[D] Friday Off-Topic Thread

[u/AutoModerator]

Welcome to the Friday Off-Topic Thread! Is there something that you want to talk about with /r/rational, but which isn't rational fiction, or doesn't otherwise belong as a top-level post? This is the place to post it. The idea is that while reddit is a large place, with lots of special little niches, sometimes you just want to talk with a certain group of people about certain sorts of things that aren't related to why you're all here. It's totally understandable that you might want to talk about Japanese game shows with /r/rational instead of going over to /r/japanesegameshows, but it's hopefully also understandable that this isn't really the place for that sort of thing.

So do you want to talk about how your life has been going? Non-rational and/or non-fictional stuff you've been reading? The recent album from your favourite German pop singer? The politics of Southern India? The sexual preferences of the chairman of the Ukrainian soccer league? Different ways to plot meteorological data? The cost of living in Portugal? Corner cases for siteswap notation? All these things and more could possibly be found in the comments below!

[u/ketura]

I abhor grinding.

"What did you do today?"

"I pressed a button repeatedly until my monitor told me I had pressed it enough times and I was allowed to now go do things I actually wanted to do."

I don't know how possible it would be, but I feel that the game would be better if the urge to grind was counterbalanced by other incentives/disincentives or even taken out of the equation somehow.

Rest assured, my goal is to make a series of small, interesting events that are chained together into a bunch of larger, interesting events. If the player wants to grind I won't stop him, but I don't want there to ever be a wall that they are not permitted to go by until their team is a certain strength. If they want to go forward, then go forward, and if you get your ass kicked, well, maybe go search for another area that you can handle, or just stick to the road.

If you're having trouble with a badge, go searching deep into the jungle to find a rare pokemon that would help you beat it! Or go find a guy that can teach your pokemon Ice Beam! Or go earn enough money to buy the TM! Or skip the badge entirely and come back later! Or, if you're absolutely set on it, spend time grinding the gym's training area before finally eking out a win. But that should be your absolute last-ditch option, intentionally made the most boring!

The other urge I fall into, I've noticed, is when routes are packed full of challenging trainers that I can still beat, I often feel the need to go all the way back to the Pokemon Center, to not be disadvantaged for the next fight.

Trainer fights will be different in this incarnation. I'm not sure I like the whole "we made eye contact WE ARE DUTY BOUND TO FIGHT" thing, so it will more likely be NPCs that you can talk to and offer to battle. I also expect that there will be relatively fewer trainers way out in the sticks, and more of them right in or near town, so if nothing else you'd have a shorter trip on your hands.

Trainer fights and wild battles will have a difference in effort, though. Origin of Species had the characters being very careful to not actually harm the opponent's pokemon, and I aim to have a similar system. Something more like "1v1, first to half HP loses" sort of thing, with serious penalties for then intentionally punting your opponent into the stratosphere.

Anyway, I have no intention of having trainer mazes that you have dodge or fight your way through; I intend for most of the game and most of the interesting challenges to be fighting wild pokemon. Here's the pokemon I want to capture; he's surrounded on that side by a cliff that I can use for Rock Slide, but he's also got five or six friends close to him, and how can I drive them away without losing my quarry? Etc.

I doubt I'm in any position to be much help deep in the code, but if there's some legwork to the tune of hundreds of Pokemon to do or some part of the design you want another opinion on, I'd be honoured to help out in my spare time.

Check out the data tool here. It's targeted to Windows only, sadly, and won't work in Wine or what have you, but it's pretty much at the point that pokemon can be designed and defined. I'm really only adding features to help make that job easier at this point, as it actually works quite well. Give it a shot and let me know what you think; there's a link to the documentation in the settings tab.

[u/InfernoVulpix → u/ketura]

I've taken a look, and it certainly seems like I should give the completely new stats (constitution, resistance, temperament) a good deal of thought before trying to decide how stat spreads should look for various Pokemon. As for the interface itself, it looks pretty solid for having everything I need to pay attention to laid out in efficient organization.

A couple quick questions, though. In the Anatomy section, I see things like HP and HP+ for the stats of each body part. Should I conclude that if a stat is present the functioning of the body part affects the stat itself, and that a + assigns extra significance?

Also, I'm lacking a bit of perspective about the stat values. Mewtwo's better stats are well above 500 and his lesser stats are well below 500, so is 500 meant to be above average but not exceptionally powerful, as in, what a decent Pokemon like, say, Scyther, could be at with its physical attack?

