitly silenced.
In the face of ambiguity, refuse the temptation to guess.
There should be one-- and preferably only one --obvious way to do it.
Although that way may not be obvious at first unless you're Dutch.
Now is better than never.
Although never is often better than *right* now.
If the implementation is hard to explain, it's a bad idea.
If the implementation is easy to explain, it may be a good idea.
Namespaces are one honking great idea -- let's do more of those!
A lot of pythons implementation and development follows a lot of this if you look through it. The entire idea of white space indenting is defiantly for readability and some other things can easily be seen in there. Other things such as list comprehension and other advanced programing techniques you don't really discover till you look for them and those were the sort of things that were hitting me over the head. For the past two weeks I've learned a lot about programing in python and got more than a few tricks to use. Mostly called Idioms. While I feel it's bad style to link out of the website if you got a grasp of python heading over to here will show a good amount of them.
It also seems a lot of their techniques are a bit faster than my C/java learnings tend to get me to create. Hopefuly I'll put more of the idioms to use in teh future though for right now I'd settle for being able to import my own modules under the program I work with. You don't miss functions until you have to cut and paste while updating the same functions over and over again.
Friday, October 7, 2011
Worker bee
I really need to update this more. Getting used to a very early morning shift is proving to be difficult and leaving me a bit lazy in the afternoon. On the plus side I've learned quite a few tricks with python.
But enough with that. I have been minorly tinkering with some things. A few more lines in the roguelike mostly for door use and some musing over how to do text messages. Though much hasn't been done with that, though I did however go through to what point in my favorite list is.
Bout at step 5 though I'm trying to add doors as those seem like a challenge in my schema. Saving will be interesting though I've been playing with saving files on the job. While this may be over your heads and I haven't touched it at all in playing with snakes I'll go on about it. Python actually has an object tokenizer (I belive it's called this) so long story short it can write large chunks of data to a file in some internal format. It's neat, though I may be skiping it with how my code works, maybe for a later project I'll use it whole sale but I don't know how deep or shallow it goes with objects inside objects.
Speaking of playing with snakes it's almost time to get to it's goal of a simple "fighter" system. I think roughly 4 more topics and it could start being put together. Though I'm still unsure how well I'm getting the concepts across. Scope for instance is really hard for me to explain but I understand it decently well through usage, the nomenclature and reasoning it out with others is beyond me though. While not entirely spoilers I have loops, classes, I/O, and actually using a file planed. How well I'll execute it remains to be seen. Either way that's my poor attempt at an update, I'll rest a bit less this weekend and actually try and get some stuff done in my free time. Been getting a little lax with rewarding myself for the job.
But enough with that. I have been minorly tinkering with some things. A few more lines in the roguelike mostly for door use and some musing over how to do text messages. Though much hasn't been done with that, though I did however go through to what point in my favorite list is.
Bout at step 5 though I'm trying to add doors as those seem like a challenge in my schema. Saving will be interesting though I've been playing with saving files on the job. While this may be over your heads and I haven't touched it at all in playing with snakes I'll go on about it. Python actually has an object tokenizer (I belive it's called this) so long story short it can write large chunks of data to a file in some internal format. It's neat, though I may be skiping it with how my code works, maybe for a later project I'll use it whole sale but I don't know how deep or shallow it goes with objects inside objects.
Speaking of playing with snakes it's almost time to get to it's goal of a simple "fighter" system. I think roughly 4 more topics and it could start being put together. Though I'm still unsure how well I'm getting the concepts across. Scope for instance is really hard for me to explain but I understand it decently well through usage, the nomenclature and reasoning it out with others is beyond me though. While not entirely spoilers I have loops, classes, I/O, and actually using a file planed. How well I'll execute it remains to be seen. Either way that's my poor attempt at an update, I'll rest a bit less this weekend and actually try and get some stuff done in my free time. Been getting a little lax with rewarding myself for the job.
Friday, September 23, 2011
Thoughts about older RPGs
Combat project has sorta been on hiatus with all the job junk but I've been thinking about turn based games. Asking a question akin to "how would you make turn based RPGs competitive" to some people got a few answers. Some not so worthwhile to me as they were subjective such "awesome graphics" and "Epic plot" but a few managed to get my attention.
Pre-battle Tactics
This one got my attention, though not much of an explanation, as I may have never seen this explored. In most traditional RPGs the most you did before a battle was buy then equip the best items, maybe use some monster repel to keep random encounters down, and recover. That's it, quite little you do that does have an impact in battle but not much of a choice until you're low on supplies. While I didn't get a proper explanation there was a few thoughts on this. The most overwhelming thought was of "buff" spells.
In most old games, I say most as I haven't seen them all, enhancement spells only last until the end of battle. After that the only thing that sticks with you is a number of negative status effects like poison. While this could have been due to memory issues it may have been a hold over from earlier games. The thought upon hearing Pre-battle tactics was a very simple idea of "everyone gets to cast a free enhancement spell". Using some menu you could set up your battle strategy and get all your buff spells or possibly abilities cast. Personally in every RPG I never used buff spells besides bosses for the simple reason that the turn you spent casting them could used defeating the enemies, it only served to make the battle one turn longer for the random encounters to me. How true this is I'm not sure but given a system of setting up some insurance on battles would tempt me into using them, a good strategy for making MP more valuable as it could be expended a lot more.
Beyond that I'm not sure. I'm not the most creative thinker in this sort of thing but for a more traditional Turn based RPG this seems like very unexplored territory so it's gotten me interested in it. Maybe something to look more into for later musings.
Menu System Reduction
I had mixed feelings on this but it's true. There are a lot of menus in RPGs. Often you'll go through a few sunscreens to do something other than the basic attack, even then you'll have to select the enemy which might as well count as a menu. It's a hard thing to solve for me though there may be a few ways to go about it.
While I have not played Mass effect I have seen it in action. The ability to pull up your non standard attack actions with one button then use a mouse/direction to select which one and target at the same time hides a lot of the menu systems without taking away from the number of it. Excuse me if I'm misremember a bit here though, it's been a bit over a year since a viewing of a Mass Effect game in action was seen here. While it may just be hiding the steps it's a lot better to look at.
