In the previous post I alluded to work being carried out to greatly enhance Sojour’s ability to track characteristics that alter over time. Everything in that post still stands, but we are now a lot further along with the implementation.
Coding wise, it is pretty much done. Just a few loose ends to tie up and a lot of testing to do.
I’m hoping to get this out by the 9th April – but as always this is dependent on free time.
For those that haven’t read the previous post, Sojour will soon allow you to define up to four trackable characteristics for each ruleset:
In the above case I have used up all four trackable characteristics for a Traveller ruleset.
This dialog is pretty much unchanged from the previous post with the exception of the ‘Hex Based?’ checkbox which will allow you to define if these characteristics are displayed in decimal or hexadecimal. Traveller uses hexadecimal based characteristics, so in this case I have ticked it.
Internally the system can handle any number of trackable characteristics but I have limited it to just four for ease of use (see the previous post) and to limit how much toolbar real-estate is taken up.
Each ruleset can be defined with between zero to four trackable characteristics.
Now that I have defined my Traveller ruleset, the next visible change you will see is when you add a new character or token:
The above window has been given an overhaul. In addition to the trackable characteristics fields, the notes field now uses the same component that’s used in the journals, which provides for greater flexibility when writing notes.
Each character, token or campaign asset can choose to either enable the ruleset trackable characteristics, or not. In the above example I have enabled them.
The screenshot clearly shows how the characteristic colour coding carries through. It also shows the use of a hex value in the Endurance field. Everything is validated. So in this case, these fields will only accept valid hex values. A field’s background will change to red to let you know if an invalid entry has been made. The Ok button is disabled until invalid entries are fixed.
In addition to raw values, tokens can also accept a dice expression which is then automatically rolled when the token is dragged to a map.
These characteristics show up as characteristic bars in Sojour:
In the above screenshot we can see the four characteristics that were added for the Traveller ruleset. These are visible for both the characters and the NPC’s.
Each bar is colour coded to match the colours you chose for the ruleset.
Hovering over these bars now produces a new tooltip:
The same tooltip is visible when the NPC portraits are hovered over too.
To alter a characteristic all one need do is wave the mouse over a portrait and then use the mouse wheel. The characteristic that gets modified is based on a keys that are pressed in conjunction with the mouse wheel rotations. These are:
- No Keys – The first characteristic is altered
- Ctrl Key depressed – The second characteristic is altered
- Shift Key depressed – The third characteristic is altered
- Shit & Ctrl Kyes are depressed – The forth characteristic is altered
As with the current version of Sojour, altering a characteristic displays a floating number over the token on the map. The altered value floats up from the map-token whilst getting continuously more transparent until it disappears.
Each floating number is colour coded based on the actual characteristic that was altered:
The above collage shows Sir Conrad having each of his characteristics altered from left to right. The displayed values respect the number base chosen for the ruleset. In this case, hexadecimal.
Sojour will automatically upgrade existing rulesets and campaigns. Below is an existing Runequest campaign that I have been running. It automatically got upgraded to use the new trackable characteristics system with no input from the user:
The current version of Sojour only has one fixed trackable characteristic called hit-points and only NPCs have them. The above ruleset got auto-upgraded so that the troll NPC’s in the journal are now using hit points that are tracked with the newer system.
That’s it for this post. Feel free to send me feedback with regard to this new feature – just use the email address in the manual. The more feedback I have, the better I can make this new feature 🙂
Have fun, and thanks to all the customers that bought Sojour!
RobP
Sojour 