Guide

Scenes: a country's own darts

A scene is the darts of one country (or of a few countries that share it): its local league, its youth classes, its ranking circuit of opens, its national championship. The core pack's file is data/scenes.json; a mod adds a file there or in data/scenes/.

A scene does not hold events. It is an index over ordinary content:

• its events are event templates (data/events/calendar/, see Calendar and entry rules);
• its rungs are tours (data/tours.json, see Tours and the Tour Card);
• its venues are venues with the country's code.

The scene record says which countries it covers, which tours are its rungs, what each rung is for and who may enter it. A tour that no scene names belongs to the international ladder and is on every career's calendar.

A scene record#

{
  "id": "mymod.scene.lowlands",
  "countries": ["NED"],
  "name": "Lowlands darts",
  "body": "Lowlands Darts Bond",
  "description": "Regional leagues, a ranking circuit of opens, a masters and the national championship.",
  "startable": true,
  "active": "resident",
  "seasonStart": 9,
  "rungs": [
    { "role": "local",   "tourId": "mymod.tour.lowlands-league", "entry": "residents" },
    { "role": "youth",   "tourId": "mymod.tour.lowlands-youth",  "entry": "residents" },
    { "role": "ranking", "tourId": "mymod.tour.lowlands-opens",  "entry": "open" }
  ],
  "population": { "locals": 120, "youth": 40, "juniors": 40, "nationals": 0.9 }
}

A mod that adds a tour to a scene another pack owns does not replace the scene record: it puts the rung on the tour instead (rung in tours, with the scene's id). Such rungs come after the scene's own.

Building a country's ladder with what events already do#

Who may enter#

An event of a rung marked residents takes only players who live in the scene's countries: the computer's players and yours alike. Anyone else is refused with the reason code residence (the calendar says "Residents only") and the sentence eligibility.residence. A player the event would not take anyway (too old, not the standard, a Tour Card holder) is told that reason instead: the one that would still stop them if they moved. An event of an open rung takes anyone; a player living elsewhere pays the fare from abroad.

One event may say otherwise than its rung, in its own restrict:

"restrict": { "maxAge": 17, "residents": false }

true: residents only, though the rung is open (a closed national championship in an open circuit). false: anyone, though the rung is for residents (a world junior championship held in a residents' junior tour).

Played in full or in the background#

Every scene runs in every career, at one of two levels.

• In full: its events are on the calendar and played one by one, and it keeps its population figures.
• In the background: its events are not staged, except those that say "whenBackground": "played" (a country's big open, which players from elsewhere travel to). With "quick" the event is staged there too, but resolved from the quick-result table: a national championship that gives a background country a champion each year without a dart thrown. It keeps only the local adults it says (backgroundLocals, for those staged events; nobody plays its local nights) and still keeps its club juniors and young players (backgroundJuniors, backgroundYouth), so the country goes on bringing players through.

Which level: the country the player lives in is always in full; a scene marked active: always is in full in every career; otherwise a new career's own choice decides (the new-career spec's fullCountries, a list of nation codes), and without a choice the scene's level. The choice is written into the career's own copy of the scene records, as their level, so a save keeps it whatever the pack becomes later.

Say what the scene keeps in the background. A scene that is not played in full still tops its young tier up to population.youth and its club juniors to population.juniors every year unless it says otherwise, and the grown-ups stay: left like that, a background Northern Ireland grew from about 40 players to 195 in thirty seasons and the world's own newcomers shrank to make room. Give every scene that can be in the background backgroundYouth: 0 and a small backgroundJuniors (the core uses a fifth of juniors), as the fallback record does.

Who reaches the top#

The world's newcomers each year are shared between the nations by the weights of their name pools, whichever scenes are played. They live in their own country, start in its scene's events like anyone else, and are where a country's stars come from: the pub player who comes good is one of them.

The players a scene makes for itself are there to fill its fields. They play its residents' events, the events of its own open rungs marked locals, and no other open event (the county open and the qualifying school are drawn from the world's own players, as they would be without the scene), and population.ceiling holds them to that standard. A club junior the scene made as a child is the exception on both counts: grown up, the open events are theirs. Without a ceiling a scene that is played in full brings through more good players than one that is not, and the top of the world drifts towards the countries a career happens to play: in thirty-season runs of the core pack the UK's share of the strong players went from 38% to 50% that way. So: give every scene a ceiling under the standard of the tour's qualifying (the core's is 62), and change a country's weight in the world through its name pool's weight, not through its scene's figures.

