Polymorphism Extension (.ext file) [Fantasy Grounds Unity 5E ruleset]

[drempel]

Can't check at the moment, when I get a chance I'll let you know what happens

[SilentRuin]

So are you saying if I export all the NPC's without shapechange linkage into a module. Then create a campaign, create a new "initial" NPC and setup the linkage there, then export the adventure module, and then loaded both the "NPC's" module and the "Adventure" module into a campaign the shapechange linkage would work? Or am I reading your edits wrong...

I'm theorizing here - but the idea is how do we trick it to reference .mod read only critters.

1) Export all 3 NPCs.
2) Import them in new DB.
3) Have each NPC (new copy) choose the .mod read only version of the others for transformation.
4) Export them.
5) Import them.
6) Here is where I'm confused. Because when you attached the .mod versions they still did not have the right info in their poly data. But will they all now? Or do you have to do this again one more time?

Worth a try though.

[drempel]

I'm theorizing here - but the idea is how do we trick it to reference .mod read only critters.

1) Export all 3 NPCs.
2) Import them in new DB.
3) Have each NPC (new copy) choose the .mod read only version of the others for transformation.
4) Export them.
5) Import them.
6) Here is where I'm confused. Because when you attached the .mod versions they still did not have the right info in their poly data. But will they all now? Or do you have to do this again one more time?

Worth a try though.

For the NPC module I wouldn't bother setting up the links. Then in the adventure module I'd copy the NPC I needed for the encounter so it made a version in the adventure module and when setting up the linkage I'd have it link to the NPC Module instances. Then the adventure module NPC is what would go into the encounter.

So say I had a Werewolf named Fred who is first encountered in human form.

1. Make three versions of Fred, one for each form in the "NPC campaign".
2. I export the NPC module from the NPC Campaign
3. Load the NPC module into the Adventure Campaign.
4. Copy NPCs:Fred (Human) making an Adventure Campaign version of Fred (Human).
5. Set the linkage up so that Adventure:Fred (Human) points to NPCs:Fred (Hybrid) and NPCs:Fred (Wolf).
6. Add Adventure:Fred (Human) to the Encounter.
7. Export Adventure module
8. Load Adventure module into ongoing campaign and run encounter, hopefully the links will be preserved properly at that point since they are pointing to NPC:Fred (Hybrid) and NPC:Fred (Wolf). Since NPC:Fred(X)'s id's should be the same in both the Adventure Campaign and the Live Campaign?

At least that's what I was thinking based on your previous answers. Am I missing something that would make that not work?

[SilentRuin]

For the NPC module I wouldn't bother setting up the links. Then in the adventure module I'd copy the NPC I needed for the encounter so it made a version in the adventure module and when setting up the linkage I'd have it link to the NPC Module instances. Then the adventure module NPC is what would go into the encounter.

So say I had a Werewolf named Fred who is first encountered in human form.

1. Make three versions of Fred, one for each form in the "NPC campaign".
2. I export the NPC module from the NPC Campaign
3. Load the NPC module into the Adventure Campaign.
4. Copy NPCs:Fred (Human) making an Adventure Campaign version of Fred (Human).
5. Set the linkage up so that Adventure:Fred (Human) points to NPCs:Fred (Hybrid) and NPCs:Fred (Wolf).
6. Add Adventure:Fred (Human) to the Encounter.
7. Export Adventure module
8. Load Adventure module into ongoing campaign and run encounter, hopefully the links will be preserved properly at that point since they are pointing to NPC:Fred (Hybrid) and NPC:Fred (Wolf). Since NPC:Fred(X)'s id's should be the same in both the Adventure Campaign and the Live Campaign?

At least that's what I was thinking based on your previous answers. Am I missing something that would make that not work?

Your more an expert at this stuff than me - but sounds worth a try for sure.

