Match-Up Chart Creator Program

[Grim Tuesday]

So... a few days ago I started coding a program that would let people easily create and share match-up charts which show their own personal opinion on the ratios of every match-up...

Then a friend of mine took a look at my code, said it was awful, and decided to rewrite it from scratch.

Here's the end result: http://www.mediafire.com/?xzacod5ucz9t3f7

The ratios go from red to blue to green (unwinnable disadvantage to even to unwinnable advantage). It automatically calculates averages for you and lets you arrange the characters in order of your own personal tier list by clicking and dragging them over one another. You can save your match-up chart and load it later as well.

Dunno if anyone'll be able to find a use for this, but I thought it was worth sharing.

All credit goes to Dreadofmondays.

 

[Mr Wizzrobe]

Wow good ****. Nice work man.

 

[t3h Icy]

Zelda > Mewtwo

 

[Zankoku]

Is your friend willing to provide the source code?

 

[Max?]

Anytime the words "Matchup" and "Chart" appear in the same line of thought in the Melee Discussion, terrible things follow suit.

 

[Roneblaster]

Ill definetly be gettin on this when i get home.

 

[0Room]

Two issues:
This is ginormous and how do I make it smaller

I feel like there is a more efficient way of display as opposed to slight changes in colors
As in

Having defined colors for each one instead of shades

 

[DerfMidWest]

curses. why do i have to own a mac -.-"

 

[Grim Tuesday]

Zelda > Mewtwo

HAHAHAHAHAHA.

Obviously, Mewtwo > Zelda, sorry.

Is your friend willing to provide the source code?

He is, I think. It's in GML (Game Maker Language), so I don't know how usable it would be. I'll ask him tonight.

Two issues:
This is ginormous and how do I make it smaller

You can't really. The only way we could program that in would be scaling, which makes it really ugly :/

I feel like there is a more efficient way of display as opposed to slight changes in colors
As in

Having defined colors for each one instead of shades

Is that really necessary? xD

 

[Roneblaster]

My comp said it was a virus and wouldnt open it....

 

[Grim Tuesday]

Your comp is wrong.

 

[dreadofmondays]

The size of the game world is something odd like 1320x1320. I did try it with a full window because I have a large enough monitor, but the mouse wasn't in the right place for some reason.
Also, I'll add a button for some high-contrast graphics or something. :]
Roneblaster, it doesn't work on your computer because your computer is a Vista.
I can tell it's a Vista because it doesn't work.

 

[dreadofmondays]

Okay, I updated it; now you can choose the smashwiki colour set, or the default one. The same link in the OP should work, just redownload.
If you want the source code, it's here: http://www.mediafire.com/?i4ptbr15pusgsu1
If you don't know what .gmk is, don't bother.

 

[crush]

Omg can't wait to try this out!

 

[Roneblaster]

yea my computer just chooses not to open this.

 

[Grim Tuesday]

It isn't a virus at all... >_>

 

[rhan]

Haley Williams makes my wee wee move.


Downloading this now. Hopefully it works.

Edit: Norton just classified it as a threat.

 

[Grim Tuesday]

The **** >_>

It's not a virus, it's just a normal game maker exe.

Tell you what, try and download a different game made with Game Maker and see if Norton says the same thing.

 

[Roneblaster]

nevermind i got it, just had to disable norton.

**** norton


awwwwwww wtf? we cant do halves only whole numbers? i am dissapoint.

 

[Grim Tuesday]

K.

Next version you'll be able to fap over your perfect 49.1462/50.8538 ratios.

 

[dreadofmondays]

K.

Next version you'll be able to fap over your perfect 49.1462/50.8538 ratios.

This.

I'll see what I can do. And regarding Norton over-zealously 'protecting' you, here's an image of the program:

Wow. What a threat.

 

[Roneblaster]

u mad cause i like specificiticity?

 

[Pi]

fox loses to samus LOL
falco loses to samus LOL
PEACH LOSES TO SAMUS LOL

 

[Strong Badam]

i think the default values were just pulled from a thread somewhere, they aren't important.

anyway my main issue is having to go to 2 different places to fix a match-up ratio. can right-click be -1 and left click +1?

 

[dreadofmondays]

i think the default values were just pulled from a thread somewhere, they aren't important.

anyway my main issue is having to go to 2 different places to fix a match-up ratio. can right-click be -1 and left click +1?

What do you mean? That's how it works. o-o And it automatically updates both sides of the matchup.

 

[Grim Tuesday]

fox loses to samus LOL
falco loses to samus LOL
PEACH LOSES TO SAMUS LOL

Yellow means even.

 

[Strong Badam]

What do you mean?

o.

That's how it works. o-o And it automatically updates both sides of the matchup.

I knew this much.

 

[rhan]

fox loses to samus LOL
falco loses to samus LOL
PEACH LOSES TO SAMUS LOL

Samus is broken that's why.

 

[KirbyKaze]

Is there a way to make this program so you can cut out or eliminate characters?

If I bothered to seriously try and make one of these, I'd probably ignore everyone below Pikachu or Mario tbh (if I even bothered to include them). Just because there's almost no useful data on the majority of those characters available...

