Pulse combat

[Thalen]

Was this ever imp'd on soj2? I never played it so I wouldn't know. If not, I realize it must be annoying to hear players wanting stuff from other muds imp'd on soj all the time, but maybe it should be considered .

[Jegzed]

Pulse combat is the most annoying piece of code present on Duris.

Its a lot more constant spamming and makes it worse to time things.

/Jegzed

[Ragorn]

Pulse combat is a waste of coding time. It's complicated, buggy, and did absolutely nothing practical to change combat on Duris.

- Ragorn

[Shevarash]

Not imp'd, and no plans to.

[cherzra]

I absolutely HATE pulse code. 30 seperate prompts and messages.. no more normal attack rounds, but X attacks, Y attacks, Z attacks, each with seperate prompt and messages... God did I love the old code where everyone just attacks in the same round, much conciser, easier, and fun.

Cherzra of the anti-pulse league

[Thalen]

I must say I do like the gnome mercs now though

[Shevarash]

Gnome mercs?

Scuse me while I bust a gut laughing

[Thalen]

Fear the gnome headbutt!

[Kyos]

Pulse combat sucks.

Coded a system for it myself, in theory it
was kickass.

But the human mind is not fit to see scrolling text and get information from it fast.

When the information scrolls by, then stops for a brief moment, it is much easier to get something from it, hence a round system is
much better.

A continous scroll really blows and i think
duris will change back to normal round system
in awhile.

Have fun!

[Ragorn]

The funniest aspect of pulse combat is this. They coded this complicated system of pulses, set all sorts of racial and class modifiers for pulse, tweaked multiple attack skills, recoded haste and slow spells, and in the end, combat is exactly the same as it was before. A monk is still better than a ranger, who is still better than a mercenary. Ogres still do more damage than trolls. Halflings still aren't good hitters.

Not much seperates a grey elf ranger from a human one. The grey attacks faster but does less damage, so over the course of time the two races are almost equal anyway.

A lot of code and a lot of bugs for a system that's almost exactly the same as the old one.

- Ragorn

[Thalen]

Actually I thought it made strong races do better with worse eq while weaker ones do better while stacked. I thought that if a weaker race were stacked, the racial penalties to damage would be compensated by high hit/dam from their equipment. So a halfling warrior with newbie eq would be much worse compared to a dwarf with newbie eq yet if they were each stacked the halfling would be better. But yeah i get the idea pulse system sucks :P

[This message has been edited by Thalen (edited 02-13-2001).]

[Gindipple]

What exactlly is pulse code? I know in the base circle code there is this concept of pulses in the main loop and a count of missed pulses. But that is just normal game ticks as I understood it. so is this pulse code something entirely different?

Gindipple.

[Ragorn]

In standard combat, there is a combat round every 12 "pulses". Under pulse combat, each race/class combination attacks every X pulses. So a grey elf ranger might attack every 8 pulses while an ogre attacks every 14. The result is something like this:

Both attack

Elf attack

Ogre attack

Elf attack

Elf attack

Ogre attack

Elf attack

Both attack


As you can see, the elf gets more hits in the same amount of time. To offset this, the Elf might have an 80% damage modifier, while the ogre might have a 140% damage modifier. The end result is, they'll do about the same amount of damage over time, but it's easier to tweak if one race/class gets too dominant. If Ogres start owning, they can be changed to a 14 pulse with a 130% damage rating or something.

- Ragorn

[Gindipple]

Ok so non pulse code goes like this if I understand you right.

for_each(player_in_combat)
player->Attack()

Where an Elf's Attack() command might get 3 swings and an Ogre's Attack() might get 2.

And the output would look like this.

Elf attacks.
Elf attacks.
Elf attacks.
Ogre attacks.
Ogre attacks.

Which is much the way Soj worked, right?

If that's the case I probably wouldn't like pulse code either.

Gindipple.

[Ragorn]

No, it looks like this.

Elf attacks.
Elf attacks.
Elf attacks.
Ogre attacks.
Ogre attacks.

Elf attacks.
Elf attacks.
Elf attacks.

Ogre attacks.
Ogre attacks.

Elf attacks.
Elf attacks.
Elf attacks.

Elf attacks.
Elf attacks.
Elf attacks.

Ogre attacks.
Ogre attacks.

Elf attacks.
Elf attacks.
Elf attacks.
Ogre attacks.
Ogre attacks.

On each of your pulses, you get as many hits as you would normally get in a round. This example assumes that an Elf would swing 3x a round and an ogre twice (maybe wielding a 2h).

All told, the elf is getting hella more swings, but doing much less damage per swing than the Ogre. The ogre attacks less often, but really crushes what he's hitting.

- Ragorn

[Nokie]

Good or bad, I hope the pulse combat system was a good coding exercise for the Duris coders. If they end up going back to the old system (I have a feeling they will stick with Pulse), they still have a deeper understanding of how their mud works!

