Author

Chapuz · « **on:** April 26, 2014, 12:40:39 am »

Time's up!

Chapuz · « **Reply #1 on:** April 26, 2014, 12:54:07 am »

Spoiler for Task:

Spoiler for DDD:

Spoiler for Whispers in the Dark:

Spoiler for Cuckoo's Nest:

Spoiler for Silver Ferns:

Spoiler for Divine Light:

Spoiler for Task:

Spoiler for Divine Light:

Spoiler for Silver Ferns:

Spoiler for Cuckoo's Nest:

Spoiler for DDD:

Spoiler for Whispers in the Dark:

Spoiler for Task:

Spoiler for Cuckoo's Nest:

Spoiler for Divine Light:

Spoiler for Silver Ferns:

Spoiler for DDD:

Spoiler for Whispers in the Dark:

Chapuz · « **Reply #2 on:** April 26, 2014, 12:55:44 am »

Spoiler for Task:

Spoiler for Death Dost Dominate:

Spoiler for Divine Light:

Spoiler for Cuckoo's Nest:

Spoiler for Silver Ferns:

Spoiler for Whispers in the Dark:

Spoiler for Task:

Spoiler for Whispers in the Dark:

Spoiler for Divine Light Late; 1/2 points:

Spoiler for DDD:

Spoiler for Cuckoo's Nest:

Spoiler for Silver Ferns:

Chapuz · « **Reply #3 on:** April 26, 2014, 01:07:06 am »

Spoiler for Task:

Spoiler for Whispers in the Dark:

Spoiler for Divine Light:

13.

Even in the world of Elements, it’s an unlucky number.

Consider the thirteenth element, for example. It has been shunned as ‘Other’, removed from the glory of War and reduced to a mere relic of its former glory. To this day the Chroma Palace stands in the Oracle Plains, but few dare to draw near, fearing the unlucky ruins for its violent past.

Or maybe not daring to face the thirteen unlucky individuals set there to keep eternal vigil.

Long hailed as the center of all elemental realms, the Chroma Palace is a rumored to be linked to their very fabrics. ‘The Palace of a Thousand Portals’, it used to be called in ancient days. Elementals of various disciplines and designations would pass through its network every day.

But then one day, the Pantheon of False Gods rose from 11 to 29, and the bolstered forces of the False Gods started their long-sought invasion of the Elemental world.

The forces of the twelve elements united under the banner of Chroma. The only hope for the weak elementals was the Chroma Palace Network, which allowed them to sabotage the False Gods’ forces. But Gods are Gods, and in the end they managed to enter the very fabric of the elemental realms and lay waste to the Chroma Palace. Soon they had subjected the entire world of Elements, starting a reign of terror which continues to this day.

And their first action as Supreme Overlords? To set a guard upon their one fear, the Chroma Palace. Thirteen where selected for this gruesome task, their names unknown, their pasts secret from all. Perhaps they were young back then, but today they are famed as The Elders.

It is said that there was one Elder for each Element, at the beginning. But the flow of time touches all, and even the Elders have changed in the meantime. Only one has managed to stay true to its original element, shrouding itself in the stillness of the Aether. But none have weakened over time, and none have relaxed their watch.

Even today, every newfound Elemental must be awe-inspired by the Elders in their time. They are the final obstacles on the way out of the Palaces, guardians of the gateway to No Man’s land brimming with endless possibilities. Once you’re outside, you could challenge a Half-Blood, face off other players in the Arena or wreak havoc in Duels. But nope, you’re stuck on the inside, with those thirteen guardians standing ready to stop you. And maybe if you overcame them, you could go on to become a Godslayer, first in your respective League or a Champion of duels.

But you’ll still remember those thirteen Elders who provided you with your first challenge.

