Mazz VI: Wisdom of the Mancers

[GodzFire]

Grim posts news on MariusNet.

[Graydon]

If testing's going to be happening on Monday, Tuesday, or Wednesday nights, I'm probably going to be around.

Drop me a line if you want more hands on deck CP! I'd love to get some games of MYTH in with you! I've mentioned it before... We miss you buddy!

[Pyro]

Grim posts news on MariusNet.

Paris has also posted news on Mnet, what's your point? Just because you can't instantly post news doesn't mean you can't post news. I'm sure they asked one of the mods if they could move a thread to the news or make a news post out of a message they sent. Just how admins in forums can make threads into a sticky. They don't give the original poster admin powers just to do that, they do it themselves.


Mazz on the night time sounds great, will it be a private test?

[hmp]

Thats a good time for me, I should be on then most nights.

By the way, here is a list of "Next-Gen" Mazz Masters:

- 25 Years Of Mac
- Gholiath
- HMPy
- Mike
- Spa
- Sillek
- Zoso

[Baron LeDant]

Your player lists are deeply flawed

[Doobie]

don't forget your fellow udog! private message me with your current email address and I'll see what I can do about your mnet account.

[Archer]

As long as we're asking for things for v3, any chance you can swap Web and Volt in the Electromancer inventory? I end up not really being able to use Volt much because when the Electro is attacking quickly, she'll fire off an Orb or three immediately after Volt finishes and usually before I can react to stop her.

Alternately, is there some way to avoid this that I haven't found, other than maybe being better about knowing exactly when the Volt is going to finish?

~J

[Deqlyn]

HMP i thought you werent gonna be playing...

Dont forget the other Mazz Dreamteam i think they beat Mazz 4 player

Godzfire
Deer
Sovereign
Gholiath



I would say that my "dream team" would be

Rab
CRC
HMP
Fool
GKG
Ducky
Wismuth
Michael Jordan
Scotty Pippin
Dac
Azrael
Deqlyn

And basically anyone whos beaten a 4 man mazz


In another note is there a RISK myth map?

[Fury IX]

Theres a world map cmap, called Earth v1.40, which is a pretty cool plug (not really playable though). I think risk would be cool.

[ChrisP]

Also, from watching the films, I notice you do some deeply strange things with mana on the enemy units; if you've got time sometime, I'd love to hear an explanation of how you set things up under the hood.

~J, who just burned four hours watching Mazz VI films

Chances are what you’re seeing with mana is a technique used to order attacks. For example, if you want a monster to attack in the following order: claw, claw, claw, claw, bite, repeat… you make the claw attack cost 25% mana, the bite cost -100% mana and set the mana regen to 0. You can get real fancy by setting the mana regen to values other than zero, the way Silicon Dream did for the Marilith in Mazz V, but the math required to get the desired results is pretty intense.

Okay, so the cause of the weird delays that sometimes occur are due to a pseudo-randomization of when new waves of monsters appear. I think it’s an important element in the game because, well, it helps keep things a little different each time, and it makes for nice lulls as well as periods of intensity - which makes things feel more natural and not so scripted. What makes it semi-random is it controlled by the results of combat.

Picture a string of monster waves… first a wave of thrall (or whatever) and when you kill those, it triggers a second wave of maul (or whatever) to spawn in a different spot, and when you kill that second wave, it triggers the third wave, etc… until the entire string of waves is depleted, 15 or so waves later.

Mazz 6 has nine such strings running in parallel. At the end of the longest string are the black thrall (just after a wave of warlocks, as you figured out). Because players move around the map, and kill waves at different paces each game, the strings get depleted at different rates each game. That’s why things tend to thin out late into the game: most strings have already been depleted. Sometimes, just due to the way the game unfolds, one or more strings take a really long time to deplete, or some strings can be depleted very quickly. And that’s why, if a team of players were to somehow focus only on the string ending in black thrall - always being near where the waves in that string spawn, and killing them quickly – it’d technically be possible to force the Watcher to show up in as quickly as 30 minutes, maybe even less.

There’s also a tenth string, but it is timed, and doesn’t work like the other nine.

I hope that all makes sense and satisfies your curiosity, Archer, because I have a favor to ask in exchange for the explanation. It’d be a huge help to me if you could watch a film and measure the interval between warlock attacks, down to the exact second, and let me know asap. If the warlock moves, or if player units go out of range or get too close between attacks, you won’t get an accurate reading, and it really has to be exact, so I’d measure a few different warlocks just to be sure.

I could take this measurement myself, but the sum of seconds between warlock attacks is such an important number – it will, in fact, determine what will make the new Mazz tantalizingly winnable, yet cause even the most jaded Mazz pros to curse, pull their hair out, and want to kill someone – that I’d rather you do it. k? Thanks!

[GodzFire]

I'm very impressed by Archer's knowledge of Mazz, I must say. It's very strange since I don't think I've ever played with him before. Archer what is your Myth name again?

Chris I might be able to help with that testing. A long time back, to have a little fun, I edited the Light units so they would take no damage or get stoned. That let me just have some fun and mess around with units. I still have this local, and it might help Archer study the warlocks, since that way he wouldn't need to worry about units dying and losing on any difficulty. Would that help?

