So I had this crazy idea...

[nunnbt473]

I want to develop my own version of the mag feeder to simulate the process. To help plan, test and simplify mag feeding for the future. The idea is you say you want, Idk.. a mind sato and it just tells you what to feed. Or you punch in you have X mag with X stats and it says you have these possible mags available from this point onward.

My problem is, well, being a noob. I don't fully understand how mags work or what the requirements are for each of them as they evolve. I've read several guides and help sites..etc, but they tend to not be very clear.



http://www.pso-world.com/sections.php?op=viewarticle&artid=1240Like how does one properly translate that chart? I get the section ID/Class req part. But the stats..?

http://www.pso-world.com/sections.php?op=viewarticle&artid=1016 POW>MIND & DEX | DEF > 45

So Power > Mind. Power > Dex. Def is 45+ or Power >Mind AND Dex or Def > 45?

And the PB blasts. Are those determined based on what type of mag it evolved into? And what it evolves into is based off of stats, class, section ID and sex?

I'd like to develop it in phases.

1.00 just simulate feeding a mag and the resulting evolution

1.01 Evolutions 10
1.02 Evolutions 35
1.03 Evolutions 50
1.04 Evolutions 100
1.05 Mag Cell Evolutions
1.06 the ability to save the file on the local computer
1.07 Allow multiple mags to hotswap quickly between them
1.08 Tracking of items fed (and quantity) in the mag file history
1.09 Add evolutions to the tracker
Above completed.

1.10 The ability to 'undo' a previous item feed (reglardless of how far back it was) via a dbl click in the tracker.

1.11 Load pre-designed 'guides' which instruct how many of each item to feed
1.12 Allow double click of guides/track to 'fast feed' a variety of items in any quantity.
1.13 Allow for manual editing of stats / evolution.
1.14 Saving manual edits to mag file

1.15 Display possible future mag types based on the current evolution

1.16 Add the photon blasts acquired

1.17 Add mag abilities for Boss/10% HP/Death/Bar Fill

1.18 Add a feed timer that occurs every X minutes/seconds. Pop up or sound to alert for a new feed.
1.19 Add a right-click to various mags/items to show the requirements to use or become..etc.
1.20 Add data files for items/feed charts to the install folder. Read information directly from file for easy updates/fixes user side.

1.21 Display possible future mag typed refine, based off of current stats


1.?? Do a systematic comparison/cross reference of stats to determine how to achieve exact stats or correct a 'guide' after you have misfed an item

Edited July 24, 2015 by nunnbt473

[Soly]

I have had in mind to develop an app like this.. I have one that has been around that it just simulates the mag feeding process but it has a few errors (thing why i would like to develop my own)

Your points

0 to 2 should be pretty straight forward IMO, just simulate the process the ship server does for the mags, the server software is public but sodaboy's forum is/was down... (a few of the checks in the ship are wrong and there is where the mags mess up in game)

3 should be part of 4 as it would be the format your program would handle all the data. If you get it to save all the data should be just the reverse process to load everything again. I guess here you would include some sort of text output to share your item list.

5 and 6 probably would be some sort of hard-coded stuff.

Make the program automatically create a mag feeding process based on the stats required I think is kinda hard, would be nice indeed but I don't see myself doing that.. probably at some point (as I said) I will make this mag feed program fixing the errors the other one has.

[nunnbt473]

1.00 I pretty much have done at this point. I also completed a section ID check.

Hm, yes I did get 3/4 backwards there. 4 would be just a touch more than that. Modifying certain things to give a preview. Such as if the next step is feeding 35 monomates it would say monomate 35.. click it then monomate 34..etc. With basic .txt files/numbers I don't think it will be too hard to create that setup.

Well its half hard coded, its still somewhat formula based. Which is what I am trying to figure out from the other websites and just haven't quite managed to do. The code itself isn't very complex, just deep rooted logically. I just don't have a full understand of what I am trying to create.

6 will be a nightmare. It will likely be the coup de grace to the mag feeding section of the program to say the least. I know I'll have to find some type of common denominator and check each sub level for each stat at each item..etc. I haven't sorted out all the details of it yet though since its further down the road.

[Soly]

Something I'm curious... Did you create an ID calculator, to calculate the ID you are going to feed the mag with? ...it that's it, you could probably just select the ID right away (and avoid human errors).. I made an ID calculator aswell, in my item maker I bet no GM uses it xD

[nunnbt473]

Hah nah, I just did it because I needed time to think on the design of the mag feeder and it was simple and easy and kept my mind revolving around the code. The two in those pictures arnt actually linked. I will have to add a drop down for class/section ID for the mag though.

