Specialized Edges (Savage)

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

Overview

Early in the development of our data files, we determined that we would need to do some special handling for a few of the edges. For example, the "Professional" edge requires the user to select a trait that with a rating of d12. Similarly, the "Scholar" edge requires the user to select two skills with a rating of d8 or higher. We need to allow the user to select the appropriate choices via menus, plus we need to properly validate that everything has been done correctly.

Built-In Support

Situations where the player must select a trait or two to associate with an ability are reasonably common across game systems. There are also many situations where a pick's state needs to be toggled or choices need to be selected from a dynamic list. Consequently, the Skeleton files provide a substantial amount of built-in support to handle these cases. This support takes the form of a component to handle the internal mechanics and a template for displaying picks with menu selections.

The "UserSelect" component provides support for all the mechanics. In general, this component can be used to handle the vast majority of the customizations that you'll need. The "UserSelect" component supports a variety of behaviors, including a toggle state that can be selected by the user (generally via a checkbox), a menu of choices that are driven dyanmically at run-time, and up to two different menus for selecting other things or picks within the data files. Between these four mechanisms, you should be able to use the "UserSelect" component almost all the time.

The Skeleton files also provide a "UserSelect" template within the file "visual.dat". This template is similar to the "SimpleItem" template, except that it is designed to orchestrate the display and handling of picks derived from the "UserSelect" component. Fields within the component are defined to tailor how the visuals behave, while the template interprets these fields to appropriately display information and allow the user to modify it.

You will almost certainly find situations where the "UserSelect" component will come in handy. When integrating the visual behaviors, you can either use the corresponding template or adapt aspects of it for use within your own templates. Either approach is perfectly reasonable and up to you as the author.