Spoiler for DDD:

Spoiler for Cuckoo's Nest:

Shakif, The Bazaar seller

You! Yes, you! Shakif knows you. Your kind is always looking for shiny things. Everyone wants shiny things, yes yes. So how about this Photon? It's one of the best things you can get and very cheap too! Or how about a Phoenix? A bit pricy, but very strong! Worth every electrum! Noo~ wait! Where are you going? Stay, there are so many more things you need to see!
Oh, I see you're more interested in dark things. Yes, Shakif knows, there is no shame. I don't judge here. Giving your enemies nightmares while you steal their belongings and mutate their skeletons into hideous abominations. Yes, great fun indeed! There are also interesting creatures you surely will like: Here, a minor vampire, caught in the Nox Fields by some very brave adventurers. Yes, it will serve you well! Or better yet, look here, see this small Lycantrope in the cage? Very cute, no? No! Don't be fooled! Given the right treatment, and a little bit of Darkness love, it will turn into a vicious creature, tearing apart anything that gets too close. Be careful, buy six at once!
Yes, I can see it in your eyes, you know what the real shiny stuff is. Not these small things, Phoenixes and Lycantropes, pah! Stupid stuff for stupid people I say. But you, yes, oh yes you know better. Here, why don't you join me in the back. Yes you see this? It's a rare Nymph Tear. Very rare indeed. Not just anyone can go and collect these like old Shakif can. Normally, I would sell one for a fortune, but for you my friend, I see your great potential. You surely will be the greatest elemental of them all! I like you, so all I ask of you is a small token to keep my family fed.
What, you already have eleven of them? Well, you see? I was right, you are the greatest of them all! No one else would have so many.
So what are you here for? I see Shakif has nothing anyone of your greatness could want.
Oh? You wish to sell? Ah yes, of coruse, you can get rid of this junk here, Shakif takes it all, yes yes, all the junk. Even from Oracle Plains. Shakif can sell them to stupid people, not the likes of you. You are the brightest of them all! How about I help you get rid of some of those extra tears too? Can't give you full price of course, gotta earn money to buy a purify for my sick daughter, but I'll give you a good deal for them! Sound good? Ok! Here, take these coins, now run along, Shakif will need to trade to feed the family.
Fresh new wares! Freshly arrived, vicious obedient creatures from the most outer Nobody's Land! You! Yes, you! I see you know what you want! A relic! ...

Bonus Task!

Spoiler for Cuckoo's Nest:

The whole map and new NPCs have spiced up the PvE aspect of the game (in a way similar than the introduction of the Arena had), and made the grind easier to go through. On the other hand, the PvP aspect was left untouched. This is a very important part of the game, specially for end-game and veteran players that have achieved most of the things that can be done and have acquired most of the cards and upgrades, as well as for people that just enjoy playing against friends. Both of our suggestions are geared towards improving the PvP experience (which has been in a particular bad shape lately).

First proposal:
Just like the new changes made PvE more varied, some changes to 'PvP Duel' should make things less monotonous (and open up the opportunity for completely new PvP events in the community). We suggest to make PvP duels more sandbox-like allowing the players (if both agree with it) to start the match with different HPs, pets, (or other cards already in play), multiple marks, dexterity, or starting quanta (and any combination thereof). This can provide a new playing experience for players, or even act as a handicap system for players of vastly different skill levels.

Second proposal:
This one is a bit more technical and concerns the programming. We suggest making the main server register connection problems with the PvP server, and keeping this information for a while so that it has an idea of the shape in which the PvP server is (this wouldn't even require communication between the two servers, since the game clients could intermediate the talk, as they talk with both servers). If too many of the PvP matches become plagued with problems, then the main server would have this data and an automatic notification could be sent to Zanzarino to solve the problem, maybe with a backup server being used while the problem is fixed (if it can be afforded). This could help to avoid things like the server bugs which are becoming more and more frequent, because Zanz would be getting notified before things get too out of control.

Spoiler for Silver Ferns:

[/spoiler]

Spoiler for DDD:

Spoiler for Whispers in the Dark:

Challenges!

