Hero Designer - version 2 Feature/Request List

[Simon]

OK...first off, let me preface this by saying that v2 is not going to be coming up in the immediate future. I'm looking for a December, '03 release (hopefully).

Also, anything that I list as a proposed feature should be considered tentative. Nothing will be "written in stone" until I actually code it into place.

That said, here is a taste of some of the features that I am planning on for v2:
<ol>
<li>Character Repository (online): This will be a searchable database of characters that folks can browse through HD. There will be a large range of search criteria....upon searching and selecting results, users will be able to view the characters and decide whether to save them to their system or not. Users will also be able to upload characters to the repository. HD will automatically take care of most/all of the searchable parameters during the upload.</li>
<li>Abilities Repository (online): This will be a searchable database of abilities (powers, skills, etc). Users will be able to upload or search the database, specifying a number of search criteria and viewing/selecting from the results list. This will act much like the "mother of all prefab tabs".</li>
<li>Images Repository (online): Much like the characters and abilities databases, this will contain images for characters. Artists will be able to include full contact information with their uploads, effectively using the database as an online portfolio. Users will be able to (hopefully) find the perfect image for their character.</li>
<li>Template "hierarchy": The ability for a template to specify a "parent" and then only state the items that it is going to change, add, or remove from the "parent". This will greatly increase performance when switching templates as well as make template edits much easier.</li>
<li>Martial Arts: Full revision of the treatment of Martial Arts maneuvers....bringing things fully inline with UMA and allowing for Modifiers, custom maneuver building, etc.</li>
<li>Versioning of characters and abilities: The ability to specify a version for a character. All prior versions will be part of the character file. When viewing a character, you will be able to flip between versions, seeing what has come before. Additionally, when viewing a particular Power or ability, you'll be able to flip between versions of that particular ability to see the changes that it has gone through.</li>
<li>Combat Record exports. These will be almost identical in nature to the current exports except that you will be able to specify multiple character files to export. They will also, of course, have some additional tags/containers to account for the multiple characters</li>
<li>Support for alternate graphics formats (i.e. not just JPG). This will depend largely on legal issues, though I suspect they may be more my own paranoia than anything else ;)</li>
<li>The proverbial "much, much more"</li>
</ol>

Just as a general rule, I will be working to streamline the app as much as possible. Two areas I want to concentrate on in this process: the loading of templates (the modularized templates will be a huge help) and the structuring of the lists of purchased items (large characters tend to get bogged down working the list ordering).

So...those are some of my current plans. Feel free to post suggestions or requests to this thread....I will respond as best I can.

Once again, please take all of this with a large grain of salt....until I actually code the functionality in, nothing is final.

[TechnoViking]

You covered about every thing I wanted to see in v2.

A couple things I can think of;
1. Alot of people have requested conversions of movement from inches/phase to MPH.

2. You may want to look at the free PDF libraries on the web, and have HD2 be able to Export to Template or basic print to PDF. This would especially help out non-Window users.

3. Lockable characters. Have hdc files that can be given to people or downloaded online that can be view/printed but not editted. Will help people who want to share their creations with people but protect their IP.

4. Easier update, Have a Update Program menu selection in v2 that will automatically download updates and install'em and restart the program.

5. Genre rule sets. Be able to switch to the specific rules used in the different genres. Star Hero has slightly different rules (System Operations for example), and I bet Fantasy Hero will have new rules also. Have this rules avilible, and be able to switch to them.

Mike

[Simon]

Originally posted by Mike Basinger
You covered about every thing I wanted to see in v2.

A couple things I can think of;
1. Alot of people have requested conversions of movement from inches/phase to MPH.

2. You may want to look at the free PDF libraries on the web, and have HD2 be able to Export to Template or basic print to PDF. This would especially help out non-Window users.

3. Lockable characters. Have hdc files that can be given to people or downloaded online that can be view/printed but not editted. Will help people who want to share their creations with people but protect their IP.

4. Easier update, Have a Update Program menu selection in v2 that will automatically download updates and install'em and restart the program.

5. Genre rule sets. Be able to switch to the specific rules used in the different genres. Star Hero has slightly different rules (System Operations for example), and I bet Fantasy Hero will have new rules also. Have this rules avilible, and be able to switch to them.

Mike
1. Certainly possible....though I still need to think of a clean way to handle the fact that a character can have a primary and a secondary value for their movement as well as a primary and secondary value for their speed. Having four values for the MPH is not terribly appealing.....

2. Probably won't happen. I have no interest in hard coding a print function into HD. I am extremely happy with the way the export process has worked out thus far and will be concentrating on enhancing and expanding that rather than working on a hard-coded print function that few would use. As for non-windows users, most of the current export formats work just fine on pretty much any OS on the market.

3. While an idea I had considered, it's not really feasible. The format used for character files is designed to be "open". It's just not really workable/possible to effectivley lock it.

4. This is something that I'm considering, but it's not the easiest. The isssue is actually a Windows issue....Windows "locks" the file "update.jar" while Java is running, since the JVM references it. It can't be overwritten until Java is shutdown. In the early alpha/beta days I had an auto-update procedure in place....sort of a bootstrap launcher that checked for updates and installed them....but many folks had issues with this, so it was dropped. I think that making the update process any simpler will actually cause more problems. Most likely more than it's worth.

5) That will simply be a function of the "hierarchical" templates. It will be very easy to create templates which modify the rules contained in a "base level" template.

[Herolover]

First, let me see how impressed I am with the current HD. The fact that I cannot keep up with the updates says a great deal about the amount that you are supporting your creation. I was skeptical at first when I heard about HD, but you have completely made me into a fan boy. That said....

(NOTE: Some of these items may already be mentioned, planned, or insanely obvious.)

1) A complete set of updated export templates. Including one that mirrors the WG and one that mirrors the character sheets presented in official Herogame books. (Preferably both in rtf fomrat.)

2) A way to have a "combat record sheet" listing several characters main abilities. Ideally this would be printed by selecting the HD files of the characters and having the sheet print automatically.

3) The ability to list MPH or Kmph by movement speeds would be GREATLY appreciated.

4) A place for AGE to be listed.

5) More skins...(obviously not very important).

6) When a limitation or advantage is selected please keep the limitation or advantage window open.

7) Instead of having custom (skill, power, disad, whatever) in the selectable list in alphabetical order put it at the top or bottom of each list thereby making it easier for people to find.

8) A way to put notes directly into the character through HD

9) A way to put a seperator line inside a list or power framework.

10) Updated Documentation

When I think of more I will post more.

[Simon]

Originally posted by Herolover
First, let me see how impressed I am with the current HD. The fact that I cannot keep up with the updates says a great deal about the amount that you are supporting your creation. I was skeptical at first when I heard about HD, but you have completely made me into a fan boy. That said....

(NOTE: Some of these items may already be mentioned, planned, or insanely obvious.)

1) A complete set of updated export templates. Including one that mirrors the WG and one that mirrors the character sheets presented in official Herogame books. (Preferably both in rtf fomrat.)

2) A way to have a "combat record sheet" listing several characters main abilities. Ideally this would be printed by selecting the HD files of the characters and having the sheet print automatically.

3) The ability to list MPH or Kmph by movement speeds would be GREATLY appreciated.

4) A place for AGE to be listed.

5) More skins...(obviously not very important).

6) When a limitation or advantage is selected please keep the limitation or advantage window open.

7) Instead of having custom (skill, power, disad, whatever) in the selectable list in alphabetical order put it at the top or bottom of each list thereby making it easier for people to find.

8) A way to put notes directly into the character through HD

9) A way to put a seperator line inside a list or power framework.

10) Updated Documentation

When I think of more I will post more.
1) While I likely won't create any new export templates, I will likely be cleaning up the export tag list and creating new functionality for folks to take advantage of.

2) Already planned. See above.

3) Already mentioned. The main issue here is that the MPH is dependent on both the Movement ability and (obviously) the SPD. SInce both of these can have primary and secondary values, it makes the display of MPH pretty unworkable, as you have up to 4 values to deal with.

4) Depending on what you're talking about, you've already got it. If you mean the Age Disadvantage, it's already present on the Characteristics tab (you can edit the Age selection to indicate the actual age). If you're talking about straight description, you have plenty of fields on the background tab to list the age.

5) Not high on my priority list, but it is something that I'm intending to work on.

6) I'm going to be doing a fair bit of work on the Modifiers and how they are selected. I think folks will be happy with the results, but I don't want to say much more until I do a bit of work to see how much is feasible.

7) Doubtful that this will change.

8) I'm really not sure what you're talking about here....You can add notes to any ability on the character....you have up to 6 customizable fields on the background tab....I don't think that anything else is necessary here....

9) Another strong possibility, but I need to see how much is going to be involved in implementing this and determine if it's worth the effort...

10) That's a given.

[Barton]

Dsimon: THANKS for the thread and the ability to influence the next version!

PS about the automatic updating... would Installshield work for the HD program?
Personally I think an auotmated update feature is a low priority.

[Simon]

Originally posted by Barton
Dsimon: THANKS for the thread and the ability to influence the next version!

PS about the automatic updating... would Installshield work for the HD program?
Personally I think an auotmated update feature is a low priority.

I agree that it's a reasonably low priority. I'm going to be looking into different options for the installer/launcher that HD uses. I'm currently using InstallAnywhere, a good app, but you need to pay a decent chunk of money for the version which will handle auto-updates.

I'll be checking on other apps like InstallShield to see if they provide any better functionality.

[tiger]

The only thing I can think of I mentioned before. That would be the ability to add new Skill/Powers/Disads. ect. into the program and have them permanently option and not something that would have to be done from character to character.

Other than that I'm quite happy with the program and especially the support given for it.

[Starwolf]

On the combat sheet, It would be of immense value if the export autosorted tha characters by SPD & DEX. Maybe with an override so the User/GM could manually change the order (sort of a move up/down button).

BTW, I am vewy impressed with DH up to now, keep up the good work!!

[Simon]

Originally posted by tiger
The only thing I can think of I mentioned before. That would be the ability to add new Skill/Powers/Disads. ect. into the program and have them permanently option and not something that would have to be done from character to character.

Other than that I'm quite happy with the program and especially the support given for it.

That is a planned feature.....you will be able to specify an arbitrary number of new abilities (Powers, Skills, etc) in the template. Combined with the new template structure, this should make life pretty easy for you ;)

[Simon]

Originally posted by Starwolf
On the combat sheet, It would be of immense value if the export autosorted tha characters by SPD & DEX. Maybe with an override so the User/GM could manually change the order (sort of a move up/down button).

BTW, I am vewy impressed with DH up to now, keep up the good work!!

I'm planning on having a new screen for putting together a combat record. The user will set the order of the characters on that screen. There will be several "auto-sorts" available to automatically order the list by such parameters as character name, SPD, DEX, etc.

[Starwolf]

You rock, I guess it's time to start a V2 piggy bank so I'll be prepared to purchase when it comes out (maybe in time for Christmas :rolleyes: )

Hmmm....having never seen Santa Claus, I guess he could be Dan in disguise....

[Immortaldreamer]

Okay, let's start with the obligatory intro...used Hero Designer since it was first released. Used MetaCreator/Creation Workshop prior to that, so I'm a convert to the Great Guru that is Dan. So, none of this is complaining, because I'm really happy with my HD. :) But, since he asked, a couple things that I really, REALLY wish I could have in my "Ultimate Hero Designer":

1: The ability to put Skill Enhancer "lists" where -I- want them, not where Hero Designer thinks they ought to go (the end of the list). First off, I can't put a separator between them, because of that, for readability issues. Secondly, when I have a specialist character, as I often do (a character who has 90% or so of their skills in Sciences, or Knowledge, or whatever), I'd like that list to be FIRST. As it sits now, it's a decent amount of work in "post production" on the HTML sheets to move everything.

2: The ability to do nested lists. One of the only things that I don't like about Hero Designer is that I -can't- do something that I could in Metacreator...nested lists. I -like- the ability to create something that looks like this:

Telekinetic Abilities:
insert telekinesis Multipower here

insert telekinesis EC here

Telepathic Abilities
insert telepathic Multipower here

Insert telepathic EC here

And so on. As it sits, right now I have to make everything a separate list, which is just irksome for formatting, and occasionally leads to having to apply modifiers to both, rather than to the "master list" and having it apply to everything. Just a pet peeve. :)

3: A little -less- of the "rules checking", at least until Hero Games follows their own rules. :) There's been a number of times where I -CAN'T- build a power or skill setup the way it's been done in an official Hero Games product, because Hero has broken their own rules, and done something like applied a modifier to a 2 pt. CSL, or something similar. With the realization that a specific GM might choose to change a given rule as well, I'd rather see things give -warnings-, of the "are you sure you want to do this? It's against the rules" stripe, rather than stonewall me. Ran across the same thing the other day trying to add "Inherent" to several abilities...it simply -wasn't available- in the advantages list, so I had to put it in by a Custom Modifier.

4: Support for the Optional Language system, without my having to go through tons of Custom Modifiers. I would worship at the shrine of Dan forever if it did this -for- me.

5: Improved support for Everyman abilities. Having to add a -4 Custom Adder to a language to support Native Language, or a -2 to a Professional Skill so it can be 11- like it is in the rulebook and still be free, is just a pain, especially when I can look at Martial Arts, Weapon Elements, and see the "Default Element" in there for free...it would be the same idea...a 0 cost 4 pt. Language, and a 0 cost 11- Professional skill. :)

6: The ability to "group" files for easy administration. So that, for example, let's say I have BrickMan, MentalMaid, SpeedsterDude and MagicGal as 4 characters. These belong to the players of a Sunday night tabletop. It would be COOL to be able to define those somehow as "Sunday Night Group", and be able to do things like print them all simultaneously, or even better, add exp to all of them simultaneously, or add a trait to all of them. (Like adding a new Contact that I've given them to all 4).

