Party Arrangement

PartyOriginNorth/East/South/West

PartyOrigin Scripts are called at the start of combat to allow the designer to place the origin point for the party. This is the point that the party and the monsters will refer to when they are being placed. It is the x=0, y=0 point for party placement and it is the initial 'turtle' position during monster placement.

There is no center location in a six-by-six area and the default origin is one and one-half places to the right and one place above the actual center of the room in which combat starts. We call one of the following scripts that belongs to the global Special Ability “Global_Combat”:

• PartyOriginNorth

• PartyOriginEast

• PartyOriginSouth

• PartyOriginWest

corresponding the direction the party is facing. The script can change the origin location by setting hook parameter 5 to the x-offset from the default location and hook parameter 6 to the y-offset from the default location. Both offsets are limited to the range plus or minus 8. For example, if parameter 5 is set to -1 and parameter 6 is set to 2 then the location will be moved one step to the left and two steps down on the combat screen.

The PartyArrangement script is called at the start of combat to determine the position of the party members on the playing field.

Parameters

hookParameter[5] – the first character will be either 'I' or 'O' depending on whether the combat is taking place indoors or outdoors.

Context

• None

If the script exists and returns a string of exactly the right length then that string is used to determine the position of the party members on the field of play relative to the party origin location (see above). Here is how it works; step-by-step.

Numbers are represented by letters. A = 0; a = 0; B = 1; b = -1; C = 2; c = -2; Etc.

The position of the party is determined. I don't know how.....I think perhaps the center of the playing field.

There is a string of characters for the case that the party is facing north Within that “North” string there is a string of characters for the case where the party has one member: The string consists of exactly two characters which define the x- and y-coordinate of the first party member with respect to the party's position. For example, he might be at x = -2, y= 1. The string would be “cB”. There is also a string for the case when there are two members in the party. The first two characters are for the first party member and the second two characters are for the second party member. For example “cBdC”. There is another string for three party members, four party members, so on up to eight party members. They might look like this:

1. "AA"

2. "AABA"

3. "AABABC"

4. "AABABCCC"

5. "AABACABCCC"

6. "AABACABCCCDC"

7. "AABACABCCCDCDA"

8. "AABACABCCCDCDAEC"

Put them all together in one big string and you have defined how the party members should be arranged for the case that the party is facing North:

"AAAABAAABABCAABABCCCAABACABCCCAABACABCCCDCAABACABCCCDCDAAABACABCCCDCDAEC"

Now you repeat the exercise for the the case where the party faces East, South, and West, in that order. Then glue all four strings together in a mighty whole. You are done.