This is sorta something that I was beginning to realize in combat project, 4 to 5 options every attack was seeming to be a lot. May be ways to reduce this as skipping some of them but at minimum you need to do 2 selections unless some sort of macro system was in place to automate a few decisions. More work needed on that thought though if that gets done soon you guys may not benefit from it.
Either way some lite thinking going on. I will try to get back to putting something up here but it may be hectic till I get an understanding of the situation. Though with how it goes I tend to do more little things like my own projects or drawing the more work I need to do. Either way if you have seen games which do some of these things I'd like to hear about them to look into it.
Pre-battle Tactics
This one got my attention, though not much of an explanation, as I may have never seen this explored. In most traditional RPGs the most you did before a battle was buy then equip the best items, maybe use some monster repel to keep random encounters down, and recover. That's it, quite little you do that does have an impact in battle but not much of a choice until you're low on supplies. While I didn't get a proper explanation there was a few thoughts on this. The most overwhelming thought was of "buff" spells.
In most old games, I say most as I haven't seen them all, enhancement spells only last until the end of battle. After that the only thing that sticks with you is a number of negative status effects like poison. While this could have been due to memory issues it may have been a hold over from earlier games. The thought upon hearing Pre-battle tactics was a very simple idea of "everyone gets to cast a free enhancement spell". Using some menu you could set up your battle strategy and get all your buff spells or possibly abilities cast. Personally in every RPG I never used buff spells besides bosses for the simple reason that the turn you spent casting them could used defeating the enemies, it only served to make the battle one turn longer for the random encounters to me. How true this is I'm not sure but given a system of setting up some insurance on battles would tempt me into using them, a good strategy for making MP more valuable as it could be expended a lot more.
Beyond that I'm not sure. I'm not the most creative thinker in this sort of thing but for a more traditional Turn based RPG this seems like very unexplored territory so it's gotten me interested in it. Maybe something to look more into for later musings.
Menu System Reduction
I had mixed feelings on this but it's true. There are a lot of menus in RPGs. Often you'll go through a few sunscreens to do something other than the basic attack, even then you'll have to select the enemy which might as well count as a menu. It's a hard thing to solve for me though there may be a few ways to go about it.
While I have not played Mass effect I have seen it in action. The ability to pull up your non standard attack actions with one button then use a mouse/direction to select which one and target at the same time hides a lot of the menu systems without taking away from the number of it. Excuse me if I'm misremember a bit here though, it's been a bit over a year since a viewing of a Mass Effect game in action was seen here. While it may just be hiding the steps it's a lot better to look at.
This is sorta something that I was beginning to realize in combat project, 4 to 5 options every attack was seeming to be a lot. May be ways to reduce this as skipping some of them but at minimum you need to do 2 selections unless some sort of macro system was in place to automate a few decisions. More work needed on that thought though if that gets done soon you guys may not benefit from it.
Either way some lite thinking going on. I will try to get back to putting something up here but it may be hectic till I get an understanding of the situation. Though with how it goes I tend to do more little things like my own projects or drawing the more work I need to do. Either way if you have seen games which do some of these things I'd like to hear about them to look into it.
Wednesday, September 21, 2011
Still alive and looking at things
Haven't been posting for the past few days with mandatory drug tests, pre job paper work, and getting transportation set up. Between that just been trying to keep it cool as I'm going to probalby have a tough first few weeks.
To prepair for that I've looked into some "advanced python programing" on a whim not sure what It'd spit out. And got this video on youtube. "Advanced Python or Understanding Python"is presentation hosted by google for "advanced" topics on python. The quotes are there as I'm not sure where advanced starts and guts of the system begins. It's one of those things that even with the amount of time I've spent with python haven't really gotten into. I can get the gist of most of it especially the objects, some of which I've used such as generators, but some of it went over my head. Some things blow my mind such as the ability and execution of functions inside functions and the possible ability to contain more functions within.
Though there is a positive note to this. While I know that I am not the best python programer out there if this is labeled "advanced" and seemingly things that may never be used by me I might do alright. Beyond that a friend of mine is tentivly looking to try and make a game and I've been tryingforce him into python using tkinter to help him out with it. Playing with snakes post I made are me trying to refine what the points I was trying to get to him when I tried to "teach" him for giggles at one point.
Other than that been sleeping in as much as possible because the days I can do that are soon to come to an end. Though I'll finally have a job programing which is what I've been after for a long time. But for tonight it's Wings night, wonderful yet horrible for you buffalo wings from Pizza hut. Their "WingStreet" wings have a deal every Wednesday which means I can grab a box of them for nearly 4 bucks. For that price I'm up for getting take out.
While not the best wings I've gotten there isn't much choice around here. Not that many restaurants in the area though there are quite a few bars but doubt they are known for their chicken wings. I've had a quite a few failed attempts at cooking good chicken. Either way it's a nice spicy thing that I do enjoy even it's bad for my health. So with this a question for you guys. Anything you get regularly that's horrible for you but eat/drink it anyways?
To prepair for that I've looked into some "advanced python programing" on a whim not sure what It'd spit out. And got this video on youtube. "Advanced Python or Understanding Python"is presentation hosted by google for "advanced" topics on python. The quotes are there as I'm not sure where advanced starts and guts of the system begins. It's one of those things that even with the amount of time I've spent with python haven't really gotten into. I can get the gist of most of it especially the objects, some of which I've used such as generators, but some of it went over my head. Some things blow my mind such as the ability and execution of functions inside functions and the possible ability to contain more functions within.
Though there is a positive note to this. While I know that I am not the best python programer out there if this is labeled "advanced" and seemingly things that may never be used by me I might do alright. Beyond that a friend of mine is tentivly looking to try and make a game and I've been trying
Other than that been sleeping in as much as possible because the days I can do that are soon to come to an end. Though I'll finally have a job programing which is what I've been after for a long time. But for tonight it's Wings night, wonderful yet horrible for you buffalo wings from Pizza hut. Their "WingStreet" wings have a deal every Wednesday which means I can grab a box of them for nearly 4 bucks. For that price I'm up for getting take out.