[Fyrewolf5]

Oh......... perhaps these pso-world guides will be much clearer than those. I've never really trusted the mag feed programs myself, I find it makes some very poor judgements sometimes. I've definitely studied the charts a lot though, maybe I can share something useful out of everything I've picked up.

evolution chart: http://www.pso-world.com/sections.php?op=viewarticle&artid=2452

feeding chart: http://www.pso-world.com/sections.php?op=viewarticle&artid=1021

feeding chart for ep 2 formula mags: http://www.pso-world.com/sections.php?op=viewarticle&artid=1031

Mag cell combinations: http://www.pso-world.com/sections.php?op=viewarticle&artid=659

ep 4 mag guide w/ cell combinations & properties: http://www.pso-world.com/sections.php?op=viewarticle&artid=2343

Mag Properties: http://www.pso-world.com/sections.php?op=viewarticle&artid=1302

When it comes to mags, it is easy to be overwhelmed. The reality is that the system is complex, but actually very shallow i.e. lots of options, but very few good/correct options. Once you break it down, it's very easy to see how to get the best gains on your mag.

The evolutions should be much easier to read in that first link. Mags evolve based on feeding characters class, section id (2 groups of 5 ids), and the mag's stat balance. For example, stat balances will be like Pow>Dex>Mind or Dex>Mind>Pow; this is just raw value of which number is highest like 5 / 50 / 30 / 0 or 5 / 0 / 45 / 22. There are also the rarer ones of Pow=Dex>Mind, which happens when the mag is like 5 / 50 / 30 / 20 or 5 / 25 / 25 / 0, but those evolutions are rarely ever used when making mags, except maybe when making a pow panzer tail (the naga mag required to make only has one 0mind option of Pow=Dex>Mind). Mags at level 10 evolution only take into account the character class feeding it. Mags at level 35 evolution take stat balance and the character class which evolved it at level 10 (not the currently feeding character's class, strangely enough). Mags at 50+ evolutions use stat balance, current character class, and section id (as group a or group b set of ids).

Mag feeding is a lot less complicated than it first appears. There is almost no choice for mags being raised early; unless you are making a pure single stat mag (e.g. 15/0/0/185 or 6/178/16/0), they all have to feed the same and evolve the same to not gain extra levels of defense, gaining mostly dex early on and saving pow/mind for later. Half of the foods can be thrown out, and then the remains can be divided in half again into pow vs mind sets. For most mags you can ignore monomates/fluids, trimates/fluids, and star atomizers as just being inefficient, way way more expensive for too little extra gain, or raises every stat. So then you're left with dimates/fluids(pow or mind), antidote/antiparalysis (dex), and sol/moon atomizers (lot of pow or mind, a little dex or def). Usually the atomizers aren't actually practical to use very much or for very long, so really there's only 4 main foods for 50+ mags and only 1 rarely used option for atomizers (moon) that doesn't raise def. Also, most of the time mags only want to have max iq and don't really care about sychro%, since synchro is only for using pbs for damage, while iq is for mags using pb for twins/leilla.

First off, baby mags can only eat mono stuff and anti stuff, or else they will gain an unwanted level of defense, the mono stuff would be of pow or mind, antidote dex/pow and antiparalysis dex/mind.

The level 10 mags (varuna vitra kalki) can only eat antidote (dex/pow) and antiparalysis(dex/mind), or else they will gain an unwanted level of defense.

The level 35 mags (mitra marutah ashvinau) will almost always have dex as their highest stat, as it is impossible not to without gaining defense.

The 35 mags evolved with ranger at level 10 pretty much only eat antiparalysis and raise faster than other mags; consequently making a low dex mag with estilla pb is difficult as you either juggle foods or feed mono stuff at like +3 pow or +4 mind, however it can be done with lower dex than the other mags.

The 35 mags evolved with hunter/force at level 10 can eat antidote (dex/pow), antiparalysis (dex/mind), and sol atomizer (pow/dex); as these mags have a pow/dex option they are much easier to make low dex mags with, but cannot go to the minimum dex thresholds the way ranger mags can.

