Question

I am trying to get a game from exercise 36 in LPTHW to work.

I can get the whole part of the game working except when it gets to the combat. Here is where I think the problem is.

def combat_engine():    
    global wins, hit_points, current_hp
    if monster_current_hp or current_hp > 0:
        print "You can type 'a' for attack, or 'q' for quit, choose one."
        answer = raw_input(":> ")
        if 'a' in answer:
            attack(monster)
            attack('player')
            combat_engine()
        elif 'q' in answer:
            print t.white_on_red("You give up and are devoured by the %s.") % monster
            exit(0)
        else:
            print "I dont understand %s." % answer
            next()
            combat_engine() 
    elif monster_hp == 0:
        print "You defeated the %s, congradulations %s!" % monster, name
        wins = wins + 1
        if wins == 5:
            you_win()
        elif victim == 'player':
            hit_points = hit_points + d6()
            current_hp = hit_points
            print "You feel hardier."
            next()
            barracks()
    elif current_hp == 0:
        print "You have been deafeted by the %s, better luck next time." % monster
        next()
        exit(0)

    else: 
        print "Bug Somewhere"

I believe the bug is somewhere in this function. When i printed out the HP values of each character, the battle was still going on after the monster had been reduced to -2 hp. maybe it a problem with booleans?

What I would like it to do is to either do all the stat adjustments for winning and quit the game if you lose. I just want to get past this so I can start learning about classes and dicts which should make my life much easier. Please let me know if I should post more information, I’m new at this and not the best at posting questions on here yet.

Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

in the last part of your code you don’t call the function d100(), but the value d100. That’s surely not what you want to do.

   if d20() >= monster_to_hit and d100() <= monster_crit:
        print "The %s scored a critical hit against you!" % monster
        hit_points = hit_points - (monster_dmg * 3)
        next()
    elif d20 >= monster_to_hit and d100() > crit:
        print "The %s strikes you!"
        hit_points = hit_points - monster_dmg
        next()

when debugging in python, the main word is “print”. You should feel free to print as much as possible so as to understand what’s going on.

example:

# attack function
def attack(victim):
    dice20 = d20()
    dice100 = d100()

    print "victim == monster", victim == monster    

    print dice20
    print dice100
    print to_hit
    print crit
    print monster_current_hp
    print mod_dmg 
    print mod_dmg * 3
    print monster_to_hit
    print monster_crit
    print hit_points
    print monster_dmg
    print monster_dmg * 3

    global monster_current_hp, current_hp, to_hit, crit, hit_points
    if victim == monster:
        if dice20 >= to_hit and dice100 <= crit:
            print "You scored a critical hit against the %s!" % monster
            monster_current_hp = monster_current_hp - (mod_dmg * 3)
            next()
        elif dice20 >= to_hit and dice100 > crit:
            print "You strike the %s!" % monster
            monster_current_hp = monster_current_hp - mod_dmg
            next()
        else:
            print "The %s evades your attack!" % monster
            next()
    else:
        if dice20 >= monster_to_hit and dice100 <= monster_crit:
            print "The %s scored a critical hit against you!" % monster
            hit_points = hit_points - (monster_dmg * 3)
            next()
        elif dice20 >= monster_to_hit and dice100 > crit:
            print "The %s strikes you!"
            hit_points = hit_points - monster_dmg
            next()

do the same in the combat engine so as to see the infinite loop appear. Then remove the useless print that bloat your trace with unuseful information, until you see clearly the reason it loops, because of some value, because of a boolean if test that doesn’t behave the way you expected… something like that.