cobase2010/paddlebets

Pet battle simulator, AI player, and back end

paddlebets

Paddlebets is a pet battle simulator, AI player, and back end. It also includes a rudimentary text-based front end, which allows human against human play and human against computer play. The display does not show all important information for playing a pet battle. Ability descriptions, pet power, damage source information, and ongoing debuff status are all missing from the display.

All of the pet information should be in a "full_XX.XX.XX.dat", where the XX indicate version number. To play, set up a team file, which specifies all the pet, breed, and ability selections. These selections should be given by number codes which are listed in the "dump.txt" file included in this distribution. An example team file, "team.txt" is also included.

Once the team file is ready, human vs. human play can be initiated with:

  paddlebets.exe <pet data file> hh <team file>

The interface will then prompt for moves for each side, left side first. The moves can be chosen with a single key press. The abilities can be selection with keys 1-3, switching to another pet with 4-6, and key 7 indicating a pass. If only a single move is available to a player it will be automatically selected.

To play against the AI, use the command:

  paddlebets.exe <pet data file> hc <team file> [<depth>]

Here the depth specifies the number of moves ahead the AI will search. On 2014 PCs, the AI will rarely take over a second to pick a move at a depth of 4. A depth of 5 is the minimum to pose a challenge for beginner human players. A depth of 5 will take from 5 to 30 seconds to pick the first few moves and be progressively faster as the game progresses.

Paddlebets will execute repeated play of AI vs AI games to determine the superior team in the team.txt file specified matchup. This feature is accessed with:

  paddlebets.exe <pet data file> cc <team file> [<depth>] [<# of games>]

Higher depth will correspond with better simulated play strength, but also take longer.

The Windows release may not function unless you download and install a dll package from Microsoft:

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/confirmation.aspx?id=40784 .

Select the "vcredist_x86.exe" option and the executable should run properly.

This software is not an emulator and does not contain or use any files, codes, audio or images incorporated in or generated by Blizzard Entertainment downloaded content. All code is original (unless noted) and not based on decompiling or reverse engineering Blizzard software. No professional software engineer would write code like this.