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This week was fun, pragmatically speaking. I got to finally finish off the bugs and call skill selection in the character generator complete. Plus, I got some initial rich text code done for the character sheets. Furthermore, I got to add in a new feature.

Those keeping up with the twitter feed already know this. I got the idea to add in a “Suggested Items” tab when purchasing items for your characters. This little tid-bit looks through all of your skills and attributes and finds the best types of items for you. For instance, if you have Large Swords as a skill it will add all the large swords to your list. It also checks armor and if any suits of armor and adds in those pieces that can be worn with a hindrance level (modified by your strength) of 2 or less. it also factors in some of the other items, such as ammo, and tools that match skills you have. For instance, have lock picking as a skill, then lock picks are added.

It is an aid, not any kind of hard line or predictive element. It is really simple in code. It just matches up certain skills with certain types of items, or matches attributes with modifiers (in the case of armor). It does not check prices, or likelihood of use. Its a simple way of filtering out everything you may not need, for those things you are likely to want.

Of course, it doesn’t do everything. For instance, it doesn’t buy adventuring kits, rations, etc. The reason is that these elements aren’t predictable is because of their type. Generally speaking, they are simple items that can take any type of name or shape in other campaigns. The code really only looks for items of specific types, like weapons, armor, and tools. These are distinguishable by their stats, which make things easier to categorize by your character creation needs.

Still, not a bad feature when you think about it. it helps eliminate oversights, or silly mistakes. For instance, say you do buy a crossbow skill. While purchasing your weapons you could accedentally purchase a longbow instead, or forget that you bought the skill entirely. Furthermore, it helps to remove some of the questions on might have with purchasing tools or armor. If it is on your recomended items list you can feel confident that it is something you could use effectively.

I can’t take full credit for it. The idea was inspired by Jon Soto.

Another thing that I worked on was getting some item tables done in the CRM. Now the items report creates nice uniform tables for each of the item types. These tables tend to exclude CRM/DPnP type elements, simple because the campaign reports are more or less used only for table top play. The DPnP elements, such as covering areas for clothing, and other list items, are too cumbersome for use outside of virtual use (where the computer can do all the work on using those stats for you). Item descriptions still retain these, but the tables do not in an effort to make them easier to read, and to save some space.

I also did a mammoth job on uploading content into the CRM. I am finding some very small, and easy to fix bugs that I still have to deal with, but overall, things are looking good.

Anyways, I am very excited about what is happening here. I am definitely looking forward to releasing this. It looks like release may be sooner than I had begun to think.

This entry was posted on Sunday, April 26th, 2009 at 3:06 pm and is filed under Campaign Resource Manager, DPnP, Developer Blog, Player Character Creator. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.