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 configurable 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 deselects 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.

The question that remains is how sources can be utilized within the data files. Every source has a tag automatically defined by the Kit. These tags always belong to the group with the unique id "source" and possess a tag id matching the id of the source. Therefore, if you define the source "pickme", the tag id "source.pickme" will be automatically defined.

Whenever the user enables the source, the tag is automatically assigned to the hero, and the tag is not assigned then the source is deselected. This makes it possible to easily check the hero for the various source tags to determine if an option has been selected or not. You can reference source tags anywhere within your data files, such as testing them within scripts. You can even use them within ContainerReq and/or Live tag expressions, allowing you to customize the interface or control whether things exist within the data files.

Dark Campaign Settings

The original Savage Worlds rulebook provides some suggestions regarding different campaign settings. For example, there are two "Dark Settings" presented. In a "Flawed Heroes" setting, heroes are allowed to take an additional Minor Hindrance at character creation, while a "Tragic Heroes" setting allow heroes to take an extra Major Hindrance.

Our current data files will report any attempt to do take extra hindrances as a validation error. What we need is the ability for users to toggle these options on if they wish, with our validation rule making the appropriate adjustments. We can model these options easily via the Sources mechanism.

The first thing we need to do is setup a source that will serve as a logical grouping for the user. Each of these options reflects the nature of the campaign setting being played, so that's what we call the grouping. Since this is intended as a grouping, we need to make it non-selectable. This results in the new source shown below, which we can add to the file "control.1st".

<source
  id="Settings"
  name="Campaign Settings"
  selectable="no"
  description="Options associated with the style of campaign setting being played">
  </source>

The next thing we need to do is setup our individual options as sources. We need one option for flawed heroes and another for tragic heroes. Both sources need to reference the "Settings" source we defined above as their parent. This yields the following two new sources.

<source
  id="Flawed"
  name="Flawed Heroes"
  parent="Settings"
  description="Heroes may select one additional Minor Hindrance, earning one extra Hindrance point">
  </source>

<source
  id="Tragic"
  name="Tragic Heroes"
  parent="Settings"
  description="Heroes may select one additional Major Hindrance, earning two extra Hindrance points">
  </source>