Ironwood Omnimedia

As promised, today I am getting in depth with the Character Journal of the PC manager. Frankly, this feature may not mean anything to many players, but for some like me this is an exciting element of the program that I plan to use like crazy!

It seems stupid on paper. A character journal is like a diary. I could just use a word processor and do the same thing, right? Well, you could. However, what the character journal in our program does is create nodes and organizes your journal more like a codex or a database. For instance, you initially start with several parent nodes including Areas, Characters, and Quests (think of them like categories but an entry can only have one). You don’t need to use these, they are simply a starting point. You can make up any number of these parent nodes, change the default ones, etc. You can add child nodes to these such as Allies, Enemies, Party Members for the Characters nodes. In regards to your journal you simply select a node that your entry will belong to and add a new entry, edit an entry, or add to an entry. These all behave differently.

Adding a new entry adds a new entry with a title, a real world entry date, and the journal text. Its simple, and works well. Furthermore you can link other nodes to this one (and the node you link to can be set to add the current new entry to that node’s links). These links appear at the end of the journal entry in a section entitle “See also: “ which then lists all of the related nodes. For instance, you come to a small town. You may want to add the town to your Areas node. In the town is a unique NPC you think is important to remember so you add an entry for the new character in the Characters node. You can then add a link, or reference, of the town where you met the NPC. Also, when you link them you select the option to return the reference. Now, when you review the town’s node you see a reference to the character at the bottom of the entry. Also, at the bottom of the character’s entry is the town’s reference. This makes it easy to identify why and how the node might be important as well as other elements surrounding that character you may need to review, such as a quest.

Editing an entry will allow you to directly edit the node. You can change text, references, etc. This should only be done if you made a mistake in your entry. For adding new information you should, instead, Add to Entry.

Adding to an Entry allows you to add new journal entries to the previous entry. The entry is tagged with the date you entered it. Furthermore, new entries can have their own references to another entry. This is a bit confusing on paper, but how it works is that a second or third entry in a subject, such as a character, can reference a town, but not a specific entry in that town. Otherwise, things could get really wonky. Adding new entries shows how things can change with a character. For instance, a new character may seem like an ally, but if you review each new entry on that character you may find out more about him. Things, like their actions, may start to reveal themselves.

Your journals are not printed with the character sheets as they can get to be HUGE. However, you can print them separately. When you do print them your chapters are made up of your primary nodes (such as your Areas, Characters, and Quest entries). Sub sections are based on the child categories (up to 3 I think) and each of these has your parent entries and their child entries.

While its not settled yet, there may be additional elements to an entry that I am still looking at ironing out. Primarily adding images is one thing I think would be very useful, especially for areas. So, while only the text portion and organization is guaranteed at this point, I am playing with a number of other options that could be added to release or at least patched in later. As it stands, the ability to add so much information, and organize it so easily is really robust. For players interested in this kind of stuff, I don’t think you could ask for anything better (except maybe using a wiki, but this is pretty damn close in this regard).

So, I’ll get back to work on getting the best RPG software ever to be released finished.

Until it is, Happy Gaming!

This entry was posted on Sunday, June 20th, 2010 at 11:56 am and is filed under Developer Blog, DPnP, E-RPG General Development, Overall Development, Player Character Creator. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.