[Ohrrpgce] SVN: james/12694 New enemy bitset "Controlled by Player"

Ralph Versteegen teeemcee at gmail.com
Thu Jan 27 05:40:40 PST 2022


On Fri, 28 Jan 2022 at 01:07, James Paige <Bob at hamsterrepublic.com> wrote:

>
>
> On Thu., Jan. 27, 2022, 4:34 a.m. Ralph Versteegen, <teeemcee at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> On Thu, 20 Jan 2022 at 14:56, James Paige <Bob at hamsterrepublic.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Wed, Jan 19, 2022 at 6:49 PM Ralph Versteegen <teeemcee at gmail.com>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On Wed, 19 Jan 2022 at 13:49, James Paige <Bob at hamsterrepublic.com>
>>>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> So I do have a few other changes related to this one planned.
>>>>> * An option to make heroes controlled by (random) AI
>>>>> * A concept of "traitor" which will affect targeting classes when an
>>>>> attacker is targeting
>>>>> * A concept of "turncoat" which will affect targetting classes when an
>>>>> target is being targeted
>>>>> * Attacks that can turn these effects on and off or set-to-default
>>>>>
>>>>> So an enemy with all 3 of Controllable, Traitor, and Turncoat would
>>>>> function as a hero for that one battle.
>>>>>
>>>>> To simulate a classic "Confuse" status, you would have an attack that
>>>>> turns Controllable off, and traitor on, but don't touch turncoat. Then to
>>>>> end that status, use an attack that sets Controllable and Turncoat back to
>>>>> default.
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>> I was hoping this meant you were going down this direction :)
>>>>
>>>> I'm not sure whether "Traitor" is proposed to swap foes and allies of a
>>>> target, or just makes everyone count as a foe. Those are two different ways
>>>> that you might want a Confused status to work, and it seems that these bits
>>>> would only allow one or the other.
>>>>
>>>> What I was thinking was to give each combatant a team (default 1 for
>>>> heroes, 2 for enemies) and an "acting" team. A target is considered an ally
>>>> by an attacker if their team is the same as the attacker's acting team,
>>>> else they're a foe. Also team 0 could mean "independent", with no allies.
>>>> You probably wouldn't use more than a third team, for "Nature", say when a
>>>> clan of hyenas opportunistically attack while you're fighting someone
>>>> else).
>>>>
>>>> So Confuse to make someone attack anyone indiscriminately would change
>>>> their acting team to 0 (so two confused targets still hit each other), and
>>>> to swap sides you'd change their acting team (although now I realise that
>>>> means the attack would need to be specific to use by heroes or enemies,
>>>> unless there was an attack bit like "swap target's acting team" that just
>>>> set it to the attacker's).
>>>>
>>>> Maybe I've overcomplicated it again, while still not adding all that
>>>> much utility/flexibility (really should work on allowing script hooks for
>>>> things like this) vs just adding a third Independent bit.
>>>>
>>>
>>> Yeah, I think teams will overcomplicate it for now-- and yes, having
>>> scripting hooks so people can customize this behavior will be the best way
>>> to get advanced fancy effects
>>>
>>
>>> I do kinda like the idea of being able to make a confused enemy target
>>> all, rather than only the opposite side, but I'll have to think if there is
>>> a nice simple way to do that.
>>>
>>
>> Going down the route of bitsets then I don't really see another option
>> but adding another bitset to make everyone an enemy.
>>
>> Now, I'm not pushing for the team IDs idea, but I just wanted to write
>> something about complexity. Say you add a third bit, or even a fourth ("Foe
>> to all"). I think that arguably two integer-valued settings are simpler
>> than 3 bits, because 3 bits is 8 possible combinations, a lot to think
>> about. And even an 8-way setting could be simpler to reason about than 3
>> bits if you don't have to think about any interactions. Complexity of
>> implementation is usually also secondary.
>> But in fact after looking at the new version of get_valid_targs I
>> realised team IDs would actually have been simpler in implementation too.
>> The bitsets are more complex... in fact I see some mistakes in the code,
>> which I'll fix: "Dead-ally (hero only)" and "Dead foe (enemy only)" were
>> meant to be informative only, to warn that those settings didn't make sense
>> for enemies/heroes, but not to intentionally restrict the targets.
>>
>
> I was actually considering two more bit states-- "Indiscriminate Attacker"
> to attack both sides, and "Tergiversate Target" to be targeted by both sides
>

