Charlie's Arena is ONLINE!!! (5th DEMO RELEASED) (RECRUITING)

[Villain]

Cool game!
But how to connect to the server, to play it with some other alive people?))

[Charlie Fleed]

Play -> Web Server -> Join Room or Host Room

[Villain]

So... where are the people? I am alone!!! =((
When a playtime? When people come?

[Charlie Fleed]

I know... I got many people saying this is good, and it's going to be successful, and addictive and so on, but then only a few people showed up in the channel... and unfortunately for them not always at the same time.

The next big thing that is going to happen in Charlie's Arena is the introduction of user profiles. The game will request the creation of a user profile. The username and a password will be registered with the server. This will ensure that every player will have a unique username. Moreover any time you create a party or a character, the game will connect to the server and get a unique identifier for that object. The purpose is to record statistics about players, their parties and characters and show some rankings. Something like "who's the highest-level archer", "which is the highest-average-level party", "which party has won most battles" and things like that. Week- or month-top parties or players could get some kind of bonus. Suggestions are also welcome.
For the moment the server will not save the complete parties data but in the future it could, and then it will be possible to use it for restoring accidentally deleted accounts (which means accidentally deleted savefile).

[deValdr]

If it isn't already, it should be a vs. CPU mode.

[Villain]

I'am Agree, but would it be interesting?

[deValdr]

It would give the player ability to play at all times which is a must.

[Charlie Fleed]

And would you play if it were just for practice? I mean with no exp and no UPs for these battles?

I've been doing some reasoning about the battle formulas. I fixed a few fundamental objectives.
One is that I want the players to figure out really quickly what damage a weapon or a skill will produce, so that they can plan their strategy in the light of that.
Next, I wanted some character parameters to affect attacks and skills, in a combined way with the attack of weapons and the power of skills.
Finally I wanted the Intelligence value to play a role both when using magical skills and when being the target of them.
So, here are a few ideas I have come up with.

Melee Weapon Physical Attacks:
DAMAGE = User's STR + Weapon's ATK + min(User's STR, Weapon's ATK)

Ranged Weapon Physical Attacks:
DAMAGE = User's HIT + Weapon's ATK

Magical Skills:
DAMAGE = User's INT + Skill's POWER + min(User's INT, Skill's POWER)

Physical Skills:
DAMAGE = (Damage of the physical attack with the equipped weapon) * Skill's POWER / 100

Physical Defense:
DEFENSE = Defender's PDEF

Magical Defense:
DEFENSE = Defender's MDEF + Defender's INT + min(Defender's MDEF, Defender's INT)

Ok, now to explain how the three min functions work and why they have been put there I will propose a few examples.

A wizard with INT=20 (A) and a wizard with INT=100 (B) use the same skill, with POWER=100. According to the formula above we have:
A' damage = 20 + 100 + min(20, 100) = 140
B' damage = 100 + 100 + min(100, 100) = 300

As you can see A is "too weak" to exploit the skill to its full potential (which would be 100 + 100), as its INT value limits the min function. B instead uses the skill at its full potential and the damage is 114% higher (more than doubled).

What happens if they both use a stronger skill? Let's say 500?
A' damage = 20 + 500 + min(20, 500) = 540
B' damage = 100 + 500 + min(100, 500) = 700

Now, 700 is just 29% higher than 540. What's happening here is that also B is too weak to exploit the full potential of the skill, and the two damages become more similar. In other words it is a situation in which the skills counts more than who is using it.

The same goes with STR and Weapon ATK (you need STR to exlpoit the "bonus" damage points of your weapon), and with INT and MDEF (you need INT to exploit the "bonus" defense points of your weapon).

I'm still not sure about ranged weapons and the attacks (and skills) made with them. I think using the character's HIT parameter in the same way as the STR parameter is wrong, after all, if it makes sense that a stronger character deals more damage with a sword, a gun deals a damage that doesn't depend on who's using it. What could happen is that a character has bad aim. So I guess I will start from there.

[Charlie Fleed]

5th demo released.
http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?dgxmtzmthz3

[Charlie Fleed]

Due to a bug discovered in the web server chat I had to upload a patched version.
http://sites.google.com/site/charlieflee...urrent.zip

Remember to copy your old "savefile.rxdata" file in the new demo folder.