Updates to Template:Item

Hi all,

I've started making several upgrades to Template:Item, which were sitting at the back of my mind for a while now.

I wanted to write the details here, both to get feedback, and to help organize my own thoughts.

Upper River Exchange

Now that we have a second market place, it seemed appropriate that the Item template will support this similarly to how it supports the buy/sell information at the "regular" Bazaar.

So I've added new template parameters, equivalent to the existing ones (e.g. "Upper Shop" to be alongside "Shop", "Upper Buying/Selling" to be alongside "Buying/Selling", etc.). All the details are in the (newly created!) template documentation page.

The template code will produce slightly different text depending if the item can be bought, sold or both, and also if if can or cannot be bought/sold at the Bazaar in London.

By default, buy/sell prices are in Hinterland Scrip. However, there are a few items who sell there for echoes. So I've added the new optional parameter "Upper Sell Currency", which can be set to anything really, but we'll use it for "Echoes" when needed.

The next step, of course, is to go over all items which can be either bought or sold at Upper River Exchange and add the proper parameters. Some already converted examples:

• Sneak-Thief's Mask
• Nikolas & Sons Instant Ablution Absolution
• Ambiguous Eolith

Item Effects List

A while ago, I've updated the {{Storylet}} and {{Card}} templates so that instead of supporting a fixed (yet large) number of possible "OptionX" parameters, it will let a Module handle that, so that the template wouldn't have this limitation. This also should help performance (since even if there's only one used Option, the template must process and test the value of all parameters, unlike a module).

So the next thing I plan to add real soon is somethings similar for the Effects list in the Item template. For any page using this template the change will be transparent. But behind the scenes the Item template will call a new module to process the "EffectX" parameters.

Besides being hopefully a touch more efficient, and removing an arbitrary limitation on the number of possible effects, the real benefit will comes later from having a module process the item's effects. To see the benefits from that, I'll go to the next step in the plan:

Best in Slot

With a module processing each of the item's effect, the module can easily utilize the existing Module:ItemList to compare the effect and produce more useful data. What I'm aiming at is that instead of the regular (boring) effects list we have today:

• Respectable +4
• Shadowy +6
• Dangerous +3

The template (and module) will instead display:

• Respectable +4 (best in slot)
• Shadowy +6 (best in slot non-Fate)
• Dangerous +3

etc.

I already have 90% of the module code for that, but more testing is needed.