Racial Ability that allows a choice of several abilities

[tatteredking]

Working on the Sundered Skies files, and am a little stuck as to how to code the Elves. They get Plant Heritage as a racial ability. Plant Heritage is actually 8 separate abilities, that the elf gets to select one of. I wandered over to the Pathfinder files to see how it was handled in there (for things like Shifters, who have a choice of several backgrounds). Taking a look at hour Shifting was coded, a Field was added

Field ID: usrCandid1 Value:thingid.raSTbeasth|thingid.raSTcliffw| thingid.raSTdreams|thingid.raSTgorebu|thingid.raSTlongst|thingid.raSTlongto|thingid.raSTrazorc|thingid.raSTswiftw|thingid.raSTtruedi|thingid.raSTwildhu

Taking that idea, I applied it to my 8 Plant Heritage abilities. When I compiled, I got an error saying usrCandid1 wasn't defined.

1) am I on the right track for how to handle this in the Savage Worlds setting?
2) where and how should I define the usrCandid1 Field?

Thanks in advance

[rob]

The Pathfinder and Savage Worlds data files are VASTLY different, so I'm afraid knowledge about the Pathfinder files will rarely translate directly over to Savage Worlds. This specific situation is one that was completely skipped for Savage Worlds in an effort to avoid a lot of complexity in writing the data files.

When we first added support for SW, there were a handful of settings and exactly one race that offered a choice. That was the Half Elves, and they had two choices. So the solution we implemented simply had two separate versions for Half Elf, with the user choosing the appropriate version.

Generalizing things to support the Elves in Sundered Skies will entail some fundamental rework of the SW data files to properly accommodate. My best guess is that it would be the better part of a day to implement a good solution and properly test it. Between now and GenCon, we're already in a huge crunch, so I don't see the necessary rework happening quickly. I'll talk to Colen to see if he has any ideas on how to solve this more efficiently than I'm envisioning.

[tatteredking]

Hey rob, thanks for the feedback. I understand that it isn't a priority with Gen Con coming up. Just want to get it on the list of nice things to have.

It's not just Elves in SS this is applicable to though. Wildlings are the same way. Many of the newer settings, the Miracles Edge restricts your Powers choices by what deity you worship. Some of the settings have Edges restricted by deities or homelands.

I don't understand the fundamental coding of the background files or I would take a stab at it myself.

[CapedCrusader]

I was wondering how to log a deity for a character myself. Hellfrost has a whole series of Edges that are deity-specific, one for each of about 25 different deities, with more in the expansions. I can't see any way to add this as a piece of information. It's by no means a top priority, but it would be a nice addition.

FYI - I've been a programmer for a long time (20 years working with Oracle, COBOL for 6 years before that) and I've done a lot of other programming on a non-professional basis. What's this actually written in? If you point me in the right direction, I might be able to figure it out if you folks are too busy with other things. I'm unemployed at the moment, so I have some free time on my hands...

[tatteredking]

Hey Ron,

we could potentially use Factions to specify deities. The one question I have is, does the software allow you to take more than one Faction....say one dictating your spiritual beliefs and one dictating your professional affiliations?

[CapedCrusader]

I thought of that, but I don't know where you'd identify the faction on the character. I don't see a faction field anywhere, even after I've added a couple of test faction items.

[tatteredking]

Right at the top, there is a dropdown box for "Select Cabal". I just checked it out and it only allows one selection. So it doesn't support being a Priest of Festival AND a Boughbreaker, for example. Now perhaps if we had another box like that for Deity or Spiritual Belief. I think the wiki may tell how to create the Faction dropdown in Hero Lab, and the faction tab in the Editor.

Ah, but you may not have it turned on for your datafiles.

Check this out.

http://forums.wolflair.com/showthrea...hlight=faction

[CapedCrusader]

No, I didn't have that enabled before. I'd forgotten about the fact that it required enabling. Good catch! I'll try it out and let you know.

[rob]

Originally Posted by CapedCrusader

I was wondering how to log a deity for a character myself. Hellfrost has a whole series of Edges that are deity-specific, one for each of about 25 different deities, with more in the expansions. I can't see any way to add this as a piece of information. It's by no means a top priority, but it would be a nice addition.

The Factions mechanism already suggested was added specifically for situations like this.

Originally Posted by CapedCrusader

What's this actually written in?

It's a bastardization of Basic, Pascal, and something completely custom for accessing/manipulating HL's data objects. So there's no official language that this derives from. We needed something that supported logic and behaviors in a very non-standard framework, so we came up with something that we hoped would be effective in defining the desired operations while also being reasonably straightforward for users to get comfortable with. In hindsight, we were moderately successful, although there are definitely some aspects that could have been handled better.

[CapedCrusader]

Your own home-grown programming language? Impressive.