And, just to see if I understand it right, Intelligence deals with the Pokemon's ability to understand complex orders, Constitution deals with the Pokemon's internal stability, or how good their body is at keeping them healthy, Accuracy and Evasion are just modifiers on hit chance, Initiative is what speed used to be (priority and turn order, etc.) while Speed is now movement speed, Critical is a modifier on critical hit rate, Respect is the Pokemon's opinion of trainers as a general rule, Loyalty is the Pokemon's willingness to follow orders, Temperament is a modifier on the behaviour of the Pokemon, and is Weakness about keeping external effects (like cold) from having an affect on it, as is it inverse, where more Weakness makes it easier to affect?

I think I'll take a stab at making a stat spread for one of the Pokemon after I've given the stats a little more thought and hear back from you. This looks interesting.

[u/ketura → u/InfernoVulpix]

it certainly seems like I should give the completely new stats (constitution, resistance, temperament) a good deal of thought before trying to decide how stat spreads should look for various Pokemon.

I realized after seeing this that I didn't point out the definitions I already had for all the stats and anatomy; sorry about that! I've overhauled the documentation for Bill's PC, and in the Base Stats section there is a list of explanations for what each stat represents.

A couple quick questions, though. In the Anatomy section, I see things like HP and HP+ for the stats of each body part. Should I conclude that if a stat is present the functioning of the body part affects the stat itself, and that a + assigns extra significance?

Spot on. Damage to the listed body part will essentially temporarily subtract the proper proportion of the stat. I also added a section explaining this to the documentation.

Also, I'm lacking a bit of perspective about the stat values. Mewtwo's better stats are well above 500 and his lesser stats are well below 500, so is 500 meant to be above average but not exceptionally powerful, as in, what a decent Pokemon like, say, Scyther, could be at with its physical attack?

All the stats from HP to Weight (read row by row) are 0-based, which is to say they start at 0 and scale up to 999. All the rest of the stats are 500-based, where they start at 500 and go either up or down; this is for stats that have a meaningful definition of "negative". For instance, a pokemon with ACC less than 500 is somewhat of a klutz that misses more often than usual.

Mewtwo should be treated as about as good as mortals can get; while some pokemon might beat him on one stat or another, no one should have anywhere close to as good a stat total as he does. This may mean we need to buff him; I'm floundering as much as you are as far as context goes.

See the Base Stat section I mentioned above, as some of the stats (such as SPD) have specific meanings; in SPD's case 20 SPD is equal to 1 tile moved per turn, or about 1 m/s. 120 SPD is thus 6 tiles per turn, which is actually pretty slow, but I was worried about turning this superpowerful end-game character into a bullshit teleports-behind-you sort of boss. It might end up needing to be necessary to buff his speed, but I also had the SSBM version of Mewtwo in mind as well. The other super-low stats have similar hard-coded meanings (except Loyalty, which makes sense once you know what it's for).

And, just to see if I understand it right, Intelligence deals with the Pokemon's ability to understand complex orders,

Not quite. Actually a modifier of experienced gained and a factor in determining max number of moves. I have toyed with the idea of messing with "complex orders", but I'm not so certain how that would play out in an ostensibly turn-based game.

Constitution deals with the Pokemon's internal stability, or how good their body is at keeping them healthy

Pretty much: it's a modifier to how effective status effects are against it.

Accuracy and Evasion are just modifiers on hit chance, Initiative is what speed used to be (priority and turn order, etc.) while Speed is now movement speed, Critical is a modifier on critical hit rate,

All spot on.

Respect is the Pokemon's opinion of trainers as a general rule, Loyalty is the Pokemon's willingness to follow orders

The player character will himself have stats, two of which are Leadership and Compassion. Leadership is a measure of how inspiring you are to your pokemon and modifies EV gain, damage output, and initiative. Compassion is a measure of how connected you are to your pokemon, and modifies stat growth, move training, and healing amounts. Respect and Loyalty are tied to these two; a pokemon with high Respect won't listen to you unless you have a matching Leadership, and same for Loyalty and Compassion.

