The Mini Arena

[countlieberkuhn]

Making a new thread for the mini-arena, which I'm hoping will see some use in mallboro once it's done It's been tweaked a fair bit and now has 7 paradigms (just added dark knight).

The idea is characters will be premade using a combination of 20 level up packages, each with varying amount of HP, Str, and Mag (the only stats used in the program). A set of 3 paradigms will also be chosen for each character. All of the paradigms are entirely pre-set, and cannot be altered. This makes it easier to balance, as powerful skills like flare have only a 10% chance of being cast when in a black mage paradigm, for example. Once a character has been made, that's it. No level ups or anything. The characters should all be staying at the same level, so that I can say "Cloud versus Sephiroth: Who will win?", display their stats and paradigms, and then you guys can bet. For what, I dunno. Maybe just shits and giggles

The point is, rather than having a smaller roster of constantly changing characters which require maintenance, people can just design a character, and I'll whack 'em into the program, and then they can be randomly selected to fight in an Arena event. No more maintenance. With enough characters and paradigm combinations, as well as a hefty reliance on the RNG, there should be plenty of room for interesting betting.

This won't be nearly as involving or deep as the main Arena, requiring nothing more than placing a bet and maybe contributing a character, so the two should be able to go together quite nicely, appealing to different types of player

I've posted 3 battle outputs here so you can see what it's looking like, although some if it won't make much sense as you don't know what some of the paradigms/skills do exactly - some are quite wibbly.

For example, the monk skill 'suplex': Deals damage equal to 50% Str + 10% enemy max HP. 25% chance to fail, causing user to take half the damage caused and not passively regen HP that turn. Chance increases to 75% if user's current HP is lower than enemy's current HP at time of use.


blitzball.goatpen.org/miniarena/

Edit: If you're wondering why power break doesn't seem to do much to Sephiroth in the Cloud v Sephiroth match, it's because all dark knight skills ignore damage-altering effects. Dark attack is only about as powerful as a regular attack in most cases and requires a small HP sacrifice, but the payoff is that it can ignore things like power break.

[Bob]

Definitely an interesting idea! It REALLY makes me want to make my own fighting...thing. I've been itching to design my own thing that wasn't FF-based (though there would be definite similarities in some fields, of course). I've been building up a bunch of ideas for it, just gotta compile them and design my new program!

Of course, right now on the agenda is Arena 4.0, where I plan to mess around with statuses a tad and maybe implement gambits. But I suppose I should first just get the current Arena going! I'm so behind on that! Sorry, everybody!

[countlieberkuhn]

That's Ok Bob! And yeah, I'm using the FF skills as inspiration for the skills and how they work, but in most cases I'm tweaking them and adding more randomness and chance for failure and such (as with the suplex) in order to make up for the fact I only have 3 stats to work with It's mostly making life easier for me, but it does mean I've got to be a bit more creative with how things work from a balance perspective, because I don't have MP as a limitation

It is fun though, and feels more like I'm creating my own fighting program rather than an FF imitation, which I like.

[Bob]

Yeah, your program seems to have just minor stat elements and random shifts between paradigms, so the paradigms just need to compliment your stats and that's it. The only downside I can see is that there's a chance with a setup like this that there will be an "ultimate build" that always wins (though most programs have that setup). Hope it works out!

[countlieberkuhn]

Haha, I'm hoping that an extra-heavy reliance on randomness will stop any build from being too powerful, although I admit I'm having trouble balancing monks at the moment. Mainly the passive regen - trying to strike a balance so that it'll heal a somewhat meaningful amount for people without masses of HP, but not heal too for those who do.

I'm currently regretting making a dancer paradigm, which encompasses elements of bard, dancer, and geomancer into a single paradigm for maximum randomness. Problem is it means coding about 5 moves into each individual move (sing, dance, terrain), and some are proving a lot more complex than I initially anticipated. I've been coding 'sing' for the last 2 hours, when it took me just 2 minutes to code 'climhazzard', since all I really had to do was copy my code for flare, and change 'str' to 'mag'. With sing, I'm working with temporary alterations of stats and stuff, which I hadn't really planned for in the first place. Lots more variables and if statements have to be added in existing areas of code now

Climhazzard's a rare attack like Flare, but for warriors to make them a bit more exciting, rather than just power break/armor break whores.