[ChrisP]

Thanks, Godz, but I don't think he'll need that to watch a film.

Might come in handy for something else later though.

[Archer]

Chances are what you’re seeing with mana is a technique used to order attacks. For example, if you want a monster to attack in the following order: claw, claw, claw, claw, bite, repeat… you make the claw attack cost 25% mana, the bite cost -100% mana and set the mana regen to 0. You can get real fancy by setting the mana regen to values other than zero, the way Silicon Dream did for the Marilith in Mazz V, but the math required to get the desired results is pretty intense.

Yeah, I figured that part out by watching the Soulless (and to a lesser extent the Liches with their fire-something-then-cyclone-a-bunch-repeat cycle); it was a revelation to me, as I'd initially assumed that they were throwing their permanent attack immediately and then charging back up, so I spent a lot of time focusing on avoiding it, whereas it looks like it's every... I don't remember, fourth? Fifth? Well, assuming you weren't sadistic enough to have most of their attacks be permanent.

The part that's still mystifying me is the units that don't vary their attacks that I can see, most notably the Ghost Dwarves (or is their special the low-arc Pathfinder-style throw?) and the Fetch (I guess that shot looks a little more powerful? Hard to tell). The effects I think I've found are subtle enough that I'm honestly not sure I'm not tricking myself into seeing a pattern here.

Mazz 6 has nine such strings running in parallel.<snip>

There’s also a tenth string, but it is timed, and doesn’t work like the other nine.

I hope that all makes sense and satisfies your curiosity, Archer

It absolutely does, thank you very much for the explanation (not least because, while I had deduced the existence of at least four strings with the belief that there was a fifth, I'd had no clue there were so many left unfound; I could well have gone mad trying to use the tiny little viewing area available in films to figure out what the exact chains are.

because I have a favor to ask in exchange for the explanation. It’d be a huge help to me if you could watch a film and measure the interval between warlock attacks, down to the exact second, and let me know asap. If the warlock moves, or if player units go out of range or get too close between attacks, you won’t get an accurate reading, and it really has to be exact, so I’d measure a few different warlocks just to be sure.

I could take this measurement myself, but the sum of seconds between warlock attacks is such an important number – it will, in fact, determine what will make the new Mazz tantalizingly winnable, yet cause even the most jaded Mazz pros to curse, pull their hair out, and want to kill someone – that I’d rather you do it. k? Thanks!

Absolutely. I need sleep now (just came off a very long run in which we exploited the warlock-trigger knowledge to possibly shameful degrees, but it means that I should have a warlock-attack-interval in there somewhere for you), but I should be able to get that to you tom… later today; I need to watch the film anyway.

(I must say, I have the distinct feeling you're having a go at me. I'm going to go out on a limb and venture to suggest that maybe the Warlocks regenerate mana based on something that's apparently completely unrelated to them; I'll therefore get completely different times for what appear to be identical Warlocks and go utterly insane. I guess tomorrow I figure out if I'm an untrusting jerk or not )

I'm very impressed by Archer's knowledge of Mazz, I must say. It's very strange since I don't think I've ever played with him before. Archer what is your Myth name again?

I generally go by Durandal, but I don't think I've played on the metaservers since PlayMyth closed; I mostly have a group of friends that I play with connected via IP. We're not that great, so I try to make up for it through study. Many thanks again to whoever posted the 4man film, by the way; being able to check things against that, especially with all of the Holy Vision at the end, has been invaluable to my understanding of the map.

(The auto-linking sorta ends up sending the wrong message there, what with the sentence being about things closing )

Chris I might be able to help with that testing. A long time back, to have a little fun, I edited the Light units so they would take no damage or get stoned. That let me just have some fun and mess around with units. I still have this local, and it might help Archer study the warlocks, since that way he wouldn't need to worry about units dying and losing on any difficulty. Would that help?

As he mentioned I can probably fulfill Chris's request without it, but I'd love to get my hands on it for general testing and experimentation purposes if you wouldn't mind.

~J

[Death's Avatar]

(The auto-linking sorta ends up sending the wrong message there, what with the sentence being about things closing )

Notice where it autolinks

[ChrisP]

(I must say, I have the distinct feeling you're having a go at me. I'm going to go out on a limb and venture to suggest that maybe the Warlocks regenerate mana based on something that's apparently completely unrelated to them; I'll therefore get completely different times for what appear to be identical Warlocks and go utterly insane. I guess tomorrow I figure out if I'm an untrusting jerk or not )

Absolutely not. Prior to asking, I confirmed in Fear that the Warlocks should never vary their attack intervals unless interrupted by the events I've already listed in my previous post. And I may tease occasionally, but never to the cruel extent of making someone waste their time. I have a long to-do list, have little time for Myth (any long posts I make are while at work), and am lazy about certain things. This is something important, but I have no old films... and happened to notice you do. I do appreciate you doing this, and hope that answering a few questions is a fair trade. Let me know if there is anything else you're curious about, but understand I am still rusty and trying to re-figure out half this stuff myself.

By the way, you are correct about the ghost dwarves and I believe the fetch have an attack that is slightly longer range. Just subtle touches.