What are RuleSets?
This is a concept where attributes of a gaming system gets packaged together to be consumed by the WheelMUD Gaming Engine. This opens the posibilities to any pencil and paper gaming system, or even custom systems. The first attempt at a ruleset, contained GURPS Lite. This ruleset can now be found under the Files folder in the trunk.
What is contained in a RuleSet?
RuleSets contain, but are not limited to:
- NPC and Mob stats
- Gaming formulas
- Skill Trees
- Feats
Tentative Technology: Zip Archives
At this time, it looks as zip archives will be how to package RuleSets. Zip archives is just the packaging mechanism, not how they will be stored.
Task:
Create folder structure for unpacked RuleSets
Task:
Create system/code/utility to pack and unpack RuleSets. This will allow them to be transportable across MUDs.
How are RuleSets stored?
The last implemented version of RuleSets used XML files to store the gaming data. Each RuleSet had its own set of custom parsers to read data into the Gaming Engine.
Technology: XML
Gaming systems are very diverse, and it is very difficult to create one XML schema to fit all situations. I believe that a better solution is to allow the people creating these XML files leeway in how to do their particular schema.
How are RuleSets injected into the main system?
Technology: LINQ To XML
This is a textbook case of where to use LINQ To XML. I did a quick test, and it is a LOT less code than how the original parsers were coded.
How is the functionality in a RuleSet discovered by the WheelMUD gaming engine?
There will be a master.xml file that will describe what type is each file is, what parser to use, and what is the base class that will be used to contain the data. This file is read at the MUD server startup. This will be set from the main configuration file.
Master File Format
The master file will have a root element called "Files". The Files child elements will be "tables" and "rules"
Tables
These tables contain the stats, skills, modifiers, and other table like entries in a gaming system. The tables element will contain one or more "file" element(s). A table branch would look like this:
Rules
These rules contain the actual sucess or failure rules for each table type. Some gaming systems have varying rules, and this will help provide the gaming engine support for them.
So an empty master file would look like this:
