Game Randomizer

I got tired of rolling dice and trying to figure out an easy way to pick 4 random heros from a group of 10, so I wrote a quick javascript app to do it for me!

If anyone wants to use it, here’s the link:

http://bit.ly/sotmrandom

Right now it’s just the stock art from the website, but I may change that up. Also, if anyone associated with the game has an issue with this and wants me to take it down, just say the word and I’ll make it happen. I’m not looking to make any money off of this, just starting out as a developer so basically anytime I’m confronted with a problem I see if I can code out the solution.

Thanks. Feedback is welcomed!

Fancy! Out of curiosity, will it work on a mobile browser?

Also, while I’m not the official voice of >G, I’d think that as long as you’re not making money or giving away some sort of not widely available info, there shouldn’t be an issue.

It will work on a mobile browser. I’m going to optimize the code and css to make it more mobile friendly, but I hacked this together today and wanted to get it out. I’ve also never written a native mobile app, so I may build it as a standalone app too.

If you wanted to make a WebOS app, you’ve already made it. Of course you’d have to find WebOS users to actually use it, heheheh. Unless you already plan to make other iOS or Windows Phone 7 apps, you probably shouldn’t waste your money with that, as it’s required $99/year and they can only be sold in their respective markets. If you wanted to learn Java (assuming you don’t already know it), shouldn’t be too difficult to make an android app, and they can always be side loaded. That and Windows Mobile, but nobody has that. (I just got a Windows Mobile 5 Dell Axim x51v, and am having fun playing with it.)

Cool!

Heros is usually spelled Heroes.

Fixed.

I just actually checked that site, and the effects are pretty nice. Visually appealing. I plan to make a Windows Mobile 5 app for keeping track of various things (HP counter, damage modifier tracking, immunity tracking, etc) to make playing easier to manage, maybe I should add something like that. (Unfortunately, Windows Mobile doesn’t support WPF/Silverlight, meaning cool effects and MVVM patterns are difficult/impossible.)

Oh, now THAT is cool.

Heh, I’m having fun just hitting “Reshuffle” over and over. Look at them go!

I’ll try to get the art work updated and whatnot this week. I’m glad you guys like it!

I also think it is pretty nifty, granted I usually don’t have the computer on when I am going to play SotM so that’s a downside, but if I ever do I know where to go to choose what heroes to play.

You can visit it from your smartphone if you have one. I’ll be working on making more mobile friendly in the next few days.

Haha! I am one of them there rare breeds of people who do not own any kind of mobile phone what-so-ever. All I got me is one of them there land line phones. Now some of you youngsters may not even know what that is and possibly some of these here technological people may of forgotten what them there phones are from the stone age. So as a reminder for all those folks is that it is a phone connected by a wire that links to a what is known as a phone jack, that is also connected to the wall of the home. Essentially what a landline phone does is make phone calls and that is it, no internet, no texting, and no playing little games. (Not to be taken in a rude way, I just like going on about it since not too many people even believe me when I say I have never owned a mobile phone)

Uhm… those landlines of days from the past can (and in many cases, especially out in the rural, do) have internet access. Painfully slow, mind you.

So how many reshuffles on 5 heroes does it take to get the freedom 5?

Hmmm… I believe that given 10 heroes to choose from and choosing 5 of them at random and ignoring order there are 252 distinct possible sets. But I haven’t taken stats in MANY years. Anyway there’s about a 1 in 250 chance of getting the Freedom 5 at random.

10! / (5! *5!) = 252

To feed off of that, if you run the randomizer 25 times, you have a 9.5% chance of getting the freedom 5 at least one time. If you run it 50 times, you have about 18% chance. 174 times gets you right at 50% chance. 1000 times will get you 98%.

Finally registered a name for the site:

sotmrandomizer.info

Does anybody have any good scans or art for the environment cards they’d like to share?

