Variations and how they work.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 

I've decided to do this "special" on variations because it's becoming 
clear to me that a lot of people don't quite understand how to make 
variations tie in together correctly in, say, eyelids, [Paint Ballz], 
[Add Ball], [Linez], and various "override" sections. Variations can 
be added to just about any area of the .lnz, and you can tie up specific 
colour, size, and fuzz etc variations in such a way that, for instance, 
fawn patches and eyelids will only come out on brown pets and grey patches 
and eyelids on white ones. You can tie in variations between baby and 
adult .lnz sections also, so that when you adopt a fuzzy pup or kitten 
from the Adoption centre, it will grow up to be fuzzy also (or not, if 
you so choose). 

As you probably know by now if you work with variations, each section 
has one or more set of variations when you see a # followed by a number 
after it as, for instance: 

[256 Eyelid Color]
#3
29
#2
19
#1
59
## 

The game expects to see the # numbers diminish by one until they get to 
the ## which finishes off that specific variation set. Now, lets take as 
an example that you want to make sure that a dark grey eyelid is always 
on a pet with no patches and a white body; the variation is that there 
are grey patches on a pale grey-eyelidded white body, and that there are 
chocolate lids and fawn markings on a chocolate body. It so happens that 
your main breed [Ballz Info] balls are white. 

Right, let's go back to the eyelids, and indicate to the game that this 
is a set of "hooked" variations. To do this we take the top # number and 
add a period and uppercase letter to it, so it will look like this: 

[256 Eyelid Color]
#3.A
29
#2
19
#1
59
## 

It doesn't seem to matter what letter you choose, so long as you always 
have the same letter at the start of the set which is to be "hooked" to 
it. And this is the point that I want to emphasise: You do not need to 
put a (dot)(letter) after every single # number! I've seen a lot of people 
do this, and they have problems with the game either not tying up the 
variations properly or not showing them correctly on 2nd-gens. 

Okay, so you want to tie in the patches next. You want the white body of 
the [Ballz Info] section to have the dark grey lids, so you put #3.A followed 
by no data -- the game will realise what's expected. You want the white, 
pale-grey-lidded body to have patches, so put grey-patch data under #2, 
and you want fawn markings on a brown body, so we choose #1 for that here: 

[Paint Ballz]
#3.A
#2
(grey patch data)
#1
(fawn patch data)
## 

And then there's [Color Info Override], where your first (#3.A) is the white 
body so no data goes after it and it will pick up the [Ballz Info] data, your 
second also is the white body so no data to go under #2, and the third (under 
#1) is chocolate: 

[Color Info Override]
#3.A
#2
#1
(chocolate ball data)
## 

This works every time; it works when you want to tie in different ball sizes 
([Ball Size Override] -- you may need to create this section for yourself in 
the adult part of the .lnz) and textures ([Color Info Override]) or fuzziness 
([Fuzz Override] -- you may need to create this section for yourself too) or 
[Linez], [Move], etc etc -- the quantity of possible variations is enormous. 
One other thing to note is that if you are doing several variation sets in 
a given area -- as with the Dalmatian spots -- you separate them with lines 
that have a semi-colon, never a blank line (the game sees the blank line and 
thinks that you've finished with that part of the .lnz). So you would have: 

#3
#2
(data)
#1
(data)
##
;
#3
#2
(data)
#1
(data)
##


Never


#3
#2
(data)
#1
(data)
## 

#3
#2
(data)
#1
(data)
##

1) Remember to leave one of the # numbers with no data under it, or your game 
will never pick up the relevant data from the [Ballz info] area. 

2) Remember always to finish a variation set with ##. 

3) Remember to tie in a variation set with others using only one letter to 
"hook" in each variation set (and put it on the top number in the variation sets). 

4) Remember that if you are doing several variation-sets in one section, you never 
separate them with blank lines. 
 
For those who didn't see my previous "Howto" on variations, I've got a downloadable 
version of this text which includes that earlier one also.

Enjoy! 

Carolyn Horn 