[drempel]

It seemed to work. Again, I don't really know much about fantasy grounds api's and what they have available for extensions to use. When I had it link to a readonly NPC module for the shape shifting it worked. What was exported was:

<polymorphism>
<id-00001>
<class type="string">npc</class>
<DisplayText type="string">Foo (wolf) (beast (shapechanger))</DisplayText>
<Record type="string">reference.npcdata.id-00010@Foo (NPCs)</Record>
<token type="token">tokens/wolf.png@Foo (NPCs)</token>
<valid type="number">1</valid>
</id-00001>
</polymorphism>

So it created an ID that included the module and everything was happy, once both the NPC module and Adventure module was loaded into a campaign, shape shifting worked fine. (at least for one...I didn't make a bunch to see if I just got lucky yet.)

I'm sure you already know this but for anyone else reading this: when the polymorph entry is exported and it's referencing an NPC in the same module you'd see:

<Record type="string">npc.id-00010</Record>

why that doesn't work I'm not sure, since the Encounters (battle record I believe) also can reference the same NPC in a similar way, and find it. So I wonder if there's something wrong with the extensions method of doing a lookup that doesn't work when it's an exported module doing a self reference vs external reference? Again I don't know how the API works, and maybe encounters are "special" and that's why it works.

example from an encounter:
<id-00003>
<count type="number">1</count>
<faction type="string">friend</faction>
<link type="windowreference">
<class>npc</class>
<recordname>npc.id-00010</recordname>
</link>


Anyways, if this information helps anyone at all in setting it up (two modules is kind of a kludge), or help you (SilentRuin) figure out a way of doing the lookup in a way that works for this use case then great If not, I learned something anyways...

[SilentRuin]

It seemed to work. Again, I don't really know much about fantasy grounds api's and what they have available for extensions to use. When I had it link to a readonly NPC module for the shape shifting it worked. What was exported was:

<polymorphism>
<id-00001>
<class type="string">npc</class>
<DisplayText type="string">Foo (wolf) (beast (shapechanger))</DisplayText>
<Record type="string">reference.npcdata.id-00010@Foo (NPCs)</Record>
<token type="token">tokens/wolf.png@Foo (NPCs)</token>
<valid type="number">1</valid>
</id-00001>
</polymorphism>

So it created an ID that included the module and everything was happy, once both the NPC module and Adventure module was loaded into a campaign, shape shifting worked fine. (at least for one...I didn't make a bunch to see if I just got lucky yet.)

I'm sure you already know this but for anyone else reading this: when the polymorph entry is exported and it's referencing an NPC in the same module you'd see:

<Record type="string">npc.id-00010</Record>

why that doesn't work I'm not sure, since the Encounters (battle record I believe) also can reference the same NPC in a similar way, and find it. So I wonder if there's something wrong with the extensions method of doing a lookup that doesn't work when it's an exported module doing a self reference vs external reference? Again I don't know how the API works, and maybe encounters are "special" and that's why it works.

example from an encounter:
<id-00003>
<count type="number">1</count>
<faction type="string">friend</faction>
<link type="windowreference">
<class>npc</class>
<recordname>npc.id-00010</recordname>
</link>


Anyways, if this information helps anyone at all in setting it up (two modules is kind of a kludge), or help you (SilentRuin) figure out a way of doing the lookup in a way that works for this use case then great If not, I learned something anyways...

Again anything with a child reference will fail. That id-000xxx is a child ID reference. The refernce.npcdata.id-0010&Foo is a .mod reference. Which will be the same for different campaigns. Now - if you shift the .mod around and it stores a different name in it then the old name will no longer be referencable by those that used it. But that would require you to redefine that reference in the .mod to have that happen.

And an encounter that references something by a child ID in the database that does not exist in that database will not work.

So just remember there is no way to reference a child id From one DB in another - I mean you can - its just no guarantee its going to be the correct one unless someone does some magic translation for that data under the hood. You can look in db.xml if you like - you will see an <npc> node and children number under it. That is what that will match when you reference things like that.

[drempel]

Again anything with a child reference will fail. That id-000xxx is a child ID reference. The refernce.npcdata.id-0010&Foo is a .mod reference. Which will be the same for different campaigns. Now - if you shift the .mod around and it stores a different name in it then the old name will no longer be referencable by those that used it. But that would require you to redefine that reference in the .mod to have that happen.

And an encounter that references something by a child ID in the database that does not exist in that database will not work.

