Lone Wolf Development Forums - Bootstrapping a gizmo pick from the editor

Lone Wolf Development Forums (http://forums.wolflair.com/index.php)

- HL - Authoring Kit (http://forums.wolflair.com/forumdisplay.php?f=58)

- - Bootstrapping a gizmo pick from the editor (http://forums.wolflair.com/showthread.php?t=59267)

Bootstrapping a gizmo pick from the editor

Another one of those things I just can't seem to wrap my head around despite looking at the examples. A given Race or Command Package can give the player a free skill Specialty. When I had skill Specialties be something that was on the hero itself, rather than a pick on the child entity attached to the Skill, so this was as simple as a bootstrap entry on the Race or Command Package, and an it_bootcustom in the editor entry. Well, that no longer works and I can't quite figure out how to make it work.

A given Specialty has a tag to indicate which skill it's matched up to, e.g.

Code:

<!-- Thermal Skill Specialty -->

<thing

  id="spPercThrm"

  name="Thermal"

  compset="Specialty"

  isunique="yes"

  description="Apply this specialty when using an organ or apparatus that senses temperature. If you can “see” in infrared, then your Sight specialty applies instead, and you should lord that up over lesser creatures by talking about how lovely everything looks.">

  <tag group="Skill" tag="skPercept"/>

</thing>

The specialty is attached via an entity (in traits.str)

Code:

<entity

  id="entSpec"

  form="frmSpec">

  <bootstrap thing="SpecHelp"/>

</entity>

SpecHelp and Specialty are, of course, defined earlier in the file:

Code:

<component

  id="Specialty"

  name="Specialization"

  autocompset="no"

  panellink="skills">

  

  <!-- Display Name for use on Specialties Tab -->

  <field

    id="spcTabName"

    name="Display Name (Tab)"

    type="static"

    maxlength="50"

    maxfinal="50">

    <finalize><![CDATA[

      ~Displays name

      @text = field[name].text & " (" & this.tagnames[Skill.?," "]  & ")"

      ]]></finalize>

    </field> 

  

  <identity group="Specialty"/>

  

  <tag group="SpecialTab" tag="Specialty"/>



  <!-- Track the ability on the actor -->

  <eval index="1" phase="Setup" priority="5000"><![CDATA[

    perform forward[Specialty.?]

    perform parent.assign[User.HasSpec]

    ]]></eval>

    

  <!-- Each specialty that is allocated by the user costs 2 CP -->

  <eval index="2" phase="Traits" priority="10000">

    <before name="Calc resLeft"/>

    <after name="Bound trtUser"/><![CDATA[

    ~if this speciality wasn't added by the user (as with a Background trait), skip it entirely

    doneif (isuser = 0)



    ~adjust the resource appropriately

    hero.child[resCP].field[resSpent].value += 2

  ]]></eval>

</component>    



<!-- Specialty Helper component

      Each Specialty Gizmo derives from this component

-->



<component

  id="SpecHelp"

  name="Specialty Helper">



  <!-- Selection Tag Expressions -->

  <field

    id="SpecExpr"

    name="Specialization Tag Expression"

    type="derived"

    maxlength="500">

    </field>



  </component>

It all works well enough from the UI, with users able to add and remove specialties, but I'm uncertain as to how to a) bootstrap it from the Thing that is the Command Package or the Race and b) how to add it to the editor so that a user can create a Command Package and pick what Specialties get automatically added.

Looks like it's here that explains how to do this, but I can't check until I get home.

Hmm... and no, no luck with that. However, I am 90% of the way there. I am currently instead adding a tag to the BGTrait and using the following script to find the relevant Skill and modify it. But I am still figuring out how to actually bootstrap the pick:

Code:

<eval index="2" phase="Setup" priority="3001" name="Add BG Specializations">

  <![CDATA[

  var myId as string

  myId = tagids[Specialty.?," & "]

  debug "myID: " & myId

  

  foreach thing in Specialty where myId

    var indID as string

    indID = eachthing.idstring

    var skillIDs as string

    debug "indID: " & indID

    

    skillIDs = eachthing.tagids[Skill.?, " & "]

    debug "skillIDs: " & skillIDs

    foreach thing in Skill where skillIDs

      debug "Add " & indID & " to skill " & eachthing.idstring

      ~Add a pick for the Specialization to the Skill.

      nexteach

    nexteach

    ]]></eval>

And... somewhere between posting that and now, I managed to lose it such that the bootstrap is no longer showing up in the BGTrait. Still plugging away at ways of getting at this.

Coming back to this, I'm all the way up to adding the pick to the Gizmo via the script... and I don't know how to go about it. Here are the Gizmo picks for a skill that has a Specialty:
http://forums.wolflair.com/attachmen...1&d=1509196582

The SpecHelper is something that lets me constrain the choices of which Specialties can be picked for that skill and then there's the Beam specialty. How can I add a new one from a script? Or is that something that is possible?

Following the current pattern, I'd think something like "addChild" to parallel "findChild" but no luck there. If all else fails, I guess I could start by bootstrapping everything and then instead deciding whether to enable it? But, then again, I don't know how that will interact with adding things by tables, plus it seems like that would require adding everything explicitly.

Wait, bootstrapping by script? I'm sorry I didn't notice that earlier to keep you from spending time on that. You cannot use a script to create something that needs to run its own scripts, because HL sets up a list of scripts and the order to run them in before running any of them, so it can't add new scripts to that list later on, so it can't have a pick added by a script.

Forms don't have to show picks within the gizmo - you can press a button on one pick that opens up a list of picks on the hero - like all the specialties. That's how Shadowrun handles it. And then just build a text list of the specialties for that skill for display on that skill.

That way, the advancements for specialties add them to the hero, like everything else, and then the skills figure out what specialties they've got.

OK. So no script.

Am I handling it the wrong way above, by making it an entity? That seemed like the only way I could set it up so that the form accessible off of the Skill entry restricted the Specialties to those associated with the skill.

If you make it an entity, you cannot use an advancement to add picks within that gizmo, because the displacement used by advancements can only be to the hero, not to a different container.