Develop Your Plan (Savage)

Context: HL Kit … Authoring Examples … Savage Worlds Walk-Through 

Overview

Before writing any data files, it's critical that you first do your homework. If you launch into writing the data files without a good plan, you will likely run into a number of surprises and setbacks along the way. While such events won't stop you from successfully creating the data files, they will almost certainly cause unnecessary delays and frustration. So you will fare best if you take the time upfront to develop your basic implementation strategy, map out all of the basic building blocks you'll need, and design how everything should look and behave for the user.

Implementation Strategy

The first thing you need is to figure out how you are going to go about developing your data files. We've provided you with a solid starting point in the Skeleton data files, and now those files need to be adapted. The sequence used for the Savage Worlds data files leverages a methodology that has worked well for a number of game systems. You are welcome to come up with your own approach, as there is no "right" way to do it, although we recommend you start with the methodology we've presented and adapt it to suit your needs.

Building Blocks

Take the time to look closely at the game system for which you are developing data files. There are probably lots of subtle facets of the rules mechanics that you take for granted, but that will introduce complexities in writing the data files. In some cases, you will uncover holes in the wording of the rules that the game designers didn't intend. When you embark on writing data files for a game system, you have to tell HL exactly how things work, with none of the grey areas that the human brain adapts to so well.

Put together an outline of all the various building blocks for the game system. Map these pieces to the corresponding mechanism for representing each piece via the Kit. Also look at the various supplement books for the game system to get a concrete grasp of the new wrinkles introduced in those books, then figure out how those will impact your initial outline. When you're done, you should have a detailed outline of the various game system elements and a good idea of how you're going to manage them within HL.

The following is a list of some of the key Kit mechanisms to focus on during this process:

• components and fields
• component sets
• tag groups and tags
• phase and evaluation cycle
• entities

Look and Feel

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Visual Skins

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