Skills with various abilities

[SAbel]

Some of the skills in L5R allow the uses of various abilities IE invetigation may use Perception to look at a crime sceen, Intelligence to put facts together, and Awareness to interrogate someone.
So how do I allow for more than one ability to be used (or is it possible)

[Mathias]

Just don't connect the skills to attributes. Delete everything linkage related in the skills component. Or, if there's a default ability for each, present that, but make it clear whether you're presenting Investigation or Investigation+Perception (assuming perception is the default). Since both the skill and attribute will be listed on the summary panels, or on the character sheet, they'll both be displayed near each other, so the user can add them himself. If the game system doesn't make a linkage between two things, you shouldn't do so in HL, either.

Alternative 2: If the game system links each skill to a limited set (if it's ever more than 3 go with the first alternative) - so, if every skill, like your example, lists no more than three alternatives, you can take a look at how the first linkage on the skill component is defined, and how it's used, then duplicate that, creating linkages attribute2 and attribute3 (and make these linkages optional). Then, you duplicate the SklRoll field to get SklRoll2 and SklRoll3, and modify the script to use a different linkage (and remember to account for there possibly not being a linkage, since you made it optional). When you display the skill, you can display the skill's base value, and/or one or more of the SklRoll displays, depending on the space you have available and what the user will want to know, at a glance, when they're looking at that page.


Disign philosophy comment - the Skeleton files are an attempt to supply the user with common behaviors that exist in many RPGs. Just because the Skeleton files does it some way doesn't mean you have to do it that way if the game system you're working on doesn't do it that way.

[SAbel]

The core to the games system does link items together.

It is a roll and keep system, which means you roll X amount of dice and then are allowed to keep Y using only d10s with a cap of rolling and keep a max of ten, then every two above the caps roller over into the next colum or give a bnous.

I have not yet figure out how to make the system work with the roll and keep method.

I am also having trouble creating a new tab for skills, advantages & disadvantages ect. I keep getting errors when I try to make them.

Also charactes pick skills and assign them ranks (cap of 10) but do not have all skills available to them my next hurdle once I have the skills all added in.

This is much harder then what I was hoping for, but hey I try to make some progress each day, until my head explodes LOL

Thank you for all your time and help.

[Mathias]

If I understand you correctly, each thing (attribute, ring, skill, etc.) has two statistics that need to be displayed to the user; The roll value and the keep value. If that's the case, may I suggest you use the trtFinal value that has already been set up, and then add trtKeep to the Traits component (the version at the top of the traits.str file, rather than the derived traits from the bottom of the file). Whenever you display the value of a thing, you can display the Trait/Keep values, however the game system normally displays them.

If trtKeep is something that needs to be set by the user during character creation, and then modified by other things, you'll need to create trtKeepUsr (a modified copy of trtUser), along with trtKeepBon and trtKeepPly (trtBonus and trtInPlay). Then, derive trtKeep from those, using modifications of the scripts that derive trtFinal from trtUser, trtBonus, and trtInPlay.

I'm not sure why you're having to create a new skill and tab for your game. The skeleton files include a skill tab and an ability tab already. The Savage Worlds walkthrough shows you how the savage worlds files took the skeleton files' skills tab and adapted it to the way skills work in Savage Worlds, and how they renamed the skeleton files' ability tab into the Edges tab it uses.

[SAbel]

Well I get this error now after retrying the Wiki Tab change abilities to skills

The data files could not be loaded due to the following errors:

File: traits.str (line 218) - Component 'Ability' (dynamic tag) - Tag 'Ability' not defined
One or more timing errors were identified. Please review the timing report and correct the errors. You can access the report under the 'Develop' menu or by clicking this link.

[Mathias]

What's line 218 of traits.str?

[SAbel]

I am not sure but I am going to guess it has to do with this Component (see following) but the Wiki did not say to go into the traits.str to change anything, so I am at a loss.

<component
id="Ability"
name="Ability"
autocompset="no"
panellink="abilities">

<!-- Activation state of ability - we're not activated by default -->
<field
id="abilActive"
name="Is Activated?"
type="user"
minvalue="0"
maxvalue="1">
</field>

<!-- Each ability needs its own identity tag to detect cascading dependencies via prereqs -->
<identity group="Ability"/>

<!-- Setup an identity tag group to track all activated abilities and adjustments -->
<identity group="Activated"/>

<!-- All abilities get the same tag for sorting purposes -->
<tag group="SpecialTab" tag="Ability"/>

<!-- Each ability that is added by the user costs 1 slot -->
<eval index="1" phase="Setup" priority="5000"><![CDATA[
~we must ignore bootstrapped abilities from races and abilities added via advances
if (isuser + origin.ishero >= 2) then
hero.child[resAbility].field[resSpent].value += 1
endif
]]></eval>

[SAbel]

Okay So I am going to start fresh with the Wiki walk through for adding a tab, but I get lost in it somewhere and I am missing some part but here goes nothing

[rob]

The only place in that component where a "tag" is referenced is the following line:

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

This establishes a dependency on the existence of the "Ability" tag within the "SpecialTab" tag group. If you deleted or changed the id on this tag within the "tags.1st" file, then the reference to it here will fail. So if you changed the id for the tag, you'll need to change this reference to the new tag you defined in its place.

Hope this helps...

[SAbel]

Yes thank you Rob.