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| All rights for this image owned by pizza hut, please don't sue me. |
Thursday, September 15, 2011
Planing ahead
Got framework for ai punisher use for combat project done. I may or may not get it out monday but I'm close. I just need to refine a bit more but am happy how close I am. I will have to do a grammar check or something cause as it stands it has some intentional and unintentional phrasing that looks like it came out of a bad translation.
Other than that I have been making some plans for more M&M. Last time we tested a very odd character design against something that was plainly created from my experience with group fights. So something that may not be soloable at all being fought by something that abused a bit of the energy system we were using. So to make a more fair test I'm making something that isn't quite as gimmicky for both sides.
While I have some tricks for the "boss" it isn't quite as bad as the other one. Last one had some healing mechanics, position ones (knocking PC down and away so they'd take a full turn to get back), and just a lot of toughness to get through. A lot was learned but it wasn't quite a typical case. This one is more "standard" some defense tricks with psuedo summons but nothing quite as bad as the other. Throw on some standard and slightly non standard attacks and it should work alright. For the test PC I have something that is called a "blaster" in M&M's ideas. Ranged attack and nothing too fancy.
It'll be interesting to see what the energy expenditure is. For the real game the idea was you defeat monster to get energy from them, run out bad things happen. Defeating these monsters is the only way to get such energy so DM would need a good estimate on what a regular character uses in a fight. I think he vastly underestimated it with original ideas but by how much I'm not sure. It'll be an interesting experiment if we could set aside the few hours for it.I might come back here with results, I like working on M&M but have few people to talk to about it with them being DMs or players of mine.
Other than that I have one game finishing up and another that could use a bit more work on. A sandbox horror game with lots of "surprises" for my players to find. Far too many NPCs for me to keep track of and I really need to define all their quirks and relation with other NPCs. They were generated from tarot draws a while ago and have some simple back story on each one but with around two dozen even a bunch of simple back stories takes while to flesh out.
So that's my long term entertainment. What are you guys looking forward to working on?
Other than that I have been making some plans for more M&M. Last time we tested a very odd character design against something that was plainly created from my experience with group fights. So something that may not be soloable at all being fought by something that abused a bit of the energy system we were using. So to make a more fair test I'm making something that isn't quite as gimmicky for both sides.
While I have some tricks for the "boss" it isn't quite as bad as the other one. Last one had some healing mechanics, position ones (knocking PC down and away so they'd take a full turn to get back), and just a lot of toughness to get through. A lot was learned but it wasn't quite a typical case. This one is more "standard" some defense tricks with psuedo summons but nothing quite as bad as the other. Throw on some standard and slightly non standard attacks and it should work alright. For the test PC I have something that is called a "blaster" in M&M's ideas. Ranged attack and nothing too fancy.
It'll be interesting to see what the energy expenditure is. For the real game the idea was you defeat monster to get energy from them, run out bad things happen. Defeating these monsters is the only way to get such energy so DM would need a good estimate on what a regular character uses in a fight. I think he vastly underestimated it with original ideas but by how much I'm not sure. It'll be an interesting experiment if we could set aside the few hours for it.I might come back here with results, I like working on M&M but have few people to talk to about it with them being DMs or players of mine.
Other than that I have one game finishing up and another that could use a bit more work on. A sandbox horror game with lots of "surprises" for my players to find. Far too many NPCs for me to keep track of and I really need to define all their quirks and relation with other NPCs. They were generated from tarot draws a while ago and have some simple back story on each one but with around two dozen even a bunch of simple back stories takes while to flesh out.
So that's my long term entertainment. What are you guys looking forward to working on?
Tuesday, September 13, 2011
debuging and things that could use some debug
I think I found the first of my problems in combat test. Good old variable mess up. For example block has a block_wait and a block_change and parry, and dodge have similar. The X_change is how many turns at max it can wait to change and block_wait is the actual counter for it. Easy change but showing that you should always make variable names you'll get exactly what they mean on viewing. So going to work on fully testing that out and getting the AI using punisher things itself.
Other than that my Friend finally got me to get the minecraft pre release files as we could try out a server. That didn't work too well. For whatever reason I would log in, load for a while, move around ineffectively then get timedout. Seems to be a reported occurrence with no real work around so we're left with rolling back to stable version until a real update comes out. It's annoying but it's something I can expect.
Though I did make a single player world. Which happened to be an island. With one tree. No farm animals spawned but there was some tall grass. So after carefully harvesting the tree in hopes of saplings I made a farm. From there I hit tall grass for seeds to receive one. This did not seem good with the newly implemented food system. So I left the island a bit to find a few other small islands with tall grass and nothing on them and returned to plant it and do some tree management. Before the wheat was fully grown I found out that you can starve to death in game, now I made the mistake of jumping into the ocean to see if I could get in the seemingly glowing holes at the bottom before I died which I didn't make it too. This messes up my evaluation of "Starving" because I swore it left me at .5 a heart before suffication under water took that away, but I could be wrong.
After that I made another world with more trees and the hunger problem came again. I had plenty of sheep around and got lost getting other meats through hunting. Raw meat I found out does next to nothing for hunger which proved anoying when I started wolfing food down on the last food indicater. Though I have a little wheat farm growing in the middle of a lake and want to get some pumpkins or watermelons to see how they work in game.
While buggy as hell I'm actually very interested to see how food will now play in the game. I also want notch to leave the option of "classic" play style where food doesn't matter but I doubt that'll happen. It'd be a shame though, as he did say there would be ways to ignore food and Creative omnipotent mode isn't quite the way to do that.
Other than that my Friend finally got me to get the minecraft pre release files as we could try out a server. That didn't work too well. For whatever reason I would log in, load for a while, move around ineffectively then get timedout. Seems to be a reported occurrence with no real work around so we're left with rolling back to stable version until a real update comes out. It's annoying but it's something I can expect.