[countlieberkuhn]

Finally made the Dancer paradigm! Biggest pain in the arse ever! But it's done (save for balance testing) and now I can move onto the Thief paradigm, which should be a lot of fun. I've had some of ideas as to how I can incorporate an actual stealing mechanic into a battle system that doesn't involve items. Here's what I've got for it right now, although the numbers will likely change after it's made and been balance tested a bit.



Thief paradigms revolve around the 'thievery' and 'coin' mechanics, which can only by increased by successfully landing thief skills. These mechanics allow a thief to become incredibly strong over a prolonged battle, but they start off weak.

25% Mug - Deals damage equal to 40% Str. Steals 1-3 gil. Increases coin and thievery counter by amount equal to number of gil stolen. (By comparison, 'attack' deals damage equal to 75% Str)

20% Pilfer HP - Deals damage equal to thievery counter x 2. Restores health by an equal amount. Increases thievery counter by 1.

20% Soul Swipe - Deals damage equal to thievery counter x 2 and inflicts berserk on an opponent for 2 turns. Increases thievery counter by 1.

15% Coin - Throws all pilfered gil at opponent. Opponent receives damage equal to 1% of their max HP for each gil thrown. Coin counter resets to 0 after use.

20% Paradigm Shift - Changes to a new paradigm (20% rate of occurence is standard across all paradigms)

Switch Bonus: Pilfer Gil - When switching to a thief paradigm, steals 1-10 gil from an opponent. Increases thievery and coin counters by an amount equal to number of gil stolen.

Passive Bonus: Thievery - Thievery increases the damage dealt with Mug by 5% x thievery count. I.e. Thievery count of 5 increases damage by 25%. Thievery and Coin counters do not reset during a paradigm shift.

Note that for the passive, it increases damage by 25% AFTER calculating 40% of the strength of the user. So, if Mug would have done 100 damage originally, having 5 stacks of thievery would increase the damage to 125.

[Bob]

Your program sounds very fun and playable. I like that it's limit-able random. And yeah, my Sing, Dance, and Terrain functions are HUGE compared to others. In the upgrade, one thing I hope to do is make all those skills that target all a bit more compact. Right now if I say, change the power of Aerora, I have to change 3 different damage outputs.

[countlieberkuhn]

Ouch. It's the sort of thing that's easy to do though, especially if you start trying to incorporate mechanics you didn't originally plan for. I found that out when I introduced a sleep mechanic, and had to incorporate the code for waking up when taking damage in so many different places. And my program hasn't got nearly as many stats and variables to account for!

[countlieberkuhn]

Another update: The thief paradigm has been completed, and as it turned out it needed buffing from its original design, mainly in terms of thievery and coin gain.

I've added 3 more battle reports to this link for y'all to look at if you're bored. I have to admit, the 2 involving Yuffie (my prototype thief) are pretty intense though! The other new one is between Yuna and Rydia.

blitzball.goatpen.org/miniarena/

Note that there was an error with the damage increase from berserk when I made these, so berserked Yuna was hitting for about 100 more than she was supposed to in her match against Yuffie. I still posted it though as it showcases the thief's capacity for an epic comeback perfectly.

The program's nearly ready for Mallboro use though I'm gonna add a Berserker class (which should have simple skills to code), a Dragoon class, maaaaybe add an Alchemist class, and add a new skill to the Monk and Gunner classes. Should done by Thursday or Friday!

[Bob]

Heh, sweet! Yours might be ready before mine!

