Possible misc. features

[Ronan]

Continuing to outline the basic events and some systems in code, and I'm running into some questions:

Should we have an item property that marks certain item properties as non-magical, so they react properly to wild magic, dead magic, or disjunction spells? I was thinking of an item property called "Mundane", which signified that all properties above it on the list are non-magical.

Distinguish between subdual and lethal weapons with an item property? Or allow subdual damage on all weapons (arrows, darts, etc) with something like the sap tool we have now?

(Note, questions of features like this need to be resolved before the base mod is released, to prevent legacy items incompatable with latter base mod versions).

I will add to this as I think of more things.

[Overfilled Cup]

For me is it durable..ie will it still be work 2 years from now and not have been replaced by something else..and is it easy to use.

[ç i p h é r]

It may come down to perspective. An item property would certainly be easier for a builder to work with than a local variable they can't see, but checking for an item property requires looping (I think) which isn't resource friendly. If that's the case, I'd favor local variables as these are intended for custom scripted systems and you can't beat the performance of a local variable.

We can overcome builder anxieties and ease of use by documenting the functionality well in the comments area of each item. It really does work quite nicely when used, particularly if we are consistent about how we document.

[Ronan]

It may come down to perspective. An item property would certainly be easier for a builder to work with than a local variable they can't see, but checking for an item property requires looping (I think) which isn't resource friendly. If that's the case, I'd favor local variables as these are intended for custom scripted systems and you can't beat the performance of a local variable.

The non-magic item property would only need to be read if you were already looping through the properties on the item. And its really the only easy way to specify some properties as non-magical but not all in a builder-friendly way. The F1 key also tells builders what each property does (tlk entry) so its easier that way as well.

For the subdual though, I understand. But unless we have an OnDamaged event for PCs, it will only need to be checked OnDeath (of PCs and NPCs). But if we decide to use a togglable subdual mode like we have now, this isn't an issue.

We can overcome builder anxieties and ease of use by documenting the functionality well in the comments area of each item. It really does work quite nicely when used, particularly if we are consistent about how we document.

In my experience, builders and HDMs never, under any circumstance, read the documentation in the scripts you give them. No matter how simple or complicated, documented or not, they always bug you in chat That said, I still document everything.

[ç i p h é r]

Apparently, PC events exist as they do for NPC events, but they have to be checked for explicitly inside a script called default.nss (check all the events and see which one returns a valid object basically). So, in theory, we have access to all the same events for PCs as we do for NPCs. I haven't actually used these so I'm not sure how well it all works. But that possibility exists at least.

About the documentation, I was referring to adding comments in the COMMENTS tab of the object properties in the toolset, but that only works for items that have been created obviously. You're right about scripts. I think editing script files just scares builders, not to mention having to deal with modal windows can really be a pain. Thus the tradeoff between ease of use and performance.