Spoiler for Challenge Task - Silver Ferns vs. Cuckoo's Nest:

Spoiler for Cuckoos Nest:

Our suggestion is a tool that takes a deck and evaluates 3 things

How long does it take, for each card in the deck, to draw it and have the quanta to play it in a scenario that all the cards are played as soon as the quanta is available (measuring only for the first time you are able to play a copy of a card, for example, the first Lava Golem or the first fractal) (Turns to Play)
How long does it take to draw the first copy of each card (Turns to Draw a Card)
How long does it take to draw a given combo (Turns to Draw a Combo)

Turns to Play should give a measure of quanta balance and speed of the deck that is easier to understand than the QI and is particularly fit for rush decks.
The other 2 measures are more fit to check the reliability of decks where cards are not played as they are drawn, such as control decks and combo decks (mainly OTKs).
One way to improve the accuracy is to take abilities into account (for both creatures and permanents) for their quanta cost (relevant to Turns to Play) and to take into account drawing and card advantage (these play a huge role in OTK decks)

Here are now a sketch of the interface and a Python prototype of the Turns to Play calculator

Spoiler for prototype:

(to see the code I recommend copying and pasting in a text editor. Even better if it has sintax highlight)

Code: [Select]

#We are assuming the following functions have been implemented in the package 'elements'
#The package contains the following objects are implemented in it
#most of these are kinda implemented in the library Pinapple posted in the Tools section.
#An actual implementation of this tool should adapt to it easily
#
#Card object:
#has attributes Name, Code (to be used in deck codes), Upgrade status, Cost, 
#Element and Type (creature, spell and permanents, that are further split in pillars, weapons and shields)
#
#Deck object:
#A list of card objects with special methods.
#the attribute CardList is a list such that CardList[i] is the i-th card still in the deck, countin from the top (count starts at 0)
#Methods include:
###InitialDraw, that does the mulligan evaluation, decides on the random order of the deck and returns a list with the starting hand
###Draw, that draws the next card, returning it and removing it from the deck or returning None if the deck is empty
###CardList, returns a dictionary with card Names as keys and their quantities in the deck as values
#the object has a constructor (called Deck) that takes a string with a deck code, a list of card objects or still, another deck to create a copy
#
#There is also a global dictionary that takes a card Name and returns its Card Object

#We are assuming the user is going to behave, so no error checking is being done

import elements
import random

ElementName = ['Air', 'Water', 'Fire', 'Earth', 'Death', 'Life', 'Darkness', 'Light', 'Gravity', 'Time', 'Aether', 'Entropy']
Deck        = elements.Deck(raw_input("Please enter the deck code\n"))
simulations = int(raw_input("Please enter the number of simulations to be done\n"))
#we prompt the user for the data to be simulated
quanta      = {'Air' : 0, 'Water' : 0, 'Fire' : 0, 'Earth' : 0, 'Death' : 0, 'Life' : 0, 'Darkness' : 0, 'Light' : 0, 'Gravity' : 0, 'Time' : 0, 'Aether' : 0, 'Entropy' : 0}
pillars     = {'Air' : 0, 'Water' : 0, 'Fire' : 0, 'Earth' : 0, 'Death' : 0, 'Life' : 0, 'Darkness' : 0, 'Light' : 0, 'Gravity' : 0, 'Time' : 0, 'Aether' : 0, 'Entropy' : 0, 'Other' : 0}
TurnsToPlay = dict((card.Name, 0) for card in Deck.CardList().keys())
#this mixes unnuped and upped cards, to fix this the way to deal with towers/pillars would need to be changed