Anyhow, I understand NOTHING about Java coding. So that list might be totally impossible, utterly simple, or anywhere in between. Or just contrary to Dan's design plans. But hey, he asked for a wish list. So there it is. :)

[Starhawk]

Something so you could "copy" a series of power modifiers and apply it to each power without having to go though the whole process of selecting each modifier..for example, If a large chunk of my powers come through an OIF, act 14< won't work in an intense magnetic field, it would be nice to be able to apply those limitations to a bunch of powers with a single click.

..or not.. :D

[Killer Shrike]

Hey Dan, thanx for the open line.

Here are the things I want to see in a new version of HD, or at least the ones I can think off currently:

1) Customizable Power List.

2) Increased performance; even just a 5% increase would be welcome. I know the overhead in parsing XML intimately, but I notice that the app seems to have a lot of trouble keeping up with the powers list specifically, particularly when bubble sorting items up and down the list.

3) Right Click dropdowns. Im a rightclik-a-holic and I really miss that functionality.

4) A way to add a power to a compound power and a way to get a power out of a compound power.

5) A customizable list of drop down options, or better yet an option to have HD append anything typed into the various combo drop down boxes into a custom file by object type so that the drop downs build themselves.


6) A SFX line for all powers, also on a combo drop down.

7) A 'Package Deals' tab where a complete package can be entered all in one place rather than broken across 2 or more screens.

8) For characters with VPPs, an extra Powers tab for each VPP (or maybe a combined one and the lists could be employed to differentiate) allowing the tracking of a list of possible powers for that VPP; optimally this list would be treated as a virtual prefab list or a pallette for the VPP, allowing the VPP to be reassigned quickly. Also an Export tag to get at those powers in a Printout if desired.

9) A 'Set cost to 0' option for Powers, similar to the Everyman skill option on skills. This can be useful when stating out equipement in campaigns where that equipment does not need to be paid for in CP.

10) A "Standard Effect Rule" option for all applicable powers, with a conditional option to add non-Standard Effect dice of effect if desired as per FREd.

11) I saw that you stated the Martial Arts are getting an overhaul, but I would just like to add my voice to the clamor for Custom Martial Arts building, and calculating Strength into the damage.

12) The same thing applies to the powers HKA and HA; If the app could calc any advantages and apply the users choice of Primary/Secondary/None for Strength that would be tres cool.

13) I think the general power modifiers list in HD works very well in general (Im very impressed with some of the drill down chains and its intelligence in suppressing invalid modifiers), but I would really like to see improvement on the default lists of Power Modifiers for various Powers; frex, currently, 'Does Body' shows up as a default option for an EB, even before NND or AVLD is applied. Maybe give Steve an output for the default modifer list for each power and let him indicate which are valid for a given power, which arent, and which would do better consigned to the general list or are conditional for v2.

14) Improvements in the way Followers, Vehicles and Bases are handled; ideally a way to point to the file or files for those entities, and have the costs automatically roll up. :)

15) Character versioning (I see you already intend to look into this)

16) Some general non-character specific simple tools on the main file bar. The tools I can think of off hand:

a) A MPH/KPH calculator -- let the user enter in the numbers themselves so you dont have to bother with the multiplicity issue, then copy & paste the results into a note field if they so desire.

b) Damage Calculator -- Select from a drop down any 'attack' power from the active character and have it calculate the Min, Max, and Average damage for that attack.

c) Pre-rolling tool -- the applet would take the Active character, and output a series of X damage rolls for each of that characters Attack Powers (including strikes and non-velocity based Martial Manuevers with the Damage and Exert bases)

d) Character Validator -- Select a Template, enter in AP limits, DC limits, OCV\DCV limits, or DEF Limits if desired (blank for no limit), and the app will validate the active character. The validator would idicate if the character satisfied the Template and each of the specified limits.




The online Repository would be HUGE! Its something I wanted to see with v1, back when HD was just a topic of discussion rather than an actual product in fact. I will do the dance of joy if you can pull that off in v2.

Im really excited by this actually...December is looking like a good month; Return of the King, HD v2, and, oh yeah, that Christmas thing..... :D

[zornwil]

Not in any order, but all to me are high priority, I left out smaller priorities:

1) Ability to see more than just one tab of info - could be handled any number of ways - a concurrent open overview with no details (just list of powers, skills, char.s, and their points each, just some slight organization) would be adequate. I understand overhauling the tab structure would be a seriously big modification. But the current way it is I find rather unfriendly to work in, I much prefer seeing things on the screen at once. So anything that gets closer to that (but still while in the editing process) is a plus.

2) Allow for addition of new characteristics, derived characteristics, powers, skills, etc..

3) PLEASE stop "enforcing" rules and instead go to the "warning" model. If a power is too big to go in an MP, display a warning and color the line or whatever, don't stop it from happening.

4) Even if you can't do anything about it, I'd like to state for the record BETTER SYSTEM PERFORMANCE. When I run a game, I have a dozen or more characters open in that "other system". If I tried that in HD - well, I have, it just doesn't work well enough for me to use HD as a GM tool. I'm on a 1Ghz la;ptop although I suppose the "mere" 128K is the issue. Seriously, this really does prevent me from using HD in gameplay, and is a major problem that holds me back from using HD for my NPCs. I understand the workaround is to export each character to HTML and open those files during gameplay.

Actually in terms of order, I suppose my priorities would be my #4, #3, #1, and #2.

Out of the list you gave, the only one I personally consider a "high priority" would be #7, the others I would consider lower, except #6 which would be mid-range somewhere. In that mid-range I am still very much interested in seeing more exposure of formulas such as where I'd like to change END to be based on base points instead of active, just general customization of the "engine". I like your #4 a lot, it would make distribution of a game-specific template easier, so I suppose that belongs in the mid-range. #s 1-3 and 5 are "nice to have" but nothing to get excited over - people can just trade files, could easily wait for v4. #8 is bottom of the barrel for me, that could wait for v5.

[zornwil]

Originally posted by zornwil
Not in any order, but all to me are high priority, I left out smaller priorities:

1) Ability to see more than just one tab of info - could be handled any number of ways - a concurrent open overview with no details (just list of powers, skills, char.s, and their points each, just some slight organization) would be adequate. I understand overhauling the tab structure would be a seriously big modification. But the current way it is I find rather unfriendly to work in, I much prefer seeing things on the screen at once. So anything that gets closer to that (but still while in the editing process) is a plus.


Hmmm, I wonder actually if this would really be hard at all? The presentation layer should be divorced from any rule slogic anyway. I wonder if others would like this?

[zornwil]

Originally posted by Killer Shrike
8) For characters with VPPs, an extra Powers tab for each VPP (or maybe a combined one and the lists could be employed to differentiate) allowing the tracking of a list of possible powers for that VPP; optimally this list would be treated as a virtual prefab list or a pallette for the VPP, allowing the VPP to be reassigned quickly. Also an Export tag to get at those powers in a Printout if desired.


I understand an extra tab is requested, but can't this be done currently with a list under the VPP? Please advise - if it can't be, then it really would be a pretty high-priority item in my book to be able to do "something" along these lines (whatever the approach).

[Killer Shrike]

Yes, you could just list a lot of powers under the VPP, but I prefer to have only the current allotment of points in the VPP be printed up. Otherwise a decent gadgeteer or wizardy type character end up with a triple ream of paper each time you want to print the character and you have to manual go back and mark which 'slots' are active.

On the subject, a running summary of current RP assigned to the VPP would be nice too.

[Fitz]

I'd really like to see an expanded equipment tab which would allow:

1) Non-power-defined equipment to be listed (e.g. blankets -- the fact that they provide limited Life Support vs. cold isn't really something most players need to have spelled out in the character sheet).

2) Weapons to be defined in terms of their rate of fire, accuracy, magazine capacity etc., with export tags allowing them to be properly displayed together in the character sheet in the same way they are in Fred.

3) Equipment weight to be displayed for each individual item, and calculated as a total encumbrance value for the character.

[Simon]

Originally posted by Fitz
I'd really like to see an expanded equipment tab which would allow:

1) Non-power-defined equipment to be listed (e.g. blankets -- the fact that they provide limited Life Support vs. cold isn't really something most players need to have spelled out in the character sheet).

2) Weapons to be defined in terms of their rate of fire, accuracy, magazine capacity etc., with export tags allowing them to be properly displayed together in the character sheet in the same way they are in Fred.

3) Equipment weight to be displayed for each individual item, and calculated as a total encumbrance value for the character.

1) Just use a "Custom Power".

2) Weapons are defined the way they are in FREd. As Powers.

3) I'll be working on Equipement-only fields like encumbrance, cost, etc.

[Simon]

Originally posted by zornwil
Not in any order, but all to me are high priority, I left out smaller priorities:

1) Ability to see more than just one tab of info - could be handled any number of ways - a concurrent open overview with no details (just list of powers, skills, char.s, and their points each, just some slight organization) would be adequate. I understand overhauling the tab structure would be a seriously big modification. But the current way it is I find rather unfriendly to work in, I much prefer seeing things on the screen at once. So anything that gets closer to that (but still while in the editing process) is a plus.

2) Allow for addition of new characteristics, derived characteristics, powers, skills, etc..

3) PLEASE stop "enforcing" rules and instead go to the "warning" model. If a power is too big to go in an MP, display a warning and color the line or whatever, don't stop it from happening.

4) Even if you can't do anything about it, I'd like to state for the record BETTER SYSTEM PERFORMANCE. When I run a game, I have a dozen or more characters open in that "other system". If I tried that in HD - well, I have, it just doesn't work well enough for me to use HD as a GM tool. I'm on a 1Ghz la;ptop although I suppose the "mere" 128K is the issue. Seriously, this really does prevent me from using HD in gameplay, and is a major problem that holds me back from using HD for my NPCs. I understand the workaround is to export each character to HTML and open those files during gameplay.

Actually in terms of order, I suppose my priorities would be my #4, #3, #1, and #2.

Out of the list you gave, the only one I personally consider a "high priority" would be #7, the others I would consider lower, except #6 which would be mid-range somewhere. In that mid-range I am still very much interested in seeing more exposure of formulas such as where I'd like to change END to be based on base points instead of active, just general customization of the "engine". I like your #4 a lot, it would make distribution of a game-specific template easier, so I suppose that belongs in the mid-range. #s 1-3 and 5 are "nice to have" but nothing to get excited over - people can just trade files, could easily wait for v4. #8 is bottom of the barrel for me, that could wait for v5.

1) Probably won't be happening. I HATED the windowed format of CW/MC. It's a failed model that was the thing to do about 6 years ago and never really took off.

2) Will be possible through the templates. Characteristics will have to be determined, I'm not too sure on that note....

3) Will not happen. Ever. The closest I may come to that is allow some of the "hard-coded" rules to be toggled on and off in a preferences screen.

4) I've got several things that I intend to work on in terms of performance. We'll see how fast I can make it ;)

[Simon]

Originally posted by Killer Shrike
Hey Dan, thanx for the open line.

Here are the things I want to see in a new version of HD, or at least the ones I can think off currently:

1) Customizable Power List.

2) Increased performance; even just a 5% increase would be welcome. I know the overhead in parsing XML intimately, but I notice that the app seems to have a lot of trouble keeping up with the powers list specifically, particularly when bubble sorting items up and down the list.

3) Right Click dropdowns. Im a rightclik-a-holic and I really miss that functionality.

4) A way to add a power to a compound power and a way to get a power out of a compound power.

5) A customizable list of drop down options, or better yet an option to have HD append anything typed into the various combo drop down boxes into a custom file by object type so that the drop downs build themselves.


6) A SFX line for all powers, also on a combo drop down.

7) A 'Package Deals' tab where a complete package can be entered all in one place rather than broken across 2 or more screens.

8) For characters with VPPs, an extra Powers tab for each VPP (or maybe a combined one and the lists could be employed to differentiate) allowing the tracking of a list of possible powers for that VPP; optimally this list would be treated as a virtual prefab list or a pallette for the VPP, allowing the VPP to be reassigned quickly. Also an Export tag to get at those powers in a Printout if desired.

9) A 'Set cost to 0' option for Powers, similar to the Everyman skill option on skills. This can be useful when stating out equipement in campaigns where that equipment does not need to be paid for in CP.

10) A "Standard Effect Rule" option for all applicable powers, with a conditional option to add non-Standard Effect dice of effect if desired as per FREd.

11) I saw that you stated the Martial Arts are getting an overhaul, but I would just like to add my voice to the clamor for Custom Martial Arts building, and calculating Strength into the damage.

12) The same thing applies to the powers HKA and HA; If the app could calc any advantages and apply the users choice of Primary/Secondary/None for Strength that would be tres cool.

13) I think the general power modifiers list in HD works very well in general (Im very impressed with some of the drill down chains and its intelligence in suppressing invalid modifiers), but I would really like to see improvement on the default lists of Power Modifiers for various Powers; frex, currently, 'Does Body' shows up as a default option for an EB, even before NND or AVLD is applied. Maybe give Steve an output for the default modifer list for each power and let him indicate which are valid for a given power, which arent, and which would do better consigned to the general list or are conditional for v2.

14) Improvements in the way Followers, Vehicles and Bases are handled; ideally a way to point to the file or files for those entities, and have the costs automatically roll up. :)

15) Character versioning (I see you already intend to look into this)

16) Some general non-character specific simple tools on the main file bar. The tools I can think of off hand:

a) A MPH/KPH calculator -- let the user enter in the numbers themselves so you dont have to bother with the multiplicity issue, then copy & paste the results into a note field if they so desire.

b) Damage Calculator -- Select from a drop down any 'attack' power from the active character and have it calculate the Min, Max, and Average damage for that attack.

c) Pre-rolling tool -- the applet would take the Active character, and output a series of X damage rolls for each of that characters Attack Powers (including strikes and non-velocity based Martial Manuevers with the Damage and Exert bases)

d) Character Validator -- Select a Template, enter in AP limits, DC limits, OCV\DCV limits, or DEF Limits if desired (blank for no limit), and the app will validate the active character. The validator would idicate if the character satisfied the Template and each of the specified limits.




