Damage calculator

[Holy_Diver]

[quote author=Holy Diver link=topic=657.msg9352#msg9352 date=1373255439]
You'll prefer this formula. I didn't expect it. It just emerged organically. Call it divine providence.

Gee tanks fer tellin me cause I two stupt to no whats I like lesn somun tell me. Maybe it's divine providence punishing you for your irreverence by giving you a bad idea? Joking aside, I don't mean your formula is bad for game players, just that it's not optimized for the common fan game maker. [/quote]

I am just making a prediction. Don't take things so personally. You're wrong to doubt my judgement though. And that's not a prediction.

As far as all the rest, plenty of games have used dam=atk-def, so if you're confused as to how it would work, maybe you should do some research. You're ignoring HP as a factor, and SoM does this damage calculation for each of its eight damage types, then adds the results. ‎  So the damage limit would actually be 128x8, and you're not factoring in elemental weaknesses which would be essentially added to ATK. I did of course mean 0 damage =1, but that would happen behind the scenes and therefore would not be a significant part of the formula that the designer would have to keep track of.

SOM doesn't have elemental weaknesses. While its true everything is by a factor of 8. That just means if you have 128 on all 8 affinities you can hit the giant for 8 HP instead of 1 HP. If he has lots of HP that's going to be a long fight. I like monsters to go down in about 5 hits or less myself.

I mean its besides the point. We established the giant has 127 defense. That doesn't mean he has 0 fire defense. That means he has 127 defense no matter what you use. Which is likely to be the case, because most ordinary things don't have elemental weaknesses.

It's this simple:
If the designers wants an enemy to get killed in two hits: HP=20, DEF=10, Player ATK=20
After twenty hits, HP=200, DEF=10, Player ATK=20,
A hundred: HP=1000, DEF=10, Player ATK=20
A thousand hits HP=1000 DEF=20, Player ATK = 20

You can also just take the monsters defense. Cut it in half to suppose the player and monster are equally matched. And multiply that by the number of hits you want.

You know as well as I do how it would work. Why do you keep bringing this up? Are you hoping to prove my idea is dumb? Who cares; I have dumb ideas all the time. ‎  Here, I'll save you the effort "my idea for damage=atk-def was a dumb idea and would make any game that used it completely boring and unplayable". Now can we move on?

You are projecting here. I'm just arguing the merits of two damage schema. I assume ATK-DEF has merits. It supposes when equally matched no damage is dealt. If I am doing anything humanitarian, it is saving you from the trouble of setting up a map and discovering you are unhappy with the results.

You asked somewhere if there was a disassembler that charted sub routines. Yes, IDA is one. But usually each sub routine is charted on a separate page or you would just have a tangled mess. All I meant by "chart" was to catalog the function of the sub-rouines you work on for future reference.

There are tools usually used to document APIs that arrange all of the subroutines and draw lines of dependencies between them. They automatically figure out the best way to arrange things. Even if the best you can get is a tangled mess that's better than no graphical representation at all.

I suspect SOM's games would not be that complicated of a program once you pruned away all of the junk subroutines. There might only be a handful of logical units.