Editing Basics of Module Creation (section)

== Beats ==
[[File:A Sample Beat 2.png|alt=A sample beat, as seen in the module editor.|thumb|How it looks in the editor...]]
[[File:My First Beat example 1.png|alt=How a beat's number and name appear in the game.|thumb|...and in the game.]]
Okay, back to that beat you created about twenty years ago. You'll see it has several features:

* There's a '''unique ID''' in the top right, next to the delete button. You don't need to care about this.
* The white dots are '''inputs''' on the left and '''outputs''' on the right, indicating where other bits of module connect to this one. As your starting beat, this needs no inputs, and as the only thing you have right now, it has no outputs yet. We'll get to that. Beats can have any number of inputs and outputs.
* It has a '''number''' and a '''name''', here set to '1' and 'My First Beat' respectively. These do not need to be unique. You can definitely have beats without names, and I ''think'' you can have them without numbers, but they do show up in-game so you probably should fill these in. Beat numbers increment automatically as you add more beats, but ''not'' if you copy a beat and paste it.
* Five '''kinds''' of beat. Short repair allows a short repair; full repair ''gives'' a full repair, no choices offered; level up gives a full repair and bumps all characters ''currently in the party'' by one license level; none gives you no repairs but lets you look at your lancers anyway; and hidden doesn't even let you do that. Hidden is most useful for weird trickery with beats that aren't really beats but that's for a different tutorial.
* '''Background''' lets you set something to display while the beat is... beating. You can noodle around with this to see what you can select, but the important thing is that files in your module's media folder have to start with "bg_" or they won't be selectable here.
The important thing to understand about beats is that they act as 'containers' for all the stuff that follows them. In practical terms this means that whatever background image you pick will be the background for any other elements connected to the beat (unless that element has a background of its own) and that if players have a chance to pause (e.g. at a combat briefing screen or between conversations) they will be able to go back and adjust their lancers based on the permissions granted by the kind of beat. So if you have a combat briefing after a full repair, they can go back and tune their builds specifically for that combat because they're still 'in' that full repair beat.