The online Repository would be HUGE! Its something I wanted to see with v1, back when HD was just a topic of discussion rather than an actual product in fact. I will do the dance of joy if you can pull that off in v2.

Im really excited by this actually...December is looking like a good month; Return of the King, HD v2, and, oh yeah, that Christmas thing..... :D

1) WIll be possible through the templates.

2) I will do the best that I can given the constraints that I have to work within.

3) Probably not, since I'm the opposite: I hate popup menus and tend not to use them.

4) Time permitting, I will work on this a bit.

5) Drop down lists are (by and large) customizable in the templates. More than that, I doubt will happen for v2.

6) A distinct possibility.

7) Most likely won't happen.

8) Most likely won't happen.

9) Just use the Equipment tab. If the equipment tab is not available, then edit the template to turn it on.

10) Put onto my list.

11&12) Noted.

13) Something I am planning on putting a lot of work into ;)

14) Time permitting, I will work on that. I like the idea....

15) Yup.

16) An interesting solution to the MPH issue...I'll definitely look into it.

[Simon]

Originally posted by Immortaldreamer
Okay, let's start with the obligatory intro...used Hero Designer since it was first released. Used MetaCreator/Creation Workshop prior to that, so I'm a convert to the Great Guru that is Dan. So, none of this is complaining, because I'm really happy with my HD. :) But, since he asked, a couple things that I really, REALLY wish I could have in my "Ultimate Hero Designer":

1: The ability to put Skill Enhancer "lists" where -I- want them, not where Hero Designer thinks they ought to go (the end of the list). First off, I can't put a separator between them, because of that, for readability issues. Secondly, when I have a specialist character, as I often do (a character who has 90% or so of their skills in Sciences, or Knowledge, or whatever), I'd like that list to be FIRST. As it sits now, it's a decent amount of work in "post production" on the HTML sheets to move everything.

2: The ability to do nested lists. One of the only things that I don't like about Hero Designer is that I -can't- do something that I could in Metacreator...nested lists. I -like- the ability to create something that looks like this:

Telekinetic Abilities:
insert telekinesis Multipower here

insert telekinesis EC here

Telepathic Abilities
insert telepathic Multipower here

Insert telepathic EC here

And so on. As it sits, right now I have to make everything a separate list, which is just irksome for formatting, and occasionally leads to having to apply modifiers to both, rather than to the "master list" and having it apply to everything. Just a pet peeve. :)

3: A little -less- of the "rules checking", at least until Hero Games follows their own rules. :) There's been a number of times where I -CAN'T- build a power or skill setup the way it's been done in an official Hero Games product, because Hero has broken their own rules, and done something like applied a modifier to a 2 pt. CSL, or something similar. With the realization that a specific GM might choose to change a given rule as well, I'd rather see things give -warnings-, of the "are you sure you want to do this? It's against the rules" stripe, rather than stonewall me. Ran across the same thing the other day trying to add "Inherent" to several abilities...it simply -wasn't available- in the advantages list, so I had to put it in by a Custom Modifier.

4: Support for the Optional Language system, without my having to go through tons of Custom Modifiers. I would worship at the shrine of Dan forever if it did this -for- me.

5: Improved support for Everyman abilities. Having to add a -4 Custom Adder to a language to support Native Language, or a -2 to a Professional Skill so it can be 11- like it is in the rulebook and still be free, is just a pain, especially when I can look at Martial Arts, Weapon Elements, and see the "Default Element" in there for free...it would be the same idea...a 0 cost 4 pt. Language, and a 0 cost 11- Professional skill. :)

6: The ability to "group" files for easy administration. So that, for example, let's say I have BrickMan, MentalMaid, SpeedsterDude and MagicGal as 4 characters. These belong to the players of a Sunday night tabletop. It would be COOL to be able to define those somehow as "Sunday Night Group", and be able to do things like print them all simultaneously, or even better, add exp to all of them simultaneously, or add a trait to all of them. (Like adding a new Contact that I've given them to all 4).

Anyhow, I understand NOTHING about Java coding. So that list might be totally impossible, utterly simple, or anywhere in between. Or just contrary to Dan's design plans. But hey, he asked for a wish list. So there it is. :)

1) I've been thinking a bit about just that and will probably "unlock" them like you're requesting. The idea was to have them follow the WG, but that should really be up to the user.

2) I will see what I can do.

3) No. Though I will provide a preferences screen where some of the hard-coded rules can be toggled on and off.

4) It's something that I've been wanting to tackle since before v1.....I'll see what I can do.

5) I'll see what I can do, but it's not that straightforward. Someone can have a campaign in which Literacy is not part of an Everyman Language, but is something that they want on the character....the Language should then cost 1 point, not 0. There's lots of little 'gotchas' like that that make a blanket "Everyman" unworkable on non-roll-based Skills.

6) I doubt that I will do anything like this for v2....it gets pretty far outside of the scope. Though you may find some functionality in the online repository that compensates for it..... ;)

[RPMiller]

Wow!! I thought I wanted the world... ;)
I really only have two requests:

1) I would like the default format for everything to be as close to the WG as possible. It sounds like most folks don't care about the format as much as the functionality. The few format requests were per the WG so this sounds like a fair request.

2) You are already taking care of it as you mentioned above which was better tag control. I'll be happy to make those WG Export Templates someone mentioned above (especially since they are 99% done already, and in RTF format), but I have to be able to control where the bits and pieces will go and how they will look.

Everything else you have done so far has been incredible as I have said numerous times so I look forward to anything you may add in the future.

[Force]

I will take whatever.

HD is a nice program and worth the cash imo.

Good support and FAST updates.

The only request I have is the ability to use other images besides jpeg.

[ProfessorM@ss]

Well, here's my two cents:

1) I heartily agree with the people who want to be able to put Package Deals all in one place, without breaking them across several screens. It's just clumsy as hell to put them in, the way they are no.

2) A Campaign Rules enforcement screen. If my campaign only allows 60 active points in an attack power, and 30 in defenses, etc., it'd be nice to be able to enforce this. A campaign rules template would be a nice way to go.

3) Wizards for filling out the templates. I shouldn't have to mess with XML files.

4) Sorting for lists of powers and skills.

5) I also heartily agree with your stance on being able to toggle off the rules enforcement. I think this should be as across the board as possible, and be set as a permanent set of preferences in an Options menu. One of MetaCreator's strengths was the ability to modify it for house rules and such. For example, virtually everyone I know ignores the new Elemental Control rules around requiring powers in ECs to use Endurance. It gets mightily irritating to dance around the HD popup screen everytime I make a character who uses an EC.

6) Finally, I still find the mouse selection jerky and unresponsive. That needs to be fixed, IMO.

Thanks, Dan! You've done a great job. I'm looking forward to v2.

--->M@ss

[Simon]

Originally posted by ProfessorM@ss
Well, here's my two cents:

1) I heartily agree with the people who want to be able to put Package Deals all in one place, without breaking them across several screens. It's just clumsy as hell to put them in, the way they are no.

2) A Campaign Rules enforcement screen. If my campaign only allows 60 active points in an attack power, and 30 in defenses, etc., it'd be nice to be able to enforce this. A campaign rules template would be a nice way to go.

3) Wizards for filling out the templates. I shouldn't have to mess with XML files.

4) Sorting for lists of powers and skills.

5) I also heartily agree with your stance on being able to toggle off the rules enforcement. I think this should be as across the board as possible, and be set as a permanent set of preferences in an Options menu. One of MetaCreator's strengths was the ability to modify it for house rules and such. For example, virtually everyone I know ignores the new Elemental Control rules around requiring powers in ECs to use Endurance. It gets mightily irritating to dance around the HD popup screen everytime I make a character who uses an EC.

6) Finally, I still find the mouse selection jerky and unresponsive. That needs to be fixed, IMO.

Thanks, Dan! You've done a great job. I'm looking forward to v2.

--->M@ss
1) Will not be happening

2) An interesting idea. I hadn't actually been thinking about that, but I'll see what I can do about including something along those lines.

3) Probably won't happen. I've looked around at several graphical XML editors and they're all just as complex as the actual XML (IMO). If I find something that works well and simplifies matters, I may include it.

4) On my list.

5) I will be including the preferences screen, though there will likely be some rules which are still "fixed". HD has a different goal from Meta Creator. It was made from the ground up to be a chargen for the Hero System and to help enforce/follow the rules of the system. There are some things that Steve wants to be fixed in place (and non-editable).

6) I'm going to be working rather heavily on the purchase lists to streamline them. Hopefully you'll find the new ones more responsive.

[Talon]

1) As mentioned in another thread, non-chained templates: the ability to add non-related templates together. (If there's a single "mother template", you should still be able to construct a strict ordering of templates and apply changes in that order...)

2) Equipment stats (cost, etc.) -- Dan mentioned this is on the list.

3) For toggling rules enforcement on/off, I think a useful metric would be "anything done in a Hero product should be possible without a warning in HD" (if you toggle off the right rules switches). I haven't run into this much myself, but it does seem wrong.

4) Improved performance on changing order and having multiple characters open.

5) For the KPH/MPH issue...seems to me that computing 2 values (primary noncombat velocity*primary noncombat SPD; secondary velocity*secondary SPD) should fit the bill. Of course, it would be easier with...

6) Arithmetic allowed on tag values. Hey, everyone has a dream. :)

[Simon]

Originally posted by Geoff Speare
1) As mentioned in another thread, non-chained templates: the ability to add non-related templates together. (If there's a single "mother template", you should still be able to construct a strict ordering of templates and apply changes in that order...)

2) Equipment stats (cost, etc.) -- Dan mentioned this is on the list.

3) For toggling rules enforcement on/off, I think a useful metric would be "anything done in a Hero product should be possible without a warning in HD" (if you toggle off the right rules switches). I haven't run into this much myself, but it does seem wrong.

4) Improved performance on changing order and having multiple characters open.

5) For the KPH/MPH issue...seems to me that computing 2 values (primary noncombat velocity*primary noncombat SPD; secondary velocity*secondary SPD) should fit the bill. Of course, it would be easier with...

6) Arithmetic allowed on tag values. Hey, everyone has a dream. :)

1) I can tell you now that it simply will not work like that. I will be allowing templates to specify a "parent". That will allow you to do what you are looking for. Editing templates will become very easy at that point (you won't need to wade through a 6000 line XML document....you just include the items that you want to change and nothing else). By going this route, there is an explicit ordering of templates, removing any confusion from overlapping rules or modifications.

2) Yup

3) Let's clear up this little misconception: There is nothing done in published Hero System 5th Edition products that HD cannot do. Unless it is part of the Errata. Steve is EXTREMELY careful to make sure that the published products follow the rules. Some errors slip through, but those are placed in the errata for the books as soon as they are found. The only issues that I'm aware of in which HD 's rules differed from published examples which Steve verified were correct, HD was changed.

4) Planned

5) Doesn't work. It leaves out half of the possible values. While it may work for _you_ it doesn't work for everyone. A potential solution was proposed above, which is likely what I will be using.

6) Keep dreaming ;)

[tiger]

Reading through these post I thought of a couple more things

1)Clean the windows

2)Laundry

3)Mow the grass, I hate it!!!!!!!

4)Cooking would be good. It but Micky D's out of business near my house but it still be good :)

[Immortaldreamer]

As per Dan:

3) Let's clear up this little misconception: There is nothing done in published Hero System 5th Edition products that HD cannot do. Unless it is part of the Errata. Steve is EXTREMELY careful to make sure that the published products follow the rules. Some errors slip through, but those are placed in the errata for the books as soon as they are found. The only issues that I'm aware of in which HD 's rules differed from published examples which Steve verified were correct, HD was changed.

Dan, from pg. 169, Terran Empire:

Sensor Enhancements I (+2 to Systems Operation) Active Cost: 4. Real Cost: 2. Because it's bought through a Bulky OIF. Hero Designer -WILL NOT- let you put modifiers on a 2 pt. SL...even though that's obviously what was done here.

There are other such examples, too, and that's why I referred to it as such in the original post. If Hero was religious about following their own rules, it would be different. But I've run across this situation not once, but 5-6 -times-, in the rules...trying to build something from the rulebooks that I -just can't do- in Hero Designer. I understand the argument that Hero Designer isn't Metacreator, and is solely for Hero...but when I'm trying to build something -out of a Hero book-...I shouldn't get a "you can't get there from here" response from the software. I'm not blaming this on the software; IT is obeying the rules. But since Hero doesn't, all the time, it would be nice to see those absolutes made not-so-absolute until/unless it does.

[Simon]

Originally posted by Immortaldreamer
As per Dan:

3) Let's clear up this little misconception: There is nothing done in published Hero System 5th Edition products that HD cannot do. Unless it is part of the Errata. Steve is EXTREMELY careful to make sure that the published products follow the rules. Some errors slip through, but those are placed in the errata for the books as soon as they are found. The only issues that I'm aware of in which HD 's rules differed from published examples which Steve verified were correct, HD was changed.

Dan, from pg. 169, Terran Empire:

Sensor Enhancements I (+2 to Systems Operation) Active Cost: 4. Real Cost: 2. Because it's bought through a Bulky OIF. Hero Designer -WILL NOT- let you put modifiers on a 2 pt. SL...even though that's obviously what was done here.

