Automatically Adding Picks to Actors

Context: HL Kit … Advanced Authoring Concepts 

Overview

When a new actor is created, it is a virtually empty container. Exactly one thing is automatically added to each actor. It's the "actor" thing that is automatically created for you by the Kit. Other than that, an actor is empty.

So what about all of the various details that are a fundamental part of every actor? Every actor clearly needs to possess all of the basic attributes for the game system (e.g. strength, intelligence, etc.). In most games, the set of skills is pre-set, so those should be part of each actor, too. Every game system has its own unique set of things that should be a basic part of each actor. However, the Kit has no way of knowing what those particular things are for each game system.

To deal with this, the Kit provides three separate mechanisms for specifying which things should be automatically added to every actor. Each mechanism works slightly differently and is intended for use with different types of things. Together, they should make it easy for you to pre-configure every actor with all of the picks that is needs. The topics below describe each of these mechanisms.

Adding Groups of Related Picks

• • Enmasse

Adding Individual Picks

• • Bootstrap

Pre-Selecting Picks Within Choosers

• • Auto-add