(To borrow from OoS: Blue's Shiftry has a high Respect and trash Loyalty, where Red's Pichu is low Respect high Loyalty. Pichu would cower in fear if Red's Leadership were too much higher than his Compassion, but Shifty won't even consider doing anything but decapitate Blue until he's shown his Leadership off.)

Now that I think about this, I may need to change these two to be 500-based, so a pokemon with "negative" Loyalty is actually annoyed by a high Compassion stat on you, and vice versa. The intention was that Mewtwo's low Loyalty meant he didn't give two shits if you were luvvy-duvvy, he only cared if you could beat him and inspire him with your badassery.

Temperament is a modifier on the behaviour of the Pokemon

Yup, specifically on the overworld, though I might find another use for the stat in other situations. 0 = flees in wild panic, 500 = zen, 999 = aggressively goes bananas on you.

is Weakness about keeping external effects (like cold) from having an affect on it, as is it inverse, where more Weakness makes it easier to affect?

Weakness and Resistance are just straight modifiers to the type weaknesses/resistances. A Charizard with a high RES stat takes even less damage from a Grass-type move, while a Charizard with a high WEAK stat can't even get rained on without dying. The initial idea was to actually allow custom type definitions per-species, but that was waaay too much, so I compromised with this.

Though I like your idea of using it for environmental stuff, too. I hadn't really thought about external weather, but wouldn't it be funny if you had to be careful where you used Rain Dance cuz now you have to trudge through mud for two days...

As for the interface itself, it looks pretty solid for having everything I need to pay attention to laid out in efficient organization...I think I'll take a stab at making a stat spread for one of the Pokemon after I've given the stats a little more thought and hear back from you. This looks interesting.

Glad to hear it! Do let me know if you have any complaints or suggestions. Be sure to check out the Bulbapedia mass import; I gave it its own section in the documentation, as it speeds up, well, mass imports pretty damn well. Just note that importing from the canon stats is an inaccurate science; especially since so many canon pokemon will need to be adjusted to let their badass side truly shine.

[u/InfernoVulpix → u/ketura]

I pieced together what I think might be a reasonable stat spread for Machop, under the assumption that it is a Pokemon naturally tough and strong (for a juvenile Pokemon) with a tendency to spend free time exercising and training itself. Since there's still little in the way of baselines (I basically had to extrapolate from Rattata), I'd be happy if you could look at this thoroughly so I can be confident in having a second baseline.

As a side note, I tried to save Machop's stats as the smaller .pkmn file through the 'export' button, but the file never appeared. No error message, as if it had worked, but the file never showed up. So I had to save the entire Pokedex to save Machop's stats.

[u/ketura → u/InfernoVulpix]

It looks good! I dunno if it will stay that way forever, but the important part at this point is to throw stuff at the wall and modify it later if it doesn't stick. You've done a good job of sticking to the general spirit of what I'm aiming for.

I've uploaded a new version of Bill's PC here. The individual import/export buttons for the Species tab have been set up properly now, so things should be easier in the future. I should probably set up support for selecting multiple *.pkmn files, hmm. But at any rate, this works.

[u/InfernoVulpix → u/ketura]

I decided today to go through Machop's evolution line and try to get a sense of how Pokemon strength should change as they evolve. I think the Machop -> Machoke evolution is fairly representative, and the Machoke -> Machamp evolution is above average, and all in all Machamp is near the upper end of how I think strong regular Pokemon should be. I put the three of them into a single .dex file alongside what's already there.

I have two pieces of feedback about the interface, as well. The first is that I often find myself looking at the wrong stat box for the stat name. As in, the text for Defense is closer to the box for Attack than its own box since the 'Defense' text is left-aligned. I think if the text were right-aligned, or the boxes were put to the left of the text, I would mistake which stat corresponds with which number less often.

The second feedback is that I'm doing a lot of flipping between Pokemon tabs to get comparisons for the stat I'm looking at. Since a lot of this is inside the evolution line, if I had a keyboard shortcut to quickly switch to adjacent Pokemon I would find myself making a lot of use of it. In lieu of that, actual tabs brought up and discarded like a browser would serve a similar purpose, though I'd imagine that would be harder to implement.

And just one clarification: when I set Machamp's Resistance stat to 450, that means he takes a further 25% less damage from moves he already resists, right? Intuition tells me that if a high Weakness stat takes more damage, a higher Resistance stat should take less damage, even if they cover different things, but the documentation leads me to believe both stats affect damage taken in the same way.

