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FIXED: Monster damage display

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FIXED:  Monster damage display Empty FIXED: Monster damage display

Post by musicman Wed Apr 27, 2016 12:53 am

Here's where I think the interaction of players characters and their adversaries in javatar needs improvement. For example: I encounter 1 group of 3 Black Dragons on level 5. They are peaced. One of my chars chooses to attack them. Then there seems to be a roll for who wins surprise round and if my party loses the surprise round (which should rarely happen if monsters are peaced imho) there are 3 different displays across the bottom of the encounter (for each character) describing how much damage each character took from each monster. These 3 displays of monster damage often overlap into their next round of damage without there being an option for the players characters to respond resulting in the monster getting 2 surprise rounds before that players characters have a chance to respond (or get a friggin keystroke in for that matter) with the appropriate response from each class of character they are running . My suggestion is to combine these monster attack displays into ONE display (for each type of attack - depending on the monster and their complexities) and balance the chance for players characters to get their spells, swings off. It is even worse in encounters where there are 4 groups of monsters as sometimes each monsters attack is displayed 4-5- or 6 times before the next groups attack is displayed thus further hindering the group of spelunkers to make a victorious response. Dragons for instance: have a chance at a claw attack and a larger chance of a breath attack. Each monster type has specific types of attack(s) Some have just one attack others have 2 or 3. All this information is available in D&D Bestiary/D&D Players Handbook/D&D Dungeon Masters Guide which is what the original authors based their calculation of what they thought at that time (1979-85 when they were all still currently adding to improvements and updates) were fair rules for a computer based dungeon game. Granted, the authors added many new names of monsters (some with special attacks) but they were all based on the monster types described in Dungeons & Dragons Bestiary. Alas I digress
I ask for better (in game) displays of interaction between our parties and our parties adversaries ( I see monsters getting more options than players) and give us nimble fingered gam0rz a chance to win with dignity (not always but especially if we are well equipped)

Thanks,
Steve

musicman

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FIXED:  Monster damage display Empty Another Suggestion from JF

Post by boxripper Fri Apr 29, 2016 10:42 am

Twisted Evil This is a real problem, even when entering a room.  It seems like breathers are the worst, and all the messages pile up one on top of another.  As a player, what you need to do is make the keystrokes to make the attacks that you would normally do.  IE cast thunderbolt or sphere of fire or harm-- do this in the blind as soon as the messages start piling up.  This attack will go off in a timely fashion-- you just wont see it.  If you wait for the display to stop showing attacks-- you will most likely die, or suffer grievous bodily injury.  

That is a work around-- the solution is to NOT display all those lines of text.  Combining them all up would be one thing-- showing a single line of SURPRISE!  and then just calculating and subtracting damages would be another.  In reality-- no one cares if I got breathed on 12 times or 9 times.  All I care about is displaying the end results and letting me make a counter attack.

If the purist in you demands displaying all that data-- can we push the display back to the end of the encounter. Sort of a combat recap? Or make it an optional display. Shift V toggle verbose combat messages -- like we do now with traeasure.
boxripper
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FIXED:  Monster damage display Empty Re: FIXED: Monster damage display

Post by musicman Sat Apr 30, 2016 7:11 pm

Jake's comments seem to back up what I am saying about this and although it probably been should have been started in display and timing issues, it is confusing if not frustrating to see 'monster attacks you for xxx damage after it dead on 5/5 screens/clients. Consolidate the damage displays for monsters plz?

musicman

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FIXED:  Monster damage display Empty Re: FIXED: Monster damage display

Post by Jude Mon May 02, 2016 9:50 pm

I think what we are seeing here is an inadvertent result of one of the ways Javatar is coded.

When I put the server together, one of the things I did was eliminate the annoying pause between rooms/encounters that slows down the pace of other versions of Avatar. That pause does help synchronize round timing for disparate parties in the same room though.

In Javatar, there is one 'click' for combat rounds, shared by everyone. If you enter a room, and get surprised, right before a new 'regular' combat round starts.. you can get the double whammy. It doesn't happen all the time, but you can really get clobbered when the timing is mismatched. And yes--the clients are coded to spit out combat messages in order--so if a ton of monster messages are in the queue--they may take a while to animate/display. (We went to great pains to make the display work this way--a while back, we had monster messages getting ignored, and that REALLY annoyed people, rightly so!)

