Nested 'if' checks processing incorrectly?

Posted by Azeral777 on Sun 19 Dec 2004 08:12 AM — 5 posts, 21,755 views.

Azeral777 Sun 19 Dec 2004 08:12 AM #0

A friend of mine had the desire to create a timer that, every five minutes, used the 'qmorph <name>' command to randomly change his description to one of fourteen designed choices. He came to me asking how it could be done, and I showed him a sample alias that had a 50% chance to smile and a 50% chance to grin. Based off of that and a little independant research, he came up with the code that follows, which is having problems.

He has a MUSHclient variable named 'number' that's blank by default, which stores the random number generated by the randomizer. When he runs the script (I made it into an alias and it's doing the exact same thing), it almost always chooses 'qmorph prinny', despite the 5% chance he assigned to it. Occasionally, it'll 'qmorph delibird', but the other options seem to be completely ignored. I watched the 'number' variable between commands and it is changing as it should, the script just seems to be getting stuck at prinny/delibird.

Anyway, without further ado, I present the script (yes, it's bad code, but it's one of his first attempts at it):

Randomize
world.SetVariable "number", Rnd
If world.getvariable ("number") > "0.95" Then
world.Send "qmorph delibird"
Elseif world.getvariable ("number") > ".90" Then
world.Send "qmorph prinny"
Elseif world.getvariable ("number") > ".85" Then
world.Send "qmorph metro-taur"
Elseif world.getvariable ("number") > ".80" Then
world.Send "qmorph gamma"
Elseif world.getvariable ("number") > ".75" Then
world.Send "qmorph tundraswan"
Elseif world.getvariable ("number") > ".65" Then
world.Send "qmorph sinow"
Elseif world.getvariable ("number") > ".60" Then
world.Send "qmorph lerk"
Elseif world.getvariable ("number") > ".55" Then
world.Send "qmorph fade"
Elseif world.getvariable ("number") > "0.50" Then
world.Send "qmorph sawfly"
Elseif world.getvariable ("number") > "0.45" Then
world.Send "qmorph normal"
Elseif world.getvariable ("number") > "0.40" Then
world.Send "qmorph dragon"
Elseif world.getvariable ("number") > "0.35" Then
world.Send "qmorph blackswan"
Else
world.Send "qmorph porpoise"
End If

Any idea what might be causing this to happen?

Flannel USA Sun 19 Dec 2004 09:04 AM #1

You are using the numbers as strings.

0.75 is different than "0.75"
And another (once you fix that) possible source of error is the variable being considered a string, so it would compare
".50" > .50 and well, while it probably wont happen, VB has been known to do some funny things.

You use Cint to convert that variable to a number and make sure VB knows that it is.

May I also suggest you, instead of using getvariable a bunch of times, make it a script variable (at the beginning, which you can Cint once and be done with it) and then use that variable.
Reading MC variables takes a good amount of time (although its still basically instantaneous) so you should probably refrain from using it 20 times every five minutes.

Also, if you look at the random social plugin (check the plugin section of this site) youll find a plugin that sends a random social every X seconds. You can easily modify that to change his descriptiong (think of the qmorph command as a social).

Azeral777 Sun 19 Dec 2004 09:32 AM #2

Thanks for the help, I corrected the code with the majority of those suggestions and sent it back to him (after some thorough testing), it's working fine now. Being used to C++ and new to MUSHclient's functions and VB scripting myself, the answer just wasn't coming to me.

Again, thank you for your time.

Poromenos Greece Sun 19 Dec 2004 11:22 AM #3

This is what I do:


Dim fso, s, ts, intLine, intCounter
Randomize
Set fso = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")
Set ts = fso.OpenTextFile("titles.txt", 1)
s = ts.ReadLine
intLine =Int((Int(s) - 1) * Rnd + 2)
For intCounter = 1 to intLine
    s = ts.ReadLine
Next
ts.Close

Make a file called "titles.txt" and write all the titles you want in it and put the number of lines of the file on the top, like:
2
title1
title2
When you run this code, it will return a random title in the variable s.

Nick Gammon Australia Forum Administrator Sun 19 Dec 2004 07:36 PM #4

And just to push the Lua barrel a bit more, you could do it in Lua like this, which allows for adding additional titles much more easily. Your method would require changing all your number breaks if you wanted even one additional one:


titles = {
  "delibird", "prinny", "metro-taur", "gamma",
  "tundraswan", "sinow", "lerk", "fade", "sawfly",
  "normal", "dragon", "blackswan", "porpoise",
}

which = (math.floor (MtRand () * table.getn (titles))) + 1

Send ("qmorph " .. titles [which])

This code here generates a random number in the correct range by finding how many items there are in the table, and multiplying the value from the MtRand function by that. MtRand returns a number 0 <= n < 1.

Since there are 13 items in the list above, that would be a number in the range 0 to 12, so we add 1 to get an index in the range 1 to 13 as Lua requires.

Then we simply index into the table.

In your VB example, it is unnecessary to set a MUSHclient variable in the first place. That is only overhead, and caused the problem you had to start with. Sticking to your own technique, simply use a VB variable, eg.


Randomize
r = Rnd
If r > 0.95 Then
  world.Send "qmorph delibird"
... and so on ...