Purpose

First, I am aspiring to become a software developer and have only just begun seriously studying and learning to program. I learned some HTML 16 years ago, took a course in Visual Basic 10 years ago, and took a summer class in Java 9 years ago. I'm currently 26 without a college degree and no longer wish to work in restaurants.

The purpose of this blog is to answer questions regarding Torn aka Torn City, a (mostly) text based MMORPG with nearly 17,000 daily players! Torn has provided me with so much enjoyment and excitement. I am motivated to use its challenges as opportunity to practice calculating things for fun and focus on optimization.

What I hope to do is to outline problems as precisely as I can and provide solutions. I will also host data collected. A lot of information on Torn is found in it's Wiki but I will be displaying information I'm using.

Most of the problems in Torn can be solved with arithmetic and algebra. Some problems I hope to model in such a way that I can write code to solve them. I am currently learning Python on Code Academy and I intend on looking at some database languages like SQL. Microsoft Excel is essentially my notebook and scrap paper for running calculations. It can also be used to make a database for some specific Torn problems such as optimizing Education decisions.

This blog will also provide perspective on my play style and what I hope to accomplish. Posts will demonstrate my attitude and priorities when it comes to planning and will at first showcase my solution for my specific circumstances. I hope to expand on problems introduced in this format and solve for general cases.

I do hope to write a few calculators. One project I absolutely intend on building is for users to submit their crime data, total number of crimes in different categories, and tell them which merits they will be closest to obtaining. This will be done by multiplying the closest crime medals by Nerve cost and an estimated percentage success rate. There will also be special cases to look at such as merits for Total Crimes as well as situations where both an Honor Bar and a Medal are awarded for a certain number of crimes. I'm really excited to write this in particular.

I hope you enjoy the blog.

PS: I have some posts from years ago, They could be edited and updated, but I may just write new or similar articles if I'm motivated to look for answers related to those specific problems.