The level 50 mags have 3 possible feeding charts; the Ila, Garuda, Sita, Soma, Durga, Nandin, Yaksa, Ribhava and the Asparas, Vayu, Varaha, Ushasu, Kama, Kaitabha, Kumara, Bhirava are very similar, but ultimately the former is superior in pretty much every way. The third chart, Andhaka, Kabanda, Naga, Naraka, Bana, Marica, Madhu, Ravana, uniquely has moon atomizers feed pow/dex (the other two do mind/dex instead), but lacks a good way to raise dex and doesn't raise pow or mind well so it's limited usefulness. Thus there's really only one good feeding chart then.

Once the mag is high enough most people like to use a mag cell on it or make it an ep 2 formula mag. The ep 2 mags and a few mag cells are level 100, but most cells are possible at 50. Once you make a mag into a cell mag it feeds significantly better than any other mag. They're able to gain massively more pow/mind from dimates/difluids, and a ton of dex from antiparalysis. This is where mag leveling will really take off, where before you may have been feeding pow/mind at values like +16 or +11, or dex at +14, now you can get +27 pow/mind and +28 dex from foods. Mag cells are awesome.

The ep 2 formula mags have 3 feeding charts, but they are all slight variations of other charts, with nidra diwari savriti feeding almost like cell mags, sato rukmin deva feeding almost like the ila group, and rati pushan bhima feeding almost like the andhaka group.

Photon blasts are even less complicated than anything else. Most of the time you can only get to choose the first blast; the class that feeds the mag to level 10 will get farla(hunter), estilla(ranger), and leilla(force), but the level 35 blast is almost always pilla because mags are pigeonholed into getting dex gains early and will always have dex as their highest stat then if they keep at 5 def. The last pb is almost always chosen to be twins, though it's not always necessary for a force / hunewearl / ramarl to do so. In addition, some of the photon blasts just really suck, leilla, farla, and golla in particular, although you can still choose one of those blasts to make 4way chaining a bit easier.

I hope you'll find some of my rambling insights useful in some way, and be able to make a good program that actually works well (and doesn't tell me to spend 720% more meseta on trifluids for 7.4% more mind gain and no iq gain). If you have any questions about mags, magfeeding, or anything else, feel free to ask.

Edited July 9, 2015 by Fyrewolf5

[nunnbt473]

Fyrewolf I havnt even finished reading that yet or checked the links and already determined that right there is GOLD. Pure mag gold. Absolutely invaluable. I'll be doing a lot of digging around through it this week and trying to put it to good use Thank you much.

As for the last comment though. That will have to be the very last edition. Something that calculates time. mesta. Creates alternatives based on those criteria. That is indeed the biggest hurtle in this program, anticipating what it is the player wants to do and what their goals are. As you said, there are a plethora of variables at work. Figuring out exactly how it works. Then doing that two more times. Then finding the common denominator in the logic. Translating that to code. Then trying to implement that code into existing code... well, needless to say THAT one is going to take some time, but its on the long term list as of now.

Edited July 9, 2015 by nunnbt473

[Soly]

Well... any poor judgement is either programmer or user fault... as the program doesn't do anything by itself and even that, the issues with mags are related to the feed tables in the ship and that's a programmer's fault but is another story...

Again

I have never seen a program that actually does by itself the mag raising... and if this was made it would give you the same output every time... so at the end you will have just straight guides as there are out there. So just a program that can actually simulate a proper raising is what you would want.

[nunnbt473]

Well... any poor judgement is either programmer or user fault... as the program doesn't do anything by itself and even that, the issues with mags are related to the feed tables in the ship and that's a programmer's fault but is another story...

Again

I have never seen a program that actually does by itself the mag raising... and if this was made it would give you the same output every time... so at the end you will have just straight guides as there are out there. So just a program that can actually simulate a proper raising is what you would want.

Well what is poor or good is in part based on play style. Whether you prefer to run up and Rabarta something or sit back and safely Fioe it for half the damage comes down to play style. And whether you need 180 dex or 150 is also affected by things like gear and what one or two shots you often times..etc. Which in turn gets into combat and damages..etc. Which opens a whole new can of worms.

It is true that it just likely means there are a slightly wider variety of 'proper' mags that do or should have guides written for them. Yet at the same time, someone may not know they are looking for that particular guide.

Ultimately though, most likely, the main use of that 'feature' will be for when something goes wrong and someone does want to sit there and do math to figure out if its still possible to acquire a particular 100 mag at 110..etc or what it would cost stat/point wise to do it. I suspect, the main use of the program will ultimately be selecting a guide to follow and putting in where you are so you can easily figure out what comes next. My guess for the second most used function would just be manually punching things in to see how they end up and if they like that particular build.

[nunnbt473]

So Im making excellent progress so far. I kind of skipped the strict versioning for the first few and jumped around a bit. I've been working on 1.00 /1.01 / 1.02 (Ended up renumbering them a bit and update the OP to match). I've got most of it working and functional, I just need to add in a bit of user validation and checking for things like duplicate files/names..etc. I've got the first series of evolution from Mag to Varuna \ Vrita \ Kalki functional already.

However I did notice something and I am curious.

Say you start with a fresh baby mag. You feed it nothing but monofluids. It will get to level 9 mind with 80 points towards the next level.
A monofluid (as mag) gives +40 mind.
A monofluid (as Varuna) gives +8 mind.
Normally the extra .20 would spill over if it was say.. going level 8 to 9. However, level 10 is an evolution / mag type change.

If the mag evolves, will it the .20 spill over. Would +4 spill over? (half of 8) Would it go to 10.00 flat/even and not have any spill over?

What if multiple stats level at the same time? Say you have a baby mag. Feed it 7 dimates then 2 trimates. It then gains a level in defense and power from the same item. (This is a poor example since it jumps from 8 to 10, not 9 to 11)

I think I currently have it designed so that it spills over it..
1. adjusts the levels (if needed)
2. adjust the partial levels (if needed)
3. checks for an evolution.

I'm not 100% sure thats proper though? Does that sound proper by your ear Fyrewolf? If your level 9 and eat something and gain 2 levels, those stats are based on the original mag type and not the new evolved form's food type/mods?



I've also yet to figure out how I am going to distribute this thing when I do get a suitable version fully functional.

Edited July 12, 2015 by nunnbt473

[Fyrewolf5]

I think it raises the food bars first (with "spill over"), then evolves it after it's done eating that food.

There is another thing I didn't mention though that is impossible to account for; mags do not save odd food bar numbers. Whenever you bank a mag or logoff and back on, it will lose one point from any odd number food bar. For example, if you feed a baby mag 3 star atomizers at +25 each for 75 in every stat, then bank it or logoff/logon, it will actually be at 74 in every stat, and feeding another star atomizer will only bring it to 99 in every stat.

Consequently, this could actually be used to test your questions; you could level a mag from 5-13 off of star atomizers with 1 bank/logoff trick after the first feeding as described, and clearly see whether it has 24 in every bar after it goes from lvl 9-13 on the ninth star atomizer. If you don't want to spend money on stars you can hunt from whitill ep 1 normal al rappy.

[nunnbt473]

An excellent point. Though I am a bit too lazy to go through all that right now in addition to jumping in/out of the code lol. I'm barely actually playing the game as it is atm heh.

[Soly]

Actually.. i can test that pretty easy... imma try tomorrow

[nunnbt473]

Well I've just about got the core program ready. I still have to make it not error when there are 0 mags saved at startup. I have feeding groups for every type of mag. All the mags except cells should work properly. I'l add the cells in the nexday or two sometime. After that the first test run should be ready I think.

[nunnbt473]

So I've been picking apart a few more bugs. I notice as I get higher up in the levels, the balance of stats will sometimes temporarily shift. Especially if I am just going all willy nilly trigger happy clicking random stats. As I have been doing this I've noticed what, at least I think to be, unintentional / impossible evolutions occurring. This is likely a result of the fact that I had to change, for example if level == 50 to if level >= to account for things like multiple levels gained within a single item. I do likely already have a solution to fix my fix there. Two in fact, which may ultimately become redundant... but effective.

The first is making sure the previous level was below the evolution target (say previous level < 35 and current > 35). However, I think itd also make sense to say only MagType.Mag can become MagType Varuna, Vritra, Kalki. However, I don't want to unintentionally prevent evolutions either. However, that raised a few questions in my mind. Which mags can evolve exactly into what.

• Can a cell mag ever become any other mag (Not counting another appropriate cell used)?

• Besides the evolutions at 100 and every 10 after, is it possible for mags to re-evolve?

• If an evolution occurred because of a balance of stats and later that balance shifts, can it become a different evolution of the same evolutionary level. Ergo a 50 becoming another level 50

http://www.pso-world.com/sections.php?op=viewarticle&artid=1240

Varuna can become Rudra Marutah Vayu?

Then Only Rudra can become Varaha, Bhirava or Kama, Apsaras? (SectionID depending of course)

Or can Rudra / Marutah / Vayu can become any of the 12?

Also for mag cells, I assume any mag meeting the requirements can become that mag, even if it is per say, ill advised. Ergo a level 100 special mag or a Force 45 def special mag could become one of these cell mags?