Shrap chance in basing games (plus small change to how it's given)

[BIET]

Sharks get a random amount of shrap each time they spawn. Below is explained how it's handled.

The bounty your ship starts with determines how many prizes to give the player when spawned. The way this works is that for every bounty you start with, a prize is given similar to how a green gives you a prize.

Here are the current prize weight settings in the basing arenas:

[PrizeWeight]
QuickCharge=0
Energy=0
Rotation=0
Stealth=0
Cloak=0
AntiWarp=0
XRadar=50
Warp=0
Gun=0
Bomb=0
BouncingBullets=0
Thruster=0
TopSpeed=0
Recharge=0
MultiFire=255
Proximity=0
Glue=0
AllWeapons=0
Shields=0
Shrapnel=100
Repel=100
Burst=50
Decoy=0
Thor=0
Portal=20
Brick=0
Rocket=0
MultiPrize=0

This gives shrapnel a 100 out of 575 (4/23 or ~17.39%) chance of being prized each time. Since the initial bounty is 3, the chance to spawn with:

• 0 shrap is ~56.37% (19/23 ^ 3)
• 3 shrap is ~35.60% (4/23 * 19/23 ^ 2 * 3)
• 5 shrap is ~8.02% (4/23 ^ 2 * 19/23 * 3 + 4/23 ^ 3)

In order to display shrap amounts next to the bomb icon, or below your ship (see poll here), the bot has to know how much shrap the player has. Normally the bot would only receive this info after firing a weapon, be it a bullet, bomb, mine, burst, or repel. For shrap this is not quick enough, and this is where the change comes into play.

Instead of the game giving the prizes on spawn, the initial bounty will be set to 0, and the bot gives the prizes instead. The probability will stay exactly the same, but now the bot knows exactly your shrap amount and can use that to display a number next to your bomb icon, or show dots representing the shrap amount below your ship.

[Rab]

Does this mean every time you spawn you get 3 green sounds? That'd get annoying. Not rly sure why ur doing this stuff nobody asked for tbh, leave it alone. The scoreboard is all we needed.

[BIET]

It would just be one green sound. And as to why I'm doing it, I've suggested these changes in other threads and shared them in-game. Got positive feedback on those. Having the bot manage the shrap prizing would also make it possible to change the distribution without changing the prize weight for greens.

[Kassius]

As someone who doesn't play any of the ships this affects, obviously I'm all for QoL improvements, and anything that can be done to make things easier for newer players. Could some form of this be in public too perhaps?

Also, Biet you seem to be an absolute master at scaling the graphics. Qan's suggested to me in another thread that the energy font could be scaled to appear below the WB, I'd use to know when I could shoot as I'm just a bad player and regularly am hitting control when I don't have enough energy. Or is energy something the bot can track, and thus give an indicator below the ship as to when you should be able to fire? E.g. A red/green dot or indicator?

Keep up the good work, the community is lucky to have you.

[BIET]

I only know how to move the game's graphics to the right and down, not left and down. No idea how he'd do it. I'll ask him. But, even if you could get your energy total to show, it wouldn't change color past certain limits.

The bot wouldn't be able to keep up and reliably serve you the your energy.

The only option I currently see is changing the energy bar graphic (the part in the middle) and use the right part of the bar to only show your energy bar past 1350 energy. Change the color of the bar too, and you have an indication of when to shoot. Let me see if I can throw something together.

[Rab]

I only know how to move the game's graphics to the right and down, not left and down.

why is this?

[BIET]

I thought the point (top left) where the graphic is shown was fixed, but just changed hlthbar.bm2 and that one is actually centered. So maybe engyfont.bm2 is also fixed on a different spot. Maybe top right?

Below is a healthbar only showing the energy between 1350 and 1500. Made for 1920 px width game window

[BIET]

OK, engyfont is actually fixed on the top right, but when you move the number over to the right, you also increase the spacing in between the numbers. Eventually when you get close to your ship, you've lost the first two digits. Unless I've done this all wrong, there's no really good way to solve this problem by moving your energy from the top right.

[Kassius]

I thought the point (top left) where the graphic is shown was fixed, but just changed hlthbar.bm2 and that one is actually centered. So maybe engyfont.bm2 is also fixed on a different spot. Maybe top right?

Below is a healthbar only showing the energy between 1350 and 1500. Made for 1920 px width game window

Thanks, Biet, I'll take a look when I get back home tomorrow :-)

[Turban]

If we go through with this change it would be probably good to prize all ships three random prizes as ship bounty affects things such as player point and rating scores. You also would need to likely edit the minimum bounty value requires to attach to a terrier down to 0 as players tend to immediately attach after spawning. This value is by default set to 3, but had already once changed to 0 when we were playing around with the idea of fixed shrapnel spawns which were met with mixed opinions. Not sure whether it was reverted back to normal.

As an added question (quite an important one): would only sharks be able to see this graphic? I would hope that to be the case as counting repels and dodging possible three or five shrapnel patterns are valuable skills deeply rooted into the gameplay, and having too much "information" on your screen can be somewhat distracting.

Shrapnel count should in my opinion be linked to icons, and repels one seems quite redundant in the end as you can already tell how many repels a shark has.

[qan]

I don't think points or R are used for bot ratings in any sense (and those are strange to the point of not mattering much anyhow), so unless people commonly reference that in F2, it may not be such a big deal.

Fixed shrap was reverted along with timed ports/bursts. Interesting ideas, at least, but I think people enjoy the random element. Someone suggested tying some of these to team performance, such as greens collected. Might be interesting to try at some point, as it could encourage pushes where they might not ordinarily be and break up what is often a slow, plodding affair.

Only sharks should be able to see any of these graphics, yep. They're screen objects and use the center of the screen as the offset start.

[Turban]

Yeah, I meant more so the arena points for most points shield. I know few people for some reason take pride in wielding it, and it puts a target in your back. Not really a big deal in the end.

[BIET]

The amount of bounty after prizing would be the same as before. Instead of sharks starting with 3 bounty, they will start with 0 and gain 3 by prizes from the bot. So there won't be any change to points gained from killing sharks. The prizing itself would happen about 5 ms after spawning, so attaching shouldn't be an issue. AttachBounty could be lowered to 0 if necessary.

The shrap and rep graphics below the ship are all optional AND player specific. Same goes for the shrapnel count beside the bomb icon on the right. Only the player would see them if they so choose to enable them. So these are QoL improvements and helping us to gain more control over the prizing in general.

[Nipple Nibbler]

If I recall distension had a thing where you were greened stuff'n things on spawn, sometimes it would bug out and not green you. Usually this is from dying many times in a short period of time(which sharks do in BD). This would really suck in shark in the middle of a BD to not be able to attach due to bounty. +1 to lowering bounty to attach for sharks to 0 just incase.

Keep up the good work biet, bring the game into the 2000's!

[project dragon]

Along the lines of distension, I recall the bot warping you back into spawn or something if you attached prior to bot greening you. I don't know the mechanics of why that happened but I know it was annoying.