[countlieberkuhn]

On second thoughts, it won't be Today and tomorrow have become booked up with things to do, so maybe monday now XD

[countlieberkuhn]

Hey guys! The mini arena program is almost done, and before it gets uploaded for use on Mallboro, I want to know if there's any other job class or character archetype they'd like to see? I'll give a quick run-down of all the currently existing paradigms so you can see what might need adding. Some classes have been adapted a bit from their usual roles so as to try and fill certain niches in my program (and help with balance). I can't be bothered to make a webpage for it right now (hate doing that), so you'll have to make do with these little synopses


Warrior: A strong, methodical fighter that passively reduces all incoming damage by a small amount, and is capable of performing power break and armor break to weaken enemies. There is also a small chance to use climhazzard for heavy damage. All skills scale only off strength. And I even spelt armor without a 'u' so as to not make your brains explode with the concept of proper English XD

Ninja: A dangerous fighter capable of evading and getting critical hits on any attack 25% of the time. They use attacks that scale off a combination of strength and magic, with more emphasis on the former. They do take a small amount of extra damage when hit to make up for their evasion and critical chances, which are both unique to the Ninja paradigm.

Monk: A tough, strength-based fighter that takes advantage of high HP to use their abilities safely and stay alive. Chakra heals for an amount based on their strength and max HP, and they passively restore a small amount of their max hp each turn. When their HP is at lower they are at more risk, as their main attack, 'suplex', can result in the monk injuring themselves if their current HP is lower than their opponent's.

Gunner: The gunner relies on a bit of luck to deal heavy damage. Two of the gunner's attacks scale from neither strength or magic, but do set amounts of damage based on random number generators. Potshot deals damage equal to a % of their opponent's max HP (between 5 and 20%) but may miss, and trigger happy shoots 5-15 times, dealing a set amount of damage per bullet. They also have a chance to fire enchanted ammo on any attack, which deals bonus damage based on their magic power. All attacks may also backfire and hurt the user instead, however.

White Mage: The typical healer, capable of casting cure, regen, and protect. Regen heals for a % of your maximum health, but the % amount increases if your magic power is higher, so it's good for warrior and mage types. You also have a 25% chance to remove all negative statuses each turn while in this paradigm. There is also a small chance to cast holy for big damage, and great gospel for total recovery and temporary invincibility. It's too small a chance to rely on, but game changing when it does.

Black Mage: Black mages can dish out the highest magic damage in the game, with Ruin, Drain, Bio, and (less frequently) Flare. They can also cast focus to permanently increase the magic power of the user, which will carry over even after shifting into a new paradigm.

Dark Knight: Dark Knights are capable of pretty consistent, but all skills except demi require a small HP sacrifice to cast. However, the benefit is that all of their skills completely ignore damage modifiers like power break or protect, and never miss even against Ninjas. Also, whenever they take a direct hit, 20% of the damage dealt returns to the attacker.

Gambler: The gambler encompasses the roles of gambler, dancer, bard, and geomancer all rolled into one package. Every skill relies heavily on a random number generator, but they can dish out the highest damage of any class by a long way if you're lucky. With the right slot reel roll, you might just summon knights of the round, or even win the fight instantly. Or lose instantly. Both are very unlikely.

Thief: Thieves start off weak, but all of their skills steal gil and increase their thievery counter. Thievery increases the damage dealt by all thief skills except coin, which instead throws all coins at the enemy to deal damage equal to 1.5% of the enemy's max HP per coin thrown, potentially dealing enormous damage, especially against opponents with high HP. Thievery and coin bonuses aren't lost during a paradigm shift.

Dragoon: Dragoons warriors that deal more damage based on their enemies' statistics. The more of a difference there is between an enemies' strength and magic stats, the stronger the dragoon gets. Dragoon passively get a strength increase based on 33% of the difference between enemy strength and magic, lancet steals health by an amount to double the difference between enemy str and mag, etc etc. Dragoons are excellent at countering characters who have chosen to either get massive amounts of strength and neglect magic, and vice-versa, but not very effective against more well-rounded characters.

Berserker: Berserkers, like thieves, start off weak, but get more dangerous the lower their health gets. Their passive increases the damage dealt by all skills by 1 for each percent of health they are missing. For example if a berserker is at 40% health, they will deal 60 bonus damage. The skill mad rush deals more damage than an attack, but has a 50% chance to miss, but if you're below 25% HP, then it deals an additional 50% damage and only misses 25% of the time. Berserkers may become berserked for a turn when taking direct damage. Berserk from any source causes you to do a regular attack for 25% more damage, but you take 10% of the damage dealt. This can work in a berserker's favour for increasing their total damage output, though.



