DICES Engine

(D&D Interactive Character Expandable Sheet Engine)
Engine for creating interactive and automated TRPG character sheets.

ex. MareCreator

by Alexey "NotLexa" Kozhanov (Алексей Кожанов)

DICES Engine consists of three parts:

• Render engine (for now it's only a plain HTML dynamic page for NW.JS)
• MareCreator Formula Parser (MCFP) - JavaScript's module for parsing attribute effects' or formulas' code, turning them into JS objects that abstractly represent a formula's code parts, and (optionally) converting these objects into JS function.
• Template Builder - Python module for building (compiling) DICES Engine templates in format of JSON, using DICES Engine attributes written in Python (Python 3.x, preferably >=3.10).

Made for @arkain123 ≽^•⩊•^≼

How to install

1. Install NodeJS.
2. Clone the repository.
3. Run shell command npm install in repository's directory.

How to run

1. Run shell command npm run start in repository's directory.

How to build templates

1. Create a python script, preferably with extention .build.py:

   import sys
   try:
       from core import template_builder as tb
   except:
       import pathlib
       sys.path.append(str(pathlib.Path(__file__).parent.parent.parent))
       from core import template_builder as tb
   import json
   
   
   
   ... # here you can generate attribute tree that you will use in template_data later
   
   
   
   template_data = tb.TemplateData(
       name = "", # add template's display name here
       version = 1,
       attributes = tb.AttributeTree(...)
   )
   
   if __name__ == '__main__':
       with open(__file__[:(-9 if __file__.endswith('.build.py') else -3)]+'.json', 'w') as f:
           json.dump(template_data.parse(), f, indent=(None if '-compact' in sys.argv[1:] else 2))
   

2. Run it (should be working with running from anywhere)

3. (Optional) If your template data is too big and template JSON-file becomes too heavy, you can run this script with -compact flag. In this way, template JSON-file will be written in one line.

How to deploy DICES Engine on web client

Native DICES Engine render engine

1. Run shell command npm run browserify in repository's directory. It will create a new file in the repo's directory: index_bundle.js, a bundled version of all core scripts and index.js in one script, compatible with deploying in regular HTML document.
2. In index.html, change <script src="index.js" id="script" platform="NODE"></script> to <script src="index_bundle.js" id="script"></script> it is essential that platoform attribute is removed when deploying for the web.

Custom render engine

Whenever you want to use your custom render engine for DICES engine, you must create your own HTML document and JS script connected to it. However, to use DICES Engine functionality, your own JS script must be compatible with CommonJS, as you need to require("./core/dices_engine.cjs") to make it work. In that case, you can create a NodeJS script and make it browserified with npm run browserify.