You can take a look at the art I used for the environment card boxes in my “Spiff’s SotM Accessories” post. If you like them, I can probably get them to you. Keep in mind though, that they’re just stuff I found on the Internet, so I have no rights to them and I know for a fact that the dinosaur one is probably copywritten since it’s from the Turok video game.

Now available as an Android App. I’m still trying to sort out the final card images, but the functionality works for anyone who wants to download it and give it a try.

https://market.android.com/details?id=com.mikehipps.sentinelsrandomizer&feature=search_result#?t=W251bGwsMSwyLDEsImNvbS5taWtlaGlwcHMuc2VudGluZWxzcmFuZG9taXplciJd

Any possibility of an update to include the Rook City Expansion decks? This is a really cool idea, and I would use it quite a bit if it had all the heroes, villains, and environments!

Agreed, this is a neat little app, and I’d love to see it included Rook City (and eventually Infernal Relics). It’d also be awesome if it included the Promos as separate choices.

LOL… not sure if my group would use it but I just love hitting “reshuffle” again and again and wondering what that battle would be like. Certainly does a lot to illustrate the replayability concept that the designers use as a selling point.

As I mentioned in another thread, I was going to take a stab at replicating mahipp’s SotM game randomizer, and now I’ve done it:

http://www.spiffworld.com/sotm/randomizer.cfm

Features include:

1. All heroes, villains, and environments from the core set and Rook City are included, including alt versions like Young Legacy and Rook City Wraith. I’ll add Infernal Relics to the randomizer once those become available.
2. By default, all cards are included in the randomizer, but you can choose to select/deselect cards individually. By manipulating which cards are included in the randomization, you could, for example:

• have a game that randomly chose the heroes but didn’t include a particular hero that no one in your group likes
• have a game that randomly chose between just Rook City environments because you’re in that kind of mood
• choose to not include any Rook City cards because you don’t own that expansion but still want to use the randomizer
• choose to not include one or more of the alternate cards because you don’t have access to them
• etc.

3. If you include both the base and alt versions of a card and then that card is chosen, the system will randomly pick which of the two versions to display. You will never, for example, have a result with both Legacy and Young Legacy in the same game.

It seems to be bug-free at the moment, and displays relatively well on an iPad (5-hero games get wrapped, but everything 4-hero and less looks nice). It’s smart enough to not allow you to tell it you want a 5-hero game, for instance, but then uncheck heroes until there are less than five to choose from. However, there is a known issue where if you tell it you want a 4-hero game and then you only leave two heroes and their two alt versions checked (which is really just two heroes since the randomizer will not let both a base and alt version into the same results), it will crap out. I’m not sure how motivated I am to try to program around that edge case, but we’ll see.

Please let me know if you find any issues or have any suggestions.

Wow, nice job Spiff. I will be adding this to my IPad very quickly. Any chance you could already add the Infernal Relics with them being defaulted to Unchecked so us playtesters can use it when we playtest?

Sweet! When I saw you mention that in the other thread I was really looking forward to it. I assume that when IR comes out, it’ll be updated again?

Gnipp’s idea is a great one. I can update it with IR stuff right now, though I’ll have to use placeholder art for the stuff we haven’t seen yet. Stay tuned for updates.

It looks awesome so far. I was pondering doing this myself, but I got busy with moving and my job. I look forward to using this a lot.

This is really neat Spiff, I am surely going to add this onto my favorites and use it whenever I have the computer on and am in the mood for some SotM.

Infernal Relics cards have been added to the randomizer. That stuff’s not as pretty as the other stuff, but whadayagonna do?

As suggested, the IR cards are unchecked by default, so if you want to include them, you have to explicitly check each one each time you randomize (it won’t remember that you’ve selected IR items previously like it does with everything else).

There’s been no info about IR environments, so those are not in the randomizer.

You could just add temporary fields for now. Based on kickstarter update info, we know there’s one that looks alternate dimension-like and the other… well it could be “other”. So you could at least have a field for “IR Dimension” and another for “IR 2” or something.

