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Author Topic: i am confused about the format and [SELECT_CASTE]  (Read 1078 times)

Defensive kobra

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i am confused about the format and [SELECT_CASTE]
« on: June 06, 2020, 01:01:56 am »

in every example creature RAW i have seen, some things seem to be defined directly, weras some reason seemingly have to use [SELECT_CASTE:ALL] or [SELECT_CASTE:(specific caste)] to work and i really want to know why
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Hugo_The_Dwarf

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Re: i am confused about the format and [SELECT_CASTE]
« Reply #1 on: June 06, 2020, 02:26:03 am »

When the CREATURE tag is defined and you're adding tags to construct a creature, it is effectively running on "SELECT_CASTE:ALL" basically in the background, But once you start to define a [CASTE] it breaks that and now you're adding tags to CREATURE:CASTE as a sub object of the CREATURE. Thus when you want to start adding things back to the creature again for it as a whole you use SELECT_CASTE:ALL stating "all these tags I will be adding if for the whole creature (aka apply to all castes)

when you use [SELECT_CASTE] it goes back to editing the before defined CASTE that was created before (IE MALE, or FEMALE) technically you could just go back up the caste definition and add the tags there, but the thing with [SELECT_CASTE] is there is a sister/brother token [SELECT_ADDITIONAL_CASTE] that lets you add another caste to the selection. Say you have a creature with 5 castes, and 3 of them share the same tokens, like say [BODY:2WING] instead of just adding that line 3 times in the definitions, you can just do SELECT_CASTE:A then SELECT_ADDITIONAL_CASTE:C, SELECT_ADDITIONAL__CASTE:D then add the above token of adding two wings and the flier tag and gaits.

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Defensive kobra

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Re: i am confused about the format and [SELECT_CASTE]
« Reply #2 on: June 12, 2020, 11:33:12 am »

When the CREATURE tag is defined and you're adding tags to construct a creature, it is effectively running on "SELECT_CASTE:ALL" basically in the background, But once you start to define a [CASTE] it breaks that and now you're adding tags to CREATURE:CASTE as a sub object of the CREATURE. Thus when you want to start adding things back to the creature again for it as a whole you use SELECT_CASTE:ALL stating "all these tags I will be adding if for the whole creature (aka apply to all castes)

when you use [SELECT_CASTE] it goes back to editing the before defined CASTE that was created before (IE MALE, or FEMALE) technically you could just go back up the caste definition and add the tags there, but the thing with [SELECT_CASTE] is there is a sister/brother token [SELECT_ADDITIONAL_CASTE] that lets you add another caste to the selection. Say you have a creature with 5 castes, and 3 of them share the same tokens, like say [BODY:2WING] instead of just adding that line 3 times in the definitions, you can just do SELECT_CASTE:A then SELECT_ADDITIONAL_CASTE:C, SELECT_ADDITIONAL__CASTE:D then add the above token of adding two wings and the flier tag and gaits.

okay but then why is it that many creatures just uses [SELECT_CASTE:ALL] just to define some stuff about hair colours, length and skin tone?
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Hugo_The_Dwarf

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Re: i am confused about the format and [SELECT_CASTE]
« Reply #3 on: June 12, 2020, 11:49:46 pm »

Because they defined some castes, and need to use SELECT_CASTE:ALL so it adds those details to all of the castes.
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Defensive kobra

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Re: i am confused about the format and [SELECT_CASTE]
« Reply #4 on: June 13, 2020, 06:22:26 am »

okay but why is it nessesary for those things to be written after the castes are defined, would it not work just fine if they defined it before the castes?
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Hugo_The_Dwarf

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Re: i am confused about the format and [SELECT_CASTE]
« Reply #5 on: June 13, 2020, 11:18:53 pm »

At this point it seems like you are trolling. if you started right after the castes, it'd only go into the last defined caste, so as I've said already SELECT_CASTE:ALL will then apply all tags to all castes IE the whole CREATURE.
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Defensive kobra

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Re: i am confused about the format and [SELECT_CASTE]
« Reply #6 on: June 14, 2020, 05:55:35 am »

yes but i still do not understand why you would want to do something that are applied to all castes after you have defined castes when that would mean writing one additional line of code in [SELECT_CASTE:ALL] and pressing tab one additional time per line of code you want to apply to all your castes, why not just leave defining castes to the end of the document and defining tissue colors and hair lengths and stuff a bit earlier? Why do they use this seemingly ineffective method? Is there some kind of reason why it is necessary to define all the tissue appearances last? Is it so that they can be found`and edited more easily? is it necessary to define tissue appearance at the very end of the creature for some technical reason? Sorry if i come of as a bit rude i just dont understand
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Roses

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Re: i am confused about the format and [SELECT_CASTE]
« Reply #7 on: June 14, 2020, 03:13:42 pm »

yes but i still do not understand why you would want to do something that are applied to all castes after you have defined castes when that would mean writing one additional line of code in [SELECT_CASTE:ALL] and pressing tab one additional time per line of code you want to apply to all your castes, why not just leave defining castes to the end of the document and defining tissue colors and hair lengths and stuff a bit earlier? Why do they use this seemingly ineffective method? Is there some kind of reason why it is necessary to define all the tissue appearances last? Is it so that they can be found`and edited more easily? is it necessary to define tissue appearance at the very end of the creature for some technical reason? Sorry if i come of as a bit rude i just dont understand

As long as the appearance modifiers are defined after the tissues they modify, I'm fairly certain they don't need to be declared after the castes.

Also, the tabs are not necessary, there is no indentation requirements for the raws, so it really is just one extra line
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Madde

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Re: i am confused about the format and [SELECT_CASTE]
« Reply #8 on: June 16, 2020, 10:26:20 am »

Why do they use this seemingly ineffective method? Is there some kind of reason why it is necessary to define all the tissue appearances last? Is it so that they can be found`and edited more easily? is it necessary to define tissue appearance at the very end of the creature for some technical reason? Sorry if i come of as a bit rude i just dont understand

Adding that one extra line to the token framework that you are just going to copy-paste for hundreds of creatures is easier. This way, Toady didn't have to search for the space between body/tissue definition  tokens and the first instance of castes for every creature, he could just scroll to the end and add it in there.
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