There are other such examples, too, and that's why I referred to it as such in the original post. If Hero was religious about following their own rules, it would be different. But I've run across this situation not once, but 5-6 -times-, in the rules...trying to build something from the rulebooks that I -just can't do- in Hero Designer. I understand the argument that Hero Designer isn't Metacreator, and is solely for Hero...but when I'm trying to build something -out of a Hero book-...I shouldn't get a "you can't get there from here" response from the software. I'm not blaming this on the software; IT is obeying the rules. But since Hero doesn't, all the time, it would be nice to see those absolutes made not-so-absolute until/unless it does.

And again, if you can get Steve to state that those are "exceptions" or modifications to the rules as stated in FREd (and not just errors in the book) then I will change HD to match. But as it stands right now the stated (and verified through Steve) rule is that you cannot place Modifiers onto an SL or CSL that is less than 5 points.

I would say that the book is in error and that an errata entry is in order, not that HD should be changed.

[psychoph]

I kind of skimmed most of the requests cause people had laundry lists but I didn't think I saw some of the options I wanted.

1. Allow the text for powers and equipement to not have a fixed wrap point. Currently when the divider between the powers currently selected and the list of powers and prefabs is moved to the left the text listing powers stays at a fixed width instead of expanding with the extra room. For those who use HD maximized at a high resolution there should imo be some benefit to using ht emax resolution. It woudl also allow me to view more powers on a screen before i have to scroll down.

2. This is a totally out there idea and probably not possible. But I would love to see the ability to add in plugins. I have been installing a lto of open source projects lately like squirrelmail at work that allow users to create plugins for the program. This would be similar to the exports but might allow users with some programing background liek myself to assist. Legal issue may also be involved here.

3. You may also want to consider moving themes into some sort of export format so that those users that really want to customize the look and feel can do it without the need of asking you to create a new theme.So i guess it would be opening up the format which technically any one could do by opening up the theme.zp file and seeing how you go about doing things.

IMO Heros has a huge community and if you can give them a way to add to hero designer they will.

[Simon]

Originally posted by psychoph
I kind of skimmed most of the requests cause people had laundry lists but I didn't think I saw some of the options I wanted.

1. Allow the text for powers and equipement to not have a fixed wrap point. Currently when the divider between the powers currently selected and the list of powers and prefabs is moved to the left the text listing powers stays at a fixed width instead of expanding with the extra room. For those who use HD maximized at a high resolution there should imo be some benefit to using ht emax resolution. It woudl also allow me to view more powers on a screen before i have to scroll down.

2. This is a totally out there idea and probably not possible. But I would love to see the ability to add in plugins. I have been installing a lto of open source projects lately like squirrelmail at work that allow users to create plugins for the program. This would be similar to the exports but might allow users with some programing background liek myself to assist. Legal issue may also be involved here.

3. You may also want to consider moving themes into some sort of export format so that those users that really want to customize the look and feel can do it without the need of asking you to create a new theme.So i guess it would be opening up the format which technically any one could do by opening up the theme.zp file and seeing how you go about doing things.

IMO Heros has a huge community and if you can give them a way to add to hero designer they will.

1) I'm going to be doing some fairly heavy work on the purchase lists for v2. Depending on how I end up implementing them, I will endeavor to implement this as well. The way it currently works is necessary due to the nature of the purchase lists....but that's all going to change.

2) I've been thinking about a plugin model for a while. If I have the time to implement something like that, then I would certainly not be against the idea....we'll see what develops.

3) Assuming you're talking about the skins, you can already make your own. The skinning software is Skin Look and Feel by L2FProd (www.l2fprod.com). It's modeled off of the KDE and GTK themepacks and really isn't that hard to customize (which is why I selected the software).

[psychoph]

Additonal Suggestions would be only export repositories as well as templates. I know I would be very much into putting up species templates for my star wars conversion and getting critiques. When it comes to conversions though I am wondering how legal it is for hero games to allow that information on their website?

I have to say i am very impressed with the HD version 1 and the stuff you are talking about for version 2 sounds like sugar coated goodness. I really liek being able to edit the xml to add specific text for star wars into templates.

I was wondering if there woudl be anyway to add custom xml tags for like characteristics? I was looking into adding like a force characteristic to the template that woudl be either a calculated field like spd or just a normal characteristic like strength.

[Immortaldreamer]

It's not an errata. What you're referring to aren't Skill Levels, but simple bonuses to a single Skill bought in the normal manner for that Skill. The text on 5E 26 differentiates between the two. While we're certainly not perfect here, we do make an effort to follow the rules as closely as we can, and to note exceptions where relevant.

The root difficulty here is that the CSL/SL structure lacks sufficient granularity and needs a general overhaul/expansion. Unfortunately, that's going to have to wait for The Ultimate Skill, which is only partly written.

************************************************** ************************************
So, this leads me to the question...if FREd allows this, as per their pg. 26, how do I simulate this in Hero Designer? I just want to be able to build the official Hero constructs, and this one has me at a loss. I can't just -buy- the skill...that's an initial 3 pts, unless I Custom Adder that away, plus then it gives the base skill, which it -shouldn't-...it's just giving bonuses to a skill. If someone can point me to the workaround for this, I'm...well, not -happy-, but at least satisfied. The problem comes that I can't seem to build something that Steve has declared an OK Thing (TM) with Hero Designer.

[Simon]

Originally posted by Immortaldreamer
It's not an errata. What you're referring to aren't Skill Levels, but simple bonuses to a single Skill bought in the normal manner for that Skill. The text on 5E 26 differentiates between the two. While we're certainly not perfect here, we do make an effort to follow the rules as closely as we can, and to note exceptions where relevant.

The root difficulty here is that the CSL/SL structure lacks sufficient granularity and needs a general overhaul/expansion. Unfortunately, that's going to have to wait for The Ultimate Skill, which is only partly written.

************************************************** ************************************
So, this leads me to the question...if FREd allows this, as per their pg. 26, how do I simulate this in Hero Designer? I just want to be able to build the official Hero constructs, and this one has me at a loss. I can't just -buy- the skill...that's an initial 3 pts, unless I Custom Adder that away, plus then it gives the base skill, which it -shouldn't-...it's just giving bonuses to a skill. If someone can point me to the workaround for this, I'm...well, not -happy-, but at least satisfied. The problem comes that I can't seem to build something that Steve has declared an OK Thing (TM) with Hero Designer.
It's easy to do in HD, as discussed in the other thread. There are several ways, the easiest (IMO) being to simply buy a Custom Skill and call it "+2 with Systems Operation" for 4 points. Then add in any Modifiers that you want.

As I said in the other thread, I will look into incorporating a way to handle "partially limited Skills" (like this), but the instances which require them are so rare that I am not willing to bog down the overall process to incorporate it (since you can do it by the method above).

[Marcus]

Id like some easier way to build the long lists of powers that a VPP can create, and that the kind, conscience driven Player will want to line up beforehand, rather than crunch in mid-game.

Then again, maybe all I need to do is to build a Template that will ONLY list powers, and build a blank 'Character' that contains a long list of potential pool selections. Hmm. Must learn how to make templates.

[RPMiller]

Ok, I just encountered a wish list item.

I realize that you will be overhauling purchase lists so how about adding multiple selection capabilities?

i.e. CTRL and/or SHIFT selection methods so that multiple items can be selected and deleted. As another example, I've added too many skills/powers for my character and now want to quickly remove some to bring the character within the points allowed.

[The_Hero]

1) Change Export templates so that large characters won't bleed over into another sheet when printing and will be cleaned up.

2) Toggle a equipment costs/doesn't cost points tab.

Personally, I like putting equipment into it's separate area for printing, so have to have a custom power with a total, labeled equipment.

[Enforcer84]

Wow, Dan you seem to be fixing problems I didn't know I had! :)
That's way cool. Looking over the lists, I don't really have anything to add, save for that I will second the Campaign rules enforcement or varification so you can quickly check characters to see if they are viable...

[Simon]

Originally posted by The_Hero
1) Change Export templates so that large characters won't bleed over into another sheet when printing and will be cleaned up.

2) Toggle a equipment costs/doesn't cost points tab.

Personally, I like putting equipment into it's separate area for printing, so have to have a custom power with a total, labeled equipment.

Equipment does not cost points. That's the point to having a separate tab in the first place.

Use a List on the Powers tab if you want to have Equipment that costs Character Points all grouped together for printing.

[Simon]

Originally posted by Marcus
Id like some easier way to build the long lists of powers that a VPP can create, and that the kind, conscience driven Player will want to line up beforehand, rather than crunch in mid-game.

Then again, maybe all I need to do is to build a Template that will ONLY list powers, and build a blank 'Character' that contains a long list of potential pool selections. Hmm. Must learn how to make templates.

You can already put "example Powers" into a VPP. I see no need to change this behavior.

[Killer Shrike]

Originally posted by Marcus
Id like some easier way to build the long lists of powers that a VPP can create, and that the kind, conscience driven Player will want to line up beforehand, rather than crunch in mid-game.

Then again, maybe all I need to do is to build a Template that will ONLY list powers, and build a blank 'Character' that contains a long list of potential pool selections. Hmm. Must learn how to make templates.
This is what I currently do. You can also save the list as a prefab and just remember to unload it when you dont need it for that character.

To make an appropriate print template just take one of the templates you like, copy it, paste it with a new name, and strip out all the tags except the powers handling portion.

I asked for an additional VPP tab above for such a purpose in v2, but Dan has indicated he's not going to do it.

[Chris Goodwin]

Originally posted by dsimon
And again, if you can get Steve to state that those are "exceptions" or modifications to the rules as stated in FREd (and not just errors in the book) then I will change HD to match. But as it stands right now the stated (and verified through Steve) rule is that you cannot place Modifiers onto an SL or CSL that is less than 5 points.

I would say that the book is in error and that an errata entry is in order, not that HD should be changed.

I believe that since Steve is the line editor/developer for the system, that he has in all cases seen those situations and allowed them to be exceptions by letting them through. Otherwise, he spends most of his time answering "Did you really mean to do that?" type questions.

[Simon]

Originally posted by Durnin
Ok, I just encountered a wish list item.

I realize that you will be overhauling purchase lists so how about adding multiple selection capabilities?

i.e. CTRL and/or SHIFT selection methods so that multiple items can be selected and deleted. As another example, I've added too many skills/powers for my character and now want to quickly remove some to bring the character within the points allowed.

This is something that I was intending to work on anyway....consider it "on my list" ;)

There are some issues with having a non-contiguous selection (when it comes to moving up or down in the order), but I'll probably just disable the up and down buttons (as well as the edit) when a multiple (non-contiguous) selection occurs.

[Chris Goodwin]

Originally posted by dsimon
Equipment does not cost points. That's the point to having a separate tab in the first place.

Use a List on the Powers tab if you want to have Equipment that costs Character Points all grouped together for printing.

How about a "This Focus is Equipment" checkbox? Or, perhaps more generally, a "This shouldn't cost points" checkbox? That would take into account things like equipment, everyman skills, and the like.

[Simon]

Originally posted by archer
I believe that since Steve is the line editor/developer for the system, that he has in all cases seen those situations and allowed them to be exceptions by letting them through. Otherwise, he spends most of his time answering "Did you really mean to do that?" type questions.
Not the case at all....mistakes do happen. That's why there's an errata page for each book published.

I say again, there is nothing done in any of the published works for 5th Edition that HD cannot replicate. The only exceptions are items which have been errata'd.

[Simon]

Originally posted by archer
How about a "This Focus is Equipment" checkbox? Or, perhaps more generally, a "This shouldn't cost points" checkbox? That would take into account things like equipment, everyman skills, and the like.

Again, there is no need for this. If you want Equipment, use the Equipment tab. If the Equipment tab is not available on the template that you are using, then use a different template which has it enabled (it's a simple toggle at the top of the template file).

The Equipment tab works just fine, IMO and will not be changed, with the exception of the new fields which I have mentioned above.

[Killer Shrike]

Originally posted by dsimon
You can already put "example Powers" into a VPP. I see no need to change this behavior.

That might work out for some characters, but a lot of characters with VPPs will end up with huge lists of possible powers in a VPP, particularly Wizard types and Gadgeteers.

Also, many VPPs can only be changed under some circumstance such as in a lab or with study from a spell book or other more esoteric methods; also, darwinism will kick in and indicate that some options are so central that they tend to sit in the VPP for quite awhile or are constant enough to be nearly permanent and thus many VPP characters typically have a fairly set list at any given time, or even just a 'default set'.

I personally would prefer if HD differentiated between 'active' powers in the pool, with the usual limit of total Real Cost of all powers currently in the pool = the pool amount, and additional potential powers that might be assigned to that pool.

As it is, Ive had to go thru a fairly convoluted process of having the character with an empty VPP (pointed, but no powers) in 1 character file, keeping the master list of powers possible for thier pool in another character file and making that a prefab. Then, when I want to output thier current VPP, creating a 3rd character file and selecting the current powers desired from the prefab. into the new empty character file and then printing that list through a modified template.

Pain in the rear basically.

No big deal, but support for a 'virtual' powers list for VPPs within a character would be IMO a very cool thing. YMMV...

[Tom]

Would it be possible to have a "Display Modifier Values" checkbox similar to the "Display Active Points" box you've already added?

For me, anyhow, including modifier values is generally a waste of space on a character sheet (my players come in two variety: Already know, and Don't care).

[Simon]

Originally posted by Killer Shrike
That might work out for some characters, but a lot of characters with VPPs will end up with huge lists of possible powers in a VPP, particularly Wizard types and Gadgeteers.

A couple things:

1. If you want a list of Powers that the character can use but which don't print out, then use an Equipment list and use a template which does not print equipment.

2. If you have a Wizard type with a large list of available spells for his VPP and you want to list all of them, then yes, you are going to have a LONG printout. That's kinda the point. Organizing the VPP differently won't change that.

I see no point in reprinting a character everytime his VPP configuration changes. That kinda defeats the purpose behind a VPP to begin with, IMO.

