Hello! Ive been working on a mod for about a week now and have suggestions that lean more on the technical side.
Ill try to give some use cases so the non tech ppl reading have something they can read.
I am write a series of events and dialogs and have trouble controlling the 'can be trigger randomly'.
I feel some things are missing. like conditions based on time, or custom boolean flags.
I feel like being able to limit event to X number of days from the game start as a condition would be great.
I have string of events and dialogs that go like this.
Idols and staff complain about the Studio WiFi.
You can: Ignore them(Spend nothing), buy some half assed replacement(Spend next to nothing) or Upgrade it(Spend Lots Money.)
If you Ignored or didn't do much a flag is set.
Now your WiFi is hacked, and a devious hacker Attemps to extort you for money.
He tells you to give he money(A LOT OF IT) and that the cops cant help you.
You can: Give him the money, Call the cops, Ignore Him.
If you don't pay him, he start leaking Idol and Staff information online.
This generates scandal points. These events will pop up randomly.
He will eventual randomly contact you again.
You can: [didn't call cops]Pay him(A lot of money), [called cops]Pay him(Crap Tons of money), Ignore him
at first glance this seems simple.
but it actual is a lot of flags.
Flag1 (I call it 'freeWifi')
Has the event ever happened? freeWifi !=0 and !=1
if true trigger WiFi event.
You didnt spend much or anything freeWifi = 1 else =0
if freeWifi==1 randomly trigger Haker dialog, at its end freeWifi=0
Flag2 I call it 'hacked'
Flag3 I call it 'scornedHacker'
if you dont pay hacked = 1
if you call cops hacked and scornedHacker = 1
random events:
Idol personal information leaked
Idol personal photos leaked
Idol texts leaked
Staff emails leaked
And so on.
All these random events involve one random idol or staff, and the have 2 or more options.
One to do nothing(Generate Scandal points and Idol Mental Stress), Do something (Spend money, Generate few Scandal Points, no stress.)
lastly have the hacker come back as a random dialog asking for money
options and text dependent on if you called the cops
{Side note: the cops do nothing.}
Tech Talk:
Currently events and dialogs have condition based on Resources, Variable and Fan total.
I'm finding it problematic that conditional formula and variables are only numeric in nature (Or at least seem to be the Documentation was not clear for meta vars).
Would it be possible to add condition based on vars with types and flags defined by the modder?
Flags as in simple Y/N or True/False.
Vars with types like String, boolean, int, float and such.
If given its own page for set up in the Event Editor these could be pulled in to the drop-downs after being setup.
This could also allow for custom flags or vars to be add to things like idols and staff as well.
This could give more options for meta data association when setting up events.
I'm finding it complicated to work with a system that I can make pseudo flags with 1 and 0
aVariable = 0
aVariable = 1
but lack
aVariable = not set
I currently cant check for null. or if i can the docs to tell me how.
So im doing this to check if its unset-
aVariable != 1
aVariable != 0
I'm not even sure if that works as write since im not sure how the formulas are converted...
I mostly work with java but I have experience with Unity (C# & Javascript)
if 'aVariable' was never set can i even check for it with out throwing an error?
if its javascript converted will 'undefined' work?
I cant think of any C# ways to define and/or convert this...
TLDR: I mostly just want to do this (aVariable = true), (aVariable = false), or (aVariable = null)
Im going to stop with this one, request since if I start talking about another this post will be several miles (or km) long.