Modding multiple branches

This page walks through the process of creating an encounter which has more than one choice point. See Adding an encounter with a choice to learn about a simpler encounter which has only one choice. Using the "branch" encounter type, it is possible to create one encounter which has any number of branches. For example, you may want to have an early choice, where the player can back out of the encounter or decide which characters will be involved, then do some more dialog, and then have a final choice to decide the encounter. The focus is on getting something simple which you can see in the game, and adding more details later. The description and screenshots are current as of December 2019, early access version 0.12+104 Pixle Masterson.

Prerequisite encounter

This is a brief summary of the prerequisite steps. If you have an example event already skip to the next section. For more details see Adding an encounter with a choice

TODO: correct these details for the choice example

1. Select "Tools" at the main game screen, then "Open Editor", then "Content and Comics Editor"
2. At the upper left, click "Mods", click "Create New Mod" in the browser, and fill in the form.
3. At the upper left, click "effects", then "New", and fill in the form. In the "Type" dropdown, select "Wilderness Scouting". The name field will fill in with auto-generated text.
4. On the targets line, add the default "hero" story role and a second story role "volunteer"
5. Delete the choiceTarget section, and in the outcome list, add "description". This creates the comic.
6. This is the most common mistake, causing a mod to not work! New events are disabled by default. Under abilities, set encounterEnabled to true
7. Save, and go to the comics screen
8. Add a basic full size panel with the hero and volunteer facing each other.
9. Your screen should look similar to this:

Key concept

In an encounter with only one choice, you fill in the choices using In the outcomes section of an encounter, you can do a lot of things. In this case, we will add a custom "aspect" onto each character. Then the second encounter will have filters, so it will only trigger if the required aspects are present. Suppose the first encounter adds aspects to two characters, but one of them is killed. Then the second encounter will never trigger because it will never find both aspects.

Create the aspects

It's quick to create the aspect file in a text editor, and easier to control the names. Create the folders as needed to edit a new file in the assets/aspects folder. I use one file named <mod>_aspects.json to store all the aspects. Each aspect looks like this:

[
{
	"modId": "lewe",
	"id": "lewe_hero",
	"importance": -1,
	"lifespan": "all"
}
]

The default value of lifespan is "missionOnly". This is appropriate for other situations, but here we need the aspect to remain in place for the entire game. Be sure to set lifespan to "all". Create one aspect for each role you wish to repeat in the second encounter.

Add the aspects in the outcome

In the outcome section, click "Add Outcome". This exact screenshot is from a mod which has a choice, and already has some outcomes including a theme and a relationship change; your outcome section may have fewer sections filled in.

In the "New Outcome" dialog, on the left, select Aspects. Ignore the suggestions in the middle. On the right, click target to set the role from the encounter to whom the aspect will be added. Then hover over addAspects, click "new", and select the aspect.

You can add multiple aspects to one character in one outcome, but you will need to add a separate outcome for each character. The json text for the outcome section should look like this:

{
	"class": "Aspects",
	"target": "hero",
	"addAspects": [
		{ "id": "lewe_hero", "value": "1" }
	]
},
{
	"class": "Aspects",
	"target": "volunteer",
	"addAspects": [
		{ "id": "lewe_volunteer", "value": "1" }
	]
}

Create the second encounter

Create the basic encounter the same way you created the encounter above. The encounter will have several roles. Usually, you will establish two roles in the first encounter, such as hero and volunteer. Then in the second encounter you want to establish the same two roles; this is for convenience. The role names can be completely unrelated, but it's much easier to remember if you use the same role names in the first encounter, the aspect names, and the second encounter. To make the encounter require the aspects, add the aspect name in the filter section, near the bottom of the target entry. Here is a screenshot of the effect editor showing this.

Here is what the json text looks like. It's usually a good idea to re-test some other assumptions. In the below example, the aspect was added when the hero was "available" (no lover) but that may have changed since the aspect was added.

{
	"role": "hero",
	"template": "PICK_BY_SCORE",
	"scoreFunction": "1-HAS_LOVER",
	"scoreThreshold": "1",
	"aspects": [ "lewe_hero" ]
}

Seeing the effect in game

As your chain of encounters gets longer, the amount of time it takes to trigger the chain for testing gets longer. For two encounters, it's helpful to have a saved game just before the first encounter. Then you can load it, trigger the first encounter, and check to make sure that the aspects are added. You can see aspects in the cheat window of the character detail panel. Scroll to the bottom to see the most recently added attributes. Here is a screenshot of the detail panel.

Once you have verified that the aspects are present, continue on to set up the second encounter, and save just before that. If there is some problem with your filters, you can come back to this second save game. If you change the aspects, you may need to delete the second save game and restart from the first one.