Nokie Quickfingers gives yet another obvious observation that really wasn't necessary!

[Enduil/Raroth]

I really must agree with Kyos on this thread.
Pulse combat sucks. We experimented with it on our mud and it became too much spam. On duris it looks like this in a fight:


< 218h/218H 112v/112V Pos: standing >
< T: Raroth TP: sta TC: excellent E: mercenary EP: sta EC: few scratches>
-=[Your awesome hit hits a shady mercenary hard.]=-

< 218h/218H 112v/112V Pos: standing >
< T: Raroth TP: sta TC: excellent E: mercenary EP: sta EC: small wounds>
A shady mercenary misses you.

< 218h/218H 112v/112V Pos: standing >
< T: Raroth TP: sta TC: excellent E: mercenary EP: sta EC: small wounds>
-=[Your hit hits a shady mercenary hard.]=-

< 218h/218H 112v/112V Pos: standing >
< T: Raroth TP: sta TC: excellent E: mercenary EP: sta EC: few wounds>
A shady mercenary misses you.

< 218h/218H 112v/112V Pos: standing >
< T: Raroth TP: sta TC: excellent E: mercenary EP: sta EC: few wounds>
-=[Your mighty hit hits a shady mercenary.]=-

< 218h/218H 112v/112V Pos: standing >
< T: Raroth TP: sta TC: excellent E: mercenary EP: sta EC: few wounds>
You whirl around, just missing a shady mercenary's vicious attack.

< 218h/218H 112v/112V Pos: standing >
< T: Raroth TP: sta TC: excellent E: mercenary EP: sta EC: few wounds>
You miss a shady mercenary.

< 218h/218H 112v/112V Pos: standing >
< T: Raroth TP: sta TC: excellent E: mercenary EP: sta EC: few wounds>
-=[A shady mercenary's mighty hit hits you.]=-

< 210h/218H 112v/112V Pos: standing >
< T: Raroth TP: sta TC: few scratches E: mercenary EP: sta EC: few wounds>
-=[Your hit hits a shady mercenary.]=-

< 210h/218H 112v/112V Pos: standing >
< T: Raroth TP: sta TC: few scratches E: mercenary EP: sta EC: few wounds>


Lots of unnessecary spam from the prompt, that keeps popping up after each attack.
This is the way it is without pulse:

< 218h/218H 112v/112V Pos: standing >
< T: Raroth TP: sta TC: excellent E: mercenary EP: sta EC: few scratches>
-=[Your awesome hit hits a shady mercenary hard.]=-
A shady mercenary misses you.

< 218h/218H 112v/112V Pos: standing >
< T: Raroth TP: sta TC: excellent E: mercenary EP: sta EC: small wounds>
-=[Your hit hits a shady mercenary hard.]=-
A shady mercenary misses you.

< 218h/218H 112v/112V Pos: standing >
< T: Raroth TP: sta TC: excellent E: mercenary EP: sta EC: few wounds>
-=[Your mighty hit hits a shady mercenary.]=-
You whirl around, just missing a shady mercenary's vicious attack.

< 218h/218H 112v/112V Pos: standing >
< T: Raroth TP: sta TC: excellent E: mercenary EP: sta EC: few wounds>
You miss a shady mercenary.
-=[A shady mercenary's mighty hit hits you.]=-

< 210h/218H 112v/112V Pos: standing >
< T: Raroth TP: sta TC: few scratches E: mercenary EP: sta EC: few wounds>
-=[Your hit hits a shady mercenary.]=-


Much less spam

[Shevarash]

It's an interesting idea, but ultimately more trouble than it's worth for Sojourn.

There are other ways to balance out races/classes.

[Faerwynd]

It dawned on me that there's a function on most muds called an autoprompt or something similar. It usually only shows that "display" message when you hit a #CR. It really cuts down on spam, and a lot of old school mudders used it to keep as much on their screen as possible. That might help out with the spam.

Not that it matters for Soj3, but for anyone experimenting with it...

[Eilorn]

How about a new toggle: smartbattleprompt{regular, tank, enemy, both}? Regular is the way it is now. tank only shows a prompt when tank hp changes, enemy only shows prompt when enemy hp changes, and both shows prompt when either changes. Your own hp changing would cause a prompt in any case.

Eilorn

[cherzra]

I don't really see why there should be so much different prompts... I mean, you can do this with Zmud if you want it.

[Tlixor]

Being a cleric in pulse combat is the biggest pain in the ass. At least when there were rounds you had something to look back on to tell who was tanking, etc. Pulse makes everything spammy, makes everything disorganized, (makes it more realistic). I like it for the realism. The original point of pulse combat in duris was that a drow warrior could do as much damage as an ogre warrior, because a drow would be like a blender, fast, but not hitting hard each hit, and an ogre would be like a truck, slow, but you'll take serious damage each hit. I'm still not sure if i like it or not, i know it wasn't implemented the way it was originally planned, and we all have our theories as to where it benefits the most.