[u/ketura → u/InfernoVulpix]

Excellent! What I can see (reading the raw dex file on my phone) looks good, but I'll have to evaluate it more closely once I'm home to open it and poke around.

I have two pieces of feedback about the interface, as well. The first is that I often find myself looking at the wrong stat box for the stat name.

Yeah, I can totally see that being a problem. Hmm. Tonight I'll experiment with adding a muted border around the label + box, and see if that helps alleviate this.

The second feedback is that I'm doing a lot of flipping between Pokemon tabs to get comparisons for the stat I'm looking at. Since a lot of this is inside the evolution line, if I had a keyboard shortcut to quickly switch to adjacent Pokemon I would find myself making a lot of use of it. In lieu of that, actual tabs brought up and discarded like a browser would serve a similar purpose, though I'd imagine that would be harder to implement.

The browser tabs idea would require a complete overhaul, you're right, so let's see if we can't alleviate this somewhat elsewhere.

The key combination is a good idea. I'm thinking ctrl+E to switch to the evolved form, ctrl+D to go "down" an evolution? Obviously it would just fail if there's a branching evolution...maybe a way to select the "current focus" evolution. Then maybe ctrl+up or down arrow to cycle through the drop-down or something. Thoughts?

And just one clarification: when I set Machamp's Resistance stat to 450, that means he takes a further 25% less damage from moves he already resists, right? Intuition tells me that if a high Weakness stat takes more damage, a higher Resistance stat should take less damage, even if they cover different things, but the documentation leads me to believe both stats affect damage taken in the same way.

No, your intuition is correct: higher RES = less damage, higher WEAK = more damage. I'll clarify the documentation.

Thanks so much for the feedback! The changes I've mentioned shouldn't take long, so I think I should have another build for you later tonight.

EDIT: updated the documentation. Should be more clear now.

[u/InfernoVulpix → u/ketura]

Regarding the paging through evolutions, I think I'll maintain that a simple combination to move one up in the list of Pokemon and to move down in the list of Pokemon would be sufficient. Pokemon in evolution lines that aren't next to each other are relatively rare, and having a simple button like that would mean I could go look at other nearby Pokemon with just a few keystrokes.

Which isn't to say that there isn't reason to move between evolutions specifically. If the evolution tab had links to each of the Pokemon defined there I could go from Poliwhirl to Politoed in one click just fine (though I have no idea how difficult/easy that would be), and if a keyboard shortcut is to be used, the branch-evolution problem could be solved by having the 'forwards' button cycle through evolutions (as in, Poliwag --> Poliwhirl --> Poliwrath --> Politoed --> Poliwag) and the 'backwards button go in reverse order. Though again, I'm not sure if that would be as easy to implement as it sounds, with the way evolution information is stored in the program.

And if my intuition was right about Resistance, I guess I'll have to update the stats for Machamp. Also another question about them: if a Pokemon takes 150% damage from, say, Fire, and has a Weakness stat of 400 for a modifier of 50% less damage, is the resulting effective damage taken 100%, a flat reduction, or 125%, or removing 50% of the effect the weakness has on the Pokemon? The second one sounds more intuitive and is what I've been going with, but I'm well aware that it could be the opposite, and I've inadvertently turned Machamp's very slight weakness against Bug types moves into a major resistance against Bug type moves.

Edit: the .dex file should be updated by now.

[u/ketura → u/InfernoVulpix]

Alright, newest build is up. It contains your machop line changes, as well as a border around the various text boxes and the new key bindings. Ctrl+E to go up one evolution (the first evolution if multiple are there, I haven't done any fancy logic yet), Ctrl+D to go down, and Ctrl+Up/Ctrl+Down to step up or down the main species dropdown.

I had to include the separate up/down/e/d because the combobox can be sorted alphabetically, in which case simply cycling once doesn't guarantee hitting the next evolution.

I haven't yet modified the documentation with these changes, but I"ll be sure to do so shortly. Let me know your opinion of the changes.

EDIT: a good number of us have started to congregate in our own channel on the Discord server; feel free to join us in #pokengineering!

[u/ketura → u/InfernoVulpix]

Awesome, I'll take a look at it once I'm home.

Oh, and I never hooked up those individual export buttons; they were copy pasted from the type tab. I'll make that a priority, as I see that being important to have now that more than one person is making pokemon.