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README
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README
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= Treasurer’s README file for Treasurer version 0.1 =
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== Overview ==
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Name: Treasurer
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Technical name: treasurer
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Purpose: To provide an interface for mods which want to spawn ItemStacks randomly and
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an interface for mods which create new items.
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Version: 0.1
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Dependencies: none
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License: WTFPL
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== Introduction ==
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Problem:
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There are a bunch of mods which have cool items but they won’t appear in the world by
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themselves.
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There are some mods which randomly distribute treasures into the world. Sadly, these only
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distribute the items they know—which are just the items of the mod “default” most of the
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time. The items of the other mods are completely missed.
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The reason for this is that the distributing mods can’t know what sort of items are available
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unless they explicitly depend on the mods that defines these. Viewed the other way round,
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the item-defining mods that also distribute these items into the world are limited in the
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sense that they only know one means of distributing items.
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There is a gap between defining items and distributing them. Every time a mod does both,
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flexibility is limited and expansion becomes difficult.
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To bridge this gap, Treasurer has been written. Treasurer makes it possible a) for mods to define
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treasures without bothering _how_ these are distributed into the world and b) for mods to distribute
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treasures around the world without knowledge about _what_ treasures exactly are distributed.
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== Technical side of Treasurer ==
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=== technical overview ===
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To get a working Treasurer architecture and actually get some treasures into the world,
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you need:
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* Treasurer
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* at least one treasure registration mod
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* at least one treasure spawning mod
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=== treasurer registration mod ===
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Firstly, there are the treasure registration mods (TRMs). The task of TRMs is to tell
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Treasurer which items does it have to offer, which relative appearance probabilities these
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treasures should have, how “precious” the treasure is considered (on a scale from 0 to 10)
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, optionally how big the stack of items should be and optionally how much worn out it is.
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TRMs must depend on at least two mods: On treasurer and on the mod or mods
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where the items are defined. Technically, a TRM consists of nothing more than a long
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list of “registration” function calls. While this seems trivial, the task of balancing
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out probabilties and balancing out preciousness levels of treasures is not trivial
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and it may take a long time to get right.
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It is strongly recommended that a TRM really does nothing
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more than registering treasures (and not defining items, for example). If you want
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to make your mod compatible to Treasurer, don’t change your mod, write a TRM for
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it instead.
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There is an example TRM, called “trm_default_example”. It registers some items
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of the default as treasures. Unsurprisingly, it depends on treasurer and default.
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=== treasurer spawning mods ===
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Secondly, there are the treasure spawning mods (TSMs). The task of a TSM is to somehow
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distribute the available treasures into the world. This is also called “treasure
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spawning”. How exactly the TSM spawns the treasures is completely up the TSM. But a
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TSM has to request Treasurer to get some random treasures to distribute. A TSM may
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optionally request to filter out treasures outside certain preciousness levels, so
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it can be
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Treasurer can not guarantee to return the requestet amount of treasures, it may
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return an empty table, for two reasons:
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1) There is no TRM activated. There must be at least one to work
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2) The preciousness filter filtered out. This problem can be fixed by installing more
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TRMs or by balancing the existing TRMs to cover as many preciousness levels as
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possible. It also may be that the range specified by the TSM was too small. It is
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recommended to keep the requested range at least of a size of 1.
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Treasurer does, however, guarantee that the returned treasures are always in the
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requested boundsa.
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A TSM has to at least depend on Treasurer.
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Like for TRMs, it is strongly recommended that a TSM does nothing more than spawning
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treasures. This does not exclude the possibility that a TSM does not depend
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on any other mod.
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There are two example TSMs. The first one is a very basic one and called “tsm_gift_example”.
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It gives a “welcome gift” (1 random treasure) to players who just joined the server
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or who respawn. The preciousness filter is not used. It does only depend on Treasurer.
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The second one is called “tsm_chests_example” and pretty advanced for an example.
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It places chests of the mod “default” between 20 and 200 node lenghts below the water
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surface and puts 1-6 random treasures into these. The lower the chest, the higher
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the preciousness. It depends on treasurer and default (for the chests, of course).
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=== Recap ===
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TRMs define treasures, TSMs spawn them. Treasurer manages the pool of available treasures.
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TRMs and TSMs do not have to know anything from each other.
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TRMs and TSMs do not neccessarily have to change any line of code of other mods to function.
