Come Alpha: Data driven UI updates

For those that missed it, I’m gearing up for a “relaunch” of LEWD with a rewritten client, it running on my new engine, and with hopefully lots of nice new content for the writers I have been seeking.

Though I haven’t redesigned the UI’s look yet, the way it works is now very different, with many enhancements.
live-updates

There is one little apparent change here, still: The -1 to all but charisma that gets +2.

The whole thing with all the redoing this is that these are no longer some thing on the client, and the way the client API for the engine works is it’s easy to drive data from the server to update the game.
Here, what’s happening is that that the API makes it easy to listen for changes on the player, and a tiny bit of code fills in elements on the page that are marked to be the player’s “bonus stats”.  There’s a hook for it too, so I can make it say “+#” for positive numbers instead of just the number.

Though that addition is more apparent, there are many things where things update more smoothly now.  Stat updates, for example, no longer have the whole character card flip to reload it all, but instead just the more specific elements are updated. Just in general, this will make managing data shown to the player a lot easier.

Also coming with the alpha is that traits will be selectable in the game instead of just at character generation, just like raising stat points.

Speaking of stat points, that got changed a bit as well
stat-updates

The difference between “stats” and ‘bonusStats(from traits, items, etc)” are now better separated on the client.  While the character card shows the total, where you actually go in to raise your stats shows your base, which makes a lot more sense.

Back to traits and in the tool, these are also now created through the tool instead of a few hard coded things on the client
adding-traits

So these are crazy straight forward and easy to add now compared to before.  Before they were just on the client too and not “secure”, since that prototype was just pooped together to show some of the ideas I had in mind.

One of the coolest things is that if there’s ever a great idea on something to add, it doesn’t have to wait for a “patch”.  When a new trait is added here, it pops right up in the list of traits in the client, whether it’s during character generation or otherwise.  If it’s bugged, it can be updated for everyone too.

Also, hopefully simple enough for “non-programmers” to add in.

Oh, and it says “buttons”, but the client doesn’t render buttons for these really. Instead there’s a listener set on network events elsewhere that programmatically fires those button click events within the server.  “buttons” are just way to add some triggered code to an object, whether the buttons are rendered on the client or not.

I’m still not sure what points I’m going to have it okay to “refund” traits or stats for that matter.
Currently you can raise them up any time you’re not in a scenario, but I have them refundable at that same time just for testing purposes, but that’s not ideal come “beta”.

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