Limb Damage Equation concept

Austere

Tael said:

Ernam said:

Nope, different equations for each class.

I will say no more than this, but that's a pretty misleading way of putting it. The equation is mostly the same. There is definitely a unifying formula.

(Can someone else please solve it/reverse-engineer it so we can stop having these threads? @Nim ?)

Why are you asking people to solve it if you know it. . Seems pretty silly.  I have already stated my opinion once in this thread, and since it effects me none, I am hoping Tecton decides to just change the formula at this point. Do Manda users get a full refund if they do? 

Also,  there are numerous people that could reverse it,  but Ernam didn't dropbox it yet.  Guess he still isn't that brave [or that dumb]

Austere

Although,  having researched this problem from the other direction before coming to the conclusion that charging people for something I enjoy doing anyway is dumb,  feel free to pm me for my email and drop me a copy If you feel that strongly.  Otherwise, just stop.  You look foolish. 

Jacen

Austere said:

 charging people for something I enjoy doing anyway is dumb

This is pretty much the definition of a good career.

Austere

Jacen said:

Austere said:

 charging people for something I enjoy doing anyway is dumb

This is pretty much the definition of a good career.

I had no idea he depended on the profits of his systems so much.  Forgive me for not considering this was his livelihood at stake and not just a game he played for fun. 

Edit: $3500, his estimated profit number, he sent to me via pm,  must be tough to live on for as long as he has played, though. He MUST be doing something on the side. .. Not going to take guesses, because the only thing I can think of he would have time for(after coding on his systems 20 hours a day) is either illegal or just gross.

Bluef

If people have really paid him that much, I've lost all faith in this community. You've fed the mogwai after dark, now he's your problem Achaea.

Herose

If anyone wants to collect and send data to me I'd solve it and release it free of charge.

If logs contain all of the pertinent information you could just send those to me and I would extract the data from it.  For example, for a monk I would need things stance, strength, knuckle level, level of opponent, con of opponent, health of opponent, and attack type.

The log should just be you doing one punch/kick in one particular stance over and over again until the limb breaks.  Then switching up the stance and doing it again.  The log should also contain a quick score to grab your stats, a list of what you're wearing, and the health of the opponent if you didn't want to send that separately. 

If enough people send me data to get me started I'll make another thread requesting any additional data I need.

Tael

Austere said:

Why are you asking people to solve it if you know it. . Seems pretty silly.

1. If someone reveals the function, we can stop having these threads. And the similar posts that have shown up in a number of other threads, which are harder to avoid.

2. I learned the formula from Ernam just after coming back to the game, and part of that involved agreeing not to reveal it.

Consequently, it would be nice if someone else solved it.

Cynlael

Careful, @Bluef. Put too much logic into your post, and he might say he's not going to bother responding to you.

Aegoth

@Tael, there's really nothing to keep you from revealing said function, and achieving your desire of these threads to stop happening. Nothing will happen to you legally or otherwise. There's absolutely no way to enforce a verbal agreement like that. It's 100% in your power to do what you're asking other people to do. The worst that will happen is someone will get angry and cry and complain about some megalomaniacal plot getting thwarted.  Just a thought!

Austere

Tael said:

Austere said:

Why are you asking people to solve it if you know it. . Seems pretty silly.

1. If someone reveals the function, we can stop having these threads. And the similar posts that have shown up in a number of other threads, which are harder to avoid.

2. I learned the formula from Ernam just after coming back to the game, and part of that involved agreeing not to reveal it.

Consequently, it would be nice if someone else solved it.

Pm It to me.  I know just who to give it to that will share it without raising suspicion.  Only way to guarantee this threads death,  beyond divine intervention. Everyone here knows the only way to deflate the ego in this thread is to distribute the formula. It either needs cracked, or posted.  Otherwise,  your still just part of the problem, not the solution.  

Tael

Aegoth said:

@Tael, there's really nothing to keep you from revealing said function, and achieving your desire of these threads to stop happening. Nothing will happen to you legally or otherwise. There's absolutely no way to enforce a verbal agreement like that. It's 100% in your power to do what you're asking other people to do. The worst that will happen is someone will get angry and cry and complain about some megalomaniacal plot getting thwarted.  Just a thought!

1. When I first came back (and had no idea who Ernam was), I traded credits for the formula. Given that I promised not to reveal it, it is, theoretically, under the scope of HELP SCAMS.

2. I try not to break agreements when I can help it.

3. While I still think it's basically correct (and it looks much more reasonable than any other function I've seen anyone else present), if it is, indeed, inaccurate, that would be nice to know - since I traded for a perfectly-accurate formula, presumably I could get the credits back or invoke HELP SCAMS myself.

Austere

I really do feel the need to state this again: formulas, scripts,  guis, and artwork are ooc concepts.  IRE does not, to my knowledge, cover any such ooc agreement.  If the formula is wrong, it should not be covered under help scams. @Sarapis can we get confirmation on this? 

