Using Bitmaps for Die Types (Savage)

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Context: HL KitAuthoring Examples … Savage Worlds Walk-Through 

Overview

The contents of the attribute and skill incrementers currently show the die-type and any adjustment using the format "d6+2". It would be ideal if we actually showed a bitmap for each die-type, since it would tailor things much more closely to how Savage Worlds works. Depending on what we ultimately want to achieve, doing this is either easy or a small amount of work.

The Easy Solution

The Skeleton data files include an assortment of bitmaps for the various die-types. There are bitmaps for use on the screen and within character sheet output. All of these bitmaps are automatically copied into place for your use when you create a new game system. All you need to do is reference them.

We've already centralized all of the handling for what gets displayed into a single place. The field "trtDisplay" contains the text to be output, and the procedure "FinalRoll" handles synthesizing this text. So all we need to do is modify the "FinalRoll" procedure to incorporate the bitmaps instead of using simple text.

Open the file "procedures.dat" and locate the "FinalRoll" procedure. Within this procedure, there is a line that generates the die-type for display by combining the letter "d" with the numeric value. We can easily change this to use the appropriate bitmap instead.

You can insert the bitmap into the text via the use of encoded text. The syntax for inserting a bitmap via encoded text is "{bmp filename}", where filename is the base name of the file to be inserted. Since the die-type bitmaps intended for use on screen are named in the form "d6_screen.bmp", the corresponding encoded text for a d6 should be "{bmp d6_screen}". This means that we can change one line of script code and get the die-type appearing as a bitmap. The new line of code should be the following.

finaltext = "{bmp d" & dietype & "_screen}"

Reload the data files and see what you think. The die-type uses the proper bitmap and any adjustment is appended as a text value. Not bad for a single line of code being changed, but we can probably do a bit better.

Refining the Behavior

As expected, after a little bit of testing, the results aren't quite optimal. So let's try refining the handling a bit. For example, if there is an adjustment made to the final roll (e.g. "d6+2"), the "+2" is a bit too small now. We'll start by increasing the font size.

The incrementers for showing die-types all use the "incrDie" style, so we'll need to modify it. Open up the file "styles_ui.aug" and locate the style. It currently uses the "fntincrsim" font resource, which is also used by another incrementer, so we can't simply change it. Instead, we need to define a new font resource, which we'll call "fntincrdie". We can define the new resource as part of the style, and we'll pick a size like 54 as a good balance that hopefully won't overshadow the die-type bitmap. This yields a revised style definition like the one below.

<style
  id="incrDie">
  <style_incrementer
    textcolor="f0f0f0"
    font="fntincrdie"
    editable="no"
    textleft="13" texttop="0" textwidth="44" textheight="20"
    fullwidth="70" fullheight="20"
    plusup="incplusup" plusdown="incplusdn" plusoff="incplusof"
    plusx="59" plusy="0"
    minusup="incminusup" minusdown="incminusdn" minusoff="incminusof"
    minusx="0" minusy="0">
    </style_incrementer>
  <resource
    id="fntincrdie">
    <font
      face="Arial"
      size="54">
      </font>
    </resource>
  </style>

If we add the Ace edge and the Boating skill, we can see what this looks like. Unfortunately, this new size is a little too prominent compared to the die-type bitmap, so we need to make it a little less white. This is achieved by modifying the "textcolor" attribute within the style and dialing down the brightness a little bit. We'll pick a value of "c0c0c0" as a good compromise.

This still doesn't look quite right. The "+" looks good, but the numeric adjustment looks a little too frail. We can change the font resource to be bold, but that results in the "+" looking blocky and ugly. What we need is for the "+" to be non-bold and the numeric value to bold. We can accomplish this by revising the procedure a little bit to carve up the bonus into two pieces. The net result is a revised procedure script that looks like below.

~declare variables that are used to communicate with our caller
var finaldie as number
var finalbonus as number
var finaltext as string

~bound our final die type appropriately
var final as number
final = finaldie
if (final < 2) then
  final = 2
elseif (final > 6) then
  final = 6
  endif

~convert the final value for the trait to the proper die type for display
var dietype as number
dietype = final * 2
finaltext = "{bmp d" & dietype & "_screen}"

~if there are any bonuses or penalties on the roll, append those the final result
if (finalbonus <> 0) then
  var bonus as string
  bonus = signed(finalbonus)
  finaltext &= left(bonus,1) & "{b}" & right(bonus,1)
  endif

We now have something that works a bit better, but it still doesn't look great. When some traits have adjustments and others don't the die-type bitmaps seem to bounce around due to the centering logic we're using. In addition, having the adjustment value aligned at the baseline of the bitmap isn't very visually appealing. More importantly, the changes we've introduced have caused a number of cascading issues elsewhere, such as the damage and description text for weapons, which are now mucked up.

A Different Approach