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Treasurer depends on nothing.
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Important: It should always only be neccessary for TRMs and TSMs to depend on Treasurer.
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All other mods do NOT HAVE TO and SHOULD NOT depend on Treasurer.
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=== On rarity and preciousness ===
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==== rarity ====
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Rarity in Treasurer works in a pretty primitive way: The relative rarities of all
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treasures from the treasure pool are simply all added up. The probabilitiy of one
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certain treasure is then simply the rarity value divided by the sum.
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==== preciousness ====
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How “precious” an item is, is highly subjective and also not always easy to categorize.
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Preciousness in Treasurer’s terms should be therefore viewed as “utility” or as
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“reward level” or “strength” or even “beauty” or whatever positive attributes you can
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think of for items.
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So, if you create a TRM and your treasure is something you want the player work
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hard for, assign it a high preciousness. Everyday items that are already easy to
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obtain in normal gameplay certainly deserve a lower precious than items that are
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expensive to craft.
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If your treasure consists of a powerful
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item, assign it a high preciousness. When in doubt, try to value gameplay over
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personal taste. Remember that TSMs can (and will!) filter out treasures based
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on their preciousness.
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For TSM authors, consider preciousness this way: If the trouble the player has
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to get through to in order to obtain the treasure is high, better filter
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out unprecious treasures. If your TSM distributes many treasures all over the world and these
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are easy to obtain, filter out precious treasures.
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TSMs also can just completely ignore preciousness, then the given treasures base
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on sheer luck.
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==== Recap ====
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Rarity determines the chance of a treasure, whereas preciousness determines
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the difficulty to obtain it.
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== Overview of examples ==
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- trm_default_example - registers items of default mod
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- tsm_chests_example - spawns chests (from the default mod)
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- tsm_gift_example - gives one treasure as a “welcome gift” to joined or respawned players
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== Treasurer API documentation ==
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=== API documentation for treasure registration mods ===
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The API consists of one function, which is called “treasurer.register_treasure”.
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treasurer.register_treasure - registers a new treasure
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(this means the treasure will be ready to be spawned by treasure spawning mods.
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parameters:
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name: name of resulting ItemStack, e.g. “mymod:item”
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rarity: rarity of treasure on a scale from 0 to 1 (inclusive). lower = rarer
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preciousness: subjective preciousness on a scale from 0 to 10 (inclusive)
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higher = more precious.
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count: optional value which specifies the multiplicity of the item. Default
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is 1. See count syntax help in this file.
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wear: optional value which specifies the wear of the item. Default is 0,
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which disables the wear. See wear syntax help in this file.
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note:
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This function does some basic parameter checking to catch the most obvious
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mistakes. If invalid parameters have been passed, the input is rejected and
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the function returns false. However, it does not cover every possible
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mistake, so some invalid treasures may slip through.
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note:
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Rarity does not imply preciousness. A rare treasure may not neccessarily a
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very precious one. A treasure chest with scorched stuff inside may be very
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rare, but it’s certainly also very unprecious.
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returns:
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true on success,
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false on failure
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=== data formats ===
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format of count type:
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A count can be a number or a table
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count = number
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--> it’s always number times
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count = {min, max}
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--> it’s pseudorandomly between min and max times, math.random() will be
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used to chose the value
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count = {min, max, prob_func}
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--> it’s between min and max times, and the value is given by
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prob_func (see below)
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format of wear type:
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completely analogous to count
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format of prob_func function:
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prob_func = function()
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parameters:
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(none)
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returns:
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--> a random or pseudorandom number between 0 (inclusive) and 1 (exclusive).
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notes:
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prob_func is entirely optional, if it’s not used, treasurer will
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default to math.random. You can use prob_func to define your own
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random function, in case you don’t wish your values to be evenly
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distributed.
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=== API documentation for treasure spawning mods
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The API consists of one function, called “treasurer.select_random_treasures”.
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treasurer.select_random_treasures - request some treasures from treasurer
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parameters:
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count: (optional) amount of treasures. If this value is nil, treasurer assumes a default of 1.
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minimal_preciousness: (optional) don’t consider treasures with a lower preciousness. If nil, there’s no lower bound.
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maximum_preciousness: (optional) don’t consider treasures with a higher preciousness. If nil, there’s no upper bound.
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returns:
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a table of ItemStacks (the requested treasures) - may be empty
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