Special dice systems

[Vhex]

Dicenomicon from http://www.gandreas.com/iphone/dicenomicon/ has a pretty good interface for both choosing dice to roll and building expressions.

[Lee]

@wolph
So, is the final rule set from the latest book, or are players using that whole collection of rules? BW is likely right about it taking the roll details and letting macros do the rest

@Xaelvaen
Good point. Not too hard to put in so it's on the list.

@Vhex, Rumble
Thanks for the suggestions; more on this below. Additionally, it's a toss up for me regarding Fudge and Fate dice since a dice bar is primarily a player-facing aspect. I think the actual script system can handle this easily, but I'm open to discussing it.

@jfj
I did read Craig's posts when he first put it up, and I can safely say, at least for the moment, that outputted expressions from this dice bar is similar to what his parser expects, with a few differences that are easy to overcome, such as delimiter (dealing with 1.3 , I used ; with string properties and simpler regex in mind, and I believe his uses [] to denote executable expression and ; as terminal character), and several flags that are not yet within his roll expressions. His has two I don't have ! (for displaying detailed results for individual rolls) and !s (which does as the former with a sum). I guess the biggest thing to address is the difference of data structures we used. I employed a Guava ListMultiMap storing POJOs holding the details of each roll, but I don't think it'll be a problem bridging this particular difference when the time comes.

The idea I had (with 1.3 in mind) was to have a an external and independent handler for expressions from the dice bar, so it would be easier to code and debug without having to deal with MT's parser. Since 2.0's parser is still being worked on, I pushed ahead hoping that the parser would readily accept expressions fed from external sources instead of having these sources deeply integrated into it.

I also work to keep it as simple as possible and, hopefully, intuitive. Here's a screenshot of the bar:

Dice bar

From left to right the controls are:

• View saved rolls list
• Recipients control
• Save roll expression
• New expression
• Execute expression on expression field
• Expression field
• Copy to clipboard
• Target # for roll total
• Exploding dice
• Exploding dice cap
• Chained roll mode (more on this below)
• # of dice to roll
• Roll options (for keep, drop, reroll, explosion threshold etc)
• Dice roll button (behaves differently depending on whether chained mode is toggled or not)

The dice bar resides at the bottom, right above the status panel. I've made additions to layout control, so this control group can be hidden or shown when necessary, as with all the other components. Note that the appearance and arrangement of controls is not yet set in stone. The icon set you saw above is something I cobbled together to display the WIP, it was bare earlier today. The icon for the button to view saved rolls is definitely getting axed. Furthermore, it is coded in JavaFX with skinning in mind, so people interested in changing how it looks should read up on FXML I'm more of a minimalist when it comes to GUI design so it turned out this way.

The expression field contains the expression as it is being created during normal or chained mode. It is also independent of the building controls meaning one can just type something in and run with that. An expression will not execute unless it is of a valid form.

Chained mode, simply put, allows die types to be mixed together. If disabled, hitting the dice buttons rolls 1D*. When enabled, clicking on the button increments the # on dice type field.

I hope this was informative. Thanks again for the input so far

[JML]

Did you think of success counting ? Something along the line of "every d10 over 8 is a success"…

Good one. I've put in an item for this on the roll detail object. If I may ask, which game system(s) employ this?

Sorry to be late. From the top of my head I would say all WOD games, old and new, and also Shadowrun among others. But I just remembered it's already handled : XdYsT in Dice Expressions.

[Bone White]

One question Lee, will this dice window function like other default frames and be allowed to be "pop-out hidden"/pinned/undocked (and most importantly) removed/restored.

[Lee]

Sorry to be late. From the top of my head I would say all WOD games, old and new, and also Shadowrun among others. But I just remembered it's already handled : XdYsT in Dice Expressions.

Ah, it was remiss of me, but I think I already have this integrated since the first point of order I worked on was to make sure the dice bar could do all the current dice roll expressions. Double-checking on it, yes, it is definitely in there. Sigh, I got more stuff on my plate than a glutton let loose on a $5 buffet

One question Lee, will this dice window function like other default frames and be allowed to be "pop-out hidden"/pinned/undocked (and most importantly) removed/restored.

It's not a frame, but a tool bar. But, yes, it can be hidden and revealed. I made additions to the layout, necessitating several changes people will see once this is out. For now, I've locked the bar, since working with it on vertical orientation had a less seamless feel to it over the default. I'm trying to introduce (IMO) a more fluid interface where controls behave differently depending on the context or user focus.

For example, if a framework designer is writing macro code, the function keys do different things as opposed to when he/she is working on the map, to which hot keys will then primarily trigger macros bound to them. I'm not completely there yet, but the end result would be (quick) accessibility to relevant stuff depending on where the focus is currently at. Like when a designer is building a map: he/she will have hot-keyed access to the asset library (using a new traversal method), tools (e.g. drawing, topology etc), map switching, and the like. I hope people will take to it as I do think they'll be more productive once they do.

[wargames]

One dice system I would love to see get touched on is Legend of the Five Rings. L5R has a roll and keep system based around d10s and those d10s can explode however there are ways of expanding the range at which dice explode and limit how many times a dice can explode.

[Lee]

One dice system I would love to see get touched on is Legend of the Five Rings. L5R has a roll and keep system based around d10s and those d10s can explode however there are ways of expanding the range at which dice explode and limit how many times a dice can explode.

It's already possible. If you check the discussion, the system allows to explode from a range (i.e. 8 to 10), re-roll 1s (for expertise), cap the # of explosions (i.e. only 10 explosions), and add a modifier to the total (+2 for every explosion above 10). The latter's not automated, but one easily can get the details (e.g. # of exploding dice) and write a macro to complement the dice roll (i.e. roll result + (# exploding dice * 2)).