Keeping a country's professionals#

A pack that names a country's professionals (a mod's players) sees them retire one by one, and the world's yearly newcomers do not refill a named list: they are shared between all the nations by their name pools. In ten seasons of a United States draft with 56 named professionals, 41 were left, and the class would be gone in three decades.

population.pros keeps the number up. On each new year the scene counts its residents (not the human) with a potential above its ceiling, or a level above it for a player it does not hold. While it has fewer than its figure, the best of the young players it made, by level, of the ages in the tuning's scenes.broughtThrough.ages (16 to 23), are brought through: their potential is lifted to the ceiling, or their level if higher, plus a draw from scenes.broughtThrough.headroom (6 to 18), and the open events take them from then on. A scene that is not played out has hardly any young players of its own, so when it has too few it makes the rest, young players of those ages as its top-up makes them. Each player brought through takes the place of one of the world's yearly newcomers, so the world keeps its size and the top of the world does not drift towards the countries that keep a figure.

Give it the number of professionals the pack names for the country. The core's scenes have none: the world's newcomers keep the British and Irish professionals up by their name pools.

A country with no scene#

One record of the pack is marked "fallback": true and names no countries. It carries its own small ladder inside it, under template: venues, tours and events, written exactly as those records are written anywhere else. They are never scheduled as they stand. When a player comes to live in a country that no scene names, the game makes that country a copy: every id gets the country's code on the end (core.event.default-open-winter.ned), the venues are placed in that country, and {nation} in names becomes the country's name. The copy is written into the save, so the career keeps it whatever the pack becomes later.

A mod replaces the fallback by adding its own record with "fallback": true (the later one is used).

Making a country from it in the Mod Studio#

In the Mod Studio, open your pack, choose Country scenes and press New country. Type a nation's name or its code. The studio writes the same copy into your pack as ordinary records with your pack's ids (acme.scene.ned, acme.tour.ned-local, acme.venue.ned-club, acme.event.ned-open-winter): the venues, the tours, a season of events and a scene marked startable, so a new career can live there on the first save. Rename and change them in their forms. A nation that is not in the game yet is made first, under Nations.

The country also gets a housing market and a bank record of its own (acme.housing.ned, acme.loans.ned), each a copy of the default record that names this country alone: without them it would be on "typical costs". Change the homes, the rents and the loans in their forms (Housing, Banks and loans). A country that a housing or bank record already names is left with that record.

A number after the name is the country's cost level against the general figures: netherlands 1.15 makes the homes' rents, bills and prices and the cost of arriving fifteen per cent dearer (rents to the nearest ten, prices to the nearest five hundred), and exhibition nights there pay fifteen per cent more. Without a number it is 1.

Its pubs and clubs become exhibition places for club nights, pub takeovers and charity nights (acme.places.ned.clubs) and its hall for the big nights (acme.places.ned.big-nights), so a player living there is offered nights at home (Exhibitions). Add towns and venues to those two records as the country grows.

Under "Can a career start here?" a scene also lists, as Worth adding, what its countries still lack: homes of their own, a bank, exhibition places. None of them stops a career starting.

Three things to know:

• The scene is written with population.backgroundLocals 16, population.backgroundYouth 0 and population.backgroundJuniors 10 (the tuning keys studio.newCountry.backgroundLocals, studio.newCountry.backgroundYouth and studio.newCountry.backgroundJuniors). Keep figures like these: a scene that leaves them out tops its young players up every year while it runs in the background and the world's own newcomers shrink to make room (see "Played in full or in the background").
• The copy has the rungs the general scene has. The core's has a local and a ranking rung and no youth rung, so a junior career in the new country has no age-limited tour until you add one: a tour, its events and a rung with the role youth.
• A scene record of your pack shows Can a career start here? above its form: yes, with the countries, or what stands in the way, in the words the loader uses when it reports the pack.

What the loader checks#

• a rung's tour exists;
• a country code is a nation of the content;
• a country named by two scenes (the later one has it);
• a fallback record that names countries, or a second fallback record;
• a template on a record that is not the fallback, or a fallback without one;
• inside a template: every event's tour and venue is in the same template.

Each is a warning on the pack that owns the record; the pack still loads.