Nim

I think @Tael is just praying for some magical code fairy to come along and supply all the answers, so he can be blameless in the matter but still have an enchantedly wonderful life. Too bad actual fairies are capricous jerks, can personally confirm.

Tael

Nim said:

I think @Tael is just praying for some magical code fairy to come along and supply all the answers, so he can be blameless in the matter but still have an enchantedly wonderful life. Too bad actual fairies are capricous jerks, can personally confirm.

That is 100% what I am praying for.

Nim

well ok, but it'll cost you your first born, twelve yaks, and a vague favor of my choosing

Tael

I'm gay and my yak guy is out of town.

But I am all about vague favours. Bring it, fairy.

Ernam

Manda is cheap, powerful, and provides a lot more functionality than just the equations.  Specifically, it is the only publicly available limb tracking system that tracks limb damage (not hits), has a GUI and several output options, works for multiple classes (a list that grows regularly), tracks things like rebounding, tracks illusions, rebounding, SoA, etc.  Provides messages warnings on limb preps and soon-to-reset limbs, tracks any number of players, and has a recursive, real-time updated path-to-prep algorithm which is extremely useful for BMs, monks, and knights.

I'm sorry if some people think that I should spend my time coding for free, but I don't.  Once again, if you don't want to buy it, then don't.  I don't understand why 3 pages of bitching about the concept of getting paid (meagerly) for ones work is either on-topic or even a valid argument.

At this point I'm just going to follow Vadi's example and just stop feeding the trolls.  I have a very long, and growing list of happy users of my programs, including quite a few of the people who (ironically) are complaining in this thread.

If you want to rant about what a mean guy I am, please take to the Sewer so it can be summarily ignored.  If you have any relevant questions or feedback on the actual topic of the thread, please feel free to put it forward.  As always, PMs/messages welcome for people who don't want to be forum-shunned for speaking to me in an adult-like manner.

Nim

Tael said:

I'm gay and my yak guy is out of town.

I'm certain we can arrange something.

Bluef

Tael said:

Aegoth said:

@Tael, there's really nothing to keep you from revealing said function, and achieving your desire of these threads to stop happening. Nothing will happen to you legally or otherwise. There's absolutely no way to enforce a verbal agreement like that. It's 100% in your power to do what you're asking other people to do. The worst that will happen is someone will get angry and cry and complain about some megalomaniacal plot getting thwarted.  Just a thought!

1. When I first came back (and had no idea who Ernam was), I traded credits for the formula. Given that I promised not to reveal it, it is, theoretically, under the scope of HELP SCAMS.

2. I try not to break agreements when I can help it.

3. While I still think it's basically correct (and it looks much more reasonable than any other function I've seen anyone else present), if it is, indeed, inaccurate, that would be nice to know - since I traded for a perfectly-accurate formula, presumably I could get the credits back or invoke HELP SCAMS myself.

Um, is HELP SCAMS really reversible like that? I would think...not. That's like me saying "Here, for 50 credits you can have this kitten but you must promise not to kill it." Then I watch the owner murder it and ISSUE them. I somehow doubt that I'd win.

So just get over it and post it here or PM it to someone and claim ignorance of how it leaked. Otherwise, people are right: You're part of the problem.

I'm personally REALLY sick of the commercial-style posts here for Manda by the way. I think I'm going to start flagging them for breaking Forum Rule #9: No advertisements.

Cooper

Other issues aside, this thread does not break the advertisement rule.

Bluef

When there are numerous posts all tagged for the same advertisement-style writing...I'm willing to bet it's looked at. It may not be hit farming or link spamming, but allowing the signature line and repeated postings of commercials about his "products" to exist is essentially offering him a platform to advertise. If others start to do the same thing, it could get pretty messy. 

Cooper

Hmm. I didn't consider the linking to his site part at first, but I still don't think it breaks the rule. 

Ernam

Bluef, you've made your point.  Let it go.  If I'm doing something illegal, it'll be handled appropriately.  Otherwise, there's no rule against "doing things Bluef doesn't like".  Also, please adhere to the ruling you brought up.  [I didn't mention you, @Cynlael did, and I was responding to him.]

Bluef

The Official Counter
------------------------
# Times I've had to view the Manda | Godzilla | SLC links
since my OP on advertisements: 1

Tahquil

Guys, lay off @Tael and stop trying to get him/her to give up the formula. She/He said they made a promise not to give up the formula and they're sticking to their word. Don't go bashing them for having a sense of decency or trying to make them beak their word.

Nim

I said I'd post something tonight, but then I went to coding my own stuff and then getting the best suit of armor to ever armor, so I might not get anything legit up here for a while, but hey, you guys posted like a dozen things while I was at work, so let's start Nim's Adventures in Mandaland Part 1. I paid for the ticket, so you guys all enjoy the ride, and try not to troll Ernam too much until it's over, please.

