Lamoot is correct... this is something that I need to fix for the upcoming version of OGA (that is, allowing people to preview sounds in archives separately). Also, in his defense, I've submitted quite a lot of audio files individually myself, for precisely this reason.
Look into zlib. I think it can do that, although I'm not 100% certain. What I can tell you is that I'm virtually certain there are some libraries that allow you to do it.
My opinion of ND licenses is that, while they have a place, that place definitely isn't on OGA. :)
NC licenses are well-intentioned, but they're a legal minefield because the definition of "commercial" is so sketchy. In any case, they're completely incompatible with Free Software, which specifically allows commercial use.
Nothing wrong with uploading existing content. There's more than enough out there so that everyone can get in on the action. :)
That being said, it may be interesting to have a separate counter for content that you yourself authored, since it takes longer to do that. Something to think about for 2.0, perhaps.
Let's go back to the original idea where we just add all the damage multipliers together to get the total damage. Boring stuff, right? It doesn't have to be if we spice it up in some other way.
Why not consider having multi-elemental attacks inflict status effects? Now, coming up with all of the combinations will be time consuming, but it could net you something really cool. Maybe adding ice and electricity together will inflict Slow? Perhaps holy + fire has a chance of causing instant death to undead? There are all sorts of other things you could do with various elemental combinations if you move away from just the idea of pure damage. Plus, if you want, you can add these effects in addition to the high damage formula listed above.
The sky's the limit. :)
Anyway, I'd be interested in hearing comments and ideas from other people, so if this got your mind working, let me know what you think.
So here we are. We've come up with two not-so-good solutions. It's time to kick back for a bit and consider what mathematical properties we'd like this solution to have, rather than taking shots in the dark. So, without resorting to numbers, here's what we want:
If you hit a creature with multiple elements that it's weak against, you should do significantly more damage than you would have with just one element that it's weak against.
If you hit a creature with multiple elements that it absorbs, it should absorb significantly more HP than it would have with a single element.
If you hit a creature with multiple elements, some of which it's very strong against and some of which it's very weak against, it should, at worst, do an average amount of damage. Same with healing.
If it's immune to every element you hit it with, it should take zero damage.
If you hit a creature with an element that it has normal resistance to and an element it is immune to, it should do less than normal damage, but at least half.
The function should be relatively continuous; changing a single resistance by a small amount should never change the total damage by a large amount.
So, let's try this:
Find the average off all the damage multipliers.
If the result is greater than 1, raise it to the power of the number of elements involved in the attack.
If the result is less than -1, do likewise (except preserve the negative sign if you end up squaring the value)
What the above algorithm does is give you a number that's reasonable in the case when you have some high resistances, but scales up very quickly when you're hitting a lot of weaknesses. Plus, the function is continuous (I believe that's the term, anyway), so that a small variation in any of the elemental resistances will never result in a huge jump in damage.
At the moment this algorithm is untested, but I'm fairly satisfied that it's a good start. But, what if we want to do something other than math...? (continued)
So, where we we? High risk, high reward for multi-element attacks.
Ideally, if the attacker happens to discover the defender's elemental weaknesses and hit more than one at once, you want to reward them for doing so by giving them extra damage above and beyond what would otherwise be possible. At the same time, if they make a bad choice and hit the enemy with two or more elements that they absorb, you want them to absorb *a lot* of HP, making it high risk.
Here's one way that might seem good at first glance.
Figure out the damage multipliers for all of the elements involved in the attack.
Separate the negative and positive ones into different bins.
Throw out the zeros.
Multiply all the positives together, then multiply the absolute values of all the negatives together.
Subtract the negative total from the positive total.
In this case, your "typical" damage multiplier is one (assuming 0% resistance across the board). If you happen to hit the enemy with two attacks that they're weak against, your total damage multiplier is 4, which rewards you for managing to hit both.
The problem hits when you attack them with a multi-elemental attack where one of their resistances is very close to 100% (making their damage multiplier for that element around, say, .01). So even if they're weak against one element, multiplying that by .01 makes the total damage minuscule, whereas you would expect it to do, at the worst, normal damage.
So this system is broken in that it messes you up when the enemy has a single high resistance to one of the elements you're attacking with.
So, what else can you do? (continued in next post)
@adrix89: The deed is done. :)
Bart
Thanks :)
pfunked, can you tell me how to get wireframes from these? :)
Bart
Lamoot is correct... this is something that I need to fix for the upcoming version of OGA (that is, allowing people to preview sounds in archives separately). Also, in his defense, I've submitted quite a lot of audio files individually myself, for precisely this reason.
Look into zlib. I think it can do that, although I'm not 100% certain. What I can tell you is that I'm virtually certain there are some libraries that allow you to do it.
My opinion of ND licenses is that, while they have a place, that place definitely isn't on OGA. :)
NC licenses are well-intentioned, but they're a legal minefield because the definition of "commercial" is so sketchy. In any case, they're completely incompatible with Free Software, which specifically allows commercial use.
Nothing wrong with uploading existing content. There's more than enough out there so that everyone can get in on the action. :)
That being said, it may be interesting to have a separate counter for content that you yourself authored, since it takes longer to do that. Something to think about for 2.0, perhaps.
Let's go back to the original idea where we just add all the damage multipliers together to get the total damage. Boring stuff, right? It doesn't have to be if we spice it up in some other way.
Why not consider having multi-elemental attacks inflict status effects? Now, coming up with all of the combinations will be time consuming, but it could net you something really cool. Maybe adding ice and electricity together will inflict Slow? Perhaps holy + fire has a chance of causing instant death to undead? There are all sorts of other things you could do with various elemental combinations if you move away from just the idea of pure damage. Plus, if you want, you can add these effects in addition to the high damage formula listed above.
The sky's the limit. :)
Anyway, I'd be interested in hearing comments and ideas from other people, so if this got your mind working, let me know what you think.
Bart
So here we are. We've come up with two not-so-good solutions. It's time to kick back for a bit and consider what mathematical properties we'd like this solution to have, rather than taking shots in the dark. So, without resorting to numbers, here's what we want:
So, let's try this:
What the above algorithm does is give you a number that's reasonable in the case when you have some high resistances, but scales up very quickly when you're hitting a lot of weaknesses. Plus, the function is continuous (I believe that's the term, anyway), so that a small variation in any of the elemental resistances will never result in a huge jump in damage.
At the moment this algorithm is untested, but I'm fairly satisfied that it's a good start. But, what if we want to do something other than math...? (continued)
So, where we we? High risk, high reward for multi-element attacks.
Ideally, if the attacker happens to discover the defender's elemental weaknesses and hit more than one at once, you want to reward them for doing so by giving them extra damage above and beyond what would otherwise be possible. At the same time, if they make a bad choice and hit the enemy with two or more elements that they absorb, you want them to absorb *a lot* of HP, making it high risk.
Here's one way that might seem good at first glance.
In this case, your "typical" damage multiplier is one (assuming 0% resistance across the board). If you happen to hit the enemy with two attacks that they're weak against, your total damage multiplier is 4, which rewards you for managing to hit both.
The problem hits when you attack them with a multi-elemental attack where one of their resistances is very close to 100% (making their damage multiplier for that element around, say, .01). So even if they're weak against one element, multiplying that by .01 makes the total damage minuscule, whereas you would expect it to do, at the worst, normal damage.
So this system is broken in that it messes you up when the enemy has a single high resistance to one of the elements you're attacking with.
So, what else can you do? (continued in next post)
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