If there are certain powers that you typically have in your VPP, then list them in your VPP. The choice is yours as to how exhaustive of a list you want to include.

[Simon]

Originally posted by Tom
Would it be possible to have a "Display Modifier Values" checkbox similar to the "Display Active Points" box you've already added?

For me, anyhow, including modifier values is generally a waste of space on a character sheet (my players come in two variety: Already know, and Don't care).
It's possible.....time permitting.

Actually, I'd more than likely leave that up to the export template to handle (and include enhanced functionality in the export process to allow that level of control).

We'll see how it works out....

[mudpyr8]

A) Just so I understand about equipment. You will be adding some custom fields to items in the equipment tab to allow specification of mass and perhaps other attributes?

B) I would suggest the following:
1) Weapon Stats as used in the book
2) Mass
3) Hit Location for Armor
4) Description
5) Type (Melee Weapon, Ranged Weapon, Armor, General)
6) Carried/non-carried check box

C) With associated tags for the export templates. This would allow someone to create an export template that ignored the standard hero power specs, but listed weapons in a weapons section, armor in an armor section (possibly including hit location breakdown), and just a general equipment list.

D) Total carried mass.

[Simon]

Originally posted by mudpyr8
A) Just so I understand about equipment. You will be adding some custom fields to items in the equipment tab to allow specification of mass and perhaps other attributes?

B) I would suggest the following:
1) Weapon Stats as used in the book
2) Mass
3) Hit Location for Armor
4) Description
5) Type (Melee Weapon, Ranged Weapon, Armor, General)
6) Carried/non-carried check box

C) With associated tags for the export templates. This would allow someone to create an export template that ignored the standard hero power specs, but listed weapons in a weapons section, armor in an armor section (possibly including hit location breakdown), and just a general equipment list.

D) Total carried mass.
I will try to work as much of that in as possible....hopefully all of it. It's pretty much what I was aiming for anyway ;)

Thanks!

[Killer Shrike]

Originally posted by dsimon
A couple things:

1. If you want a list of Powers that the character can use but which don't print out, then use an Equipment list and use a template which does not print equipment.

I will look into this



2. If you have a Wizard type with a large list of available spells for his VPP and you want to list all of them, then yes, you are going to have a LONG printout. That's kinda the point. Organizing the VPP differently won't change that.

That was why I requested a seperate tab for VPP virtual powers lists with seperate export filters so that they wouldnt print unless using a template that used the tags. It would behave exactly like the Equipment tab does now, except that I asked for the additional functionality to automatically move a power between the VPP and the VPP virtual list, probably by a selection sensitive button.



I see no point in reprinting a character everytime his VPP configuration changes. That kinda defeats the purpose behind a VPP to begin with, IMO.

Depends on the VPP. VPPs can be used for all kinds of different power constructs. Yes, for a Cosmic VPP or any VPP that is changeable in combat, it doesnt makes sense to print the character each time. Other types of VPPs are less dynamic however and it would make sense to generate a new print out with the info.

However, the biggest aspect of this is if you want to use HD as a during play tool. The ability to quickly drop in the current disposition of a VPP for a character from a virtual list of pre-made powers and have all the math and AP/RC limits applied would be a very good thing.


If there are certain powers that you typically have in your VPP, then list them in your VPP. The choice is yours as to how exhaustive of a list you want to include.
Yes, and what Im saying is that HD should enforce the RC limit of a VPP and that any powers assigned to a VPP on the character sheet should be considered 'active' powers, with a seperate list provide to track 'inactive' or virtual powers that are possible in the VPP but which are not currently assigned to the VPP.

Thus the character sheet would not get cluttered by long long lists of powers that need to be printed everytime the character is altered, even if the VPP was not altered in any way, all tracking of what powers are currently active would not need to be done manually, and finally the current RC total of all active powers would not need to be manually summed and tracked. The application would handle all of that.

Instead, by the method I suggested only the currently active powers (or in the case of Cosmic or other highly dynamic pools, perhaps none at all) print out on the standard exports, any active powers in the pool will be calculated to be equal or less that the RC limit of the pool, and adjusting the currently active power set is easily accomplished to and from the virtual powers list. The virtual powers list would be printable by a specific export template, and you get the best of both worlds.

In short, it would function just like the Equipment tab does now, except that a) VPPs would be restrained to their RC limits as per FREd; b) you could move a power back and forth into the VPP easily; and finally c) the Equipment tab is not subverted from its intended purpose.

Just my opinion. Yours obviously varies, but nevertheless, I think it would be a useful addition that more closely applies the letter of the rules to VPPs, unclutters the default print out for a character, allows better organization of abilities within the application, and supports the use of HD as not just a program from which character sheets may be derived, but also a playing aid.

No big deal, YMMV

[mudpyr8]

PDF was mentioned. When I was playing d20 I used PCGen. PCGen is a fine character designer and has a lot in common with HD. They added PDF support through some Java library, but ran everything through their template interface. So, you could export your character to an rtf, pdf, html, or plain text file. The PDF templates created extremely nice output. It wasn't so much for cross platform as it was for a clean layout. Overall it was very nicely done.

Is PDF needed for HD? I'm not sure. On any platform except Windows you can generate PDFs for free from any printing interface, or at least through a ps to pdf conversion, so if I output to rtf or clean html I could create a PDF with little difficulty. Only Windows users would need some licensed software or run ghostcript and do a ps to pdf conversion.

Rambling now. Bottom line, Java PDF library and then support PDF export templates. Low priority but probably doable.

[ProfessorM@ss]

Something I forgot...

One thing MetaCreator had that I really liked was the ability to basically toggle off the point cost of anything. I wouldn't mind a simple option in every edit field (for individual Powers or Skills, as well as Frameworks and Lists), that basically says, "Don't tally this."

That way, I could build different lists of items, or different Frameworks, or individual powers, and decide which I want to use.

Note that this toggle would also answer all the questions about building lists of powers for VPPs. You could just add "Sample Powers for VPPs", turn off the toggle, and it would be tallied separately to the character's full point totals. I would see that the 12d6 Energy Blast was worth 60 Active Points and costing me 30 Points, say, but it wouldn't be added onto my character total.

I can think of numerous uses for this.

--->M@ss

[Simon]

Originally posted by ProfessorM@ss
Something I forgot...

One thing MetaCreator had that I really liked was the ability to basically toggle off the point cost of anything. I wouldn't mind a simple option in every edit field (for individual Powers or Skills, as well as Frameworks and Lists), that basically says, "Don't tally this."

That way, I could build different lists of items, or different Frameworks, or individual powers, and decide which I want to use.

Note that this toggle would also answer all the questions about building lists of powers for VPPs. You could just add "Sample Powers for VPPs", turn off the toggle, and it would be tallied separately to the character's full point totals. I would see that the 12d6 Energy Blast was worth 60 Active Points and costing me 30 Points, say, but it wouldn't be added onto my character total.

I can think of numerous uses for this.

--->M@ss
Metacreator allowed you to do numerous things that were not legal.

The point of HD is not to mimic Metacreator.

Once again, if you want an item which does not cost points, put it on the Equipment tab.

[The_Hero]

I know equipment doesn't cost points, my point was I wanted to be able to print Equipment that costs points under the equipment section, like when you buy Equipment that doesn't cost points.

Hope that sounds clear...

[Simon]

Originally posted by The_Hero
I know equipment doesn't cost points, my point was I wanted to be able to print Equipment that costs points under the equipment section, like when you buy Equipment that doesn't cost points.

Hope that sounds clear...

If you want Equipment to cost points, then its purchased under the Powers section.

This is just the way that HD is going to work. I see no need to change things so that Equipment can cost points or so that Powers do not.

[The_Hero]

One thing MetaCreator had that I really liked was the ability to basically toggle off the point cost of anything. I wouldn't mind a simple option in every edit field (for individual Powers or Skills, as well as Frameworks and Lists), that basically says, "Don't tally this."

That way, I could build different lists of items, or different Frameworks, or individual powers, and decide which I want to use.

Note that this toggle would also answer all the questions about building lists of powers for VPPs. You could just add "Sample Powers for VPPs", turn off the toggle, and it would be tallied separately to the character's full point totals. I would see that the 12d6 Energy Blast was worth 60 Active Points and costing me 30 Points, say, but it wouldn't be added onto my character total.

I can think of numerous uses for this.

Gotta agree with this here, that way you can have write-up of commonly used pool powers without having to keep them somewhere else, which is inconvenient.

The toggle for ignoring points would effectively make it a conveniently placed Notes section for the Pool which does math...

--->M@ss [/B][/QUOTE] One thing MetaCreator had that I really liked was the ability to basically toggle off the point cost of anything. I wouldn't mind a simple option in every edit field (for individual Powers or Skills, as well as Frameworks and Lists), that basically says, "Don't tally this."

[Simon]

Originally posted by The_Hero
One thing MetaCreator had that I really liked was the ability to basically toggle off the point cost of anything. I wouldn't mind a simple option in every edit field (for individual Powers or Skills, as well as Frameworks and Lists), that basically says, "Don't tally this."

That way, I could build different lists of items, or different Frameworks, or individual powers, and decide which I want to use.

Note that this toggle would also answer all the questions about building lists of powers for VPPs. You could just add "Sample Powers for VPPs", turn off the toggle, and it would be tallied separately to the character's full point totals. I would see that the 12d6 Energy Blast was worth 60 Active Points and costing me 30 Points, say, but it wouldn't be added onto my character total.

I can think of numerous uses for this.

Gotta agree with this here, that way you can have write-up of commonly used pool powers without having to keep them somewhere else, which is inconvenient.

The toggle for ignoring points would effectively make it a conveniently placed Notes section for the Pool which does math...

--->M@ss
<b>AGAIN</b>...this is not going to happen. I don't care that MetaCreator did it. MetaCreator did lots of things that are simply not allowed under the Hero System. I am not trying to replicate MetaCreator. I am trying to make a Hero System chargen that follows the rules of the Hero System.

There will not be a toggle to "turn off the cost" for Powers.

Please stop asking for it. The answer won't change.

If you want Powers that don't cost points, then purchase them on the Equipment tab.

[Killer Shrike]

You're being a little vague Dan but it sounds like what you are basically saying then is....no 0 point option for powers?

:D

[Monolith]

Originally posted by dsimon
If you want Powers that don't cost points, then purchase them on the Equipment tab.
Then why not just add an Equipment Tab to the superhero templates then? Then all possibilities are covered and everyone is happy.

[Simon]

Originally posted by Monolith
Then why not just add an Equipment Tab to the superhero templates then? Then all possibilities are covered and everyone is happy.

Anyone that wants one can enable it quite easily. I'm not going to include it by default as (per FREd) characters should pay for all equipment in superheroic level campaigns, making a tab for 0-point Powers, Equipment, etc. unnecessary according to the rules.

Again, it's something which can easily be done now (and something which will only get easier with the new template structure in v2).

[Immortaldreamer]

Okay...I'm -really- not trying to be a troll here. And as mentioned, I have a great respect for Dan, his update speeds are phenominal, and Hero Designer is an incredible project. BUT...
************************************************** *******************************
Feel free to post suggestions or requests to this thread...

(and then, many posts later)

AGAIN...this is not going to happen. I don't care that MetaCreator did it. MetaCreator did lots of things that are simply not allowed under the Hero System. I am not trying to replicate MetaCreator. I am trying to make a Hero System chargen that follows the rules of the Hero System.

There will not be a toggle to "turn off the cost" for Powers.

Please stop asking for it. The answer won't change.
************************************************** *******************************

Certainly, Dan has every right to code Hero Designer the way he wants. He's the programmer, after all. But Dan, just as a suggestion...if you don't want feedback that you might not agree with...maybe don't solicit it openly?

You asked for feedback from your community of users. "Suggestions or requests..."

You've -received- quite a lot of feedback. And some of it may be good, and some of it may be bad. But -all- of it, one way or another, is something that at least some portion of your users wanted to see, hence, a feature or request.

To then turn around and tell people to stop asking for things...well, if multiple people are asking? No one is infallible. Not you, not I, not the Great and Powerful Steve. You tend, from what I've seen on the board, to have a common programmer trait...tunnel vision. You have The One True Vision for Hero Designer, and so anything that doesn't mesh with that tends to be either very brusquely dismissed, or even attacked.

Now, there are things about HD that I -didn't- like...but I wasn't going to mention them, and didn't, until the thread, because it wasn't my place to attack your program. But when you ASK for feedback, you should be prepared to accept the good -with- the bad, and realize that people might not all agree with the design choices as made. That doesn't make them bad people, or invalidate their opinions.

Just -my- opinion. As always, Your Mileage May Vary.

[psychoph]

I would request that templates allow you to add your own standard skills if at all possible, either that or allow custom skill to have the same possible selection of familiraity and everyman skill. I don't entirely understand when you would ever create a skill that started at a roll lower than 8-.

I was also wondering if the skill area knowledge could be added. I know it is in the star hero book and that I can add it using a custom skill, but my personal preference is to modify the underlying template rather than creating a huge prefab with a bunch of custom area knowledges.

[Simon]

Originally posted by Immortaldreamer
Okay...I'm -really- not trying to be a troll here. And as mentioned, I have a great respect for Dan, his update speeds are phenominal, and Hero Designer is an incredible project. BUT...
************************************************** *******************************
Feel free to post suggestions or requests to this thread...

(and then, many posts later)

AGAIN...this is not going to happen. I don't care that MetaCreator did it. MetaCreator did lots of things that are simply not allowed under the Hero System. I am not trying to replicate MetaCreator. I am trying to make a Hero System chargen that follows the rules of the Hero System.

There will not be a toggle to "turn off the cost" for Powers.

Please stop asking for it. The answer won't change.
************************************************** *******************************

Certainly, Dan has every right to code Hero Designer the way he wants. He's the programmer, after all. But Dan, just as a suggestion...if you don't want feedback that you might not agree with...maybe don't solicit it openly?

