Comments on: Building Browsergames: a simple combat system (PHP)

By: MeeeeeePa

MeeeeeePa — Mon, 17 May 2010 00:03:41 +0000

I decided to not use Smarty. but I can't understand how to “translate” the Smarty Template into PHP. Help?

By: Nirkun

Nirkun — Sat, 27 Mar 2010 23:48:02 +0000

hey, your tutorial is great! It really helps me with my understanding of php.
I would love to insert a random number in that battlesystem. But when i do so in every fight the number doesn't change throughout the turns. Were is the best place to add the rand so i have a different damage in every turn? Or am I just unlucky and it always takes the same random number…
Would be nice to know were you would do that
Again thanks for this tutorial!

By: BUnzaga

BUnzaga — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 04:32:02 +0000

Perhaps do what they did in diablo 2 (and other games I am sure) put a minimum acceptable value. Something like

damage = (attack-defense) || 1;

So no matter what they will at least do 1 damage. Or if put in a different formula

damage = (attack-defense > 0) ? attack-defense : (Math.rand() > .5) ? 1 : 0;

By tweaking a system like this, if the attack is greater than 0, it will do the attack. If not, it will get a random value between 0 and 1. If it is greater than .5 then it will take off 1 damage. If it is less than .5, it will take off 0 damage.

Doing something like this will get rid of those never ending battles. Or perhaps put in a situational check at the start:

if (($player['attack'] - $monster['defense'] < 1) && ($monster['attack'] - $player['defense'] < 1){
// end in draw.
}

Anyway, there are a few different ideas to work around this.

By: someone

someone — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 01:56:10 +0000

I tried modifying the attack of the third monster from 3 to 7, you will end up with a situation where in the loop the attack is always less than defence, and the loop never exists causing a fatal error of memory loss.

5 player attack value ____ monster defence value 7 > no one will lose any health
4 monster attack value ____ player defence value 5 > no one will lose any health

By: someone

someone — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 20:56:10 +0000

5 player attack value ____ monster defence value 7 > no one will lose any health
4 monster attack value ____ player defence value 5 > no one will lose any health

By: Xenon

Xenon — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 19:20:25 +0000

I get errors like this:
“Notice: Use of undefined constant attacker – assumed 'attacker' in /Users/Niels/Sites/bg/smarty/bg/forest.php on line 53″

Caused by the arrays:
$combat[$turns] = array(
attacker => $attacker['name'],
defender => $defender['name'],
damage => $damage
);

I fixed it this way:
$combat[$turns] = array(
'attacker' => $attacker['name'],
'defender' => $defender['name'],
'damage' => $damage
);

PS: I realy like this tutorial, i was searching a long time for something like this .

By: MrLollige

MrLollige — Sat, 14 Mar 2009 18:00:54 +0000

Oh yes, true, I did not fully read it AND did not fully try to understand that code indeed. I am still a beginner in these things, and expected that smarty (the part I skipped) would enable you to decide every turn what you want to do.
Thanks for your reply!

By: Luke

Luke — Sat, 14 Mar 2009 17:01:16 +0000

I think that you may have misinterpreted the way that the combat system
works, here – after encounting a monster and clicking attack, the entire
combat simulation is run and the player's health is updated, before the next
screen. There isn't really a screen where they can see the battle is going
badly and run away.

By: MrLollige

MrLollige — Sat, 14 Mar 2009 09:12:05 +0000

This works, but only if you allow people to freely escape from their battles. If you do not want people to be able to flee, will you have to add a row for every instance of a monster, and update their hp every time?

Right now, if things are going bad, you could navigate away and your HP is back to normal again….