Yeah. I was a Computer Science major for a few years in college, so I know what you're saying. Thanks for the push, by the way. You said exactly what I need to hear to get me to look closer at my function in the right way, even though it still took me a few minutes to figure out how to remedy the problem.

MostDamage is a procedure that checks to see who, of the users who have attacked the NPC, has done the most damage. In addition to using it for simple AI (MOB goes after person hurting it the most), I also use it (or will be using it) for assigning the kill and experience (even though you get experience just for fighting, you get a bonus if you actually get the kill). In case you're curious, I'll let you know where my code was falling apart.

Each NPC carries a list of users that have attacked it, along with their respective damage amounts. That's accomplished through the AddDamage routine that I call after a damage amount is determined. It looks like this:

AddDamage(mob/M,D)
var/p
var/found = 0
for (p in M.attackedby)
if (usr == p)
M.attackedby[p] += D
found = 1
if (found == 0)
M.attackedby.Add(usr)
M.attackedby[usr] = D

Then the MostDamage function searches through that list looking for the biggest threat to the NPC.

MostDamage(mob/M)
var/p
var/mob/topscorer
var/topscore = 0 //Needed to keep track of who did the most damage to MOB
for (p in M.attackedby)
if (M.attackedby[p] > topscore)
topscorer = p
topscore = M.attackedby[p]
world << "[topscorer.charname] did the most damage"
return topscorer

I *think* both of those functions work the way they're supposed to. I haven't had the chance to extensively test them, but logically they seem okay to me. The problem, however, was that when you attacked the NPC and you missed on your first swing, your name never got added to the NPC's $#!t list, so obviously when he looked for you, he came up with null. The way I remedied that was by simpling including the AddDamage call in the event of a miss, as well, but it took me a while to figure out why even that wasn't working. Turns out you need to pass in *some* value, or else your user mob won't turn up when MostDamage loops through the list. So if you pass in 1, as in AddDamage(M,1), that does the trick. Gives you a point even for missing, but I can live with that.

Again, thanks for the help. I really appreciate it. I just found this program on Saturday, so I'm slowly muddling through learning the syntax and rules and everything. I'll probably be posting every once in a while. :)

Edit: Yeah, I'm a moron. The reason passing 0 in for a miss didn't work is because I initialise topscore to 0 in the MostDamage proc and I only check to see if the mob's damage amount is greater than top score rather than greater than or equal to.

-Justin