Though I did make a single player world. Which happened to be an island. With one tree. No farm animals spawned but there was some tall grass. So after carefully harvesting the tree in hopes of saplings I made a farm. From there I hit tall grass for seeds to receive one. This did not seem good with the newly implemented food system. So I left the island a bit to find a few other small islands with tall grass and nothing on them and returned to plant it and do some tree management. Before the wheat was fully grown I found out that you can starve to death in game, now I made the mistake of jumping into the ocean to see if I could get in the seemingly glowing holes at the bottom before I died which I didn't make it too. This messes up my evaluation of "Starving" because I swore it left me at .5 a heart before suffication under water took that away, but I could be wrong.
After that I made another world with more trees and the hunger problem came again. I had plenty of sheep around and got lost getting other meats through hunting. Raw meat I found out does next to nothing for hunger which proved anoying when I started wolfing food down on the last food indicater. Though I have a little wheat farm growing in the middle of a lake and want to get some pumpkins or watermelons to see how they work in game.
While buggy as hell I'm actually very interested to see how food will now play in the game. I also want notch to leave the option of "classic" play style where food doesn't matter but I doubt that'll happen. It'd be a shame though, as he did say there would be ways to ignore food and Creative omnipotent mode isn't quite the way to do that.
Friday, September 9, 2011
Random musings
Yesterday went well thought this week is seemingly wash for Combat project so I'll extend the projected date a week and take it easy this weekend. So just a bit of random musings.
Though I have found out a few things about python. I managed to get multithreading working though it seems the python language is not the most thread friendly language. I managed to use that with a bit of socket work for a simple echo server test. It was interesting to do something that had some non game programing.
I have done work in other languages in a higher end capacity but python has mostly been my personal amusement code. Simple little programs or games of no real value to anyone else. It's easy to transport, quick to set up, and isn't too much of a pain to work in beyond self and whitespace issues so it works well for that. On the professional end I have no code in it, and that was what the people were looking for the other day.
It was a little rough but at least it was something to show the people who were interviewing me along with some older code. It could use a lot more polish and I did cope out with some timeout functions instaed of perfectly avoiding deadlock which would only appearing in 4+ thread cases where something would get stuck on listening for a reply. I considered it a win though getting it all done in one night.
While on that subject, have you guys done anything quicker and more proficiently than you expected when you needed it?
Though I have found out a few things about python. I managed to get multithreading working though it seems the python language is not the most thread friendly language. I managed to use that with a bit of socket work for a simple echo server test. It was interesting to do something that had some non game programing.
I have done work in other languages in a higher end capacity but python has mostly been my personal amusement code. Simple little programs or games of no real value to anyone else. It's easy to transport, quick to set up, and isn't too much of a pain to work in beyond self and whitespace issues so it works well for that. On the professional end I have no code in it, and that was what the people were looking for the other day.
It was a little rough but at least it was something to show the people who were interviewing me along with some older code. It could use a lot more polish and I did cope out with some timeout functions instaed of perfectly avoiding deadlock which would only appearing in 4+ thread cases where something would get stuck on listening for a reply. I considered it a win though getting it all done in one night.
While on that subject, have you guys done anything quicker and more proficiently than you expected when you needed it?
Wednesday, September 7, 2011
further delay on anything interesting
It seems I won't have anything interesting today to offer either. After some poking around I got a quick interview to show up to. While this all well and good I have little current programing examples. To remedy this all day I have been producing some newer examples of my competence in coding.
Namely some multithreading and server client code. Then combining the two. It's going along decently well as this is territory I have covered quite a bit in my schooling days but I have never done it in python so there is a few language hurdles to overcoming though hopefully it'll help out in the end. I may attempt to get some SQL examples done but I don't think that will happen if I want sleep.
Namely some multithreading and server client code. Then combining the two. It's going along decently well as this is territory I have covered quite a bit in my schooling days but I have never done it in python so there is a few language hurdles to overcoming though hopefully it'll help out in the end. I may attempt to get some SQL examples done but I don't think that will happen if I want sleep.
Thursday, September 1, 2011
Mutants and Masterminds foe and friend design.
A little late for me but it seems Wednesday is the weekly bug friends day. Project combat test is in debug and low level code work right now. With that said there isn't much that may be interesting so I think I'll talk about something else. As I've mentioned before I play and run Mutants and Masterminds second edition. So today I'll talk a bit about making characters from the DM side of the table.
There are three things to consider when making NPCs in Mutants and Master minds 2nd (and 3rd) edition. What it can do, how does it stay alive with pesky players attacking it, and what makes it interesting. The first two are relatively easy as there mechanic based so I'll start there.
What can your being of pure evil do?
The question we ask ourselves in the morning, it's less about what it does and more about what it can do to your Players. This is is more or less the characters "Attack". This does not necessarily mean it's brute force abilities to cause players pain but more often does. In some games it could be the NPC social connection or even it's ability to enable others to be the big problem with them staying the background. Those social ones can be covered in a few skills and feats or if you get fancy emotion control and some sort of boost system if you don't just hand wave it for the sanity I seem to lack. After that we have the "main" power that work wonderful for refluffing what it can do.
The offensive powers in question are Damage, Fatigue, Nauseate, Paralyze, Snare, and Stun. While this isn't all the attack flagged powers it's the ones I see most useful as apposed to trip and dazzle which have a more limited use. First thing I would like to say which is odd is that third edition had a real good idea which I will explain in a second. first every attack in mutants and masterminds is resisted by a "save" on the targets side, how much you fail by chooses the effect. In Second edition the effects listed above had two or three stages of failure of varying degrees of severity but were set based on the type chosen. In 3rd edition they combined everything but damage and let you choose the effects beyond the powers name. This allows for a lot more customization and more fitting effects. Though either way it should be aimed at some how taking someone out of combat. Which isn't too hard for damage, the non damage abilities have a harder time of sticking though they have the benefit of "stacking" and increasing the severity of their effects if a player has failed a save earlier. Either way these should be kept near the "Power level cap" or how much the game allows you have them at though this is to taste for a Game master and their musings.
