Lesson 8: Practice Time!

In the previous exercise, you created a good starting point for CalculateDamage(), but the function body contains constants and variables that would work better as parameters. As a reminder, here’s how the function looks now:

CalculateDamage() : float = 
    MinHealth : float = 1.0
    PotionDamageAmount : float = 80.0
    var PlayerHealth : float = 100.0

    # If the damage amount would not eliminate the player, do that amount of damage
    if (PlayerHealth > PotionDamageAmount):
        return PotionDamageAmount
    else if (PlayerHealth > MinHealth):
        # Give player one more chance if their health is low

Your updated version of the function will take three parameters:

• PlayerHealth: The player’s current health

• DesiredDamageAmount: The maximum amount of damage that could be done to the player

• MinHealth: The health the player should have if DesiredDamageAmount would reduce their health to 0.0 or less.

Update the function to match the following:

CalculateDamage(PlayerHealth : float, DesiredDamageAmount : float, MinHealth : float) : float = 
    # If the damage amount would not eliminate the player, do that amount of damage
    if (PlayerHealth > DesiredDamageAmount):
        return DesiredDamageAmount
    else if (PlayerHealth > MinHealth):
        # Give player one more chance if their health is low
        return PlayerHealth - MinHealth
    else:
        # Eliminate player
        return PlayerHealth

Great! Your function now calculates the damage your player should take when given three parameters, instead of using variables and constants declared within the function.

At this point, you may be seeing a red squiggle under the () in your call to CalculateDamage() in HurtPlayer(). This is because you have updated the declaration of CalculateDamage() to require 3 parameters, but you are not passing any arguments in your call to CalculateDamage(). You’ll fix that in the next few steps.

1. Before you can pass an argument for PlayerHealth to CalculateDamage(), you have to know what the character’s health is. For that you will use the GetHealth() method. You will call it the same way as Damage() and Heal() but it will return a value that you need to save within your HurtPlayer() function.

   Verse

        HurtPlayer() : void =
               Playspace : fort_playspace = GetPlayspace()
               AllPlayers : []player = Playspace.GetPlayers()
               if (FirstPlayer : player = AllPlayers[0]):
                   if (FortniteCharacter : fort_character = FirstPlayer.GetFortCharacter[]):
                       MyCharacterHealth : float = FortniteCharacter.GetHealth()
                       DamageToDo: float = CalculateDamage()
                       Print("DamageToDo: {DamageToDo}")
                       FortniteCharacter.Damage(DamageToDo)
   

   Copy full snippet(9 lines long)

2. For the second parameter in CalculateDamage(), you’re going to need a parameter from HurtPlayer(). You will create that parameter now. Add a float parameter called DamageAmount. HurtPlayer() should now look like this:

   Verse

        HurtPlayer(DamageAmount : float) : void =
            Playspace: fort_playspace = GetPlayspace()
            AllPlayers: []player = Playspace.GetPlayers()
            if (FirstPlayer : player = AllPlayers[0]):
                if (FortniteCharacter : fort_character = FirstPlayer.GetFortCharacter[]):
                    MyCharacterHealth : float = FortniteCharacter.GetHealth()
                    DamageToDo : float = CalculateDamage()
                    Print("DamageToDo: {DamageToDo}")
                    FortniteCharacter.Damage(DamageToDo)
   

   Copy full snippet(9 lines long)

3. You now have all three arguments ready to add to CalculateDamage().

   • MyCharacterHealth for the parameter PlayerHealth

   • DamageAmount for the parameter DesiredDamageAmount

   • 1.0 for the parameter MinHealth

HurtPlayer() should look like the following, and you shouldn’t have any more errors:

HurtPlayer(DamageAmount : float) : void =
    Playspace: fort_playspace = GetPlayspace()
    AllPlayers: []player = Playspace.GetPlayers()
    if (FirstPlayer : player = AllPlayers[0]):
        if (FortniteCharacter : fort_character = FirstPlayer.GetFortCharacter[]):
            MyCharacterHealth : float = FortniteCharacter.GetHealth()
            DamageToDo : float = CalculateDamage(MyCharacterHealth, DamageAmount, 1.0)
            Print("Damage To Do: {DamageToDo}")
            FortniteCharacter.Damage(DamageToDo)

Call HurtPlayer() a few times to see the different effects it has, depending on the player’s health.

What about the HealPlayer() function? Can you think of ways to update it now that you know how to use parameters?

There’s one more method that might be useful. It’s named SetMaxHealth(), and it’s called the same way as Damage(), Heal(), and GetHealth(). See if you can use SetMaxHealth() and everything else you know about parameters and functions to update the HealPlayer() function. Think about what might be interesting or fun for the player.

Complete Script

using { /Fortnite.com/Devices }
using { /Fortnite.com/Characters }
using { /Fortnite.com/Playspaces }
using { /Verse.org/Simulation }
using { /Verse.org/Verse }

hello_world_device := class(creative_device):

    # Runs when the device is started in a running game
    OnBegin<override>()<suspends>:void=

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  Lesson 9: Failure and Control Flow

  Learn how failure is used to control your program's flow.