Here’s a little preview of what I’ve been cooking for the last few weeks.
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Might not be able to code, but I can write flavor text! Let me know if I can help at all.
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Oh that’s interesting, and that would be better than using something like chatgpt. It would be a lot of typing though 
Seifer gave me a quick demo of this last night, and damn this thing is a game changer for the refs! The ref basically plugs in both opponets PL’s and moves, and it will do all the calculations and dice rolls for them, eliminating the user errors.
So I got thinking, how else can we use this!? Here are some of my initial thoughts, would love any feedback.
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Battle simulator for fun. Just an open to use tool that anyone could use to have fun, chat, practice, whatever. Wouldn’t even use your real character in-game. Likely have limited options available as far as moves.
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NPC fights. Perhaps when you have had enough RPing and are tired of using your email updates for another kick, or there is no ref available to take the fight to discord. The ref would send you a link or maybe it would just be on your stats page, but either way it would have all your info and the NPC’s info (kept secret) entered in and you would just battle it that way to speed things up. This could potentially be used for PvP fights as well if needed.
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Sparring with a player or Training with a master. Instead of sending an email to “spar with Sephiroth again” or “keep training with master Roshi”, when you are at the same location you can enter a battle with them from your stats page or something. The spar could be limited use moves, adjusted PL’s, and you don’t actually fight each other, you would just need to have enough of a back and forth to satisfy the game into giving the PL gains/loses. Could be on a 24 hour timer or something, or the gains/loses could be changed to fit this style. Training with a master would be same thing.
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Training Fighting Styles with a Master. Again, instead of a wasted email with “train karate with the master” you could be entered in a battle simulation with the master to train it. It could be programmed to only reward you when you use the specific style in the battle, and this could even use fake PL’s like a spar, so anyone training karate white belt has the same “mini-game” to beat using that style to increase their style. Higher belts would have higher difficulties.
Have another one! World tournaments weekly or monthly! Everyones stats/moves could be entered in and kind if “frozen in time” for the whole tournament, and let us fight it out over the next week. This way the players can keep playing the real game while the tournament is kind of going on behind the scenes, and the refs wouldnt need to spend a TON of time reffing these fights. Would definitely allow for more frequent world tournaments, which is something I would love, but they were just so hard to pull off we were lucky if we did even 1 a round. There would also still be the “real”/normal world tournaments every now and then with actual RPing, but those are rare and very time consuming, and takes a great deal of coordinating with everyone (something that is much more difficult for ys all these days I’m sure, and it wasn’t so easy before).
Battle Simulator/////////
I’ll be honest… sitting around messing with PMCS is pretty fun. I’ve played it occasionally to pass the time. Its on the agenda to eventually release a “player version” to just have and enjoy.
The challenge is the secret information, in its simplest form: like “What does Kamehameha do? What does Destructo Disk Do?”. You don’t really just want to sit around, and fight with the standard punch/kick, and some of the basic attacks that get learned early.
At the initial release (I think around 1.0.8ish), the moves were still text entries into the character profile page. They get recently got coded within WordPress in a manner that we could fetch that data. Username, Password login, and then use the API to fetch learned moves…bam… we’re in business.
This sort of thing, however, is further down the roadmap. A lot of PM has been coded into PMCS, but not all of it. This is something that is planned… but back burnered to complete other PM features that are historically considered Vanilla.
NPC Fights/////////
This is right around the corner actually. PM is great, but there are 2 challenges with the game in its current state: Fight Locked, and NPC Conversation locked.
I’d argue that Mado has been a huge help in reff’ing fights with PMCS alone, things haven’t been too bad to get through fights. With PMCS in its current form, reff’ing a fight has been soooo much easier. We’ve only had one major delay (illness) so far this round.
Besides getting Fight Locked, there is the challenge of creativity. Balance between “Do you want your fight Reffed?” or “Do you want to have PMCS automate it?”. I want to release this, but I often do wonder how much of PM’s soul gets sacrificed. Not saying we shouldn’t give out this option, especially for ‘throwaway filler fights’. Just saying we’ve gotta get this right, otherwise… I could see a little of PM’s soul getting lost in the name of efficiency.
Sparring with a player or Training with a master/////////
I haven’t thought much about this. After we get NPC fights figured out, I imagine this would become a fast follower. I’ve always liked to see some sort of engine where its possible to pass/fail/critical-pass/critical-fail training events. Cool idea.
Training Fighting Styles with a Master/////////
Gamify certain progression within PM. Cool idea!
World tournaments weekly or monthly!/////////
At some point, the goal is to send players a link to fight. Removing the ref from the equation, similar to NPC Fights. Wether its a NPC fighter, or player controlled fighter.. the code is done. Just a matter of finishing stuff up here. There are however some vanilla PM features missing that I need to finish up. There are some tools within PMCS called “Ref Cheats” which allows for the ref to handle/apply something PMCS doesn’t support alone. But need everything finished up before I think we’ll be able to kick out links.
That said… I’ve heard stirs of Mado and Dalun talking about a tournament soon.
Side Note://///////
Getting fight locked sucks. FYI, did you know you could request me to help ref your fight? Just remember, I’m technically still a player. But if you badly need to get through a fight, and your willing to pass me private information… I can help.
It’s your call. I get it, you might not want me to know certain things about your character. I promise to do my best to compartmentalize between being a player, and being a ‘stand in reff’. I play dumb in a lot of situations. Truth is, I’m probably going to become a full time reff at some point. I’m just selfishly trying my hardest to still be a player for as long as possible.
PMCS was kind of a gift of love to Mado, and the group. I’m a pretty senior coder nowadays. And there was a new tool that hit the market I was given something of a sebattical to build something with it, and learn how to use it. So I came up with the PMCS project, and gifted it.