C.O.D.E.S.: Looking for testers
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So something I've been working on for the past four or so weeks is a project that I've named Chronicles of Darkness - Evennia Support. There's a couple of reasons for this. For one, Thenomain's nWoDCG, while excellent, doesn't support CoD and would require a pretty decent piece of work to update it. For another, even when it does get updated it is not exactly the easiest thing in the world for the addition of information as new expansion books come out. Finally, after diving into Evennia a bit I think it's got a lot of promise since nearly all the commands accessed by players are overwriteable which means even 'core' commands such as 'look' and 'say' can be overhauled to support things such as obfuscate, the hedge, changeling masks, etc.
I've current got a sort of proof of concept copy up and running on AWS and what I could really use are people familiar with Chronicles of Darkness to log in and sort of kick the tires so I can see what falls off (as well as letting me verify that people doing things isn't going to suddenly raise CPU access or memory requirements to crazy amounts).
At present I'm only concentrating on the 'character' aspects. My hope is to make the project available to anyone who wants to use it rather than creating a game myself so I'm not overly focused on things such as Inventory as there are other existing contributions for that. Likewise I don't have any actual commands for changing forms, obfuscating, entering the hedge, etc.
What I do have up and running is character generation for mortals, changelings, vampires, and werewolves along with what I feel are the critical player commands (+sheet, +prove, +pool, +roll, etc.). There is also a system for spending XP (completed characters are issued 75 XP so that the +xp system can be tested as well.
Any help testing the systems would be greatly appreciated, both to let me know where any code may be breaking as well as making sure I haven't messed up aspects of the system that I'm not quite as knowledgeable about (things such as the Ordo Dracul scales and if I've got the ability for werewolves to purchase gifts completely set up correctly).
Access can be reached at 13.52.78.93 port 9999 or through the webclient at http://13.52.78.93/
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@The-Sands This sounds cool. I could see the Action and Investigation systems being useful for down time rolls, too. Just need to find a way to make it do extended action rolls.
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@The-Sands Awesome progress there! I can't say I have enough experience with that rule system to help out with the details, but good luck!
Finally, after diving into Evennia a bit I think it's got a lot of promise since nearly all the commands accessed by players are overwriteable
A small correction: all commands, available to players or otherwise, are replaceable.
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Griatch -
@Derppool said in C.O.D.E.S.: Looking for testers:
@The-Sands This sounds cool. I could see the Action and Investigation systems being useful for down time rolls, too. Just need to find a way to make it do extended action rolls.
At present I'm largely working on 'just stat handling' and filling out from there. As a result I have not yet added an extended option to rolling (since that can just be handled by making multiple rolls). That's pretty easy, however, and I'll see if I can't add that option in tonight.
At present there is a roll system that is designed to be as user friendly as possible with a basic format of:
+roll/rote Strength + Crafts + Crafts: Blacksmithing + 3
To try and make things easier for players most commands that use stats (such as +roll) can be matched just by part of the stat's name (Streetw will match Streetwise, Obf will match Obfuscate, etc.). Since there's always the possibility of a naming collision you can specify the statclass if necessary (Str/Skill will match Streetwise and not Strength, Street Fighting, or anything else).
I do plan on handling things other than just character stats in the long run (changing forms is high on my list). I am just focused on stats at the moment since they are pretty much core to any game (you can manage without commands to change forms but you can't really manage without commands to record your base stats).
As I said, feel free to stop in and check things out. I really need to have people let me know about things that are unclear or about commands that don't work properly.
I'm currently working on mages and will probably have them added by the end of the week.
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Maybe you want to consider also utilizing Evennia EvMenus for these commands in addition to the pure command-with-arguments-and-switches approach. Even if a menu is slower for experienced users, for a newcomer they make it very easy to explore and learn what is available.
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Griatch -
@Griatch I'm giving some consideration to providing EvMenu support for commands like that. The issue with Chronicles of Darkness, however, is that there are quite literally hundreds of possible stats (discounting the 'open-ended' possibilities provided by specialties).
What I may do is try to create an EvMenu setup to 'build', store, and execute specific roll combinations to help out new players, but in the long run most will probably learn the syntax by hand because there's just too many possibilities.
