Help with my first profession mod/code

Game Talk The Toolbox
1

Hi all. I just started working on a profession based on Randall Flagg from the Stephen King novel The Stand and I had a few questions.

The plan for the profession was to have it feel like a sociopathic nihilist with a bag full of devious impliments and a mind full of schemes.

Question 1: Is there a balancing guide somewhere on the forums? I want to have an idea of what his point cost should be what he has to compare to and so on. Unfurtuantly I was unable to find one where I looked if there is one please let me know.

Question 2: Could someone help me fix a tiny bug I found when he spawns? it is self inflicted, he spawns with a knife and I wanted to have it be in a sheath not unlike the Special operations profession with the Kukri. I cribbed the code from the special operations profession changed the kukri to one that fit the plan better and it doesn’t spawn right. He spawns with the knife (in the inventory) and the sheath (on his body) but not the knife in the sheath (on his body). stupid I know but I want to get this right.

Question 3: Does anyone have any Suggestions for what I should add to him (or remove) to help him fit the theme better?

Question 4: How do you use the spoiler or code tag? I don’t want to wall of text a post just to provide the code.

Question 5: Did I post these questions to the right board in the forum?

I will provide the code in a separate post when I either have an admins blessing for a “wall of text” or I can figure out how to use a tag to make it less painfull to read. Got it!

The profession I used as a base was Camper

Note: This is still a quite a bit raw, but, here is what is done. I have changed the profession name and flag from the template, Gave him a description, provided him with some of what I thought he would carry.

I did NOT Change the point cost, change the skills, change the clothing, do any more playing with him then just blowing up the shelters in my world a few times… FOR SCIENCE!!!

[code] “type”: “profession”,
“ident”: “mrflagg”,
“name”: “Provacatour”,
“description”: “You always enjoyed stirring up trouble, starting fights, and inciting riots. First as a nihilist tryiing to set the world aflame. Then, for your country toppling regimes. The fun is over now it is time to see if you can put your talent for causing mayham to use when there is no government to topple.”,
“points”: 6,
“skills”: [
{
“level”: 1,
“name”: “survival”
},
{
“level”: 1,
“name”: “swimming”
},
{
“level”: 1,
“name”: “firstaid”
}
],
“items”: {
“both”: [
“tshirt”,
“socks”,
“jeans”,
“jacket_windbreaker”,
“boots_hiking”,
“gloves_light”,
“hat_cotton”,
“knit_scarf”,
“backpack”,
“sheath”,
“ref_lighter”,
“multitool”,
“picklocks”,
“boltcutters”,
“crowbar”,
“c4”,
“c4”,
“firecracker_pack”,
“firecracker_pack”,
“grenade_inc”,
“grenade_inc”,
“scrambler”,
“scrambler”,
“electrohack”,
“dynamite”,
“dynamite”,
“fertilizer_bomb”,
“fertilizer_bomb”,
“gasbomb_makeshift”,
“gasbomb_makeshift”,
“canteen”,
“mil_mess_kit”,
“militarymap”,
“roadmap”,
“1st_aid”
],
“entries”: [
{ “item”: “knife_rm42”, “container-item”: “sheath” }
]
},
“male”: [
“briefs”
],
“female”: [
“sports_bra”,
“boy_shorts”
]
}

[/code]

2

  1. No, it has to be approximated by comparing it to other professions and noticing that it’s certainly better than some weak one (and thus needs higher point cost than the weak one), but certainly worse than some strong one (and thus needs a lower point cost than the strong one).

  2. Does that knife fit in the sheath? Could be accidentally changed letter or typo in copying.

  3. This is mostly for the technical questions, not balance. Drawing board is for figuring out how should it feel and play and getting suggestions regarding themes, Toolbox is for getting it to work.

3

I figured out the problem with the knife. I had missed a couple of blocks of code telling the item list that we have items and equipped items.

Also tremendous thanks Coolthulhu. I never would have gone through the original version of the sheath code looking for transcription errors.

I think I will take this over to drawing board to finish it up.
If I wanted to submit this to the community when I am done is there a preferred method to do so?

4

Make an account on github, fork the game code, add your profession to “More Professions” mod and commit the change, test the change to make sure it works, pull request the changes to the main game.
Sounds complex, but “fork repo” is literally just pressing a big green button and then OK, committing changes can be done through github web UI which is easy to use, pull request is also announced as a big green button in the github UI.

One hint which is best said early on than late: replace all tabs in your jsons with spaces. Most text editors allow searching for tabs, Notepad++ and some more advanced ones allow automatic replacement of tabs with spaces.

If the profession is found well balanced and/or well received, it may be moved to core game later on.

5

Thanks.
If something that I slapped together because I wanted to play as a thematic “mad bomber” made it into code I would be incredibly happy.

6

Also is there a difference between the tabs/spaces when it is used?
All of the json files in my copy are tabbed by default. Though it may be a default setting for notepad ++.

7

[quote=“Logistic Tangent, post:6, topic:13896”]Also is there a difference between the tabs/spaces when it is used?
All of the json files in my copy are tabbed by default. Though it may be a default setting for notepad ++.[/quote]

There are some rules about how everything in the game needs to be linted. If you want the projects linting use http://dev.narc.ro/cataclysm/format.html.

8

Ok, I looked at that link on my phone, I just saw a white screen with a submit button.

Is it supposed to look like that? If so anything I need to know about using it?

9

You copy and paste your code into the white space and press submit, it then lints the code for you and then you copy and paste it back into your file.