You asked for feedback from your community of users. "Suggestions or requests..."

You've -received- quite a lot of feedback. And some of it may be good, and some of it may be bad. But -all- of it, one way or another, is something that at least some portion of your users wanted to see, hence, a feature or request.

To then turn around and tell people to stop asking for things...well, if multiple people are asking? No one is infallible. Not you, not I, not the Great and Powerful Steve. You tend, from what I've seen on the board, to have a common programmer trait...tunnel vision. You have The One True Vision for Hero Designer, and so anything that doesn't mesh with that tends to be either very brusquely dismissed, or even attacked.

Now, there are things about HD that I -didn't- like...but I wasn't going to mention them, and didn't, until the thread, because it wasn't my place to attack your program. But when you ASK for feedback, you should be prepared to accept the good -with- the bad, and realize that people might not all agree with the design choices as made. That doesn't make them bad people, or invalidate their opinions.

Just -my- opinion. As always, Your Mileage May Vary.
Why is this so hard for you to understand?

I have no problems with any and all feedback. I welcome the ideas that are being posted in this thread (and others). I encourage them. I welcome negative comments as well as good.....all feedback is helpful.

But, if I say that I'm not going to implement a particular feature....and then say it again when asked again....and then say it again when asked again....etc., it is just getting silly.

This issue has been talked to death. My answer has not changed since it was first posted.

It. Will. Not. Be. Implemented.

Move on. There is nothing further to discuss on this issue.

Do I have a problem with the issue being brought up in the first place? Absolutely not! I think it was a fine suggestion. But it is one that will not be implemented, for reasons which have been made abundantly clear.

Asking again (and again, and again) will not change this.

Move onto the next idea or feature request.

[Simon]

Originally posted by psychoph
I would request that templates allow you to add your own standard skills if at all possible, either that or allow custom skill to have the same possible selection of familiraity and everyman skill. I don't entirely understand when you would ever create a skill that started at a roll lower than 8-.

I was also wondering if the skill area knowledge could be added. I know it is in the star hero book and that I can add it using a custom skill, but my personal preference is to modify the underlying template rather than creating a huge prefab with a bunch of custom area knowledges.
A few things here:

1. v2 will allow the specification of "new" abilities in each of the sections. The main area that I'm still unsure about with this is Characteristics, but we'll see what I can do.

2. If you're creating a custom "roll-based" Skill, your best bet is to use the "Power" Skill. This allows you to specify a characteristic to base the roll off of (or "general" for no characteristic base), set the levels, etc. The only time you'd really need to use Custom Skill for something like this is if you wanted a non-standard pricing structure for the Skill. Power Skill also lets you specify whether it's a Familiarity and/or Everyman Skill.

3. Area Knowledge is just a special type of Knowledge Skill. Select Knowledge Skill and set the type to "Places".

[Dr. Anomaly]

Dan,

Some time back you had mentioned possibly implementing one of MY "most wanted" as one of a series of 'toggles': the ability to toggle OFF the point cost that gets listed in parenthesis after a Skill. It makes better than 3/4 of the Skills run over and take 2 lines, and that's one of the big reasons so many printouts run to 2 pages. Just being able to turn off that part of the display (print) would be SOOOO nice. :)

[Simon]

Originally posted by Dr. Anomaly
Dan,

Some time back you had mentioned possibly implementing one of MY "most wanted" as one of a series of 'toggles': the ability to toggle OFF the point cost that gets listed in parenthesis after a Skill. It makes better than 3/4 of the Skills run over and take 2 lines, and that's one of the big reasons so many printouts run to 2 pages. Just being able to turn off that part of the display (print) would be SOOOO nice. :)

Just to be sure we're on the same page here, which point costs are you talking about?

The Active Points already have a toggle to turn the display on and off...those are the only points that I currently list in parens after the Skill, to my knowledge....

[Dr. Anomaly]

Um...they DO? When did THAT get added? I guess I haven't been keeping up on the Updates nearly as well as I should have! :rolleyes: That is, it WAS added in one of the Updates...?

[Simon]

Originally posted by Dr. Anomaly
Um...they DO? When did THAT get added? I guess I haven't been keeping up on the Updates nearly as well as I should have! :rolleyes: That is, it WAS added in one of the Updates...?

Yeah...that functionality was put in with version 1.25

[Dr. Anomaly]

eeep. Sorry, Dan. I wished for it, and never even noticed that it had been granted...now THAT'S embarassing!

[Lightray]

I haven't seen this one yet:

I would like the ability to use non-standard text characters, particularly in the background fields. By non-standard characters, I mean letters with acute or grave accent marks, circumflexes, umlauts/diareses, etc. Useful for me mainly when we've got a character whose name is in French, Spanish, or another language (Hungarian, maybe). Being able to paste text into the background-type text boxes would be nice.

[RPMiller]

Originally posted by Lightray
I haven't seen this one yet:

I would like the ability to use non-standard text characters, particularly in the background fields. By non-standard characters, I mean letters with acute or grave accent marks, circumflexes, umlauts/diareses, etc. Useful for me mainly when we've got a character whose name is in French, Spanish, or another language (Hungarian, maybe). Being able to paste text into the background-type text boxes would be nice. Umm... can't you do that already? I am able to not only copy and paste, but also paste text with Extended characters as well.

[psychoph]

I would like the ability to copy and paste powers between the power tab and the equipment tab.

Or duplicate powers to save work.

For me it would assist in creating multiple prefab weapons for ships when the weapons have different firing arcs. Or I want to copy a force shield and have several types that have differing degrees of strength.

[Lightray]

Originally posted by Durnin
Umm... can't you do that already? I am able to not only copy and paste, but also paste text with Extended characters as well.
Did I miss something obvious here?

I'm on the "Basic Info." and "Background" tabs, and see no means of cut & paste. Mouse clicking and drop-downs offer no choices.

How did you do the cut & paste?

[rjcurrie]

You use the CTRL-C (Copy), CTRL-V (Paste), and CTRL-X (Cut) keys on Windows systems. I believe there are similar keys that perform these tasks on Linux and Macs.

I think I mentioned these keys in the documentation, but I may not have.

Rod

[Lightray]

huh. I did miss the obvious. Thanks!

Guess I want for nothing. :)

[Simon]

Originally posted by psychoph
I would like the ability to copy and paste powers between the power tab and the equipment tab.

Or duplicate powers to save work.

For me it would assist in creating multiple prefab weapons for ships when the weapons have different firing arcs. Or I want to copy a force shield and have several types that have differing degrees of strength.

Err...you can already. You've been able to do that since day one.

Step 1: Select a Power on the Powers tab

Step 2: Select "Copy" from the Edit menu

Step 3: Go to the Equipment tab and select "Paste" from the Edit menu

If you select a list, you will be able to copy the entire list (with contents). Or cut...your choice.

I plan on expanding this functionality to include multiple selections in v2....

[The_Hero]

Originally posted by dsimon
Anyone that wants one can enable it quite easily. I'm not going to include it by default as (per FREd) characters should pay for all equipment in superheroic level campaigns, making a tab for 0-point Powers, Equipment, etc. unnecessary according to the rules.

Again, it's something which can easily be done now (and something which will only get easier with the new template structure in v2).

So for those of us who aren't programming guys, can we have addendum in the help file on how to alter it to make it do the things you Won't program it to do, such as above, or making points costings equipment show up in the Equipment section, ability to include sample pool powers included without cost, etc?

If you won't do it, we'd like to figure how to do it ourselves...

[rjcurrie]

Originally posted by The_Hero
So for those of us who aren't programming guys, can we have addendum in the help file on how to alter it to make it do the things you Won't program it to do, such as above, or making points costings equipment show up in the Equipment section, ability to include sample pool powers included without cost, etc?

If you won't do it, we'd like to figure how to do it ourselves...

Unfortunately, most of the things that you have asked for are not under any kind of user control even by editing a template. In Version 2, we can try to include more information in the docs on how to edit a template, but I can guarantee you that it will still be in general terms and will not tell you step by step everything single thing that you can edit. However, if there are specific things that you would like to see covered in the documentation, let me know and I will see what I can do.

You can already include sample VPP powers (without cost) by placing them as slots under a VPP in the same way that you would include slots in a list, Multipower, or EC.

[ProfessorM@ss]

Hi! Me, again!

Something occurred to me tonight, when one of my players (a computer novice) was using my copy of HD to make a character. He asked where the Undo button was.

So, not only do I think we need an Undo button, but an Undo history...could this possibly be tied into the versioning feature you were discussing, Dan?

--->M@ss

[Simon]

Originally posted by ProfessorM@ss
Hi! Me, again!

Something occurred to me tonight, when one of my players (a computer novice) was using my copy of HD to make a character. He asked where the Undo button was.

So, not only do I think we need an Undo button, but an Undo history...could this possibly be tied into the versioning feature you were discussing, Dan?

--->M@ss
An undo process would need to be very different from the versioning. The versioning is going to be something that you explicitly do -- you will go to a menu and say "set the current state of the character as version X.XX". This will allow you to make lots of changes between versions.

An undo history would need to track each individual change, remembering the state of the character before the change.

It's definitely something that is possible. I'll need to look into it when I get into actual development on v2 and see how much effort it's going to take....I've got a few concerns on memory usage that I'd need to deal with in implementing an undo stack....basically only storing X actions in the stack to prevent the memory consumption from rising significantly.

Anyway, I'll try to get something like that into place.

[RPMiller]

I think I have another feasible suggestion, but I'm not sure. This may have already been brought up but can't remember.

It would be nice to be able to use the keyboard more for moving line items.
For example, instead of having to select the line and then click an arrow to move it, it would be nice to select the line and then hit the arrow keys to move it up and down, or even drag and drop with the mouse.
I'm personally not that keen on drag and drop in my own programming so that would be a secondary choice.

Is that something worthy of doing?

[zornwil]

Originally posted by dsimon
Why is this so hard for you to understand?

I have no problems with any and all feedback. I welcome the ideas that are being posted in this thread (and others). I encourage them. I welcome negative comments as well as good.....all feedback is helpful.

But, if I say that I'm not going to implement a particular feature....and then say it again when asked again....and then say it again when asked again....etc., it is just getting silly.

This issue has been talked to death. My answer has not changed since it was first posted.

It. Will. Not. Be. Implemented.

Move on. There is nothing further to discuss on this issue.

Do I have a problem with the issue being brought up in the first place? Absolutely not! I think it was a fine suggestion. But it is one that will not be implemented, for reasons which have been made abundantly clear.

Asking again (and again, and again) will not change this.

Move onto the next idea or feature request.

Actually it's sort of fun to make you keep responding like this, Dan...seriously, why would you expect people to not add their voices to a feature request, and when you ask again after v2 and going on v3, you should fully expect to see it resurrect even though you've said you won't do it. People want to have their voices heard and while any sensible person realizes it's not (nor should it be) a democracy, there is a weight in numbers. Most people believe that at some point if an overwhelming number actually wanted something it would register and force some change.

Dan, your safest tact is just to state it won't happen and move on yourself, accepting that some people will keep asking for feature -x-.

[RPMiller]

Here's one I don't think anyone has mentioned:

A tag or some other way to identify different types of powers. For example, Offensive, Defensive, Movement, etc.

This would allow an Export Template to group powers.

Barring that isn't possible, how about a way to indicate where Martial Arts would be inserted so that it could be inserted with other offensive powers?

[RPMiller]

Here's couple more:

Instead of NonManeuver representing Weapon Elements and Extra Damage DCs. It would be nice to have a Weapon Elements and AddedDC Tag. It would make the tags easier and items easier to control instead of trying to put a whole bunch of IF logic into the Export design.

Also, to have the Disads seperated into the name and the "options" would be cool also. In other words being able to display the disad as "Physical Limitation: No Hands" instead of "Physical Limitation: No Hands (All The Time, Greatly)" if so desired.

[JmOz]

One thing I asked for in v1 and was turned down was that equipment have its own tab and that items such as weapons be listed as per the summary charts in fred oppose to working out the powers Etc... (Yes I realise you can build it with powers but it is simpler in my opinion to see Sword 1d6 damage +1 ovc than Sword 1d6 HKA, Oaf, +1 CSL OAF)

I would also like to see a "Combat chart" option that would list OCV/DCV damage of a certain attack with special notes

[Simon]

Originally posted by JmOz
One thing I asked for in v1 and was turned down was that equipment have its own tab and that items such as weapons be listed as per the summary charts in fred oppose to working out the powers Etc... (Yes I realise you can build it with powers but it is simpler in my opinion to see Sword 1d6 damage +1 ovc than Sword 1d6 HKA, Oaf, +1 CSL OAF)

I would also like to see a "Combat chart" option that would list OCV/DCV damage of a certain attack with special notes
1) There is, and has always been, an Equipment tab.

2) If you don't care about the make up of a weapon (which _is_ a Power construct, according to the rules), then just use a Custom Power and set the display to be whatever you want.

[JmOz]

Yes I know about the equipment tab, I was actualy refrencing the presentation to being in the equipment tab instead of requesting it (Make sense?)

The problem with the custom power way is the layout when you try to represent multple items

What I am looking for is to make it look like pg 329 of the rule book

[Simon]

Originally posted by JmOz
Yes I know about the equipment tab, I was actualy refrencing the presentation to being in the equipment tab instead of requesting it (Make sense?)

The problem with the custom power way is the layout when you try to represent multple items

What I am looking for is to make it look like pg 329 of the rule book
Equipment tab: No...I really don't know what you're talking about here. Go slowly. And use small words ;)

As I said before on the weapons: the table in FREd is simply a quick reference. It is not the way weapons are purchased (per Steve and FREd). Nor is it the way they are displayed in published works (see Star Hero for numerous examples). Weapons <b>are</b> Powers. The quick reference table that you're referring to also has numerous footnotes and references, making it completely infeasible to replicate in HD.