for i in range(simulations):
    DeckCurrent = elements.Deck(Deck)       #create a copy of the inputed deck
    quanta_cur  = dict(quanta)
    pillars_cur = dict(pillars)
    card_look   = len(TurnsToPlay.keys())   #how many cards we still need to get TurnsToPlay data on this run
    card_found  = dict((name, False) for name in TurnsToPlay.keys())
    turn        = 0
    hand        = DeckCurrent.InitialDraw() #make the draw and account for the mulligan
    #we are set to go
    while card_look > 0:
        hand.append(DeckCurrent.Draw())
        #drawing first assumes you play second. For playing first the draw should be done in the end of the loop
        random.shuffle(hand) #this is to remove biases
        for j in range(len(hand), -1, -1): #play pillars first
            if hand[j].Type == 'pillar':
                pillars_cur[hand[j].Element] += 1
                if hand[j].Upgraded == True:    #separate treatment for towers
                    if hand[j].Element != 'Other':
                        quanta_cur[hand[j].Element] += 1
                    else:
                        quanta_cur[ElementName[random.randint(0, 11)]] += 1
                        quanta_cur[ElementName[random.randint(0, 11)]] += 1
                        quanta_cur[ElementName[random.randint(0, 11)]] += 1
                if not card_found[hand[j].Name]:
                    card_found[hand[j].Name] = True
                    TurnsToPlay[hand[j].Name] += turn
                    card_look -= 1
                hand.pop(j) #the card is played
        for element in ElementName:
            quanta_cur[element] = min(75, quanta_cur[element])
        #apply the quanta cap
        for j in range(len(hand), -1, -1):        
            if hand[j].Element == 'Other':
                if sum(quanta_cur.values()) >= hand[j].Cost:
                    if not card_found[hand[j].Name]:
                        card_found[hand[j].Name] = True
                        TurnsToPlay[hand[j].Name] += turn
                        card_look -= 1
                    cost = hand[j].Cost
                    hand.pop(j) #the card is played
                    while cost > 0:
                        rand_element = random.randint(0, 11)
                        if quanta_cur[rand_element] == 0:
                            continue
                        quanta_cur[rand_element] -= 1
                        cost -= 1
                    #pay the cost
            else:
                if quanta_cur[hand[j].Element] >= hand[j].Cost:
                    quanta_cur[hand[j].Element] -= hand[j].Cost
                    #pay the cost
                    if not card_found[hand[j].Name]:
                        card_found[hand[j].Name] = True
                        TurnsToPlay[hand[j].Name] += turn
                        card_look -= 1
                    cost = hand[j].Cost
                    hand.pop(j) #the card is played
        turn += 1 #end of the turn
    for element in ElementName:
        quanta_cur[element] += pillars_cur[element]
    for j in range(pillars_cur['Other']):
        quanta_cur[ElementName[random.randint(0, 11)]] += 1
        quanta_cur[ElementName[random.randint(0, 11)]] += 1
        quanta_cur[ElementName[random.randint(0, 11)]] += 1
    #pillars generate quanta
    for element in ElementName:
        quanta_cur[element] = min(75, quanta_cur[element])
    #apply the quanta cap
    #this finishes one iteration of the simulation loop
print ("Average turns for the first time the card is played\n")
for card in TurnsToPlay.keys():
    print (card + ": " + str(float(TurnsToPlay[card])/simulations) + "\n")

Spoiler for Silver Ferns:

Spoiler for Challenge Task - Cuckoo's Nest vs. Whispers in the Dark:

Spoiler for Whispers:

Spoiler for Cuckoo's:

dawn to dusk · « **Reply #4 on:** April 26, 2014, 01:20:05 am »

so, uhh, what were the reserves for then?

Zawadx · « **Reply #5 on:** April 26, 2014, 01:46:49 am »

Question to the Cuckoo's writer: is Shakif an actual NPC? I don't think he is.

Though he'd totally make an awesome addition to 1.4, as a farmy deck which appears rarely, showering you with cards.

eljoemo · « **Reply #6 on:** April 26, 2014, 02:54:27 am »

Some of the formatting is a tad messed up.