So just remember there is no way to reference a child id From one DB in another - I mean you can - its just no guarantee its going to be the correct one unless someone does some magic translation for that data under the hood. You can look in db.xml if you like - you will see an <npc> node and children number under it. That is what that will match when you reference things like that.

No I get that, hence why I was confused....but it turns out I was looking at the wrong encounter record lol. The ones that work when doing an export are prefixed with reference.npcdata. which maybe tells it to look in the module only for the id instead of the campaigns db? For a lark I tried adding that by hand to to the original module's xml that was busted but it never found the entries so no joy there. *shrugs*.

anyways got the double module workaround. How one gets the lookups to scope themselves to the module's records when a module is recording the entry during export and then finding them again is a mystery to me ATM (there's obviously some massaging of the data going on when you click the export button, for refrences to mastiff's in the MM it seems to be searching by name rather than ID in the XML).

[SilentRuin]

No I get that, hence why I was confused....but it turns out I was looking at the wrong encounter record lol. The ones that work when doing an export are prefixed with reference.npcdata. which maybe tells it to look in the module only for the id instead of the campaigns db? For a lark I tried adding that by hand to to the original module's xml that was busted but it never found the entries so no joy there. *shrugs*.

anyways got the double module workaround. How one gets the lookups to scope themselves to the module's records when a module is recording the entry during export and then finding them again is a mystery to me ATM (there's obviously some massaging of the data going on when you click the export button, for refrences to mastiff's in the MM it seems to be searching by name rather than ID in the XML).

The reference data is the .mod data - with fixed names. Usually take from whatever you loaded it up from. The local DB records have child ID's. As you started with a child ID in your original name you saved to a .mod - that will be part of its name. At least I assume that is what is happening based on the reference.npcdata.<child ID> you got in there.

[webdove]

Hi Silent, It appears from my testing today that the names in Rob2E spell coding like: "Polymorph (60) (C) =" vs the standard name like "Polymorph" are not recognized as valid enablers of your polymorphism extension.
Even though you might not see why some player would use the Rob2E spell coding for polymorph type spells, I have observed that players universally use the Rob2E versions since in virtually all cases they are better.

You might consider matching the spell name up to, but not including the first "(" as a way or removing the current incompatibility with Rob2E effects mods.
Cheers
Web

BTW, so far I have not seen the Polymorphism extension wipe any LOS memory (yay) and it enables players to select, move and see through owned NPCs just like I wanted. I actually bought it hoping it would permit perfect vision without "Party Vision and Movement" enabled and it appears to do that for me. Thanks for that!

[SilentRuin]

Hi Silent, It appears from my testing today that the names in Rob2E spell coding like: "Polymorph (60) (C) =" vs the standard name like "Polymorph" are not recognized as valid enablers of your polymorphism extension.
Even though you might not see why some player would use the Rob2E spell coding for polymorph type spells, I have observed that players universally use the Rob2E versions since in virtually all cases they are better.

You might consider matching the spell name up to, but not including the first "(" as a way or removing the current incompatibility with Rob2E effects mods.
Cheers
Web

BTW, so far I have not seen the Polymorphism extension wipe any LOS memory (yay) and it enables players to select, move and see through owned NPCs just like I wanted. I actually bought it hoping it would permit perfect vision without "Party Vision and Movement" enabled and it appears to do that for me. Thanks for that!

Correct - the keywords that trigger this are the standard WOTC standard names. NPC's have keywords in actions, traits, or spells DB entries while PC's have keywords in traits or powers DB entries. From the user perspective that means you just drop the polymorph, true polymorph, animal shapes, shape change spells in the action tab or wild shape, shapechanger, or shapeshifter in the Abilities tab for PC's - for NPC's that would be dropping all of them in the main page tab. Neither require the acual link to be dropped in - all they are looking for is the keyword - the code literally could care less what the data for that "name" is.

But no - I don't really use anything but my stuff (and now Aridhro's and in one special case - to prove my rolls truly are Will Wheaton quality type of rolls - MadNomad's stats one for one campaign). No reason except I like to be in control of the code running in my campaigns.

So no plans to support every other potential extension naming conventions out there. Just create an empty power of the of the matching expected name and you'll be fine. Or rename the one you have.