While this list isn't impressive it is all based on your execution and proper extra use. For example Paralyze is slated in game as some sort of debilitating attack on a persons ability to react be it having to work through the confusion of some sort of poison or some monsters attack that saps the strength away from them. I have taken it's frame work and used it for an ice based attack from a foe that tries to encase in a layer of ice. I could have also used snare for the effect or even stun for this idea but paralyze was an interesting choice as it could slow players down. The only change was making it a "fortitude" save. I could get into a lot more on this but the bread and butter of any person making something in mutants and masterminds is using the same thing in different manner or even just a different weakness.
What can't your being of pure evil do?
The flip side of what we just discussed. It being inconvenienced, its defense and possibly an Achilles heel in the design. There are less things to consider here but they are very important. The first is do you want this to be a boss or a group of enemy encounter.
There is a big difference, the mutant and masterminds system runs on saves against everything, and a low roll means you fail and possibly takes you out of the fight. For players this is mitigated by hero points which can reroll the save around a "safe" zone or even higher for most attacks they would take. If you make a solo NPC to take the players on it is going to be thrashed by each one of them. Taking the group route hopefully means a division of attention as his buddies will be taking up the slack even if he goes down. Before I can go into the intricate parts I have to talk about saves in Mutants and Masterminds, if you played 3rd or later D&D they should look familar.
Saves in Mutants and Masterminds are Toughness, Fortitude, Reflex, and Will. From a mechanical standpoint they have more to do with the offensive powers above than what they mean in game but I'll go through the general explanation of each one. Toughness is effectively your HP in Mutants and masterminds, it allows you to shrug off attacks like nothing and take a lot of hits. For the most part only straight up damage. This one should always be near "Power level cap" for a villain because damage saves are rigged to have a higher chance to fail and plainly mess up a character than anything else. Other saves have roughly a 55% chance of succeeding if you are matched with it, damage saves have a 30% chance of passing so it is key that these are up to limits or the character in mind will go down far more easily than would be imagined. For this reason I tend to call everything that isn't Toughness a secondary save as they aren't the primary means of ending combat in a mechanical sense. Fortitude is the "strength of body" save, things like poison or shocks to the system go here. Reflex is actually one of the more import of the secondary saves, some powers may target it directly but it covers area of effect avoiding. Willpower is the flip side of Fortitude as it is the "strength of the mind" save that generally allows overcoming illusions and pain among other generic slated things.
Unlike Toughness these secondary saves are probably not the best thing to cap. In mutants and masterminds second edition there was an odd design decision to allow these to go up to PL+5 which when completely maxed out allows for a 70% chance of passing the save in question, I believe this is more from 3.X D&D than anything and actually makes things a bit difficult in designing solo encounters or boss battles where the villains are a higher PL. There is also the fact that it is kind of cheap to just cap these, as unlike toughness there are only a few powers that can take a character out of combat like toughness and last like an unconscious condition. So in general I follow the Mastermind Manuals "level based progression" of the D&D good and bad saves. One of the secondary saves is chosen to be "good" which means it's roughly double the bad saves values. There is a formula to this equation of good and bad save but it would probably be too long and pointless so I'll post up a small mock up chart here which is effectively what I use anyways. A thing to be mentioned is M&M is assumed to be played around Power level 10, it can be played higher or lower but it's assumed to stick around 10. The result is a character that isn't a brick wall for non damaging powers to get through. These aren't quite up to cap and will have a little variance when attributes are figured out due to save calculation. It also adds a bit of flavor when the big huge monster has a higher fortitude save, the small nibble melee fighter has a higher reflex, and the psionic powerhouse has a higher will save though it may not always be the case.
Why is your being of pure evil interesting?
Hardest question to answer. At the end of the day you will have a pile of numbers to throw at the players but why about this one over the last one is always a challenge. I commonly refer to this as the gimmick portion of the character and it can either be in the power set or its flaws. This one I can't really answer but it should be a theme to the character and how it's powers work, it doesn't even have to be blatant just something to tie the numbers together. I have made bosses that have abilities that drain down and on depletion give them a nasty complication (players never saw this happen) and ones that had reactive effects to show their prowess in ability. Though I will admit over the year or so in this game I've gotten a lot better and faster at this. Early bosses and such were a horrible situation that were often far too easy which was fine in learning a system. There is a lot of mechanical potential just in the books for interesting situations with a bit of thought into what the NPCs.
Well this was far too long and possibly convoluted for people that don't know much about D&D. So as a question for those that have stayed through all of this have you played any table top games?
There are three things to consider when making NPCs in Mutants and Master minds 2nd (and 3rd) edition. What it can do, how does it stay alive with pesky players attacking it, and what makes it interesting. The first two are relatively easy as there mechanic based so I'll start there.
What can your being of pure evil do?
The question we ask ourselves in the morning, it's less about what it does and more about what it can do to your Players. This is is more or less the characters "Attack". This does not necessarily mean it's brute force abilities to cause players pain but more often does. In some games it could be the NPC social connection or even it's ability to enable others to be the big problem with them staying the background. Those social ones can be covered in a few skills and feats or if you get fancy emotion control and some sort of boost system if you don't just hand wave it for the sanity I seem to lack. After that we have the "main" power that work wonderful for refluffing what it can do.
The offensive powers in question are Damage, Fatigue, Nauseate, Paralyze, Snare, and Stun. While this isn't all the attack flagged powers it's the ones I see most useful as apposed to trip and dazzle which have a more limited use. First thing I would like to say which is odd is that third edition had a real good idea which I will explain in a second. first every attack in mutants and masterminds is resisted by a "save" on the targets side, how much you fail by chooses the effect. In Second edition the effects listed above had two or three stages of failure of varying degrees of severity but were set based on the type chosen. In 3rd edition they combined everything but damage and let you choose the effects beyond the powers name. This allows for a lot more customization and more fitting effects. Though either way it should be aimed at some how taking someone out of combat. Which isn't too hard for damage, the non damage abilities have a harder time of sticking though they have the benefit of "stacking" and increasing the severity of their effects if a player has failed a save earlier. Either way these should be kept near the "Power level cap" or how much the game allows you have them at though this is to taste for a Game master and their musings.