You have (and will continue to have) 2 choices:

1) Create the weapons as they are intended to be created: as Power constructs (e.g. "<i>Gauss Rifle: </i>RKA 2d6, Armor Piercing (+1/2), Autofire (5 shots; +1/2), 4 Clips of 30 Charges each (+1/2); OAF (-1), STR Minimum (13; STR Minimum Doesn't Add To Damage; -1), Real Weapon (-1/4), Two-Handed Weapon (-1/2)")

2) Create the weapons as Custom Powers and set the display to whatever you want.

You can even do a "shorthand" notation of (1) by using Lists to include any "general" Modifiers on a group of Weapons (like OAF, Real Weapon, etc.).

The choice is yours, but HD will not be changing in this respect.

[JmOz]

I will drop it after this:

You said:

1) There is, and has always been, an Equipment tab.

Indicating that you thought I did not know about the tab,

My comments were to indicate that while I knew about the tab, what I was requesting was for certain information to be displayed on the tab in a certain way. my second comment on the topic were to indicate that I knew about the tab, and that my prior comments brought up the tab only so you knew where I wanted to see the change. If it is still not clear to you I ask that Herodom assembled try to explain it, as my ability to say it is not matching up with your ability to understand it (Neither of are faults, just sometimes happens)

[Simon]

Originally posted by JmOz
I will drop it after this:

You said:

1) There is, and has always been, an Equipment tab.

Indicating that you thought I did not know about the tab,

My comments were to indicate that while I knew about the tab, what I was requesting was for certain information to be displayed on the tab in a certain way. my second comment on the topic were to indicate that I knew about the tab, and that my prior comments brought up the tab only so you knew where I wanted to see the change. If it is still not clear to you I ask that Herodom assembled try to explain it, as my ability to say it is not matching up with your ability to understand it (Neither of are faults, just sometimes happens)
Nope...that explains it now ;)

[Steve]

One thing I would like to see is making the Equipment tab available in "Superhero" mode. This would be really helpful to me.

[RPMiller]

Originally posted by Steve
One thing I would like to see is making the Equipment tab available in "Superhero" mode. This would be really helpful to me. Dan - I think you really do need that STICKY FAQ Thread... :D

Steve - You can do this right now. All you have to do is modify either a default super template, or copy one, and modify it adding the correct options to turn on the Equipment tab. Just compare it to one of the Normal level templates and you'll see it right at the top.

[Simon]

Originally posted by Durnin
Dan - I think you really do need that STICKY FAQ Thread... :D

Steve - You can do this right now. All you have to do is modify either a default super template, or copy one, and modify it adding the correct options to turn on the Equipment tab. Just compare it to one of the Normal level templates and you'll see it right at the top.
Durnin's right....

I won't be doing it by default because it is explicitly not allowed per FREd (super heroes pay for their Equipment....meaning that they purchase all items on the Powers tab).

[Blue]

First off, Great program. You keep posting updates and these seem to fix problems I've never even come across :)

As for version 2, none of these will make or break the program, but they are just ideas. And forgive me if any of this is already doable and I just haven't found it...

Team Functionality - It would be nice to be able to call up an entire team. Something like FILE > OPEN TEAM, and you'd click on the file for the team and it would open all of the team members linked to that team. Might have issues with big, big teams of course.

Team Output Page - As it is now you can export information to single character sheets. With characters linked together by the common item of "team name", you could then output all of their most basic information to one COMBAT sheet. I'm referring to those sheets that show Phases, DEX, OCV, etc. with each character on a seperate line.

Troubleshooting Feature - I think currently there's a log file you can gather and e-mail if there's a problem? How about if clicking on a button in the interface grabbed that item and inserted it into an e-mail in your default e-mail program so you could send it to the proper authority? Just trying to make life easier for the consumer :)

Hope something in there is a good idea.

[The_Hero]

Here's an idea for yu that won't violate the "Powers must cost points" rule:

Under Power Pool, put a subsection where you can list sample powers.

Rig it such that Powers in that subsection don't add to the total point cost of the character.

Technically, the powers in the subsection won't cost points, but will be able to be displayed under the PP instead of the equipment section which doesn't look right.

[Simon]

Originally posted by The_Hero
Here's an idea for yu that won't violate the "Powers must cost points" rule:

Under Power Pool, put a subsection where you can list sample powers.

Rig it such that Powers in that subsection don't add to the total point cost of the character.

Technically, the powers in the subsection won't cost points, but will be able to be displayed under the PP instead of the equipment section which doesn't look right.
You can already do that. Just add Powers to the VPP the same way you would to a MP or an EC or a List.

[Shaun Hendricks]

I just want character sheets that print to a REAL printer and not just HTML... that and an editable 'preview' mode. Personally, HeroMaker had the best interface of the 3 software packages and it did it with VGA level graphics. There's no reason I shouldn't be editing directly on a 'character sheet' with little pop up dialogs for all the choices and options.

Oh yeah, one final thing... Autofire in the Advantages list might be nice... ^_^

[lemming]

Originally posted by Shaun Hendricks
I just want character sheets that print to a REAL printer and not just HTML... that and an editable 'preview' mode
I actually really like the method Dan choose.

[tiger]

Originally posted by Shaun Hendricks
Oh yeah, one final thing... Autofire in the Advantages list might be nice... ^_^

uh....it already is

[Shaun Hendricks]

A Tiger told me...

uh....it already is

Well, if you can find it in my list here, I'd be most grateful!

http://swordanddragon.com/HDAdvantages.bmp

It's version 1.41b and this list looks fairly thin to me but I haven't had a chance to go through and figure out what's missing, besides Autofire (should be there in 3,5,10, etc.)

[Shaun Hendricks]

Originally posted by lemming
I actually really like the method Dan choose.

This is funny coming from the same guy that made fun of my typing oops in the Dex post... (Yes, I know it's "Clever") I just love it when karma gets even... :D

As for whatever 'Dan' chose, if he's the one that chose just HTML, sure, it's cool if you're doing web pages and lookups but my characters tend to go in nice binders with all supporting materials and documentation. For that, I like fully customizable character sheets, and Hero Creator did them best but admittedly the programming for custom sheets was a bit arcane though okay once you figured it out. With HD (current version), I get ONE choice- HTML. One choice is RARELY a choice, it's a forced decision. Thus my post, I'd like a real choice here in output types, specifically, one that talks to my nice little laserjet or an inkjet please. I'd accept PDF as well, so long as each sheet could be treated as a separate sheet. Again, Hero Creator did this well. I suppose I could reformat the HTML using GoLive or FrontPage, but to do this for each character would end up being less than thrilling. :(

[tiger]

Originally posted by Shaun Hendricks
A Tiger told me...


Well, if you can find it in my list here, I'd be most grateful!

http://swordanddragon.com/HDAdvantages.bmp

It's version 1.41b and this list looks fairly thin to me but I haven't had a chance to go through and figure out what's missing, besides Autofire (should be there in 3,5,10, etc.)

Well it shows up on mine with all attack powers and some others. It doesn't seem to with the custome power though.

I'd gather to say it's setup that way, but I could be wrong

[Steve]

When buying Presence as a power, it would be nice to have available a check box for "Defensive Only" since that is the most common limited type of Presence in my experience.

[Steve]

Originally posted by Shaun Hendricks
I just want character sheets that print to a REAL printer and not just HTML.

I'd like to second this recommendation. I think this is the first piece of software that I have come across that can't print directly to a printer.

[RPMiller]

Originally posted by Shaun Hendricks
Thus my post, I'd like a real choice here in output types, specifically, one that talks to my nice little laserjet or an inkjet please. I'd accept PDF as well, so long as each sheet could be treated as a separate sheet. Again, Hero Creator did this well. I suppose I could reformat the HTML using GoLive or FrontPage, but to do this for each character would end up being less than thrilling. :( There are several RTF Export Template on the Free Stuff --> Hero Designer page. An RTF will open with your default text editor whatever that is. The nice thing about the way Dan does the exports is that you can create whatever format you want, and then evertime you export everything will fall into place. I was able to create the WGFullCharacter Sheet Export Template and got everything to go exactly where I wanted it to go. I would strongly suggest reading the documentation and looking at the various export templates that people have created. That shows true choice. 'You' decide the export format, 'you' create what it will look like, and 'you' get to include whatever information you want on the page. That sounds like choices to me. Check it out. It is very flexible.

[RPMiller]

Originally posted by Steve
I'd like to second this recommendation. I think this is the first piece of software that I have come across that can't print directly to a printer. I agree it seems like an extra step to put an application before the printer, but the ability to edit the document and make other changes before printing is nice. Also, considering that the 'extra' step is essentially print preview it isn't any different than any other word processors or other apps that are out there.

[Shaun Hendricks]

Originally posted by Durnin
There are several RTF Export Template on the Free Stuff --> Hero Designer page. An RTF will open with your default text editor whatever that is. The nice thing about the way Dan does the exports is that you can create whatever format you want, and then evertime you export everything will fall into place. I was able to create the WGFullCharacter Sheet Export Template and got everything to go exactly where I wanted it to go. I would strongly suggest reading the documentation and looking at the various export templates that people have created. That shows true choice. 'You' decide the export format, 'you' create what it will look like, and 'you' get to include whatever information you want on the page. That sounds like choices to me. Check it out. It is very flexible.

Making me do all the work, either via HTML editing or RTF editing is NOT a choice, it's a burden. If Hero Games is going to offer software for sale as a 'professional' product, it needs to be done so that all the common options and choices are covered. At least with Hero Creator I didn't HAVE to modify the output to get a professional looking character sheet, I did because I liked more options on my sheets, a personal preference. Here, I HAVE to edit stuff to get correct printing results and that's not good. Even HeroMaker, which had a terrible printing interface, had a decent 'out of the box' character sheet that printed separate sheets correctly and not as 'table columns'. It just feels cheezy and rushed. I'm not going to belabor the point any longer, I'm sure I've been heard in the Hero Games offices and that's all I want. :)

[JohnOSpencer]

My GF has requested that the "right click" do it's normal stuff. Copy, paste, etc. And Undo.

John Spencer

[xanatos]

Will there be the possibility of controlling rounding rules? (Steve uses 2 digits in the books, but "mortals" use 1 digit)

Bye

[Simon]

Originally posted by JohnOSpencer
My GF has requested that the "right click" do it's normal stuff. Copy, paste, etc. And Undo.

John Spencer
It's certainly possible....my preference has always been not to use them. I find them annoying, which is why they aren't used in the current version of the app.

Time permitting, I will look into adding some of the basic functionality into popups.

[Simon]

Originally posted by xanatos
Will there be the possibility of controlling rounding rules? (Steve uses 2 digits in the books, but "mortals" use 1 digit)

Bye
It's definitely a possibility.

I've got all of the rounding pretty much centralized in the app (since there was a fair bit of "fluidity" to how HD was doing things in the early days), so I can probably make this part of the general preferences screen.

[johnflang]

A feature I would like to see in V2 is campaign settings.

1) I would like the abilty to create a campaign that includes prefabs, campaign limits etc...
2) The ability to import/export the campign info to other members of the group.
3) Support more than one campaign. This would allow me to work on a Forgotten Realms character, than switch characters and work on my Matrix Hero character.

[Heroman]

Making me do all the work, either via HTML editing or RTF editing is NOT a choice, it's a burden. If Hero Games is going to offer software for sale as a 'professional' product, it needs to be done so that all the common options and choices are covered

Actually, I use a modified export template called something like 'Default Character Sheet No Background Fields' (I think from the Free Downloads) which actually does page breaks (using: br style="page-break-after: always;" ), even in Netscape 7.02. It took a bit of mangling, but it is a really nice layout, even if it needs more work :)
Sadly, I don't know how complex PDF generation is (which would be my next format of choice over M$$$) so I am happy with HTML output.

The only thing I would look for is more flow control in the template (so you could put powers in columns instead of just rows) and more finalized, quality HTML character sheets which do not break page boundaries

[Killer Shrike]

Originally posted by Heroman
Actually, I use a modified export template called something like 'Default Character Sheet No Background Fields' (I think from the Free Downloads) which actually does page breaks (using: br style="page-break-after: always;" ), even in Netscape 7.02. It took a bit of mangling, but it is a really nice layout, even if it needs more work :)
That sounds like one of my Export Templates, which is just a modification of the Default Character Sheet (quite literally, I just took the background tags out of the template to save ink :rolleyes: )

If you could check the Template in the 'Select Export Template' dialog it will have my name in the Description. If so, please starte a new thread with the formating changes you think need to be made and Ill take a look at it.

Another of my Templates (which I personally use as the 'Default') is the 'One Column Abilities Character Sheet', which I designed primarily to save page count when printing. Its a little more robust than the true 'Default' sheet when it comes to breaking evenly because I gave the abilities section more width and broke Martial Arts into a page-section w/ all other combat info, and Powers to thier own page-section. Talents, Skills, Perks, and Disadvantages all share a page-section. Characters with a real metric ton of skills, talents, and perks tend to push to a 'wrapped page', but those are rare in most campaigns. A slight modification could be made to break any of those groups into thier own page-sections if it would be worthwhile. I also divorced the page sections from any real ordering; each sheet is self contained, and can be stapled together in any order. I tend to use the 'second page' which collates all the combat info more often for NPCs. so I have taken to stapling that page 1st on some of the characters for instance.

Those are both available through the download page with a coupld other Templates. Look for ExportTemplatesKS.zip



The only thing I would look for is more flow control in the template (so you could put powers in columns instead of just rows) and more finalized, quality HTML character sheets which do not break page boundaries

Ok, you have to understand that this isnt very realistic within the bounds of HTML.

