Tracking the energy usage of one of my characters from https://kaerwyn.com, as well as one from https://tawaa-rp.net
This is a bash script I wrote to help me with bookkeeping of one of my characters over on a Creative Writing Group site I'm a member of. The basics are that this character has a 'magic' system that utilizes regular old electricity to function. I made this because I hadn't really seen any mana trackers out there and I wanted to have my own to kind of keep tabs on this character and explore their abilities quickly. I'm putting this out in public both as a bit of transparency - if I'm utilizing this character in a story/campaign it's fairly simple to check my numbers - and also because, again, I wasn't able to find anything like this. Hopefully with some modification it can fit someone else's needs.
Effectively this character's power usage is governed by the formula:
Energy=((10*Distance))+Mass^2/Efficiency
With energy in Watts (stored in Watt Hours), Distance in Meters, Mass in Kilograms, and Efficiency determined by his own skill with particular abilities.
This makes use of several external programs, most of which should be on a default installation of Ubuntu Linux. However, you may need the following:
bcmath tmux lolcat figlet ascii-image-converter
By default the script is set for my male mage Marcus. In the config file you can edit the following:
Name - The name of your character Pronoun - What pronoun to use. This is not for something like "He/Him"; rather, the script will output things such as "Marcus is using his telekinesis..."; and you'd want to put whatever pronoun you feel would be correct for your character in that sentence.
Log file - Where to store the log
Picture - What picture to use for the splash screen Artist - Who drew the picture? This will be displayed on the splash screen after the picture intro.
Power levels:
Max/High/Mid/Low/Crippled/Cripfac. What the max power is and the starting powers for High/Mid/Low, as well as how crippled the character is (ie, how much power do they actually have available)
Colors:
These determine the color the remaining power is displayed as.
Powers and efficiency:
These define the powers - which you'll enter as commands at the prompt - and the efficiency rating as a decimal.
Can be launched with ./marcus.sh and no arguments. This will display a short splash screen animation before launching tmux with the script, and a log of the commands you've used.
Alternatively, just the calculation prompt can be launched with ./marcus-calc.sh. This can either take no arguments, or the following:
Max
Rested
Tired
Exhausted
Depleted
Custom (number)
These will determine the starting levels of stored power; Max starts at the maximum defined power levels. Rested starts somewhere between 75% and 100% of maximum power. Tired starts somewhere between 50% and 75% of maximum power. Exhausted starts somewhere between 25% and 50% of maximum power. Depleted starts somewhere between 0% and 25% of maximum power. Custom allows you to just specify a custom charge level.
When launching without arguments, or when launching the main script, you'll be prompted with the above options; in addition, you may specify whether the character is 'crippled', removing up to the maximum of 4 energy sources from the character. This is there to help with physical injury/damages. If crippled limbs are defined, then the maximum available energy will be lowered by 25% for each crippled limb.
Following this, you can specify whether a hologram is on or off; this is a basic illusion thing for the character that brings with it some minor persistent energy drain.
Finally, you'll be dropped to the main prompt. All options are specified, however, to list them out, you may run an ability, move around, rest, recharge, set a custom energy level, turn the hologram on/off, or quit.
Default abilities are:
glow shock grab heat noise
These can be invoked with their names, followed by three numbers in the format of Duration (in minutes) Mass (in Kilograms) and Distance (in Meters).
The command holo with the arguments on or off will toggle the additional persistent energy drain.
The following commands involve movement; they simply take a duration - in minutes, as an argument:
Rest Move Work
Rest will have a minimal average power drain. Move will have an average amount of power drained. Work will set the power drain to the maximum level that the character can take from physical movement.
You may also issue the command reset <number> in order to reset the energy usage to a particular level. This script has minimal error catching, so sometimes it's possible to zero out the energy available with a malformed command. The reset command will let you simply reset to the previous level and start over.
Finally, quit will allow you to quit the script; tmux and such will automatically close for you. Note that there's a very naive way of closing the log file, so if you're accessing it in other programs those may also be killed when you exit.
There's the wonderful people over at the Realm of Kaerwyn who have supported me with my creative endeavors, both with tech and with writing.
Finally, the splash image of this character is art which was created by John Fell as a Patreon reward back when he was doing that sort of stuff. You can find his patreon - should he choose to resume activity there - over at https://www.patreon.com/Blue_Cheese
The image itself was converted from his work into ascii art by the ascii-to-image program from https://github.com/TheZoraiz/ascii-image-converter