While this list isn't impressive it is all based on your execution and proper extra use. For example Paralyze is slated in game as some sort of debilitating attack on a persons ability to react be it having to work through the confusion of some sort of poison or some monsters attack that saps the strength away from them. I have taken it's frame work and used it for an ice based attack from a foe that tries to encase in a layer of ice. I could have also used snare for the effect or even stun for this idea but paralyze was an interesting choice as it could slow players down. The only change was making it a "fortitude" save. I could get into a lot more on this but the bread and butter of any person making something in mutants and masterminds is using the same thing in different manner or even just a different weakness.
What can't your being of pure evil do?
The flip side of what we just discussed. It being inconvenienced, its defense and possibly an Achilles heel in the design. There are less things to consider here but they are very important. The first is do you want this to be a boss or a group of enemy encounter.
There is a big difference, the mutant and masterminds system runs on saves against everything, and a low roll means you fail and possibly takes you out of the fight. For players this is mitigated by hero points which can reroll the save around a "safe" zone or even higher for most attacks they would take. If you make a solo NPC to take the players on it is going to be thrashed by each one of them. Taking the group route hopefully means a division of attention as his buddies will be taking up the slack even if he goes down. Before I can go into the intricate parts I have to talk about saves in Mutants and Masterminds, if you played 3rd or later D&D they should look familar.
Saves in Mutants and Masterminds are Toughness, Fortitude, Reflex, and Will. From a mechanical standpoint they have more to do with the offensive powers above than what they mean in game but I'll go through the general explanation of each one. Toughness is effectively your HP in Mutants and masterminds, it allows you to shrug off attacks like nothing and take a lot of hits. For the most part only straight up damage. This one should always be near "Power level cap" for a villain because damage saves are rigged to have a higher chance to fail and plainly mess up a character than anything else. Other saves have roughly a 55% chance of succeeding if you are matched with it, damage saves have a 30% chance of passing so it is key that these are up to limits or the character in mind will go down far more easily than would be imagined. For this reason I tend to call everything that isn't Toughness a secondary save as they aren't the primary means of ending combat in a mechanical sense. Fortitude is the "strength of body" save, things like poison or shocks to the system go here. Reflex is actually one of the more import of the secondary saves, some powers may target it directly but it covers area of effect avoiding. Willpower is the flip side of Fortitude as it is the "strength of the mind" save that generally allows overcoming illusions and pain among other generic slated things.
Unlike Toughness these secondary saves are probably not the best thing to cap. In mutants and masterminds second edition there was an odd design decision to allow these to go up to PL+5 which when completely maxed out allows for a 70% chance of passing the save in question, I believe this is more from 3.X D&D than anything and actually makes things a bit difficult in designing solo encounters or boss battles where the villains are a higher PL. There is also the fact that it is kind of cheap to just cap these, as unlike toughness there are only a few powers that can take a character out of combat like toughness and last like an unconscious condition. So in general I follow the Mastermind Manuals "level based progression" of the D&D good and bad saves. One of the secondary saves is chosen to be "good" which means it's roughly double the bad saves values. There is a formula to this equation of good and bad save but it would probably be too long and pointless so I'll post up a small mock up chart here which is effectively what I use anyways. A thing to be mentioned is M&M is assumed to be played around Power level 10, it can be played higher or lower but it's assumed to stick around 10. The result is a character that isn't a brick wall for non damaging powers to get through. These aren't quite up to cap and will have a little variance when attributes are figured out due to save calculation. It also adds a bit of flavor when the big huge monster has a higher fortitude save, the small nibble melee fighter has a higher reflex, and the psionic powerhouse has a higher will save though it may not always be the case.
Why is your being of pure evil interesting?
Hardest question to answer. At the end of the day you will have a pile of numbers to throw at the players but why about this one over the last one is always a challenge. I commonly refer to this as the gimmick portion of the character and it can either be in the power set or its flaws. This one I can't really answer but it should be a theme to the character and how it's powers work, it doesn't even have to be blatant just something to tie the numbers together. I have made bosses that have abilities that drain down and on depletion give them a nasty complication (players never saw this happen) and ones that had reactive effects to show their prowess in ability. Though I will admit over the year or so in this game I've gotten a lot better and faster at this. Early bosses and such were a horrible situation that were often far too easy which was fine in learning a system. There is a lot of mechanical potential just in the books for interesting situations with a bit of thought into what the NPCs.
Well this was far too long and possibly convoluted for people that don't know much about D&D. So as a question for those that have stayed through all of this have you played any table top games?
Monday, August 29, 2011
To AI and beyond
Well finally figured out what my problem was. After getting tired of looking for the print statements manually I just used find function to scroll through them out. It seems I had made a debug method inside the charcter class to display all the pools and this is where the debug spam was coming from, for some reason I could not see the debug in character_debug_pool_list() unless it was commented out.
So that is taken care of for now. Now I am working on a more inteligent AI system. Currently in a text file is some mental sorting going on about what variables I should have and what basic procedures I should go through. This may develop into it's own class but I'm not sure yet.
The basic idea is to let it "see" that someone is blocking then possibly use armor breaker later to maximize damage on the player. The same is true for the other punisher moves. This leaves dice pool manipulation up in the air, but I'm not sure if I'll even be having that for most monsters. So far it's getting organized and looks alright but I'll have to start testing it.
Beyond that is actual demo. I can simply set up "choose from this list of monsters to fight" and have that sort of demo. It'll work but it seems a little cheap. I should at least try to turn it into a simple game of sorts, maybe even have some leveling up as it is a RPG but that is for later. Though thoughts on it is ever X levels gain another dice to roll and maybe just standard +1 hp per level. Maybe even throw a weapon or two in there for increased damage.