I think we have a few options.. We could consolidate surprise messages. (Probably the easiest solution... but it wouldn't really fix the two sets of attacks bunching up.). A better option would be to create an independent encounter 'clock' for every encounter area. Start the clock at zero when a player enters the room... no more bunching of surprise and normal rounds. The second, third, etc parties entering the room might suffer a bunch up issue, but that's a much rarer occurrence.. I'm leaning towards the latter fix. I think it will make the deeper levels a lot more even tempered.

Thanks for the detailed discussion on this--it's very helpful for me to understand what's going on with the code.
Jude
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FIXED:  Monster damage display Empty Re: FIXED: Monster damage display

Post by Jude Mon May 02, 2016 9:53 pm

One more thing--I could always speed up the monster message displays during surprise rounds too.. I.e. whip them across the screen with shorter delays interspersed.. if the current message delays are too long, an adjustment is very straightforward.
Jude
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FIXED:  Monster damage display Empty more unsolicited advice from JF

Post by boxripper Tue May 03, 2016 8:56 am

My opinion:

I could care less about seeing a bunch of messages flash across my screen when I enter a room.  IF those messages are blocking me from taking actions-- THEN I would prefer for them NOT to be there.  From a player's standpoint, I want to see what the mob is.  As you have it currently coded, that key piece of information is withheld from me-- and often if I wait to obtain it, I will be dead.  So I am casting spells "in the blind" to try and stop the flood of damage messages that are flashing across my screen.  My suggestion would be:  when surprised-- plot the encounter, plot the word "surprise!" (or something similar) and lock me out of taking any actions for the duration of the surprise round.  Let the mob take all their actions.  If they breathe fire, show a SINGLE message " Flames wash over you." and on subsequent breath attacks that round -- just assess the damage without plotting any more messages.  (In fact this would be a great IDEA for all combat rounds.) Rectify all their other attacks, tally up the damages and send a single message per monster group per char.  3 Ogres hit you for 223. 1 Zygron hits you for 89.  Charon swings and misses! (joking here) then-- it will be my turn.  This will clear up the message backlog problem that is created for those of us at a distance from the server.

If you really feel like listing the results of each individual attack-- (craziness, IMHO) then have a window that functions off the LAB key-- IE the same pane where items or the player list shows up.  LAB V will show you a verbose list of the last 100 combat messages-- which would be nice to find out who stole what, or which slime was responsible for destroying my necklace of the gods, or exactly what monster sent me from 999 hits to 19 -- how the heck did THAT happen?  Anyhow-- the data would be there if I wanted to look-- but it wouldn't be restricting me from playing the game, the way it is doing now.
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FIXED:  Monster damage display Empty Re: FIXED: Monster damage display

Post by musicman Tue May 03, 2016 12:58 pm

What Jake describes in his last post is exactly what I was asking the DM's to consider changing when I started this string only he used better examples of what it is like from a player standpoint. As it is now it favors the monsters most of the time because of the time it takes to display their turn.

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FIXED:  Monster damage display Empty Re: FIXED: Monster damage display

Post by boxripper Wed May 04, 2016 10:17 am

Does anyone else have any input on this issue?

I can't believe it is just steve and I who have suffered from this interface set up.
boxripper
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FIXED:  Monster damage display Empty Re: FIXED: Monster damage display

Post by miger Wed May 04, 2016 10:30 am

My relative inexperience limits any corrective suggestions I might make. That said, I would add most of my deaths of my young chars have come from getting caught in a room where I have been overwhelmed before I could take corrective (fight/run) actions. I was never alert enough to define if it was breath, fire, just hits or what did the damage.
So I have to rely on you experienced players to best describe what is happening and to offer possible suggestions for improvement.
Thanks to the active creator involvement for recognizing something could be made better, listening, and taking actions. Thanks

Mike

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FIXED:  Monster damage display Empty Re: FIXED: Monster damage display

Post by Jude Fri May 06, 2016 12:33 pm

Ok, I just patched the code.  Some highlights:


  • Each slot will deliver at most ONE breath message per round in all types of combat (surprise, exit rounds, normal combat)

  • Breath attacks are considerably less frequent now

  • Not as many monsters will participate in surprise rounds now

    I have not done extensive testing on these changes.. so let me know how they play out.  

Jude
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