Help in understanding HL Coding

[neurotopia]

wow, that was fast! thanks man. okeydoke. i thought i might have to do something along those lines, but wasn't sure. i found the AllCraft pick for adjusting all craft skills (i.e. elbow grease) so i just wanted to check if there was a larger category pick for untrained skills.

and while i have your help, i'm having some difficulty getting the effects of items to take effect when activated. for instance:

my level 1 artificer has modified a buckler with "inertia dampeners" (my steampunk name for a level 1 shield spell). i got the shield set up so it gives me the correct AC adjustment when equipped and the buckler shows up with a checkbox on my in-play tab (as i want to be able to activate my weird science item abilities from that tab). i also made sure to add spShield1 to the gizmo bootstrap with tag groupid: chargeuse, tagid: 1 so i could keep track of the number of times i used the item (manually resetting each day). like i said, i've only been using the program a couple days and apologize if this stuff is obvious (though i have made it a point to read through the documentation and tutorials) and/or my questions don't make much sense.

thanks!!! and btw, figuring this stuff out is fun!

[neurotopia]

mathias, just started looking at the debug info! GREAT STUFF!!! thanks!

[neurotopia]

ooops... nevermind. just realized i should have posted my question in a new thread. :-)

[Mathias]

The ChargeUse (you were careful about capitalization when programming, right?) mechanism only functions on staves, I believe.

There's no reason to add a separate spell to handle the effects. You can handle it all in the shield.

Phase: Pre-Levels, Priority: 10000
Start by checking if the shield is equipped, then make sure it's activated:

 
if (field[gIsEquip].value <> 0) then
  if (field[abilActive].value <> 0) then

Now, apply a shield bonus of +4 to AC (remember, shield bonuses don't stack, so you'll use the #applybonus macro to handle that):

 
    #applybonus[tACShield, hero.child[ArmorClass], 4]
    endif
  endif

[neurotopia]

ah, ok. what i was doing today was very close to that, so i think im starting to be able to make sense of things.

and yeah, i apologize. i should have blocked the text in code and posted it correctly. i do quite of bit of LAMP server maintenance and development so i'm usually pretty careful about capitalization. i was just being lazy.

again, thanks so much, mathias. you rock! between what i'm able to pull together in tutorials, wikis, and your posts, i should be set!!!!