In short, I'm not currently convinced the formula's accurate as claimed yet. Some of the assumptions it's making are pretty contrary to what I'd learned a while ago, but it is possible things have changed since then.

That said, I presently don't have a lot of proof other than that at 4716 HP in Thyr with a Lv1 band, the off-limb break happens a hit earlier (on the 8th hit) than Manda thinks it should (the 9th hit). One singular failure point honestly isn't so bad for a general purpose limb tracker, but it does disprove the total accuracy claim, and warrants further examination.

I've already let Ernam know, and he said he's looking into it as well, so if you're a Manda customer, then hey, my brutal analysis might end up getting you a better product! Such is the purpose of criticism, is it not?

Also, it failed against a bunch of data I got circa January 2013, but that doesn't mean Manda is flawed (aside for the above case) - it could just mean said data is outdated, if the Blademaster limb damage has since been reworked in Achaea itself. I'll be writing a script later to test against these values using Manda itself, since manually doing it is tedious, and though I only have ten health "samples," each sample is a ton of data.

Other things people may want to know is that it doesn't support drawslashes at all presently, and it doesn't seem to use the middle values for limbprobe, which admittedly isn't easy to do since they're windows rather than fixed values, but I figured it was worth mentioning since Manda does claim limbprobe functionality.

PS: if anyone thought I didn't already have it, you should feel sad now. I put up so many cat faces and tildes on the issue, c'mon. I'm no high end renown reverse engineering expert, but it is part of my routine at work to diagnose (and sometimes even fix) issues in code I don't even have the original source code.

Eld

Nim said:

I said I'd post something tonight, but then I went to coding my own stuff and then getting the best suit of armor to ever armor, so I might not get anything legit up here for a while, but hey, you guys posted like a dozen things while I was at work, so let's start Nim's Adventures in Mandaland Part 1. I paid for the ticket, so you guys all enjoy the ride, and try not to troll Ernam too much until it's over, please.

In short, I'm not currently convinced the formula's accurate as claimed yet. Some of the assumptions it's making are pretty contrary to what I'd learned a while ago, but it is possible things have changed since then.

It's also worth keeping in mind that, given the amount of misinformation out there regarding mechanisms like this, it's quite possible that what you learned previously was incorrect. I would be interested to know what things you're referring to, though.

Other things people may want to know is that it doesn't support drawslashes at all presently, and it doesn't seem to use the middle values for limbprobe, which admittedly isn't easy to do since they're windows rather than fixed values, but I figured it was worth mentioning since Manda does claim limbprobe functionality.
Last time I did any testing with drawslash (a few years ago), it appeared to be identical to compass in terms of limb damage; granted, I didn't test it extensively. Do you happen to know if that's the case?

Nim

I only count things as learned if I tested it myself. They may be outdated, so my current objective is to confirm if they're still true or not, but they are:

Draw slash is weaker than compass slash, which is in turn weaker than direct limb damage. Off-limb damage is, of course, the weakest by a significant margin.

Thyr < Mir < Unstanced < Sanya < Doya < Arash, in terms of damage.

Many differences are minute, eg. the difference between doya and arash is often nonexistent for most targets, though sawbones helps a bit (for example, testing just moments ago, draw slash vs 4716 with Lv1 band in Thyr goes from barely to lightly on the third hit, while compass/limb slash both do that on the second, and are otherwise identical). Ultimately, though, it looked like each stance/attack combination had a distinct damage value.

I've always assumed the three limb attacks (centreslass, arm slash, and leg slash) did the same damage as one another though, and have never thoroughly tried to disprove it. Someday, I probably should, since that's a huge assumption.

Nim

In fact, just have the data I came to these assumptions with. http://pastebin.com/KdqVqQfC

- means unstanced, otherwise first letter is stance.
d is draw slash, c is compass slash, l is main limb damage, x is off limb damage.
Number is hits to break from unbroken.

I make no claim that it's still accurate, however. In fact, I can't even completely guarantee its initial accuracy, though I did make every effort to record accurate data. The lowest health value is particularly dangerous, as my volunteer at the time was a legitimate newbie at the time, and I believe was curing things manually. Now I have sawbones, newbies have automatic curing, and so testing will have much less risks going forward. c:

Thanks goes to @Ramilies, @Nellaundra, @Gnaeus, @Iocun, and @Syth for letting me break them. That's five people, and ten health values, so some of them were even gracious enough to let me do it multiple times with things like artefacts, runes, or even dragon form.

Cooper

Your one instance of breaking one hit early in thyr makes every claim made by Ernam false. He says it is the exact formula, accurate to a single hit point, for every class and every combination of stances.

If you found one instance this was not true after a handful of tests it wouldn't be surprising to see it be wrong in many other tests too.