Castle Paradox

[planethunter]

Imagine raising your very own creature and trading it with friends...

That's the main feature of my game, I have found a way to do it.
It's not a direct method, i.e. you don't have to modify game.exe or anything.

I'll let you ponder for a while, it can be done!
All that's needed is two computers, two of the same .rpg file
and game.exe. No special tools or connections required.

All I have to say is one word and you should get it.
The reason why i'm posting this message is because I want to see if you
guys can come up with a better way of doing the same thing.

HINT: think compression people. A certain degree of trust is involved,
as there are ways to 'cheat'. But I believe people just play games solely
to cheat.... I haved devised some ways of blocking most forms of cheating, and even if you cheat somebody has to help you...

please don't lock this page until I get a few ideas at least.
I look foward to see what the best plotscripting boffins can come up with...
_________________
~PH

[Me]

Assuming we can use floppies/Zips/CDs:
Run UNLUMP.EXE, put your hero/monster on a disc, transfer to other computer, unlump other game, put hero in other game, recover other game. Voila.
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UP DOWN UP DOWN LEFT LEFT RIGHT RIGHT A B START

[planethunter0]

Yes that can be done, but I'm talking via scripting, using commands
and so forth. By using a script to "compress" all the hero's information,
stats, picture palette level... etc etc.

What could be done is to find all of these details, create a code.
and get an npc or something to display the code. The player will need it to
"trade" with another player. The hero should be deleted now. Once another code is given, then a hero will be "uncompressed" by using the
code to create a hero.

The best thing is that the code can be widely distribruted, via e-mail or
sms. No disks of anysort required.

Here is a VERY simple version of how "compression" works:

HP:12
MP:10
DEF:8
LV.6

the "compressed" version would create a code string like this:

LJHF

Here is how I did it,

the letters are representing a no. (1 to 20)
So A would be 1, B=2 and C=3

from 21 to 26 there are signs.
Add, subtract, mulitply, divide, Sqaure root and Square.

You can get any value using this method.

Nobody can make 'custom' heros unless they know the function,
so keep it a secret

There is a downside to this method, first of all:

people could raise strong heros and publish their code on their
website. Allowing weak players to become strong.


Once you have the code for a hero there's no stopping you from keeping
it. You could easily bring back dead heros. But I guess some people are
attached to their heros anyway.

Hero duplication is a problem, one could easily copy several strong heros
and get a way with it.

Perhaps a seperate .exe file could be used to code the code.
By creating a code that could only be used by another copy of the
.exe and not the player.

Any better ways of doing this, or perhaps somebody could help with solving the obivous flaws in both methods....

[Blazes Battles Inc.]

Well, despite the fact that someone could create the most powerful monster ever by manipulating that simple code, it's a fairly good idea. Except you can't put in your own custom picture without editing the .rpg file manually or through custom anyway, so all the monsters would look the same (or if there were multiple kinds the pictures would all be in the game anyway) thus making it boring. The OHR is not really suited for creating Pokemanish games.
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Preserve OHR history! Do it for the children!

[Sir_Phoenix_Drake]

Granted you have an interesting concept, yet you'd be stretching out on too far a limb to pull that off. Most people unfamiliar to OHR wouldn't bother.
_________________
-Raymond Ackenhouser (Sir Phoenix Drake)
Founder
Realmsoft Interactive America

[TMC]

I'll just point out (refering to what Blazes Battles said) that in all the pokemon and Digimon games made, ALL the gfx were in the game and no new one could be created.

Of course if you use save files, you can just passed data on by GV's and tags.
The string of code passed to the other computer can take any number of forms- It could be the name of your 'creature' follows by a real looking 'surname' or something that's actually code.
A piece of music...

You might check several million digits of pi (or any other generated number that has random properties) for a certain piece of code (the data you want to pass on), and then tell the user at which point you founf the piece. The other computer would then workout the random number at that point and retrieve data. It could be done on the OHR! (just not the pi version).
Or you could use just a single RND function to produce a string.

For all we know, all the stats except for a few might be predictable. For instance, half the stats might be hard coded by age, which could then be carried across by some means.


