Batfactors

What is batfactors?

batfactors.txt is a data file used by BatBrain, containing information about all the various factors pertinent to battle. These are saved in a data-entry-friendly format rather than just saving a map of advevents, which would be bulkier and harder to edit. Most of BatBrain's knowledge about items, skills, equipment, etc. is found in this file. As it is publicly editable on the Map Manager, a guide to understanding the format could be handy for someone looking to either add new content or fix old or previously unspaded content.

The Format

Like all mafia data files, batfactors is a map file, in the following format:

record combat_rec {
   string ufname;          // user-friendly name, not really used by BatBrain
   string dmg;             // damage to monster
   string pdmg;            // damage to player
   string special;         // comma-delimited list of other action results
};
combat_rec [string, int] factors;

Note that the map has two indices. The first string represents the category. The second index is the integer identifying the relevant item/skill/familiar. For example the "bander" category, which contains information about your Bandersnatch's enhancements to combat skills, is indexed by skill number.

Category	Indexed by
bander	skill number
chef	staff item number
crown	familiar number
effect	effect number
fam	familiar number
gear	equipment item number
hatrack	hat item number
item	item number
scare	pants item number
skill	skill number

After these important identifiers comes the actual information. The first field, ufname, is merely to make the data file easy to read and isn't really used by BatBrain when reading the file. The remaining three fields contain all the information and need to be formatted in a certain way to be understood, but I believe you'll find that format both intuitive and easy to edit.

Spreads in Batfactors

The dmg and pdmg fields contain damage information, which is converted to a spread (float[element] map) in BatBrain. The format is versatile and can include formulas and any of BatBrain's fvars. Basically damage is expressed as

amount (elements)

where amount is the damage formula and elements is a comma (but not space!)-delimited list of elements, using "none" for physical damage, "perfect" for always-correctly-tuned damage, and "prismatic" for damage in all five elements. If the action does only physical damage, elements (and the preceding space) may be omitted. If multiple elements are present, the damage in amount will be equally distributed among those elements. Examples:

10 => deals 10 physical damage -10 => heals 10 hit points myhp/2 => deals half of your current hitpoints in physical damage 10 spooky => deals 10 spooky damage 10 spooky,hot => deals 5 spooky damage and 5 hot damage 10 prismatic => deals 2 each of hot, cold, spooky, sleaze, and stench damage

For cases where the damage is not equally distributed among elements, the above pattern may be repeated, separated by a pipe:

3 hot|7 spooky => deals 3 hot damage and 7 spooky damage 50 prismatic|4 hot => deals 14 hot damage and 10 each of cold, spooky, sleaze, and stench

Special

Of course, events may have many results besides just damage, and that is all contained in the special field. The special field, quite simply, is a comma (and space)-delimited list of keywords and values, like so:

keyword1 value1, keyword2 value2, keyword3 value3

As few as 0 keywords and values may be present. Some keywords lack values. Here are all the keywords BatBrain presently understands:

Keyword	Meaning of Value
aoe	For skills with an area of effect, specifies the maximum number of monsters the skill affects.
att	Monster attack modifier.
def	Monster defense modifier.
stun	Number of rounds the monster is stunned by this action, on average.
mp	Amount of MP gained/lost.
meat	Amount of meat gained/lost.
item	neener
monster	nooner
notmonster	nooner
phylum	naaner
stats	niiner
!!	niiner
once	No value. Presence of "once" indicates that the action can only be used once per combat.
custom	No value. Presence of "custom" indicates that the item requires special handling and should be ignored by BatBrain.