Character Simulator App

[shavenlunatic]

1.  Nice to see you chose to stick around after your "welcoming" thread.  :)

yeah well, i left and calmed down a little. :rolleyes: lol

2.  What you envision strikes me as similar to Chippydip's calculator, massively enhanced.  ATMA has some of the functionality that you seek.  IIRC, it had at one point a character editor function.

YES, exactly, Chippydip is very much like what I was looking for but as you say, a lot more enhanced.

3.  The tool you are seeking is not trivial to build, however.  If you were inclined to build one yourself, (and become famous for doing so!) you'd probably do well to seek out the Phrozen Keep Mod crowd for advice on digging what you wanted to out of the various mpq and text files, so that you would replicate the game engine's calculations for various combinations of skills, stats, and items together.

crap, looks like im gonna have to install Visual Studio and get programming. I knew it might come to this, but i was hoping some poor sap had done it for me...lol :)


I'll get to work... whos making me coffee? :blink:

[Guest]

shavenlunatic,

I'm sorry if my posting came off as rude, I need to learn to accept others playstyle.

And good luck on the program, and as mentioned check out the Phrozen Keep and their forums, they're a nice bunch (as long as you don't mention Realm+Mod)

[shavenlunatic]

shavenlunatic,

I'm sorry if my posting came off as rude, I need to learn to accept others playstyle.

And good luck on the program, and as mentioned check out the Phrozen Keep and their forums, they're a nice bunch (as long as you don't mention Realm+Mod)

No rudeness felt (ooh-er missus). I just felt that you mis-understood what I was looking for.

On the subject of the app I may or may not be writing (lol), I've been looking into it and as I am relatively a D2 n00b, the stats and calculations are mental. The more I look into it , the more I realise how much of a nightmare it's going to be. Taking into account every single possibly option. The chippydips simulator is very much like what I was looking for (except it didnt take into account character stats and equipment), and chippydips in itself would be very easy to write once i had all the calculations.

But my mind boggles when i have to think of all the equpment calculations (most of which I dont understand, as I'm a newby and I cant get my head around the sheer volume of different equipment there is around there). I think if I'm actually going to do this I'm gonna have to research it for a month or two and then embark on actually programming it.

Oooh, I like a good project.

Thanks for the pointer btw :D

[JustAGuy]

Oh man,

This part of the thread is hilarious! It reminds me of a Mr. Show sketch where a former member of a band accuses his old band mates of kicking him out for only having one arm. The abbot and costello-ish routine goes something like this:

"You kicked me out of the band because I lost my arm!"
"Well, yes and no. You're out of the band because you're a bad drummer. Having one arm doesn't help. We were about to kick you out before your accident."
"So, you're saying, you kicked me out because I only have one arm?"
"No. You were kicked out because you're a bad drummer!"
"On account of my one arm!"
"No!! Listen: You have one arm. BUT, IN ADDITION TO, ALSO, you're a sh***y drummer!"
"Because I of my handicap."
"NOOO!!!!!"
and it continues...

It was quite the funny sketch, from season 3. As always with their stuff, it's all about delivery. Anyway, that's just something I remembered, paraphrased and probably badly thrashed beyond recognition, impossible to compare to the original.

And to get myself on-topic: I do see what it is that you want. I too entertained thoughts of writing such an application. But, the scope of it is far too large; the application that I would have written would have been the core of Diablo 2's skill and item systems themselves. I'm sure as hell not re-writing Diablo, since that's what they did with version 1.10, and it took about 2 years to finish. I've already got two jobs, what do I need a third (unpaid!) one for?!

[shavenlunatic]

Oh man,

This part of the thread is hilarious! It reminds me of a Mr. Show sketch where a former member of a band accuses his old band mates of kicking him out for only having one arm. The abbot and costello-ish routine goes something like this:

"You kicked me out of the band because I lost my arm!"
"Well, yes and no. You're out of the band because you're a bad drummer. Having one arm doesn't help. We were about to kick you out before your accident."
"So, you're saying, you kicked me out because I only have one arm?"
"No. You were kicked out because you're a bad drummer!"
"On account of my one arm!"
"No!! Listen: You have one arm. BUT, IN ADDITION TO, ALSO, you're a sh***y drummer!"
"Because I of my handicap."
"NOOO!!!!!"
and it continues...

It was quite the funny sketch, from season 3. As always with their stuff, it's all about delivery. Anyway, that's just something I remembered, paraphrased and probably badly thrashed beyond recognition, impossible to compare to the original.

And to get myself on-topic: I do see what it is that you want. I too entertained thoughts of writing such an application. But, the scope of it is far too large; the application that I would have written would have been the core of Diablo 2's skill and item systems themselves. I'm sure as hell not re-writing Diablo, since that's what they did with version 1.10, and it took about 2 years to finish. I've already got two jobs, what do I need a third (unpaid!) one for?!

:P LOL, i was kinda feeling like that... well observed :D

As for the application, the more and more I think about it, the more and more I realise it is going to be a nightmare. You're right, it would be like re-writing Diablo2 from scratch minus the graphics and gameplay, but all stats and damage calculations would probably end up being about 60-70% of the game (in a programming sense).

Gawd, i think i may slowly develop something over time, but I doubt I could get through it all on my own, i'll enlish some Diablo 2 statistic monkey before i start who have a programming background and just get em to shove a bunch of stuff in.. hmmmm

[--Pete]

Hi,

As for the application, the more and more I think about it, the more and more I realise it is going to be a nightmare. You're right, it would be like re-writing Diablo2 from scratch minus the graphics and gameplay, but all stats and damage calculations would probably end up being about 60-70% of the game (in a programming sense).

Hardly. More like 5% or less. The network code, the client-server code, the graphics code are all huge. The stat and damage calculations are a piece of cake once the functional forms, parameter values, and order of evaluation are known. From what I've seen posted, the problem is that D 2 is (like all Buzzard products) a dog's meal of code. Dead code, spaghetti code, duplicate (or sometimes nearly so) code. Data read from exterior tables and ignored for hard wired values. Other bad programming crapola. Even with the source code, I suspect it would be nearly impossible to accurately guess how things *really* work. Working from the executable makes the whole proposition nearly impossible and not worth the effort.

You've got single player, you've got character generators. Like any chaotic system, D2 is it's own best model -- go from there.

--Pete

[Occhidiangela]

You probably want to head on over the the PHrozen Keep. Much help there. :)

[Guest]

Another guy is trying to do a GUI interface for modding - it's kind of (?) related though, so check the thread (all of it) at least.