Version 0.1.5

Here be dragons...

I have added a new tab for the automated rehearsal system. This feature sits snugly in the "experimental" category; I have much work left to do before I will be satisfied with it, but I fear that much of that work will take a great deal of time. I wanted to share what I have put together so far. Hopefully authors will find it useful.

Since I have not updated the documentation to explain how to use the feature, here are some tips:

The automated rehearsal will run until you pause it or until it tries every possible path through your storyworld. If your storyworld contains loops such that the number of paths is indefinite, then it will presumably run for as long as you care to leave it running, though I have not actually tried running it on such a storyworld myself. Navigating to the rehearsal tab and pressing "play" will set it running; pressing "pause" will pause the rehearsal.

If you edit your storyworld after you have started a rehearsal, but before the rehearsal has finished, and if you want to have SweepWeave run through your edited storyworld, you will need to press "reset," and then "play." "Reset" causes the engine to copy the current version of your storyworld into the automated rehearsal system. Setting the system up this way lets you make changes to your storyworld while leaving a rehearsal running, which can be beneficial given that rehearsals can take a long time to run once your storyworld reaches a large enough size.

"Refresh" simply refreshes the Event Index and Cast Properties Index, showing the results of the rehearsal so far. The rehearsal screen will automatically be refreshed every 5 minutes.

The Event Index lists every encounter, option, and reaction in your storyworld, along with whether or not the event can be reached via any single path through your storyworld, and the number of paths yielding the event.

The Cast Properties Index shows the minimum and maximum values of every character trait and relationship that your storyworld actually uses. Variables that are part of your character model, but that your storyworld never makes use of, are ignored, here.

You can set the "speed" of your rehearsal to be any value from 1 to 1000. I recommend setting it to at least 250, but feel free to experiment with different values to see what leads the system to work the best on your computer. The number represents the number of "steps" that the engine takes per frame; once you pass a certain threshold, setting the speed any higher merely drops the frame rate, such that the rehearsal will not actually finish any faster, but where this threshold lies will depend on the computer that you are running SweepWeave on, along with, (I suspect,) what other programs you have running.

You can save a rehearsal report to a text file, as well. (Use the "save report" button, of course.) This will include some of the information that I think may be most useful, including the number of paths yielding each of the possible end points of your storyworld, the maximum and minimum possible values of the various character traits and relationships, and some helpful data regarding how fast the automated rehearsal system actually ended up running.

I encourage storyworld authors to experiment with this system as it currently exists, and to send me statistics so that I can learn more about how well the system is currently working. I have a number of notions about how to improve it, but will need time to do the work required.

Thank you all for your patience, your support, and your encouragement! Best of luck with your storyworld writing endeavors.

Adventure awaits!