Formula Parser Equip Vars Demo

Description

This page describes how to use the Formula Parser Equipment Variables Demo, provided in a sandbox (in Subversion)

Location

The Demo is in sandbox/EqVarDemo/PCGen and can be checked out from subversion as any other branch of PCGen. Please use build.xml (and ant) to build PCGen, as Gradle support may not be fully enabled in this branch.

General Comments and Limitations

When possible, use integers. The system is capable of doing integer arithmetic, so 1+2 will produce 3, whereas 1.0+2.0 may produce 2.9999999999999.

Known Limitations:

• Is not intended to cover unreasonably high numbers
• There is at least one UI problem, in that the UI doesn't realize that the PRExxx status of an EqMod can dynamically changes when another EqMod is added. The EqMod in question has to be selected to turn red.

New Game Mode MISC Info File Token

The following tokens are REQUIRED in the game mode to set the default value of a variable type:

DEFAULTVARIABLEVALUE:NUMBER|0
DEFAULTVARIABLEVALUE:POINT|0,0

New Campaign File Tokens

DATACONTROL

DATACONTROL: is a new Campaign file token (for PCC files). It is treated "recursively" like other tokens, e.g. TEMPLATE.

Limitations: It does not support PRExxx or INCLUDE/EXCLUDE.

Future Development: It is possible that PRExxx could be supported, it is unlikely that INCLUDE/EXCLUDE would be supported due to the nature of definitions not being traditional objects (too much unique code)

VARIABLE

VARIABLE: is a new Campaign file token (for PCC files). It is treated "recursively" like other tokens, e.g. TEMPLATE.

Limitations: It does not support PRExxx or INCLUDE/EXCLUDE.

Future Development: It is possible that PRExxx could be supported, it is unlikely that INCLUDE/EXCLUDE would be supported due to the nature of variables not being traditional objects (too much unique code)

New Variable File Tokens

LOCAL

LOCAL: is a token for the Variable files defined by the VARIABLE: PCC token.

LOCAL:x|y

x is a legal variable scope
y is the variable name

These have 2 arguments, the scope, and the variable name. For example:

LOCAL:EQUIPMENT|ModCount

Limitations:

• EQUIPMENT and EQUIPMENT.PART are the legal variable scopes that are supported (more below in discussion of Scope of Variables)
• By Design: Must appear as the first token on a line

Future Development:

• Resolve whether "EQUIPMENT" is actually the item on the line or whether it is "Equipment Variables" (how the code thinks internally). This is eventually a risk of tying closely the code and the data, so this requires consideration of how object types are defined (a much longer discussion than belongs here - please ask on _dev if you are interested)

EXPLANATION

EXPLANATION: is a free-text token (no parsing is really done) that is designed to describe why a variable exists

Limitations:

• By Design: Must not appear as the first token on a line

Behavior:

• Overwrites (as if someone would use it twice??)

Future Development

At least "GLOBAL" would be a future development item (though it would "default" to that, so the following variable file is valid:

MyGlobalVariable
GLOBAL:MyOtherGlobalVariable
LOCAL:EQUIPMENT|MyLocalVar

New Campaign File REQUIREMENTS

There are two types of files: Data Control and Variable

Data Control

Identifies variable types

The following tokens are REQUIRED in data control file:

VARTYPEDEF:NUMBER|VAR
VARTYPEDEF:POINT|AREA

Variable File

Identifies variables that can be used in the data

Note that the GLOBAL and LOCAL tokens today IMPLY VAR. Meaning

GLOBAL:MyOtherGlobalVariable

is (to the code) actually

GLOBAL:VAR|MyOtherGlobalVariable

Note this can be combined with the implied GLOBAL, so

MyGlobalVariable

is (to the code) actually

GLOBAL:VAR|MyGlobalVariable

We will need to decide if all these items can stay implied, but I believe they can.

Prerequisites

PREEQVAR

PREEQVARxxx exist as PRE tokens. All valid suffixes (LT, EQ, NEQ, etc.) are supported. Please see the PREVAR documentation if you are not familiar with the legal suffixes.

Syntax:

PREEQVARxx:y,z

Limitations:

• Only Numbers (Integer or Decimal) or a single, legal variable name are supported as y and z.

This refers to variables that are "EQUIPMENT" in the LOCAL: line of the Variable file

PREEQPARTVAR

PREEQPARTVARxxx exist as PRE tokens. All valid suffixes (LT, EQ, NEQ, etc.) are supported. Please see the PREVAR documentation if you are not familiar with the legal suffixes.

Syntax: PREEQPARTVARxx:y,z

Limitations:

• Only Numbers (Integer or Decimal) or a single, legal variable name are supported as y and z.

This refers to variables that are "EQUIPMENT.PART" in the LOCAL: line of the Variable file

Modify Token

Syntax

MODIFY:w|x|y|PRIORITY=z

w is the variable name as defined in the Variable LST file
x is the modification type.  Legal types are shown below.
y is the modification (based on the type, see below)
z is an OPTIONAL priority.  If not specified, it is assumed to be zero.

Priority

Items are processed in a Natural Priority order. PRIORITY is used to order any modifiers, then a natural ordering is used. So:

MODIFY:Var|ADD|4
MODIFY:Var|MULTIPLY|5

are applied, the Multiplication will ALWAYS occur first, regardless of token order in the file. If you are unsure of natural order, use PRIORITY to control processing order.