This is a pretty standard format that most WoD players would be familiar with anyway and it has worked well. I'm trying to make a lot of the structure as similar to existing MU* setups as possible to ease the transition (at the end of the day the players probably don't care at all what's 'under the hood' as long as it works).
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I would suggest that menus is actually a pretty good option when you have 'hundreds of possible stats' to choose from - they allow users to get a chance to explore themselves what to pick without having to refer to external documentation.
EvMenus are created in-code, which means that they can be dynamically generated from a list of stats rather than you having to maintain and update it separately. The EvMenu also comes with the
list_nodedecorator to turn a menu node into a multi-page list of alphabetized (or whatever order you prefer) list of entries for the user to select between. Below it's only 10 (rather long) options per page, but you can set that as you like:
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So the idea of this is cool, but I hate being "locked" into the CG process. Maybe it was something I was doing, but I couldn't chat with other people, I couldn't use help files, I couldn't even use the +list commands to see what options are available for CG.
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@Rucket All right. I will take a look at that. I will say that at any time in CG you can type 'quit' and it will take you out of CG, but I'll probably need to come up with something a little more graceful so you can restart it more easily (restarting CG isn't too terrible since many things are remembered, but it could definitely be better).
(I'll also need to make it obvious to people that you can quit out of the menu at any time).
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@The-Sands said in C.O.D.E.S.: Looking for testers:
@Rucket All right. I will take a look at that. I will say that at any time in CG you can type 'quit' and it will take you out of CG, but I'll probably need to come up with something a little more graceful so you can restart it more easily (restarting CG isn't too terrible since many things are remembered, but it could definitely be better).
(I'll also need to make it obvious to people that you can quit out of the menu at any time).
Oh cool, I didn't realize it saved things. That is good to know, but also probably something that should be communicated for ease of use and all that. Still, it's cool to see CoD being made for Evennia.
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@Rucket It saves things in a certain way, but probably not in the 'best way' that it should. As an example, if you go to the point where you set your race as vampire, chose your clan, and set you clan stat bonus, then quit, when you restart CG it will remember what all your stats are set to but it will have forgotten your priorities. If you reset to the exact same priorities you will still need to adjust your stats since you've now got a +1 somewhere and you'll be at a section of the CG that doesn't 'support' that.
However, all your attributes, skills, and specialties are all set and while you can change them if you want you can also get through most of those sections pretty quickly.
I admit it is not the most elegant setup and as things proceed I will certainly go back and make changes so that the system works more smoothly, but a present I'm trying to catch the 'larger' issues (such as the fact that you didn't realize you could quit if you wanted to page me).
A big part of the reason I want to get people in testing code is so I can find those areas where people are doing things without knowing what I know or trying to do things differently than I would (and finding errors I wouldn't see).
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@The-Sands There is no reason not to allow people to chat, read help files etc while in a menu, as long as the commands don't clash with the menu's commands one could in principle have access to all normal commands, if so desired. A menu is just a CmdSet after all.
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@Griatch I'll have to look into it and see if I can figure out what was going on the Rucket was 'locked in' and unable to page. It could have been that they were just at a stage where they had to type something rather than a simple menu selection. I didn't set up anything in particular in the menu system to lock out access to other commands.
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Mage support for C.O.D.E.S. has now been added.
Additionally I was able to resolve the issue with @Rucket being 'locked in' while in CG (default for EvMenus is to do this, but it can be overridden).
At present I am probably going to take a short break on 'adding splats' since Prometheans is the only published 2.0 material remaining to be added and I want to go through and give the character generation and xp menus a bit of an overhaul (making cg bi-directional and able to resume where you leave off as well as better help explanations on the nodes). I also want to work on a couple of 'support' functions such as paging, implementing a bulletin board system, and creating a +request system (which should be helpful with bug tracking).
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CG menus have now been upgraded. They will now longer block the majority of commands (though they do block the inventory command, and replace help and quit with their own versions).
The new CG menus are also bi-directional now (meaning you can back up if you want to). Be aware that at various stages this will require erasing progress in order to prevent things such as a character setting their stats to qualify for a merit and then lowering the stat while keeping the merit.
Finally, the menus now support the ability to quit part way through and will allow you to resume where you left off when you type +cg again.