Maybe we need to make more frequent releases so that you can outlet your
penchant for lexical obscureness elsewise :)


>
>
>>
>>
>>>
>>>
>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> Or a classic Berzerk could be implemented with Controllable=Off and
>>>>> could end with controllable set to default (this would work for heroes, but
>>>>> wouldn't do anything meaningful on an enemy)
>>>>>
>>>>> This should allow a lot of possibilities, and is all pretty easy to
>>>>> implement.
>>>>>
>>>>> And yes, someone could totally fake 5 or 6 heroes in the party with
>>>>> this, by using an instead-of-battle script, and adding hero enemies to the
>>>>> formation with a script before the battle starts. Definitely not ideal, but
>>>>> fine if people want to try it.
>>>>>
>>>>> Actually increasing the size of the active party > 4 and increasing
>>>>> the number of enemies in a formation > 8 is something I definite;ly want to
>>>>> do, but it will require lots and lots of cleanup, which is outside of the
>>>>> scope of what I am trying to do right now. In particular, there are tons of
>>>>> places where the ID range within the bslot() array defines what a
>>>>> BattleSprite Instance does, so the first step of that cleanup will probably
>>>>> be to convert all access to bslot() to a set of accessor functions for
>>>>> heroes, enemies, attack sprites, and weapon sprites. Then those different
>>>>> ranges can be split apart into different arrays, which can be dynamically
>>>>> sized when you load a battle formation with 15 enemies in it, or something
>>>>> like that. But that is for later. I want to keep the scope of what I am
>>>>> working on broken down into bite-sized baby-steps to mix a metaphor :D
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>> I don't think we would want to split bslot() into separate arrays for
>>>> heroes and enemies: being able to index across all of them with a bslot()
>>>> index is very useful and widely used (eg. targeting) so it would be a lot
>>>> of work to remove that. Why not just add is_hero and is_enemy attributes.
>>>> There's a lot of lines of code to change, but each would then be an easy
>>>> change. Could also start using polymorphism.
>>>>
>>>
>>> Yes, you are right. is_hero and is_enemy attributes are much better than
>>> what I was thinking of with the accessor functions for bslot. Glad you said
>>> it :)
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>> On the other hand, I do want to remove attacks and weapons from bslot()
>>>> and was considering doing it soonish. Almost all of the BattleSprite data
>>>> is irrelevant for them, and nearly all of the advantages of having them in
>>>> bslot are (or will be) gone now that battles are converted to slices.
>>>>
>>>
>>> Ah, right! Those only get used in animations, so the slice is all that
>>> really matters :)
>>>
>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>> Fortunately I think the current features I am adding will not make any
>>>>> of that later work harder, and might even lead to a little helpful cleanup.
>>>>>
>>>>> ---
>>>>> James
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> On Tue, Jan 18, 2022 at 8:22 AM Ralph Versteegen <teeemcee at gmail.com>
>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> Wow! That's not a feature I was expecting to see for a long time. A
>>>>>> nice surprise!
>>>>>>
>>>>>> I suppose this is particularly useful for giving the player extra
>>>>>> actions they can perform in battle. People are going to inevitable think to
>>>>>> use it to get around the 4 hero limit, but it seems really problematic for
>>>>>> that. Or is time to add team numbers to battles, so you can define which
>>>>>> combatants are "foe" or "ally"?
>>>>>>
>>>>>> On Mon, 17 Jan 2022 at 14:01, <subversion at hamsterrepublic.com> wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>> james
>>>>>>> 2022-01-16 17:01:32 -0800 (Sun, 16 Jan 2022)
>>>>>>> 39
>>>>>>> New enemy bitset "Controlled by Player"
>>>>>>> ---
>>>>>>> U   wip/bmodsubs.bas
>>>>>>> U   wip/enemyedit.bas
>>>>>>> U   wip/loading.rbas
>>>>>>> U   wip/udts.bi
>>>>>>> U   wip/whatsnew.txt
>>>>>>>
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