So that is taken care of for now. Now I am working on a more inteligent AI system. Currently in a text file is some mental sorting going on about what variables I should have and what basic procedures I should go through. This may develop into it's own class but I'm not sure yet.
The basic idea is to let it "see" that someone is blocking then possibly use armor breaker later to maximize damage on the player. The same is true for the other punisher moves. This leaves dice pool manipulation up in the air, but I'm not sure if I'll even be having that for most monsters. So far it's getting organized and looks alright but I'll have to start testing it.
Beyond that is actual demo. I can simply set up "choose from this list of monsters to fight" and have that sort of demo. It'll work but it seems a little cheap. I should at least try to turn it into a simple game of sorts, maybe even have some leveling up as it is a RPG but that is for later. Though thoughts on it is ever X levels gain another dice to roll and maybe just standard +1 hp per level. Maybe even throw a weapon or two in there for increased damage.
Wednesday, August 24, 2011
AI concerns and clean up.
Entering in the punisher move for bonus against parry and thinking about AI while generally cleaning it up. Not much to say about it so I'll dive into what I can discuss.
The current thought is how is the AI going to have and use edge abilities. For the most part they are specialized and require some "thought" behind them in use. One thought is that it can "cheat" and just have a timer to see if you stayed in a defensive position for x turns. It's simple and effective but unsatisfying. I don't want to make this too complex so I decided having some random dice maxes based on what type it is. Give it a chance to suprise a player while having a tendancy to lean towards one type.
Beyond that I think I'll have the AIs picking pools be very simple, possibly stupidly so. At the moment I have little idea on what is the best strategy for going about an turn though some ideas have been thought of. It's a start at least.
The current thought is how is the AI going to have and use edge abilities. For the most part they are specialized and require some "thought" behind them in use. One thought is that it can "cheat" and just have a timer to see if you stayed in a defensive position for x turns. It's simple and effective but unsatisfying. I don't want to make this too complex so I decided having some random dice maxes based on what type it is. Give it a chance to suprise a player while having a tendancy to lean towards one type.
Beyond that I think I'll have the AIs picking pools be very simple, possibly stupidly so. At the moment I have little idea on what is the best strategy for going about an turn though some ideas have been thought of. It's a start at least.
Saturday, August 20, 2011
Quick update
Due to family things and the game later tonight I'll just be putting up this quick update.
Currently have been coding in Combat Test Project to get the counter effect in the parry defense. After some viewing of how the "make attack" method has bloated I decided I need to trim it down and separate it into useful components. Got the bare parts seperated to allow counter attack to work.
For counter attack I've been stuck on for a while. It's a passive effect that comes along with using the parry defense type. For a while I've been struggling with how to implement it, the basic idea of this engine was to allow you a lot of control of how you defend and attack. The first blush idea was to allow a new smaller pool to be rolled from the successes on the attack but that seemed random. Going off the defense pool seemed silly and going off the attack pool seemed a little too much of a guarantee of a second hit if you're on the offensive.
I've decided to just take the solution of using the attack pool with some penalties to it. It's not the most intersting solution but it'll work for now. As it keeps turtling strategies to a minimum by dividing up potential defense pool dice.
As for next steps I need to get this attack method cleaned up. This means separating all the bonus and penalty searching into multiple methods which is a chore. Though for my piece of mind when working on this it needs to be done.
Currently have been coding in Combat Test Project to get the counter effect in the parry defense. After some viewing of how the "make attack" method has bloated I decided I need to trim it down and separate it into useful components. Got the bare parts seperated to allow counter attack to work.
For counter attack I've been stuck on for a while. It's a passive effect that comes along with using the parry defense type. For a while I've been struggling with how to implement it, the basic idea of this engine was to allow you a lot of control of how you defend and attack. The first blush idea was to allow a new smaller pool to be rolled from the successes on the attack but that seemed random. Going off the defense pool seemed silly and going off the attack pool seemed a little too much of a guarantee of a second hit if you're on the offensive.
I've decided to just take the solution of using the attack pool with some penalties to it. It's not the most intersting solution but it'll work for now. As it keeps turtling strategies to a minimum by dividing up potential defense pool dice.
As for next steps I need to get this attack method cleaned up. This means separating all the bonus and penalty searching into multiple methods which is a chore. Though for my piece of mind when working on this it needs to be done.
Friday, August 19, 2011
Being playtester is suffering
Some things have been coming up recently but I have finally gotten some things started with a friend that we have had planed for a while. He'll be running a 2nd edition Mutants and Masterminds game soon themed around Puella Magi Madoka Magica anime that had come out recently. To do this he's been messing with some systems in it to better fit the thematic ideas.
Basic idea is a constant need for energy to power the attacks, defenses, healing and all that so we looked into the energy system from the mastermind manual splat book. It gives a pool based on constitution of energy points to use and everything that isn't straight up hitting someone with your fist has some power points invested in it to come up with a number of these energy points to fuel it. The one twist was to not allow energy points to regenerate naturally To not ruin his plans I made up a character and a boss to see where the chips fall and it was very interesting.
First off friend was willing to do this to see how it is from the GM side of the Mutants and masterminds screen. He's been in three games so far from the players side one of which I run, so seeing how it works from behind the all concealing and powerful DM screen was a new experience. The second part was to see how much this energy system will work for game along with some other homebrew ideas to work around low energy points.
So for this I made the Maiden of despair via a quicker tarot card method I shown earlier. The fluffy results was this.
Hunched over a form that roughly looks like a long black haired women who is crying. Her form is made of monochrome pictures, diary, and letters about a man she loved yet kept a distance from. The man eventually moved onto a women whom he found attractive and actually shown interest in being his lover. This rough exterior is easily torn away by talking about the situation. Doing so reveals a shriveled child like figure inside who desperately tells itself everything is fine as it tries to patch up the holes others leave when trying to reveal her faults. She is at her worst when she conflicts with her self seeing herself at fault and tries to tear away her own memories and throw them at those around her to make sense of while she pastes up up extras to fix the holes.