 

[dreadofmondays]

Is there a way to make this program so you can cut out or eliminate characters?

This a good idea, I'll get right to work. Of course, you could simply move them out of the way >_>

 

[Grim Tuesday]

Damon, I recommend right-clicking on the character's picture to turn them and all of their match-ups transparent.

That'd be the simplest way to go about it, I'd imagine.

 

[dreadofmondays]

Okay, now you can right-click characters to hide them. You can still move them around afterwards. Since I'm basically magic, Grim won't have to edit his post - just redownload like before.

 

[KirbyKaze]

Wow this guy is amazing. <3

 

[Kal]

Haha, I'm surprised the reaction is so positive. This program wouldn't be too hard to write for someone with any real programming knowledge.

Can you get it to spit out expected wins based on character's matchups? E.g., if Sheik went even against 25 characters, and then went 40-60 with the last one, it would spit out something like "Sheik - 12.9." And perhaps you could order this list to create a theoretical tier list based on the expected matchups.

It would also be cool if we could allow for weights to be applied to certain characters based on how frequently they show up in tournament. You could then make a practical tier list by accounting for the fact that Sheik ****** a bunch of characters nobody plays isn't actually a huge advantage.

Since you're computer savvy, I would guess the formulas for the above ideas are within your grasp. But if you need me to write them for you I can very easily do that. It may be beneficial to allow for manually inputting the actual matchup odds, e.g., inputting "6.5 - 4.5" instead of either "6-4" or "7-3" could create more accurate results.

And this GUI needs work. A full-screen option alone would do wonders.

This is a very old post on GameFAQs in which I performed a similar analysis. I used Phanna's chart for simplicity (to avoid deciding how matchups ranked with characters I know nothing about), but the principle is valid.

 

[dreadofmondays]

I'll see what I can do about expected wins, but it isn't going to be overly complicated (probably something like % of matchups above 0).
As for the weights, I don't see why I should add that. The point of the program is so that you can edit the charts and show them to other people. So it follows that you could simply bump matches up or down if you felt they needed to be moved.
I agree the GUI should be improved. I'll see if I can get some res options in somewhere. Right now, you can get to fillscreen by hitting F4. What it looks like when you do that is basically what it'll look like if I mess with the screen too much.

 

[Kal]

The idea behind the weights is to produce a more practical tier list, if you're going to use this to produce a tier list at all.

 

[Grim Tuesday]

DreadofMondays is saying that the program isn't designed for making a tier list automatically, lol. The player can make a much more accurate one than any computer will ever be able to with relative ease, weighing characters yourself isn't hard at all.

 

[Kal]

Grim, it's not more accurate than a computer generated tier list; the tier lists are the same thing. When you create a tier list, you access which characters are most likely to win a tournament, which you do based on the overall matchups of each character, and the likelihood of those characters' opponents appearing in tournament. Whether a computer generates it automatically based on a chart you've manually created has no bearing on the accuracy of the tier list.

However, if it's not his intention to use this to create a tier list (though I see no reason why not, as it seems a pretty easy addition to the program, and a matchup chart's sole purpose is really to help you assess how good a character is, i.e., his place the tier list), I guess there's no point in addressing this. I just think it would be a cool addition.

Also, when I say "weighing characters," I do not mean weighing how good they are. I mean weighing their odds of showing up in tournament. The idea is to measure expected wins against a character across the character's frequency (or weight, if you like) in order to see how negatively or positively this matchup impacts tournament results. For example, if a character were a hard Fox counter, this would weigh more because there are more Fox players in tournament. Conversely, if a player were countered by Fox, this would also weigh more. In the same vein, countering someone like Young Link or being countered by Young Link would have a lesser impact.

 

[Grim Tuesday]

I'm not sure how one would "easily" weigh the likelihood of a character showing up in tournament, wouldn't it require lots of tournament data?

And the reason this method is inferior to human judgement is... Say, for example, there is a character (character y) who has alright match-ups but gets absolutely completely ***** in the easiest possible way by character x. Now, character x is VERY rare in tournaments because he gets ***** by everyone except for the aforementioned character y.

A computer would put character y higher up on the list than he probably should be, as the computer cannot account for the rarely used character x being used solely for the match-up against character y and preventing him from achieving success in tournaments.

 

[Kal]

In order to weigh the likelihood of a character showing up, a player could merely make an educated guess, or look at tournament results and try to deduce which characters were used. There is no harm in applying a weight; if you are unsure you can simply put 1/26 for everyone and pretend everyone shows up equally often.

Your example is just a worst case scenario, and obviously does not apply to this game. However, to account for a problem like the one you've mentioned would require a more complex model for creating a tier list. There's nothing wrong with that. The tier list made in the way I've suggested is not bad just because it's not perfect.

Further, you can have people watch over this sort of thing to manually account for such problems. In the example you've provided, it would not be hard to notice that "character y" is placed significantly higher on the tier list than where his tournament placings would suggest he be placed.

But the essential point here, Grim, is that this method works very well for creating a SSBM tier list. And it's particularly nice because it's slightly less subjective than "I think this character is better than this character." And really, I see no reason not to include such a thing in this program.