Custom data types - a full blown article with example(s)?

[adrm]

Clearly, this is very powerful. But I feel further tutorial(s) would be of benefit.

Reading the 3 articles found here is a must, but it would be nice to see a full example where the author explains their intentions for the example (e.g. “I have 5 people, belonging to 2 factions. One is a traitor, while 2 people are rivals. A secret map item belongs to 1 person, but 2 others know of its existence.”) and then defines new data types and relationships based on this. (For the purposes of said example, ignore the existence of templates, by the way.)

Sometimes, both in the views when using items, and while editing data types, choices will be grayed out/disabled. Please remind us why, when appropriate.

Also, I would skip the most elementary details, such as assigning colors, icons, etc to new types.

Here’s me hoping someone has the experience and patience to create such a guide. I’ve watched most of Rob’s video, but my poor German is letting me down.

[adrm]

Oooh, so needed! Well, for me, anyway.
Getting a bit frustrated with myself here.

I attempted to start with something simple: Define the type “Organization” and defining a relationship type “Member / Member of” for characters.

Nope. Can’t do it.
The Organization item is there. The relationship item is there. But I just can’t make them interact in a predictable way.

Even banging my head against the screen didn’t help. Perhaps what little I remember from OOP with abstract types and instancing is tripping me up somehow. Hard to say.

[matt]

Hi,
So there are two possible approaches here, depending on what you are trying to accomplish:

• Do you want a hierarchical arrangement, like how “Character” and “Character Group” is setup in the fiction template?
• Or do you want a relationship setup, like how “Events” and “Story Arcs” relate to each other in the fiction template?

From your description I assume you are after the latter (or at least, that is what you have been trying to setup thus far).

Steps to take are as follows:

1. Create new “Organisation” item type, as per screenshot below.
   • The only thing special I did here was tick the box to show the Organisation in the Sidebar and Relationship Comparisons
2. Create a new Relationship Type called “Member” with:
   • Label: “member”
   • Item types with a field for this relationship: “Organisation”
     • i.e. Organisations have members
   • Allowed item types for this relationship: “Person”
     • i.e. People can be a member of an organisation
3. Tick “Show inverse in Inspector”, and enter the Inverse Label as “Member of”
   • This is so that when you select a person, it will show “Member of: XXX” in the inspector
4. Tick “Always show in the inspector”, just so I didn’t have to hunt it down to make the screenshots

The two settings screens look like this:

And the outcome looks like this:

Matt

[matt]

If that is not what you meant, and you wanted them organised into a hierarchical arrangement instead, it would look like this:

Matt

[adrm]

Perfect!
Hierarchical was what I was going for.
My thinking was both too simple and too complex at the same time. Imagine that.

The initial idea was to keep track of what characters are part of what factions/organizations. As a memory jogger for myself.

So, I defined Anarchist as an organization and I’ve added some members to it, the next question is how can this be used beyond that initial simple requirement.

For example:
Can I filter on events where one or more Anarchist members were present to make it visually apparent in the timeline? I’m guessing this can’t be done automatically, as of now?

Is it possible to auto-populate an Arc based on the same criteria, i.e. an Anarchist being observer or participant? Again, I’m guessing no.

[matt]

For your latter two questions, the answer is “not right now”.

But that kind of “inherited relationships” is on our roadmap (it is listed on the Feature Requests section of our website), and is one of the first feature improvements we intend to work on once the dust settles on this initial release period of support spikes and a few release bugs.

[adrm]

Good to hear, Matt.

I’m very excited about the timeline! (See what I did there Ok, I won’t quit my day job.)