And that's all the paradigms I have right now. I still need to add an extra skill to ninjas and monks, as paradigms I made later tended to have more interesting abilities at their disposal as I got more confident with the programming, and they feel a bit bare at the moment, although more-or-less balanced. So, if there's any archetypes you want added, perhaps if you want to add a character that has a unique feel, then let me know. If you can tell me what sort of role the class should aim to accomplish, that'd also be good, but not essential. I quite like each paradigm to have a defined role though, as with the dragoon paradigm, but as long as we don't have 2 paradigms that are more or less indistinguishable it doesn't matter really It might need a few mage-friendly classes though, as although black mages are very strong, vivi-types tend to lose out a bit if they switch out to something else.

[Fleck]

Looks pretty awesome, Count. I am intrigued. I do have a a question though. If I wanted to, could I just load up all three paradigms to be the same thing? Like Black Mage/Black Mage/Black Mage, or do I need to have each one be different? If the latter, I think we'd have to come up with a third magic-intensive class because, correct me if I'm wrong, but only White Mages and Black Mages heavily rely on magic, so if they were forced to switch paradigms, then they would by necessity have to switch to a job class that isn't suited to their stats.

And thanks for giving us the good ol' 'MURICAN spelling of words. USA! USA! USA!

[Bob]

I really like the Dragoon paradigm. I dunno if it's very Dragoonly, but it works for me! But it's nice that stacking your stats on one side or the other can work against you because of Dragoons.

If you'd like, I could make you some sort of player input function from a text file, to save you some effort, but if you're good doing it your way, then that's fine by me. I could probably whip it up pretty quickly though. Plus, I'll be doing a bit of programming today anyway, so I'll be in the area If you're interested, upload your current .cpp and tell me via PM where it is (probably same location as before, but tell me it's up to date, at least in character stats). Also tell me what you'd like the input to look like. I'm kinda guessing:

Name: HP, STR, MAG, Paradigm1, Paradigm2, Paradigm3

...but if you want something else input or a particular format, just lemme know. It'll save you some effort when making new characters though. It was one reason I gave up a lot on Arena in the early days, especially when I coded all the gambits.

[countlieberkuhn]

Cheers Fleck 'n Bob. You're right, another 1 or 2 magey paradigms would be kinda good, since ideally I'd like to be able to have 3 different paradigms on each fighter. It is possible to stack them, but I like to have the chance of switching as a balancing issue, as it stops people from being able to rely entirely on one paradigm and base their stats around it, as that can end up with some classes being too strong. I've made a prototype mage character, Rydia, and when she lands flare it hurts. Not usually instant kill, but pretty damn close for most non-monk paradigms. Right now the best third class for a mage is probably gunner, since most skills don't rely on any stat in particular, but they have a chance to deal magic damage with each attack. Gamblers have a lot of magic-based skills too, but whether you'll get them is anybody's guess. I've got Yuna running a gunner/gambler/white mage setup, and sometimes her gunshots can hit for 300-400 damage if she gets a 20% potshot with enchanted ammo. Btw these characters aren't going to be used when it goes live, but they're good for testing.

We could have an alchemist that uses elemental items based on magic like in Bob's arena, or a green mage perhaps? A green mage might work nicely, as it might be cool to have a more magical answer to high hp, high strength fighters. Dragoons can handle them nicely, but they operate almost entirely on strength with the exception of lancet.

Bob, that does sound pretty helpful actually! I'll upload it shortly, and yeah, that order of stats is good. Also, if it's not too might trouble (I don't actually know how hard it is, but I just don't know how), would you be able to make it output to a text file, like your Arena program does? I've noticed that the console can only contain so much text, and just cuts off earlier bits if the battle text exceeds its line/character count. Thanks either way Also cleaned up the code a bit since you last saw it, mainly in the damage calculator function.