Behavior Types

Behavior types act as functional directives that guide the processing pipeline for data export and code generation.

Fields of most Behavior Types are omitted from exported data and do not participate in code generation, except for:

• switch is treated as string.
• anchor is treated as string when the --emit-anchors CLI flag is set.

Type Availability

Category	Regular Table	Property Sheet	Tree-Structured Data
Behavior Types	✓	△	△

△: placeholder is supported in property sheets and tree-structured data; anchor is supported in tree-backed regular tables.

Type List

Type	Description
anchor	Allows using names instead of integer IDs for cross-table references	View
assert	Validates a boolean; raises an error if it fails	View
condition	Determines whether to export a config entry; supports expressions and rich matching rules (e.g., cflags=james, v1.2.3)	View
switch	Multi-branch selector in conjunction with the Case header to determine active fields	View
placeholder	Prevents structurally empty objects from being removed	View

anchor

An anchor supplies a human-readable name for an integer config ID within a regular table or a tree-backed regular table, allowing a ref value to use names rather than numbers.

Given a regular table weapon with IDs 101, 102, 103, and an anchor column holding values sword, shield, bow, then in another table’s ref@weapon column you can enter either 101 or sword — they resolve to the same config entry.

See Cross-Table References for more information.

Default Export Value

anchor        →  no default export value
anchor=/      →  zero value (""), which allows the cell to stay blank

See Default Export Value for more information.

Rules on Values

Rule	Reason
Cannot contain |	The pipe character is the compact type separator
Cannot be a pure number	Decimal, hexadecimal, and floating-point strings are rejected to avoid ambiguity with numeric IDs
Must be unique	Duplicates are rejected; the comparison is case-insensitive
Matching is case-insensitive	FireBall matches fireball

Data Export

By default, anchor fields are omitted from exported data and do not participate in code generation. The --emit-anchors CLI flag overrides this, when specified, treating them as string fields in both cases.

assert

The assert type validates a value during data export. It expects a boolean — typically produced by an Excel formula.

Table

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Desc	-	-	-
Name	name	hp	hpCheck
Type	string	int	assert
1	Arthur	100	True
2	Merlin	80	True

Subtable

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Subtable Desc		Skills
Subtable Name		skills
Subtable Type		**[]
Desc	-	-	-	-
Name	name	skill	damage	check
Type	string	string	int	assert
1	Arthur	slash	5	True
		thrust	8	True

If a value is false, Archmage reports an error and the export fails.

Default Export Value

assert          →  no default export value
assert=/        →  true
assert=1        →  true
assert=false    →  false

See Default Export Value for more information.

condition

Determines whether to export a config entry.

Each regular table may contain zero, one, or multiple condition fields.

A condition value consists of one or more boolean expressions and matching rules, combined arbitrarily with &&.

false
env@BETA_TEST
v1.2.3 && cflags=dev,Tom

During data export, a config entry is skipped if any of its condition values evaluate to false.

Table

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Desc	-	-	-
Name	cond	name	damage
Type	condition=/	string	int
1	v1.2.0	Fireball	120
2		IceBlast	90

For usage of conditions within tree-structured data, see Conditional Export.

Value Syntax

The condition type supports the following expressions and matching rules:

Form	Description
true / false / 1 / 0	Literal boolean
↷	Shorthand for false
env@VAR	Reads the environment variable VAR as a boolean	View
xflags=c,s	Is true when they satisfy the --xflags CLI flag	View
tags=gameplay	Is true when they satisfy the --tags CLI flag and do not satisfy --tags-xx.	View
cflags=dev,Tom	Is true when they satisfy the --cflags CLI flag	View
minver=1.2.3	Is true when --semver is at least this version	View
v1, v1.2, v1.2.3, v2030.6.1	Shorthand for the above minver (must start with v)	View

A condition value is true only when all expressions and matching rules joined by && are true. E.g., v1.2.3 && cflags=Tom requires both --semver >= 1.2.3 and Tom satisfying --cflags.

Note

Each of cflags, xflags, and tags may appear at most once in a single value.

Default Export Value

condition       →  no default export value
condition=/     →  true

See Default Export Value for more information.

switch

For each config entry, a switch value holds a case label that determines which fields in that entry are active — only fields belonging to the matched case are allowed to have values; fields belonging to other cases must stay blank.

Note

Fields not belonging to any case fall outside switch control.

Table

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Case			magic	melee | magic
Desc	-	-	-	-
Name	name	style	range	damage
Type	string	switch	int	int
1	Warrior	melee		5
2	Mage	magic	12	3

Default Export Value

switch          →  no default export value
switch=/        →  empty string ""
switch=melee    →  "melee"

See Default Export Value for more information.

Data Export

switch values are exported as strings, just like regular data fields.

placeholder

A placeholder field prevents structurally empty objects from being removed. It produces no output in data export or code generation.

Table

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Subtable Desc		Rewards
Subtable Name		rewards
Subtable Type		**[]
Desc	-	-
Name	extra.keep	keep
Type	placeholder	placeholder
1
		#

Default Export Value

placeholder     →  no default export value
placeholder=/   →  accepted but has no effect

See Default Export Value for more information.