Welcome to Part 3 of the introduction series!
Coraly is one of the new Proptables that got introduced in Season 2. He has now actually surpassed Buzzy – who previously held the top spot – with his win rate.
Coraly
Coralys design is visibly inspired by either a coral or maybe a sea sponge. His colouring is reminiscent of the sea. This allows you to make an educated guess about his special abilities.
Still, there are other techniques than sea abilities to learn for him. With Clampy we’ve seen the importance of creativity.
Efficiency in just a few characters
But how can you be creative without wasting too many Bits on upgrading the ability slots? 45 characters isn’t a lot of space.
You can always omit characters. This was a well-used trick for the Demo version, when [Space] counted as character. Currently, many players use abbreviations. But the more uncommon an abbreviation is, the more difficult it gets for the AI. Especially when there are multiple possible meanings.
But what else?
Title and generic names
With Sleepy we’ve already seen the relevance of titles for abilities. But the title doesn’t just help efficiency, it also helps saving space.
You can use the title for additional characters to add information about the ability you’re trying to design. Using generic and technical terms – as you would in a title – works in the ability description as well. Why inconveniencing yourself with a complex description if there is a single word that already describes your idea?
Now you have more space for other details!
The top row gives an example how replacing ‘water transforms to cristal’ with ‘cristalize’ gives you more space to add that crystal splinters are shot at enemies.
But one should not at too many new details.
Focus
It is nice if an ability has multiple effects. But it is easier to be precise when you’re focusing on a singular effect. Most of the time, the effect is stronger as well and it’s easier to test what effect a change has to the ability.
It is also important to think about what you actually need to describe.
How detailed should the explanation for an ability be? Do you need to describe what it does? Is it enough to describe its effect? Is maybe a singular word enough?
Mini Challenge
Open up a note and try to write down a few bullet points about an attack you like. Now look at it and think about what the AI actually needs?
Which details can be omitted? Is there a generic term that already describes your attack or parts of it?
You can also try to reduce the used characters of a current ability. Can you get it down to less than half of the current character length?
Final Words
Are these ideas helpful to write shorter Prompts? What else would be helpful for others to know about shortening your Prompts?
Maybe you can share some of your own tips!
If you’re inspired to develop stronger abilities, you might be interested in designing your own bot! You can suggest your own ideas for new Strong AI Bots via this form. Maybe you can already fight it next season!
Next time we’ll look at Amöbius and combo abilities.