Twisted and fitting for the game ideals. Made a character ins a similar method only with less ideas behind it, more focused on a power set which went very weird. From the looks of it the way she worked was going to be very energy efficient. All her powers were ones that boosted up her ability to deal damage and take damage with a few rule bendy ways to add an extra effect to them. The Not witch made was meant to take on groups so it would be an intersting fight.
Cut to it and we found out even with her energy point approach she blew through the energy point restoring the witches provided without actually wounding the thing. between a combination of missing and damage saves the character was solely on the losing end. The abilities I set up as part of her fluff were very effective against a melee combatant due to throwing her out of melee range on a failure again the trip effect. I originally was making a blaster magic user before realizing the monster didn't have a single way to deal with range so I switched to melee, and did that back fire.
So the first play test ended with retreat, 4 wounds, and 30 energy points of 120 expended. So the thought expenditure of energy was vastly underestimated especially if this would be a character who was running very energy light. The drops were estimated to only recover 20 energy points per boss defeated. He said he learned a lot .I feel I made a mismatch that may not be the best to learn from but we'll see. I'll probably try again later with some learned in character strategy but I plan on making a few more scenarios for him to work with. Either way he gets experience and possibly more foes/allies for in game use.
Basic idea is a constant need for energy to power the attacks, defenses, healing and all that so we looked into the energy system from the mastermind manual splat book. It gives a pool based on constitution of energy points to use and everything that isn't straight up hitting someone with your fist has some power points invested in it to come up with a number of these energy points to fuel it. The one twist was to not allow energy points to regenerate naturally To not ruin his plans I made up a character and a boss to see where the chips fall and it was very interesting.
First off friend was willing to do this to see how it is from the GM side of the Mutants and masterminds screen. He's been in three games so far from the players side one of which I run, so seeing how it works from behind the all concealing and powerful DM screen was a new experience. The second part was to see how much this energy system will work for game along with some other homebrew ideas to work around low energy points.
So for this I made the Maiden of despair via a quicker tarot card method I shown earlier. The fluffy results was this.
Hunched over a form that roughly looks like a long black haired women who is crying. Her form is made of monochrome pictures, diary, and letters about a man she loved yet kept a distance from. The man eventually moved onto a women whom he found attractive and actually shown interest in being his lover. This rough exterior is easily torn away by talking about the situation. Doing so reveals a shriveled child like figure inside who desperately tells itself everything is fine as it tries to patch up the holes others leave when trying to reveal her faults. She is at her worst when she conflicts with her self seeing herself at fault and tries to tear away her own memories and throw them at those around her to make sense of while she pastes up up extras to fix the holes.
Twisted and fitting for the game ideals. Made a character ins a similar method only with less ideas behind it, more focused on a power set which went very weird. From the looks of it the way she worked was going to be very energy efficient. All her powers were ones that boosted up her ability to deal damage and take damage with a few rule bendy ways to add an extra effect to them. The Not witch made was meant to take on groups so it would be an intersting fight.
Cut to it and we found out even with her energy point approach she blew through the energy point restoring the witches provided without actually wounding the thing. between a combination of missing and damage saves the character was solely on the losing end. The abilities I set up as part of her fluff were very effective against a melee combatant due to throwing her out of melee range on a failure again the trip effect. I originally was making a blaster magic user before realizing the monster didn't have a single way to deal with range so I switched to melee, and did that back fire.
So the first play test ended with retreat, 4 wounds, and 30 energy points of 120 expended. So the thought expenditure of energy was vastly underestimated especially if this would be a character who was running very energy light. The drops were estimated to only recover 20 energy points per boss defeated. He said he learned a lot .I feel I made a mismatch that may not be the best to learn from but we'll see. I'll probably try again later with some learned in character strategy but I plan on making a few more scenarios for him to work with. Either way he gets experience and possibly more foes/allies for in game use.
Tuesday, August 16, 2011
Graphical limitations
Yesterday had an unexpected changes so didn't get to do much yesterday. Though today I did grab a few things and even got pygame downloaded. I'll get to what this means in a minute.
For the most part I am not used to graphical approach to programing. I don't have the math for fancy 3d effects and 2d painting to a screen can run into some annoying issues. I have done a bit of both, never really took a fancy to it. Basic python is console based so text only. While that's fine with me I think I could move onto other things.
Python comes with an inbuilt graphical GUI system called TKinter. It's like using inbuilt system things or HTML things, everything is standard issue and pretty uniform. I personally don't like using it, in it's default mode it shoves everything in a left, center, or right aligned fashion and unless you start using different containers which I ran into problems with you can't exactly place based on X and Y coordinates.
This is inbuilt and has issues with a number of image formats. The kind I like to export to. There are solutions to this that involve other modules. pygame is such a module but as the name suggests it comes with other games too. I haven't worked with it but I plan on doing a bit of tutorial looking. Nothing too complex for now but learning new coding things is something I should really do more of.
I may not be doing anything here with it for a while though it would be nice to upgrade the current system into something that's more appealing. The current goal in having it coded is that with minor adjustments I could run it with a graphics engine.
For the most part I am not used to graphical approach to programing. I don't have the math for fancy 3d effects and 2d painting to a screen can run into some annoying issues. I have done a bit of both, never really took a fancy to it. Basic python is console based so text only. While that's fine with me I think I could move onto other things.
Python comes with an inbuilt graphical GUI system called TKinter. It's like using inbuilt system things or HTML things, everything is standard issue and pretty uniform. I personally don't like using it, in it's default mode it shoves everything in a left, center, or right aligned fashion and unless you start using different containers which I ran into problems with you can't exactly place based on X and Y coordinates.
This is inbuilt and has issues with a number of image formats. The kind I like to export to. There are solutions to this that involve other modules. pygame is such a module but as the name suggests it comes with other games too. I haven't worked with it but I plan on doing a bit of tutorial looking. Nothing too complex for now but learning new coding things is something I should really do more of.
I may not be doing anything here with it for a while though it would be nice to upgrade the current system into something that's more appealing. The current goal in having it coded is that with minor adjustments I could run it with a graphics engine.
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