Cortex Game System Status Announcement

[segnett]

All this makes my brain boil a bit. I never was very good at programming outside of basic html Mostly cause I've never been that patient.

You're doing a great job!! Keep it up!!

[Mathias]

Sorry, I've been concentrating on my programming, and I haven't updated this. Status report: I've added equipment (all the mechanics are working, and 2/3 of the items are entered), weapons, armor, and character advancement (spending AP).

[Mathias]

Traits:

In the Cortex system, the unique elements of a character (other than their skills and attributes) are called traits, and include assets (positive traits) and complications (negative traits).

Like attributes and skills, they are rated in dice, from d2 - d12. In HL, I'll be using the same basic fields as skills and attributes to store the final rating of the trait. I can also make use of the Ability component defined in the skeleton files - it includes a lot of the behaviors I need, and I won't have to write the panel to display them to the user from scratch. Here's what makes selecting a trait interesting from a HL perspective: not every trait is available at every die value. A few examples: Advanced Education: d2+, Ambidexterous: d2, Brawler: d2-d6, Lady Luck d4/d8/d12. All the traits in BSG could be defined in terms of a minimum, maximum, and step size between the available values, but the Demon Hunters game does have traits that can't be defined that way, and even if that wasn't the case, I don't want to restrict what can be added later. So, I've defined the Die tag group, which simply has the values 1-6 as its tags. Each trait can then be given the tags that it can select from (as a reminder, inside HL, each value is stored as 1/2 the die size, which simplifies the math, and then displayed as a die after all the calculations are done):

Advanced Education:

<tag group="Die" tag="1"/>
<tag group="Die" tag="2"/>
<tag group="Die" tag="3"/>
<tag group="Die" tag="4"/>
<tag group="Die" tag="5"/>
<tag group="Die" tag="6"/>

Ambidexterous:

<tag group="Die" tag="1"/>

To make use of those die values, I'm going to use a menu_array portal, which offers a drop-down menu for the user to select from, and displays the values stored in an array (which I'll generate based on the Die.? tags added to the trait). The first step is to add an array-based field for the manu to use, and a field which is text based and type="user" to receive the value. Here's the code for those fields, since I ran into a bit of trouble getting all the settings right before it worked:

 
<field
id="abRating"
name="Trait Rating"
maxlength="10"
type="user">
</field>
<field
id="abSelect"
name="Trait Rating Selections"
maxlength="10"
type="derived"
style="array"
arrayrows="9"> <!-- d0 - d12+d4 -->
</field>

Populating the array requires a for loop - loop i from 0-9, and if tagcountstr["Die." & i] <> 0 (if we have a tag of that die size), put "d2", "d4", etc. into that field. Once the user has selected a value, it's stored as a text value in abRating, and then there's a script to parse the text and add its value to the trtBonus field.

Now that the basic components of traits are done, I'll move on to assets and complications. There are separate components for assets and complications, in addition to the Trait component. The cost script from the skeleton file's Ability component gets moved to both the assets and complications components, so that the assets cost points from the resTraits pool, and complications add to the maximum value of resTraits. Because the game places a limit on the number of Trait Points your character can gain from the complications you buy, I have a second pool, resComp. The complications cost points from this pool, and unlike the pools of attribute points, skill points, and trait points you use to build a Cortex character, for this pool, it's okay if you don't spend it all, as long as you don't spend more than you have, so I fooled with the messages and colors used when displaying resComp.

Actually, I had better be more specific about that. In the miscellaneous.str file is the component for resources. Within that, you'll find the scripts that check how much of a resource you've used. If you've used it all, the value is displayed in grey. If you've used too much, it's displayed in red, and if you haven't spent it all, it's displayed in yellow (you can see this in play in the Savage Worlds files). My tab_traits.dat (which is renamed from the skeleton files' tab_abilities.dat) has separate portals for assets and complications. The assets portal is very close to the abilities portal defined in the skeleton files, the complications portal started out as the assets portal, but in the places where the assets portal can display field[resTrait].field[resSummary].text, and use the scripts defined for resSummary to display things in the right color, I went to miscellaneous.str, found the script for resSummary, and copied it to the Complications portal, and then modified it to display the colors and text I want it to.

[Mathias]

Traits in Serenity:

I haven't implemented this yet, but one of the Cortex games (Serenity) was written with what's now considered v1 of the Cortex Game System. The biggest change is that traits have only two available values, major and minor. Rather than create a whole new set of mechanisms, what I'll do is define two of the values, probably d4 and d8, to mean minor and major. From there, I can put most of the scripts I wrote for the die values into if...then...else...endif statements, which will change the way everything is displayed depending on which game is being used. However, the end user won't see any of that. They'll only see that when creating a Serenity character, their assets and complications are available as minor and/or major, and in BSG, their assets and traits are rated as dice.

[flamepulse]

in the next serenity suppliment release i was under the impressions that they were goign to be havign a conversion for serenity to version 2 of the cortex rules. are you planning on making serenity able to choose what version of rules will be used?

[Mathias]

flamepulse, I am planning on allowing the conversion, although it may not be in the initial release of the files.

[TCArknight]

Any update?

Or even more example of building the set?

[Mathias]

I apologize for the lack of updates. The basic code is complete, the BSG game is entered, and the skin we're going to use for the Cortex system within HL has been designed and was implemented on Tuesday. I'm currently searching through the visual interface for anything that doesn't look just right and fixing those, and sometime this week (which is the GAMA trade show), Rob and Colen will have the change to meet with Margaret Weis Productions and show them what we've built.

[MrTact]

Originally Posted by mgehl

Let's say your character has the Talented Asset - it says to pick two skills you can justify as related, and add your trait die to all their rolls, so, we'll say you have Unarmed d4 and Melee d6, and Talented Unarmed/Melee d4. Therefore when making an Unarmed roll, you roll 2d4, and a melee roll is d6+d4. What it would mean for your character is that you have a basic level of training in the two skills, but a real natural talent for them.

That's not quite right. I believe "Talented" lets you take two related specialties. So you could take Boxing and Judo, or Swords and Knives, or maybe even Savate and Cane.

Of course, it amounts to functionally the same thing, as long as you usually use the same specialty of your combat skill (which is likely).

[Mathias]

Originally Posted by MrTact

That's not quite right. I believe "Talented" lets you take two related specialties. So you could take Boxing and Judo, or Swords and Knives, or maybe even Savate and Cane.

I'll edit my explanation - the code I wrote does only allow specialties for Talented, I just didn't specify that in in my writeup.