Custom Dice?

[Jynks]

How can I make custom dice? As in a die that dose not role numbers but instead rolls symbols? Or a mix of Symbols and numbers?

[Trevor]

I can add that pretty easily, but at this moment it isn't in. Until then, I suggest you use a regular die (of how ever many sides you want) and interpret it as you see fit. Like a "1" could be a "skull" or whatever you want.

[Jynks]

Problem is that the die is mixed.. so it means 1 and a symbol. Depending on game state you use the symbols or the numbers, also the die are coloured and they have different combinations of symbols and numbers... So 1 is also a skull, but on another die that you throw at the same time 1 = target

[Trevor]

Problem is that the die is mixed.. so it means 1 and a symbol. Depending on game state you use the symbols or the numbers, also the die are coloured and they have different combinations of symbols and numbers... So 1 is also a skull, but on another die that you throw at the same time 1 = target

You don't need to throw the dice at the same time if they results in confusion.

[Jynks]

I think this game will have to be put on hold until there is a custom dice system is all. using dice proxies just will not work I do not think.

[Trevor]

I think this game will have to be put on hold until there is a custom dice system is all. using dice proxies just will not work I do not think.

Even when you can use custom dice, I think if you'd want to roll 2 different kinds of dice at the same time that wouldn't be feasible from an interface perspective. There would be a button to roll one kind of dice, and a button to roll the other kind of dice. The only bad thing right now is you need to do the conversion of X=Y for the special dice. That's an inconvenience, but not something that would derail a project imo.

[Jynks]

i think it is... I'll just switch to another game that dose not have such problems.. it is hard enough to get board game mates to use a computer game as is, and impossible if they do not "feel" it is like the original.

[Trevor]

How exactly would you WANT this to work?

I assume a real game has you roll something like 1 normal die and 1 special die at a time. How would you want that to be implemented exactly? Would you want to roll them both at the same time? How? Would you be ok with roll 1 die with a button, and the other kind of die with a different button?

Would you want a log message like:
Trevor rolls a Skull on a DIENAME die.

[r0cknes]

That would be a cool feature, if I may add my 2 cents.

[innuendo]

Can we steal the format for chat commands?

![name of dice]!,{[face 1],[face 2],...,[face n]}

Is an n sided dace with faces named as comma separated strings. For example a d4 would look like this: !d4!,{1,2,3,4}

Then the game can track "/roll ![name of dice]" as a command, probably using "/roll !*" as the flag (* being wild card).

If you pull that out further we can combine them into grouped actions using the chat window: !attack roll!,/roll ![name of dice];/roll d6

That would give you a button "attack roll" that rolls name of dice and a d6 together.

Just thoughts on execution. Hooking into the existing architecture lets us combine them with lots of things.

[Picks-at-Flies]

This was possible on CCG Workshop; effectively you could create dice objects within your plugin which defined each side (both text and image).  To imagine how this works, imagine a multi-dimensional card with a "roll" option. When you roll it, it randomly picks one side to reveal (and announces the result in chat). You can then select multiples and get them all to roll.  This was really designed for games like Dragon Dice.

On the other hand, Wheel of Time uses four different custom dice with, from memory, 8 custom symbols between them which you roll variable numbers of, so ideally you would need an option "/roll [n] diplomacy" etc. For extra confusion, when you are rolling 40 dice, you would also want it to total the symbols rolled.

My opinion is that it's a lot of effort for a fairly niche area, but at least this gives you some explanation.

[Trevor]

I know how I can implement code-wise, and how a plugin maker can add it to a plugin. I was wondering how I should implement from the user's perspective. Jynks had mentioned a desire to roll both a normal die and also a special die at the same time. At least, I think that's what he wanted. Anywho, I don't think there is a way to do that better than rolling them one at a time, from an interface point of view. Ya, people (or even the plugin maker) can make canned messages for specific dice rolling combinations, but that's not exactly the same.

[Jynks]

Well I was thinking the best way (apart form copying how battlegrounds dose its dice) would be to just allow the plugin maker to set custom dice commands. So to be able to add a button to roll, in the same way you can add "draw" button using general function.

Something simple like this...

<dicefunction>
   <label>HitDice</label>
   <kind>D6</kind>
   <1>Skull</1>
   <2>Skull / Block</1>
   <3>Miss</1>
   <4>Miss / Block</1>
   <5>Skull</1>
   <6>Skull 2</1>
</dicefunction>

Just as an example.. it probably will not work correctly but you get the idea as in you can press the button and the plugin maker can control what the text result would be from any "side"... also "/roll HitDice-2" would roll 2 of them. and some way to strong the commands might be needed. like... "/roll D6-2 HitDice-2" rolls 4 custom dice, 2 normal D6 and two custom D6.

Battlegrounds VT has the best dice system I have seen in a app. It has 2 modes.. one is a full "modual" in for rolling dice that are shown in a pop up. You can even on the fly custom the dice rolls with modifiers and all sorts of cool stuff (the app was originality written as a VT for pen and paper RPG). Though it has a cool other function that were the plugin maker builds a dice out of GFX. So a D6 is 6 images, one of each side. Then the "roll" is that dice fast scrolling though those images, till it stops.

[Trevor]

Well, as far as user interface goes, they can click a button that says something like "Roll HitDie", and they see the result in the log.

Or they can do something like "/ra" or "/ra 4" which would roll 1 or 4 of the special dice, respectively. You may be wondering why I chose "ra". Well, "/r" is already used for rolling a regular dice. "/rd8" is used for rolling an 8-sided die (and "/rd10" and "/rd20" and so on.) I could enable a command like "/roll HitDie 5", but that would be a long thing to write out, and also it could be confusing depending on the name of the function. So I think the best solution is to use "/rollA" (or "/ra" for short) with the A indicating it refers to a special die, and not one with just N sides. A second special die, if one was needed would be "/rollB". Similar to "/roll 5", you could also do "/rollA 5" to roll a special die 5 times.
As far as a canned message button that can chain multiple rolls (like if you always rolled one d6 with one special die) you can always use multiple scripts in a canned message. Like: "/roll 5;/rollA 3"

I can always add a graphical component to rolling a die, if people wanted that. That would be pretty easy.

So you folks think that sounds good, or you have a better idea?

[Jynks]

this all sounds pretty good to me. I think a text output is fine, the only advantage of the gfx one (besides looking cool) is that there is no need to code anything, as the images themselves make the dice custom, you only need a way to name the dice and then roll that dice using those images.

As long as you can roll a mix of different dice in one roll, custom and normal... then I think it is all good though.