Data File Author Feedback Request on AB3

[Colen]

At 01:27 AM 6/15/2005 -0400, you wrote:

>Landscape printing seems to be missing - at least I can't get a print
>preview in landscape mode...
>
>Two of the game systems I wrote data files for in ABv2 used to default to
>landscape mode - and the users liked it...


Landscape print preview has been added to AB3 already, it'll be in the next
release.

[Colen]

At 02:41 AM 6/16/2005 -0400, you wrote:

>I'd like to be able to change the text format of a stat based on the
>selection state of an option assigned to the unit.
>Access to option.selection from the finalize script perhaps?
>
>Why?
>For Necromunda, I'd like to highlight all the stats that have been
>modified by model "advances" so they stand out on the printed roster...
>The advances are taken by increasing the selection count of ranged
>options, so if the ranged option selection count is greater than 0, I want
>to bold the stat...


You could currently do this by having the option add a tag, then test for
the presence of that tag in the unit stat finalize script, I believe.

[Russell]

Originally Posted by Colen

You could currently do this by having the option add a tag, then test for the presence of that tag in the unit stat finalize script, I believe.

Hmm - yeah I guess that'd work... Thanks! I'll go add those tags and try that...

[rob]

Ugh. The only way to handle this is via overrides. Using scripts to do this
won't work, since the evaluation sequence is such that scripts like
PreLinks and EntityStart are evaluated AFTER any sort of size bounding has
to be performed. The only way to do this via scripts would be to add
something completely different to the engine that specifically deals with
this situation. I'll put this on the todo list, but it certainly won't make
it into V3.1. For now, the only solution is to use overrides.

-Rob

At 07:23 AM 6/15/2005 -0400, you wrote:
>Within the standard 40K 'game rules' each game squad has a start number of
>members and a maximum number, i.e. slugga boyz in orks start at 10 with a
>max of 30 orks in the squad.
>
>Kill team is a subset of the main 'game rules' where the game squad
>numbers change to 5 to 12 for every squad, so the slugga boyz start at 5
>and have a max of 12 orks in the squad.
>
>The player can then disregard another one of the kill team game rules to
>allow them to have any number of orks in the squad, so the slugga boyz
>would be start at 1 and then upto anything of 20 (-ish).
>
>When the ruleset sc_kill is enabled, all the units need to have the min
>and max changed to be min 5, max 12, however if the user doesn't select
>the ruleset for the standard squad numbers, i.e. kl_mut3, then all the
>units min and max change to be min 1, max 20.
>
>Instead of doing this via an override for each and every unit, if a script
>within entity start that checks for the rulesets and then ammends the min
>and max, i.e
>
>if (tagis[ruleset.sc_kill] =1) then
>
>if (tagis[ruleset.kl_mut3] = 0) then
>
>@min = 1
>@max = 20
>else
>
>@min = 5
>@max = 12
>endif
>
>endif
>
>does that make a bit more sense?


---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Rob Bowes (rob@wolflair.com) (408) 927-9880
Lone Wolf Development www.wolflair.com

[rob]

Hi Russell,

I have looked into doing this, and it will entail a good bit amount of work to do cleanly. So this won't be making it into V3.1. I am putting this on the todo list for the future.

If you want to do this, though, you can use a single private stat as a "bitmask". The only issue is that its a floating point value, and you have now masking operators. But this can be overcome by assigning each stat a position within a base-ten value. So, stat #1 is the one's place, stat #2 is the 10's place, stat #3 is the 100's place, etc. You can easily "mask in" a particular stat by adding the corresponding value (1, 10, 100, etc.). You can easily detect is a given stat is in the "mask" by dividing by the value, rounding off to 0 places, saving the value, dividing by 10, rounding off, multiplying by 10, and seeing if the value equals the one you saved. If it matches, the "bit" was NOT set in the mask - if different, it was set.

This technique is the poor man's bitmask, but it ought to work for you without a lot of work. There are probably other techniques you could use, but this one does it with a single extra stat, so it's compact. :-)

Hope this helps,
Rob


At 10:41 PM 6/15/2005, you wrote:

I'd like to be able to change the text format of a stat based on the selection state of an option assigned to the unit.
Access to option.selection from the finalize script perhaps?

Why?
For Necromunda, I'd like to highlight all the stats that have been modified by model "advances" so they stand out on the printed roster... The advances are taken by increasing the selection count of ranged options, so if the ranged option selection count is greater than 0, I want to bold the stat...