NPC User Guide

[Moon Wizard]

I think that the best answer still is to use the examples from the OGL, and customize to your use in exactly the same format.

While I understand what you are asking, it's not straightforward or very understandable to represent a word-parsing state machine as a written description, which really just ends up being a bunch of examples of word order from the OGL.

If you would like to generate the level of documentation you would like, I can point out the relevant code sections for you to peruse.
rulesets/3.5E/scripts/manager_actor2.lua: isCreatureType, isSize, isAlignment
rulesets/3.5E/scripts/manager_combat2.lua: addNPC

Regards,
JPG

[ddavison]

I completely get what you are saying. That doesn't exist, unfortunately. The rules were set up by non-techie folks and then used by non-techie folks whenever they created new content. The LUA scripts are open source if you really want to dig in, but most people just care that the monsters from a published book work or not.

[Ken L]

FG's PF/3.5 ruleset does some merging.

Immunity, Reistances, DR, SR and such are all in the 'SQ' field.

It's not clear compared to say the 5e sheet which has fields for each discrete detail. I think this is a carry over from 3.5, but it's too far ingrained in the system to change as there's a bunch of stuff out there that expect this behavior now.

It does need to be documented though.

[dradams]

>Exactly the same format
It isn't just word order as we have been discussing. It is an exact (though I agree slightly variation-tolerant) vocabulary, set of delimiters and other structure that is compatible with the regular expressions you have written into the scripts. Thanks for the code snippets. I'm still disappointed that your staff can't be bothered to create this documentation, but this is exactly what I need to do it for myself.

[dradams]

Okay, so the code for the damage reduction parser seems to be what is included below. I have some basic questions; Lua isn't a language I use.

The SQ and only the SQ string is parsed for a possible indication that there is damage reduction. This is part of an SQ words while loop, so theoretically multiple instances of a given concept, e.g. DR could be ingested.

The first question is how the StringManager function works.
I went to https://github.com/joshuha/Fantasy-G...master/scripts, but I'm not sure which core script this is included in (or if it is a Lua builtin). The reason that this is important is that you can't tell from the local context how the isWord method defines a word. That is important to know to help understand what delimiters work. The key line appears to be

local aSQWords = StringManager.parseWords(sSpecialQualities);

If you can point me to how words are defined, the rest looks fairly straightforward. In particular, how would this line be parsed?

can't be knocked back (bastion boots); DR 5/-; DR: cold 10, evil 10; damage reduction evil 10, cold 10, dr magic 10, slashing 10, invisibility

The recognition of a word as damage reduction appears to be a string match with "dr" (case?) or "damage" AND "reduction" in any order. The script then creates a table of DREffects by type. It looks like the last-ingested DR of any given type would be put into the table (not a sum and not the largest).

There is a list of canonical damage types (DataCommon.dmgtypes) plus some syntactical exceptions like "cold iron", and ruleset exceptions, e.g. magic and epic. And and or appear to do the same thing.

-- DAMAGE REDUCTION
		elseif StringManager.isWord(aSQWords[i], "dr") or (StringManager.isWord(aSQWords[i], "damage") and StringManager.isWord(aSQWords[i+1], "reduction")) then
			if aSQWords[i] ~= "dr" then
				i = i + 1;
			end
			
			if StringManager.isNumberString(aSQWords[i+1]) then
				i = i + 1;
				local sDRAmount = aSQWords[i];
				local aDRTypes = {};
				
				while aSQWords[i+1] do
					if StringManager.isWord(aSQWords[i+1], { "and", "or" }) then
						table.insert(aDRTypes, aSQWords[i+1]);
					elseif StringManager.isWord(aSQWords[i+1], { "epic", "magic" }) then
						table.insert(aDRTypes, aSQWords[i+1]);
						table.insert(aAddDamageTypes, aSQWords[i+1]);
					elseif StringManager.isWord(aSQWords[i+1], "cold") and StringManager.isWord(aSQWords[i+2], "iron") then
						table.insert(aDRTypes, "cold iron");
						i = i + 1;
					elseif StringManager.isWord(aSQWords[i+1], DataCommon.dmgtypes) then
						table.insert(aDRTypes, aSQWords[i+1]);
					else
						break;
					end

					i = i + 1;
				end
				
				local sDREffect = "DR: " .. sDRAmount;
				if #aDRTypes > 0 then
					sDREffect = sDREffect .. " " .. table.concat(aDRTypes, " ");
				end
				table.insert(aEffects, sDREffect);
			end

[dradams]

More script diving. In the CoreRPG.pak I found the script manager_string.lua. I presume that this is the code for the string parsers.

