domains and deities

[Sigil]

To see how a menu system would could work for large numbers of dieties just look at the gear menu. I counted 145 items just in mundane gear items, just in HL 1.0, just think of all the new items that will be include in the future. So since LWD does make a viable menu system for gear, I see no reason they can not do some just a simple for Deities. I would rather give my players a file with all the possible choices of the Dietes in my world and not have to send the information in another form. As to what is easier I would rather just click on a deity than have to find out what deities are available and then fill in the slot. Maybe have the option available, if you use great if not great, a win win situation.

/Scott

[rob]

At 07:42 PM 2/28/2007, you wrote:

So since LWD does make a viable menu system for gear, I see no reason they can not do some just a simple for Deities. I would rather give my players a file with all the possible choices of the Dietes in my world and not have to send the information in another form. As to what is easier I would rather just click on a deity than have to find out what deities are available and then fill in the slot. Maybe have the option available, if you use great if not great, a win win situation.

The most fundamental problems with deities is that ALL of the deities are explicitly NOT open content. So HL would have to ship with exactly ZERO deities built in - at least, as it stands today. That's why we setup the deity handling the way we did it.

You are right that it would potentially make sense for us to switch to a menu-based model. But the menu would have to start with a single entry that would be named "Custom Deity". When added, the user would need to specify the name of the deity, just like they do now. The only way that additional deities would make their way into the product is if they were add via external, user-created data files. So this just feels a little bit "odd" to me. From a user's perspective, having a menu appear that contains a single option where I have to then fill in the name actually feels "wrong".

So this leaves us in kind of a chicken-and-egg situation. If we don't add a menu, then users can't add their own list of valid deities to choose from. Similarly, if we do add a menu, the interface feels "off" unless the user does add his own list. We'll have to consider if there's a way to solve this appropriately. I have an idea, but I'll have to run it by Colen to see if it's viable - and to find out how much work it will take.

BTW, suggestions are always welcome! That's how our other two products have evolved and become successful. User ideas are often a lot better than the ones we come up with. :->

-Rob

[TCArknight]

I had a thought...

What about having it both ways?

Keep it as it is now, where manual entry of the Diety is the key. HOWEVER, when loading the program, if the data file for dieties (for ex. dieties.data) exists in the game directory, then it loads that data into a dropdown and replaces the simple text field with the Dropdown list.

Would something like that work? Basically having two controls in the same spot, just making one of them visible depending on whether the data files with the dieties exists.

Tom

[rob]

At 07:03 AM 3/2/2007, you wrote:

Would something like that work? Basically having two controls in the same spot, just making one of them visible depending on whether the data files with the dieties exists.

This was almost exactly the idea I was alluding to. But I don't know the technical implications, so I'm not sure how feasible this would be at this point.

-Rob

[hentzau]

I just grabbed this product today myself, and this was the first thing I came across, "War Diety", no weapon focus feat added. I went ahead and just added in the weapon focus feat, but now I get a validation error each time I load up this character. Is there any way to turn off that validation error, especially prior to printing?

Great product, by the way! Thanks!!!

[rob]

At 05:50 PM 3/17/2007, you wrote:

I just grabbed this product today myself, and this was the first thing I came across, "War Diety", no weapon focus feat added. I went ahead and just added in the weapon focus feat, but now I get a validation error each time I load up this character. Is there any way to turn off that validation error, especially prior to printing?

As of the V1.1 release earlier today, direct support for cleric domains is now included in the integrated editor. So take a look there to see how that stuff works. You should now be able to do it "right" with relative ease.

You can use the In-Play tab to assign adjustments to your hero. One of the available adjustments modifies the total number of feats allowed. If you increase this total by one to accommodate for the extra feat you've assigned, you should no longer get the validation error.

-Rob

[hentzau]

Originally Posted by rob

As of the V1.1 release earlier today, direct support for cleric domains is now included in the integrated editor. So take a look there to see how that stuff works. You should now be able to do it "right" with relative ease.

You can use the In-Play tab to assign adjustments to your hero. One of the available adjustments modifies the total number of feats allowed. If you increase this total by one to accommodate for the extra feat you've assigned, you should no longer get the validation error.

-Rob

Hm. I thought I had updated yesterday when i installed, but I will go ahead and check for that. If not, I can make the adjustment you mentioned. Thanks for the quick response!!!

[huntercc]

Originally Posted by rob

You are right that it would potentially make sense for us to switch to a menu-based model. But the menu would have to start with a single entry that would be named "Custom Deity". When added, the user would need to specify the name of the deity, just like they do now. The only way that additional deities would make their way into the product is if they were add via external, user-created data files. So this just feels a little bit "odd" to me. From a user's perspective, having a menu appear that contains a single option where I have to then fill in the name actually feels "wrong".

So this leaves us in kind of a chicken-and-egg situation. If we don't add a menu, then users can't add their own list of valid deities to choose from. Similarly, if we do add a menu, the interface feels "off" unless the user does add his own list. We'll have to consider if there's a way to solve this appropriately. I have an idea, but I'll have to run it by Colen to see if it's viable - and to find out how much work it will take.

BTW, suggestions are always welcome! That's how our other two products have evolved and become successful. User ideas are often a lot better than the ones we come up with. :->

-Rob

Why don't you add two of your own deities to start with - one name Rob, and one name Colen! They could each grant access to the Lone Wolf domain

[Mathias]

Is it possible to have a rule that can switch between the two menus? Don't forget that Pathfinder has its own deities, and they'd be SRD, so while the Pathfinder ruleset was on, it could use the deities from that.

[Colen]

huntercc wrote:

> Why don't you add two of your own deities to start with - one name Rob,
> and one name Colen! They could each grant access to the Lone Wolf domain
> Wink


it's nice to see that someone is giving us our due credit


--
Colen McAlister, colen@wolflair.com
Chief Engineer, Lone Wolf Development