Priority must be >= 0

Items are processed from the lowest priority to the highest (highest is applied last, so a SET with a high priority is applied last)

A clarification on natural ordering: it does NOT replace priority if not defined. The two priority comparisons (user priority and natural priority) are independent. So an item of user priority 1 and natural priority 3 will be processed before user priority 2 and natural priority 2, solely based on the user priority)

Legal Types

ADD

ADD takes a Numeric Argument. Must be a legal Integer or Double, no calculations are allowed.

The 'natural' priority is 3.

MULTIPLY

MULTIPLY takes a Numeric Argument. Must be a legal Integer or Double, no calculations are allowed.

The 'natural' priority is 2.

MAX

MAX takes a Numeric Argument. Must be a legal Integer or Double, no calculations are allowed.

This sets an upper bound on the value (a maximum that the value can be)

The 'natural' priority is 4.

MIN

MIN takes a Numeric Argument. Must be a legal Integer or Double, no calculations are allowed.

This sets a lower bound on the value (a minimum that the value can be)

The 'natural' priority is 5.

SET

SET takes a Numeric Argument. Must be a legal Integer or Double, no calculations are allowed.

This sets the value (any previous value is overwritten/ignored)

The 'natural' priority is 0.

SOLVE

The 'natural' priority is 6.

This calculates a new value, and equations using other variables are allowed. If you have a value that was previously modified from the default (or you want to enable that based on using a higher PRIORITY= then you should use the value() function to capture the existing value. Thus the following are equivalent:

MODIFY:Foo|ADD|4
MODIFY:Foo|SOLVE|value()+4

(Note that the ADD is preferred because it is smaller in memory and faster to process, but more complex calculations will obviously require SOLVE)

ModifyOther Token

Syntax

MODIFYOTHER:u|v|w|x|y|PRIORITY=z

u is the scope of modification (this must be a legal variable scope)
v is the grouping to be modified
w is the variable name as defined in the Variable LST file
x is the modification type.  Legal types are shown below.
y is the modification (based on the type, see below)
z is an OPTIONAL priority.  If not specified, it is assumed to be zero.

A note on u: A Legal Variable Scope implies it must be an item that is also legal as the "x" value of the LOCAL: token from the Variable file

Limitations:

• Currently the only supported Grouping is GROUP=x where x is a value provided by the (new) GROUP: global token

w, z, y, z are the same as MODIFY:, but have variables legal as if they were in the scope defined by u (Meaning you can put MODIFYOTHER: in an Ability and if "u" is EQUIPMENT, then you can modify local variables in Equipment)

See MODIFY above for how priority works.

An Example

A decent example of using MODIFYOTHER may be from AEG's Feats (3.5e). Currently we are forced to do a special EqMod:

Assassin's Blade TYPE:Weapon PRETYPE:1,Melee BONUS:EQMWEAPON|CRITRANGEADD|1|PREFEAT:1,Assassin

With MODIFYOTHER, this EqMod is unnecessary:

Assassin CATEGORY:FEAT MODIFYOTHER:EQUIPMENT|GROUP=Melee|EqCritRange|ADD|1|PRIORITY=5000

This assumes we have something like:

Longsword GROUP:Melee PART:1|MODIFY:CritRange|SET|1 PART:1|MODIFY:CritRange|SOLVE|value()+EqCritRange

Note two things:

• The latter MODIFY on Longsword will be made easier by later developments and will not need to be attached to every weapon (it will be defined once for the entire game mode)
• The MODIFYOTHER has to act on a variable in EQUIPMENT since the GROUP is actually part of the Equipment not the Equipment Part (this is not strictly required, but applying the groups to parts gets to be a pain). Thus we use the SOLVE to add the Equipment-level CritRange Bonus to the head (where it is actually applicable in terms of how it would be output)

Functions Supported

The following functions are supported:

• min
• max
• ceil
• floor
• if
• abs
• round

If you have questions about the behavior, see the existing PCGen docs.

About Variable Scope

In this demo, there are now TWO local scopes:

• One for Equipment
• One for Equipment Parts

The distinction is where they are applied. If it is necessary to have a variable controlling what EQMODs are legal, it is likely that is related to the Part (because EqMods are applied to Parts (aka Heads) not to Equipment.) ... So the charms stuff from FantasyCraft (for example) are likely to be on PARTs, not on Equipment.

Walkthrough of the connections

Note the Game Mode MISCINFO file defines a default for NUMBER and POINT

Only items with a default value in the Misc Info file may be used as the first argument on the TYPE line in the variable file.

Therefore:

VARTYPEDEF:NUMBER|VAR

Defines an internal "variable type" of "VAR" that holds numbers.

This is done because we may want something like:

VARTYPEDEF:NUMBER|MOVEMENT

This allows us to have multiple, non-conflicting types of numbers in the data.

Once the second argument is used in a TYPE entry, then it can be used in other data, including LOCAL and GLOBAL in the variable file and MODIFY in other LST files. Items are referred to by the second argument, NOT the underlying type. So the following would be reasonable data:

VARTYPEDEF:POINT|AREA
AREA|Face (note that since GLOBAL is implied, this is equal to GLOBAL:AREA|Face)
MODIFY:AREA=Face|SET|10,10

Note that we are asking the data team to put the TYPE into the var file, but we are currently implying the Face in the code. This is so that we can "hide" the use of GLOBAL in the test (since that would cause a few confusing issues)

Note also that MODIFY CANNOT be used with the "=" in the first argument, so please don't try it! I am echoing long term intent, not immediate syntax.