Given this line in manager_combat2.lua

local aSQWords = StringManager.parseWords(sSpecialQualities);

I presume that this section from manager_string.lua parses the line

function parseWords(s, extra_delimiters)
	local delim = "^%w%+%-'’";
	if extra_delimiters then
		delim = delim .. extra_delimiters;
	end
	return split(s, delim, true); 
end

Given that no extra delimiters are passed, does this mean that anything is a delimiter if it is not an a-zA-Z0-9 (%w), a plus sign, a minus sign, a hyphen, a single quote, or a backtick? If that is true, the array of words from this example

can't be knocked back (bastion boots); DR 5/-; DR: 10 cold, evil 10 dr 10 cold and evil or adamantine, bludgeoning and piercing 10, evil 10; damage reduction 5 evil cold dr magic 10, slashing 5, invisibility

would be

can't
be
knocked
back
bastion
boots
dr [because of the prior string.lower call]
5
-
dr
10
cold
evil
10
dr
10
cold
and
evil
or
adamantine
bludgeoning
piercing
10
evil
10
damage
reduction
5
evil
cold
dr
magic
10
slashing
5
invisibility


If that is right, then the effects table would have

DR: 5
DR: 10 cold evil
DR: 10 cold and evil or adamantine bludgeoning piercing
DR: 5 evil cold

What I am missing is the following:

1. If where does the word pointer (i) get moved forward two words if the term "damage reduction" is detected?
2. Is there a test to make sure that the word following dr is a number? I don't see an equivalent of what happens in Hardness:

if StringManager.isWord(aSQWords[i], "hardness") and StringManager.isNumberString(aSQWords[i+1]) then

[dradams]

And, I'm on my own from this point. QED regarding customer care.

[Moon Wizard]

Not sure what you're referencing. I must have missed your previous post, but it seems from the previous posts that you were digging into what you needed.

Our official answer is that the code is designed to work with the core monsters as written, according to the official SRD stat blocks. If you want to create custom NPCs with similar special qualities, our official answer is to copy from an existing NPC and change out words. Other than that, we are not able to commit to the level of documentation that you are apparently looking for.

If you are looking for more help digging into more detail, I'll be happy to answer your questions, if I have time. I'm also responsible for many other portions of the company, so I'm not always available.

To answer your specific questions:
* Your interpretation for StringManager.parseWords seems correct.
* Each DR (or damage reduction) string is parsed as a separate effect.
* The word pointer for "damage reduction" does not technically need to get moved two places, since "reduction" will not match "damage" on the next pass.
* The test for the DR number string is a few lines below the test for "dr" or "damage reduction".

Regards,
JPG

[dradams]

Thanks for writing back. I'm sorry you changed forum software. This one seems a bit buggy.

Anyway:

Let's assume that the original damage reduction text looks like this


Damage Reduction 10 good


This gets parsed to this list


damage
reduction
10
good


first, damage followed by reduction gets recongized. Let's step through the code

-- DAMAGE REDUCTION
  -- the next line gets us into the loop because damage is followed by reduction
  elseif StringManager.isWord(aSQWords[i], "dr") or (StringManager.isWord(aSQWords[i], "damage") and StringManager.isWord(aSQWords[i+1], "reduction")) then
   if aSQWords[i] ~= "dr" then --this condition is not true, therefore i still equals 1
    i = i + 1;
   end
   
   if (aSQWords[i+1]) then --something exists at aSQWords[2], so the condition is true
    i = i + 1; --i is now incremented to 2
    local sDRAmount = aSQWords[i]; --sDRAmount is now set to aSQWords[2] which is "reduction" 
    local aDRTypes = {};
    
    while aSQWords[i+1] do
     if StringManager.isWord(aSQWords[i+1], { "and", "or" }) then --this condition is not true
      table.insert(aDRTypes, aSQWords[i+1]);  
     elseif StringManager.isWord(aSQWords[i+1], { "epic", "magic" }) then --this condition is not true
      table.insert(aDRTypes, aSQWords[i+1]);  
      table.insert(aAddDamageTypes, aSQWords[i+1]); 
     elseif StringManager.isWord(aSQWords[i+1], "cold") and StringManager.isWord(aSQWords[i+2], "iron") then --this condition is not true
      table.insert(aDRTypes, "cold iron"); 
      i = i + 1;
     elseif StringManager.isWord(aSQWords[i+1], DataCommon.dmgtypes) then --aSQWords[2+1] is "10" which is not in the dmgtypes list
      table.insert(aDRTypes, aSQWords[i+1]);  
     else
      break; --nothing matched; we break out of the while loop
     end

     i = i + 1; 
    end
    
    local sDREffect = "DR: " .. sDRAmount; --we create a local variable sDREffect which now equals "DR: reduction"
    if #aDRTypes > 0 then --nothing was added to the aDRTypes list, so this condition is not true
     sDREffect = sDREffect .. " " .. table.concat(aDRTypes, " ");
    end
    table.insert(aEffects, sDREffect); --"DR: reduction" added to the end of the aEffects list
   end

I presume that “DR: reduction” gets filtered out later, but this damage reduction format in the SQ text will never produce a correctly formatted effect. Is that right?

[damned]

hey dradams keep up the good work.
click on the theme at bottom left of the creen and choose FGResponsive for some reason it occasionally reverts back on some browsers...