File Paths

[zoobiedoo]

Hello Dan,

This is a feature request. I am the gamemaster for a Fantasy Hero game and I've created several custom templates and export templates and I'm working on some prefabs, too. My friend who is a player in my campaign also has HDv2.0 and one thing we've run into is that he puts all his custom templates on his C: drive whereas I put all of mine on my D: drive. So, of course, things created on my computer with HD and given to him will not point to the right drive for templates, export templates, and campaign settings unless you go in and manually change the xml (which I love the xml, by the way).

I noticed that the user can set an option in the app preferences for a template folder that the application looks in, but it doesn't look there when loading a character. So would it be possible to have HD look in the template folder when loading a character so that the template attribute in the hdc xml can be set to something like "Fantasy.hdt" instead of "C:\My Documents\Hero\Templates\Fantasy.hdt"? And/or would it be possible to use relative paths? For instance, the character is stored in "C:\My Documents\Hero\PCs\PCName" and the template path could be "..\..\Templates\Fantasy.hdt".

And could this be done similarly with Export Templates and Campaign setting files?

Sorry if this has already been addressed in the past.

Thanks, Dan. HDv2.0 is a great product and a joy to use. It looks like your upcoming vacation is very well earned.

Anthony

[Simon]

HDv2 already does that for the templates. That's the sole reason for the template directory setting under app prefs. It will first look to the full path specified in the template attribute of the character file and, if it doesn't find the template there, will look in the template directory for a file of the same name, loading that if it is found.

There was an error in the process which was fixed in one of the somewhat recent updates, so make sure that you are both running the current version of HD.

As for export templates and campaign rules, I'll have to think about it a bit.....it's certainly possible to work in similar rules for loading them....I just need to go over the potential downside(s).

[zoobiedoo]

Yep, that was the problem. My friend was using version 2.03. Thanks.

[Simon]

Just a quick update: I thought about it and couldn't come up with any "downside"....so I added in "Default Rules directory" and "Default Export Template directory" settings to the app prefs. They both have similar functionality as the template directory setting.

[zoobiedoo]

Hello Dan,

Thanks for the new features, particularly default directories.

I do have one question about them though. When I assign a template, campaign rules, or export template to a charcter from the default directories, HDv2 still saves the full path to those files in the character file. This doesn't fix my problem when transferring files from myself to another person as the full paths will likely be different for those files on different machines.

Maybe there's a good reason why HD does things this way? Would it be possible to have HD save just the file name for files in the default directories without saving the full path?

Thanks for your help on this.

[Simon]

HD will look first in the location specified by the path (frex: C:\someDirectory\someTemplate.hdt).

If it does not find the file there, then it looks for a file of the same name (someTemplate.hdt in the above example) in the default directory.

So, if you send your player(s) the campaign rules, template, export templates, and character files and they put them in the default directories, they will all be found when the character files are opened.....regardless of the full path specified in the character files.

[zoobiedoo]

Oh cool. That works out even better. Thanks!