How To Create A Character.

[Brune]

UPDATE: New patch allows you to create a character with a GUI. This system is now out of date, leaving the information up for posterity.


JSON FILES!

So first thing to explain is what the JSON format is. After parsing google I found a multitude of videos explaining json in 10+ minutes. Put simply it's a standard format that we can use to exchange data with a program. An example looks like this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JSON#Example

Basically you have bools, strings and ints. Or in simple terms Bool is a True or False, strings are text "like this", and ints are numbers. (so are floats but more about those later)

So lets go to where The Away Team is installed. Go to the game in your steam library, right click on it, go to properties and under the local files tab is browse local files which will open the directory.

From there go into assets\char here are our json files.

Here is an example of one:

{
    "name": "Corra Emmer",
    "sex": "female",
    "history": [
        "Corra is a bit hobbled",
        "by a crippling injury,",
        "but her aptitude with",
        "biology and chemistry",
        "qualified her for this",
        "journey. She is very",
        "observant and quick to",
        "notice new sights and",
        "sounds, and potential",
        "danger. She is fond of",
        "socializing with other",
        "crew, and often takes",
        "on a leadership role."
    ],
    "traits": [
        "Human",
        "Scientist",
        "Observant",
        "Teamworker",
        "Disabled"
    ],
    "attributes": {
        "age": 50,
        "mental": 9,
        "physical": 1,
        "social": 5
    },
    "sprites":
    [
        "blue_blackhair.png"
    ]
}

Here are a list of traits by type:

Career Choices = { "Mechanic", "Farmer", "Politician", "Soldier",
"Surgeon", "Scientist", "Athlete", "Comedian", "Counselor" };

Positive Traits = { "Observant", "Lucky", "Empathic", "Cautious", "Abstemious",
"Strong", "Stealthy", "Tough", "Teamworker", "Polite", "Confident", "Genial" };

Negative Traits = { "Distracted", "Stubborn", "Violent", "Reckless", "Gluttonous",
"Weak", "Addicted", "Disabled", "Loner", "Kleptomaniac", "Xenophobic", "Competitive" };

Sprites are only referenced by name and are in assets\general\character_related\characters.

We've been working on a way to package this sort of stuff up and get people to create them from game, put them on the workshop and share them with friends but currently there are funding restrictions that we don't look like we can over come.

[Brune]

You can have as many traits as you want but the first one should always be your Race (Human, Cygen or Cephalopod. The more traits you add the more events will trigger. Higher Attributes are better of course and ideally the max is 10-ish. Higher gives better odds. All numbers are int32's (unless I am wrong and tried to optimize them, safe to assume unsigned int8's 0-255 range.)

[Silverain]

Just a questions on traits:

• Do you have to select a career choice or could it be replaced with a alternative trait type?

Also a slight note Soldier seems to be listed twice as a career choice.

I'd like to add for anyone curious about this that a good way to create a new character as a beginner is to copy a existing Character JSON file and use notepad to edit the details.
The whole process is very simple and the only thing to really watch out for ensuring the description remains about the same length and width as the default characters otherwise it overlaps the boundries.

My own character made in about 30 minutes and in intial playtest seems to do rather well.

{
"name": "Jason Silverain",
"sex": "Male",
"history": [
"Jason was amazed that ",
"he was selected for a",
"position amongst the",
"crew because of the",
"painful spinal problems",
"he suffers from. However",
"he displayed an ability",
"to remain calm and",
"detached in adversity.",
"In attempts to raise ",
"morale he has begun",
"running video game and",
"tabletop gaming nights."
],
"traits": [
"Human",
"Cautious",
"Observant",
"Teamworker",
"Weak"
],
"attributes": {
"age": 31,
"mental": 8,
"physical": 4,
"social": 6
},
"sprites":
[
"J_Silverain.png"
]
}

Sprite: http://imgur.com/a/hLrQR

Download: (Zip File) https://mega.nz/#!Kh9XiALT!VLgn40lIJIUbTljB5y1XS9MKLXgKSeoRdUnZtfXaNgY

[Brune]

Originally posted by DoominaBottle:

Just a questions on traits:

• Do you have to select a career choice or could it be replaced with a alternative trait type?

Sorry, I didn't see this question before. You can replace them with an alternative trait type. I mean really the system is super flexible. It will also break in all sorts of FUN ways! :D but seriously I tried to keep it loose so you could even take the exact code framework and make a bunch of other simular IF games. I've not decided if I wanted to release the source code though as it's my first project and has billions of mistakes.

[Brune]

workshop support coming soon (tm)

[dq_177]

So character creation is a part of the game proper now, but can only have 3 Traits + 1 Negative Trait.

No limit on stats though? That's good, I don't mind having the option availible to be as weak or as overpowered with these worthless incompetent flesh sacks as I want.

[Brune]

Originally posted by dq_177:

So character creation is a part of the game proper now, but can only have 3 Traits + 1 Negative Trait.

No limit on stats though? That's good, I don't mind having the option availible to be as weak or as overpowered with these worthless incompetent flesh sacks as I want.

the only limit is 9 which is honestly fairly high for our stats. Specially over all 3 stats. So custom characters probably will be overpowered a tad.

I do want to redo the random button(s) for the stats in a later patch as well. They favor 9 because I assumed people would just want a high random button (to cut down on people just rolling until they got a high rol, just give them high rolls every time sort of thing), I wanted to gear it towards what people would typically put but randomly. Although it seems I was wrong and that I should either include or change the random stats button to how we originally generated the base characters. So we will probably mess around with that. I'd say 5 is probably min you should go unless you want to make a really killable character.

For our base characters, highest is 10 and lowest is 2. I might try to see if I can either kick down the base characters to 9 to match and then retweak/balance around that.

[Talien]

You can kinda cheat if you still use manual JSON editing to create characters since you don't have to include a negative trait like with the in game character creator. I tried it for the heck of it and that character worked just fine.

[Brune]

Originally posted by Talien:

You can kinda cheat if you still use manual JSON editing to create characters since you don't have to include a negative trait like with the in game character creator. I tried it for the heck of it and that character worked just fine.

Oh yeah I mean we still respect for the most part manual editing. Although there is obviously more risks of issues with it.