User-Configurable Options (Savage)

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

Overview

In most game systems, there are a number of optional game mechanics that may be employed. These range from methods for character creation to rules for combat resolution. There are also situations where you'll want to provide users with the ability to customize the contents of character sheets. All of these have one thing in common: the ability for users to enable options that influence how the data files behave.

All user-configurable options are presented to the user within the "Configure Hero" form. These options can be organized into logical groups to make access easier for users. The sections below introduce various ways to utilize user-configurable options within the Savage Worlds data files.

How Sources Work

The term "source" is used because most user-configurable settings will be tied to specific rule supplements for a particular game system. Each of those supplements is a different source of game material, with its own unique characteristics. To keep things organized for the user, the various options are organized into a hierarchy. To keep things simple for the author, the same "source" elements are used for each node in the hierarchy, with different attributes being assigned to dictate the unique behaviors of each node.

Source elements can be designated as children of other sources via the "parent" attribute. This is how you construct the overall hierarchy of sources. If the source "chlid" needs to be shown beneath the source "grouping" in the hierarchy, you would specify the "parent" attribute on the "child" source as "grouping". This approach makes it possible to add new sources to an existing grouping without having to modify the parent. When other authors want to extend your data files by adding support for other source books (or their own game world), this technique allows them to do so independently of your files.

Sources that are intended for user-selection must be designated as such via the "selectable" attribute. Only sources that possess no children are allowed to be selectable. If you want to force the selection of a source, then you can make it non-selectable and mark is as automatically selected.

That brings us to one last facet of sources that we'll cover here. Sources can be marked as selected by default via use of the "default" attribute. By default, sources are not selected until the user selects them. However, you can reverse that behavior so that the source is selected unless the user de-selects it. This is useful in situations where you believe most users will normally want to utilize an option. They can turn it off if they want, but the option is enabled if they don't specifically do so.