Hmm, how about a box somewhere that just automatically checks everything?

And if I can request something else, what about a box that would pick everything from an expansion. I guess what I would call a global option and then you could always uncheck specifics if needed.

Would it be useful to the play testers to have temporary fields for the cards, with temporary art? If so, I’ve got not problem adding it.

I’ll probably never use this for an actual game – not in the pick at random camp, generally. Still, it’s awesome.

This is very cool.

Have you thought about having a Promo category outside of the various base set and expansion categories. Technically Unity and Ambuscade aren’t part of Infernal Relics. And I guess I read it as the new Ra and Fanatics as promos for the expansion and the new Baron Blade and Omnitron being the promos for the 2nd edition (like Young Legacy was the promo for 1st edition). Maybe thats just my understanding. But it does look like infernal relics comes with a ton of villains.

Though I guess this tool will be most attractive to use by those who would know all that already. It won’t be the first intro to the game for people.

It would be useful for myself. I am a radomizer at heart in this game.

@logan_mann, I did consider different ways to group the items and ended up going with the one that was easiest for me to program – chronologically. I know that Vengeful Baron Blade isn’t actually an Infernal Relics item, but it makes the internal numbering that the randomizer uses much easier if I never have to go back and group a later item with an earlier set of items, which would make me have to renumber everything to fit it in. Remember, this is something I threw together in a day, so it’s not the most sophisticated app in the world, and I’m ok with that.

@Gnipp, I’ll add two placeholder environments (which I’ll update with the real info once we learn it), and I’ll add a “click here to include all Infernal Relics items” just for the play testers. In a few months when IR comes out, the IR items will all be on by default and that’s how most users will likely leave it, so I think this problem will go away then.

UPDATE: changes made to the site.

2 quick things. 1) Every time I hit Go, it collapses the choices menus. I swear it didn’t do that before. 2) Any time I select something IR, it correctly adds it to the randomizer, but then unselects it for the next run.

Those are both “working as intended”. When you hit “go”, the page actually submits a form to itself, so technically the page where you see the results is a new page, which is why the menus are back in their default, uncollapsed form. As for the IR stuff, since IR isn’t out yet, none of those options are checked by default when the page loads. So it’s the same deal, once you hit “go” to get the results view, that page has everything back in the default form, which for the IR items means they’re unchecked. That will go away once IR actually comes out and the IR things are checked by default. Then, they’ll act just like everything else.

Ok, but if I uncheck anyone else and submit, they stay unchecked, so it isn’t completely reverting to the default, just the default for IR. It just seems inconsistent.

You’re right, it is inconsistent. I started to type out an explanation for why the inconsistency was necessary given the way I tossed the page together, but then I realized it would be easier just to fix it. So I did. Now, the IR items are unchecked by default, but if you check them, they will stay checked just like the rest of the items.

Just wanting to say Spiff that I really do like the Randomizer, makes choosing random battles go a lot faster and it gave me some pretty fun ones. Did a couple battles this morning using it and boy was it a good time.

This is pretty amazing, Spiff. I’m definitely gonna use this when the mood for randomness strikes. Thanks, Spiff.

Bookmarked - and very much appreciated.

Could you maybe add an option to add an “other: _____” slot? like, have the list look like this:

Legacy
Ra
…
Fixer
Other:______
Other:______
Other:______
Other:______
Other:______

That way, if we have 2 Legacy decks (which I will) there is at least the opportunity to get both of them together.

Sorry, but I don’t think that’s something I’ll be adding. I have to imagine that the locus of people who are into random games and who also want to use multiples of the same hero in the same game is pretty small, and I’d rather not do the work for something that maybe only one or two people will ever use. I hope you understand.

Well, all you’d have to do is put an extra hero slot at the end. You’d only need one, really. Just so the option’s there.