FE task for Silver Ferns contains the Writer tasks

Challenge Spoiler is empty

Random Cuckoo's nest spoiler at the bottom has weird stuff in it (and is random)

I think that's everything but I don't know if submissions are missing and stuff

dark ripper · « **Reply #7 on:** April 26, 2014, 04:56:50 am »

Fernz, y ur deck haz soany words? *short* ... Anyways things are about to get tough! I love the concept of all teams for the artist task but I expected more.

dawn to dusk · « **Reply #8 on:** April 26, 2014, 05:09:04 am »

sorry, must nitpick about the writer task.

so we need to redo the lore of one of the NPCs in trainer. this would be the description that NPCs comes with. wouldnt this imply that the lore should FIT in the description section of it? mine doesnt, but it gets very close, missing only a couple words, but others wouldnt be halfway through the story...

rob77dp · « **Reply #9 on:** April 26, 2014, 05:36:10 am »

Just a notice to Brawl Masters (I know nae is having forum troubles so maybe Chap can look into it):

DDD should have a PM sent containing Boss Task within proper timeframe. Please check and if found include it here - thanks!

dawn to dusk · « **Reply #10 on:** April 26, 2014, 05:37:31 am »

Quote from: rob77dp on April 26, 2014, 05:36:10 am

Just a notice to Brawl Masters (I know nae is having forum troubles so maybe Chap can look into it):

DDD should have a PM sent containing Boss Task within proper timeframe. Please check and if found include it here - thanks!

chap is having forum troubles and cant edit any posts. so nothing can be done right now

andretimpa · « **Reply #11 on:** April 26, 2014, 06:52:21 am »

Comments on the other Artists:

Regardig the style/subject chosen

DL: Dude, that's Art Nouveau, not Baroque (and an excellent example of what Art Nouveau means, while we are at it).
SF: The style and subject fit well the task.
DDD: Fits the type of portraits from this time. They'd normally focus on the upper torso and head, but that's a nitpick.
witd: The subject is very Baroque, the lighting chosen fits Renascence better as the contrast between the lit parts and the ones in shadow is not very strong.

On regards to the art I'd love to see these creatures move a bit. They are always striking the same pose as in game, with the exception of SF.

Clearly SF is the one deserving my second vote here.

Quote from: Zawadx on April 26, 2014, 01:46:49 am

Question to the Cuckoo's writer: is Shakif an actual NPC? I don't think he is.

Though he'd totally make an awesome addition to 1.4, as a farmy deck which appears rarely, showering you with cards.

He's not an AI in trainer if that's what you are asking. Our idea was actually to flesh out the Bazaar a bit by writing about the guy buying and selling all that stuff (we are just thinking outside of the box).

Author

Chapuz

Brawl #3 Round 4 Voting https://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php?topic=54383.msg1134317#msg1134317

Chapuz

Re: Brawl #3 Round 4 Voting https://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php?topic=54383.msg1134320#msg1134320

Chapuz

Re: Brawl #3 Round 4 Voting https://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php?topic=54383.msg1134321#msg1134321

Chapuz

Re: Brawl #3 Round 4 Voting https://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php?topic=54383.msg1134323#msg1134323

dawn to dusk

Re: Brawl #3 Round 4 Voting https://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php?topic=54383.msg1134324#msg1134324

Zawadx

Re: Brawl #3 Round 4 Voting https://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php?topic=54383.msg1134329#msg1134329

eljoemo

Re: Brawl #3 Round 4 Voting https://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php?topic=54383.msg1134336#msg1134336

dark ripper

Re: Brawl #3 Round 4 Voting https://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php?topic=54383.msg1134339#msg1134339

dawn to dusk

Re: Brawl #3 Round 4 Voting https://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php?topic=54383.msg1134340#msg1134340

rob77dp

Re: Brawl #3 Round 4 Voting https://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php?topic=54383.msg1134342#msg1134342

dawn to dusk

Re: Brawl #3 Round 4 Voting https://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php?topic=54383.msg1134344#msg1134344

andretimpa

Re: Brawl #3 Round 4 Voting https://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php?topic=54383.msg1134347#msg1134347