Hmm,... what a brainstorming activity. I've come up with several more stupid ideas to implement with PS in my game!! Sorry for the long post!
_________________
"It is so great it is insanely great."

[Blazes Battles Inc.]

Now there's a Digimon game? Thought they went far enough with that show... er... back to the point... even the first Pokemon game had 150 possible ones to get. More if you cheated. The OHR can support 100 different heroes. You could make it seem like more by using a bunch of hero-picture-changing commands, but there are still only 100 names. And if you expect me to believe you're actually going to make even half that many, that look even semi-good and are all very different, not to mention special attacks and characteristics for each one, you've got another thing coming.

Not to mention there's not that much room for originality using the OHR battle system. Once you reach a certain point, everything starts getting way too similar. Another reason the Pokemon system was good is because of its battle system. If you tried making a Pokemon game with the OHR battle system it would be terrible. You could make your own custom battle system, but I doubt you'll do that.

...

I just remembered something writing this post. Planethunter, just skip over this if you want because you won't remember what I'm talking about (since you weren't here). Back on the first Renzo someone posted something about making a special battle system for the OHR without using plotscripting. I said that was basically impossible, and someone else (who, like my playtesters, I've forgotten the name of) said they would do it. Umm... I'm still waiting on that. Of course, since I don't remember your name, you could just not say anything. But if you DO read this, tell me if you ever did what you told me you could.
_________________
Preserve OHR history! Do it for the children!

[Bob the Hamster]

Has anyone ever played "Zelda: Oracle of Ages" and "Zelda: Oracle of Seasons" for the game-boy? Those games used a password scheme similar to this idea to trasfer secrets from one game to the other.

Really, the most difficult part of implementing a password system like this is that you need to be able to plotscript a password-entry system of some sort.

As for encypting a password, the "seed random" plotscripting command would help you there.

[planethunter]

The only reason I mentioned random values was that it might serve no purpose but only to confuse people trying to "crack" the code.

The 'if' statement could just check for all possible values of a no. in the
code, but that would just make the system more complicated...

Blaze Battles inc, the game i'm making just uses hero names for
types, not elemental types but merely physical types: knight, mage hamster etc. I have a script to make a customised name appear in a textbox and some other places. The thing is, I also want customisable
names for the hero's monsters, which have to transfered too.

( more info on that script in "anybody want to custimise hero names"
it got locked before I could post any actual code. )

One way to stop people to understand the code is to code the code.
But even I can't foresee a complex script as that.

What's all this about hero pictures, I meant swapping hero's via the same
.rpg file. So that about rules all that non-sense about different .rpg files.

btw, I wouldn't make a funtion THAT simple. It was merely for demonstration purposes only. I already have some complex functions
using sqaure roots and powers, but they are scratching
at the limits of the limits of the stats .

Whats the limit on the no. of attacks you can have, I was wondering cause
it would be pretty silly to have hundreds of heros but with the same attacks...
_________________
~PH

[Sir_Phoenix_Drake]

[planethunter]

erm, let me decode what I ment to get across.

Firstly, I want people to understand how to use my ideas. The whole coding
secrecy thing is there to stop people from working out the function. knowing
the function could make a player create custom hero's without knowing the
password for the .rpg file. Not to make it ultra difficult to understand.
I incourage people to create their own functions, by showing a simple example.

Sir Drake, it seems you must have done one of the following or both:

skim through the page and get only the bits about coding and secrecy,
and thinking I was purposly making my posts difficult to understand.
AND / OR
Not understanding anything about my example through lack of knowledge
of plotscripting, and assuming from my previous posts I was deliberately
trying to make things difficult.

What I meant by "code the code" was to encrypt the already encrypted function, not to hide the plotscripting code so people can't make out.

Alas! this is not the case, perhaps sometimes when I get an idea I spend
less time making sure every "Joe Public" can understand it. If anybody is
confused you can either:

Run home scared, 'cryptaphobia' has set in.
OR
Ask questions, i'm sure people somebody can speak english...

Well it seems i've wasted a post. Anybody know the answer to my previous
post's question. It's probably in the howto or something. Thing is, I used
my howto to generate a load of wacky images. Then my hard drive got
reformatted and I haven't bothered checking all the sat specs, again...
_________________
~PH