Im not sure what you mean by "Powers in Columns" -- what kind of layout are you talking about exactly. Im having trouble visualizing what that would look like. Do you mean something like:
<table border =1>
<tr><td>Cost</td><td>12</td><td>52</td><td>7</td></tr>
<tr><td>Power</td><td>Blah</td><td>Blah blah</td><td>blah blah blah</td></tr>
<tr><td>END</td><td>1</td><td>5</td><td>1</td></tr>
</table>

If so Im not sure why you would want that.....


As far as page breaking, its a huge PItB w/ any browser based output, even with static content. Add in dynamically generated content and all bets are off. The best you can do is guestimate and thumbnail it, and there will still be overruns.

HeroCreator has been much touted by some in this thread for its output; I used HC <b>heavily</b> and really really liked it; I miss many of its keyboard features and the free ranging cut and paste. But its outputs were not all 100% ducky either. IIRC HC handled page overruns by not handling them at all. Overruns just got dropped. Had a guy with lots of powers? Well then you needed to use the Powers Only output for that characters Powers to get them all to fit. And even that could be overrun. Etc etc.

Personally, I think the character sheets produced by the Export Templates Im using, which I pulled from the downloads page for the most part plus some of my own customs, are good to fabulous. I particularly REALLY LIKE the look & feel of the Default Character Sheet. What do you consider to be unprofessional about them?

I deal with extremely expensive professional enterprise grade software on a daily basis, and I think the export templates in HD are top notch. If a company peddling some new Business Intelligence or Quality Assessment app included an Export Template half as good as the one built in to HD for free it would likely cost 20-30 thousand bucks or more. Maybe 10 G in some sort of bundle or as a sweetheart deal closer. Im not kidding. Ive used and worked on 7 figure apps with reporting engines that are absolutely paleolithic compared to the 30 or 50 dollar HD app.


Im willing to be that if you described your dream-date Export Template (in a new thread) some of the cracker-jack Template makers like Geoff Spears or Durning could either help you to make it or maybe even just churn it out to keep thier hand in ;)

[Killer Shrike]

Originally posted by Shaun Hendricks
I just want character sheets that print to a REAL printer and not just HTML... that and an editable 'preview' mode. Personally, HeroMaker had the best interface of the 3 software packages and it did it with VGA level graphics. There's no reason I shouldn't be editing directly on a 'character sheet' with little pop up dialogs for all the choices and options.

Oh yeah, one final thing... Autofire in the Advantages list might be nice... ^_^

Thats odd; most people dont want a direct printer dump. They want to eyeball it on screen b4 they waste ink and paper printing.

Name applications that have an editable preview mode. Some word processors do it, and they have the benefit of a use model that allows it.

You really think HeroMaker had the best interface? Uh....OK. Personal preference is a wide ranging thing.

As far as Autofire on the Advantages list, it shows up for Attack Powers.

[Killer Shrike]

Originally posted by Shaun Hendricks
As for whatever 'Dan' chose, if he's the one that chose just HTML, sure, it's cool if you're doing web pages and lookups but my characters tend to go in nice binders with all supporting materials and documentation. For that, I like fully customizable character sheets, and Hero Creator did them best but admittedly the programming for custom sheets was a bit arcane though okay once you figured it out. With HD (current version), I get ONE choice- HTML. One choice is RARELY a choice, it's a forced decision.

Um....you do know that all Web Browsers have Print capability, right?

As far as the HC bit....no deal. I liked HC too, but lets not stretch the truth. In HC you either exported through a output template to a proprietary hard-ruled character sheet OR you exported through a filter to IIRC either RTF or HTML......so how does HD not support that exact same functionality for all intents and purposes? You get a formated character sheet in either HTML or RTF. Simple.


Also, having created some of my own 'Export Filters' for HC and 'Export Templates' for HD I know which of the 2 Id rather work with -- HD's way is far more standard and straightforward.



Thus my post, I'd like a real choice here in output types, specifically, one that talks to my nice little laserjet or an inkjet please. I'd accept PDF as well, so long as each sheet could be treated as a separate sheet. Again, Hero Creator did this well. I suppose I could reformat the HTML using GoLive or FrontPage, but to do this for each character would end up being less than thrilling. :(

I dont recall HC having a PDF feature. Do you mean HC handled page breaking, not PDFs well? If so, you do realize that this was bcs HC exports templates were hard ruled, yes? They didnt handle page breaking well; they didnt handle it at all. HC just ignored overruns. Thats not handling it well in my book.

And when you say you could reformat the HTML, I suppose you mean for output, and yes you certainly could. However that would be an exercise in futility because each time the character changed you would have to do it again as the old file got overwrote. Instead, why wouldnt you just edit or make from scratch a template that you like? The Export Templates for HD are simple HTML. The App uses tags nested as comments <!--SomeHDTag--> among real HTML tags to process the export routine. Simple. Change it once, it applies to all characters.

Your perceptions on the matter basically dont jive whatsoever with the evidence of my own experience with HD; while its got its rough spots, the Exporting engine isnt really one of them IMO. YMMV obviously.....

[Heroman]

By 'Powers in Columns', I was referring to some more powerful flow control tags in the export. The key thing I was thinking was the ability to make a 'powers & skills' page during output, where you put the material in the tables, 3 items per row like:

&lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;item1&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;item2&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;item3&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;


It would require flow control as you stepped thru the powers, etc. In webish terms, right now the control is kinda a simplified Cold Fusion and I am a PHP programmer :). Related to that, while the existing export meta-language is nice, I wonder: is it possible to tie in an existing parsing language into the export cycle? Instead of a custom markup language, maybe tying into an existing library could add power...

As far as the template I will check on the author...all I did was shorten the page width (too large for NS print out), decreased the font size so skills and stuff would actually fit, added the hit location chart, and changed the height/weight to metric...

[RPMiller]

Originally posted by Killer Shrike
Im willing to be that if you described your dream-date Export Template (in a new thread) some of the cracker-jack Template makers like Geoff Spears or Durning could either help you to make it or maybe even just churn it out to keep thier hand in ;) You bet I would! I have been doing primarily RTF exports, but have a few HTML exports that I just haven't posted because I didn't get any feedback, and figured no one was interested. Feel free to throw out a wish list, and I'll see what I can do.

BTW, thank you for the compliment KS. I appreciate those. :D

[RPMiller]

Originally posted by Heroman
By 'Powers in Columns', I was referring to some more powerful flow control tags in the export. The key thing I was thinking was the ability to make a 'powers & skills' page during output, where you put the material in the tables, 3 items per row like:

&lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;item1&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;item2&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;item3&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;


It would require flow control as you stepped thru the powers, etc. In webish terms, right now the control is kinda a simplified Cold Fusion and I am a PHP programmer :). Related to that, while the existing export meta-language is nice, I wonder: is it possible to tie in an existing parsing language into the export cycle? Instead of a custom markup language, maybe tying into an existing library could add power...

As far as the template I will check on the author...all I did was shorten the page width (too large for NS print out), decreased the font size so skills and stuff would actually fit, added the hit location chart, and changed the height/weight to metric... Have you considered using the START and STOP tags for this? It seems to me, and I haven't tried this myself so I'm not positive, that you should be able to build the structure of the table and then use the START and STOP tags to control placing the items into the first three cells, create a row, repeat.
Hmmm... Perhaps I'll try that in a bit and see if I can make it work. Logically it should.

[Killer Shrike]

Originally posted by Durnin
BTW, thank you for the compliment KS. I appreciate those. :D
De nada; Good work deserves recognition. :cool:

[Killer Shrike]

Originally posted by Heroman
By 'Powers in Columns', I was referring to some more powerful flow control tags in the export. The key thing I was thinking was the ability to make a 'powers & skills' page during output, where you put the material in the tables, 3 items per row like: [Snip]

OK, I can see this for skills, perks, and maybe talents, but I dont think that layout would work well for Powers; they are too complex.



It would require flow control as you stepped thru the powers, etc. In webish terms, right now the control is kinda a simplified Cold Fusion and I am a PHP programmer :). Related to that, while the existing export meta-language is nice, I wonder: is it possible to tie in an existing parsing language into the export cycle? Instead of a custom markup language, maybe tying into an existing library could add power... I'm on the ASP and ASP.NET side when it comes to web apps. Im not too familiar with PHP; what scripting language does it use? Personally, I like the current platform independent KISS-oriented method used by HD.



As far as the template I will check on the author...all I did was shorten the page width (too large for NS print out), decreased the font size so skills and stuff would actually fit, added the hit location chart, and changed the height/weight to metric... As far as the width goes, in IE you can just expand the right margin, which reclaims wasted page space ;)

As far as font, I find that if you make it too small you cant read the sheets as quickly in play. Maybe you arent as nearsighted as I am :(

As far as metric, Im a American; metric requires me to do math to translate, but I know how tall 6'2" is and how heavy 195 lbs is without having to think about it. ;)

I dont recall if I left the hit location chart in or not. I havent run a campaign that used hit locations in about 5 years, so I may have scrapped it for space if it is one of my versions.

[zornwil]

Hey Dan in case you missed it someone posted a pretty sensible request for a PER roll tag. I think it'd be useful as well, I understand the door is closed on further enhancements to v1, which is sensible, so want to put it here for v2.

[Simon]

Originally posted by zornwil
Hey Dan in case you missed it someone posted a pretty sensible request for a PER roll tag. I think it'd be useful as well, I understand the door is closed on further enhancements to v1, which is sensible, so want to put it here for v2.
I'll get it added in.

[Shaun Hendricks]

Originally posted by Killer Shrike
Thats odd; most people dont want a direct printer dump. They want to eyeball it on screen b4 they waste ink and paper printing.

Name applications that have an editable preview mode. Some word processors do it, and they have the benefit of a use model that allows it.

You really think HeroMaker had the best interface? Uh....OK. Personal preference is a wide ranging thing.

As far as Autofire on the Advantages list, it shows up for Attack Powers.

I'm not going to break down your quotes, just answer them in order.

You apparently read what I said almost entirely wrong. Your accent on the wording I used is interesting. I said I wanted a direct too printer capability, which means output in PCL or Postscript formats since most printers support one or the other of these. I would still preview the character before printing. I said that I didn't LIKE HeroMaker's printing function, which was basically a dump, thus you might be able to infer that I didn't mean what you said I did at all.

Input is input. What I meant by an 'editable preview mode' is that I'd like an input form that was akin to a character sheet and not the separate tabs which I don't like at all. Thus my comment about HeroMaker having the superior interface where it could do BOTH separate and combined entry interfaces. HC has an advantage over HD because I can see more than one set of values on the screen at once, meaning skills, powers, talents and stats. I can't do this with HD, which forces me into a strict tab based access mode: the weakest of the three Hero based software packages. That was my point there. How difficult would it be to create a different entry form with access to the same variable call outs? I'm assuming this is all just Java call routines so changing the input layout shouldn't be a problem. If all that is hard coded onto the individual pages then it would be ugly. I'd understand an answer either way, but that was just my request. Call me old-fashioned but I like working with character sheets the best.

Had you followed my link on the image from my Hero Designer, you'd see Autofire is NOT on my advantages list. It's there in powers but obviously missing on some other pages. What's funny is I was testing out the example of a Naked Modifier (which uses Autofire as the example) and I couldn't find it in the Modifiers listing when I use Naked Modifier. I found that eminently amusing.

[Simon]

I have absolutely no intention of changing off of the tabbed interface that HD uses.

The "virtual desktop" model that HC uses was a big thing about 10 years ago. The model failed. Very few people liked it. It sounds as if you are one of the few that did.

The layout of HD is not going to change. If you don't like it, I'm sorry, but there's simply no way to please everybody....I'm pleasing the majority by doing things the way that I am, so that's the way that it's going to stay.

As for Autofire, I have no idea what you're talking about. Autofire is available (assuming you're using any of the builtin templates) on any Power whose target is not "Self Only". If you're looking to apply it to a Skill, then you're doing something that is far enough outside of the design of Autofire that you'll need to use a Custom Mod. Autofire was never intended or constructed to be applied to a Skill, Perk, or Talent. It is designed to be applied to targetted Powers.

[Shaun Hendricks]

Originally posted by Killer Shrike
Um....you do know that all Web Browsers have Print capability, right?


I prefer not to be patronized, however, to answer your question, I spent more years in Prepress and Destop Publishing than I care to count anymore and know more about printing than 99.99% of the computer using populace. What you didn't pick up is that I am EXTREMELY picky about my printed results because of that and web browsers have some of the worst interfaces for printing around and you have nearly no flow control at all. One character out of place and your results end up generating sheets and sheets of garbage or lousy looking print. If you care to feel they are 'fine' for printer purposes, you are entitled to that opinion. I, speaking for myself, find Web Browsers hideous print platforms, just as much as they are hideous common interface platforms. They work, but not like print. Too many variables in design and access technique. PDF is the only reasonable format for cross-platform presentation if you want full control of how something looks. This is because it is based on Postscript, which was the first serious tag based language. It can be precise to a degree of THOUSANDS of dpi.



As far as the HC bit....no deal. I liked HC too, but lets not stretch the truth. In HC you either exported through a output template to a proprietary hard-ruled character sheet OR you exported through a filter to IIRC either RTF or HTML......so how does HD not support that exact same functionality for all intents and purposes? You get a formated character sheet in either HTML or RTF. Simple.

That 'proprietary' interface you disliked was far more standard for it's day than HTML editing is now. Word Processors are still more popular than HTML editors are now-a-days. HC's interface was very close to Illustrator or Freehand in the layout tools capability and a great deal like visual basic in the coding operations and tools. It may have been less common to pick up, a steeper learning curve, but at least things stayed where you put them and you could put lines where you liked, images, charts and other things came out exactly as shown. To be fair to HD, I have not dug into the guts of the filters yet, but that's the point, I now have to do so in order to get either a solid character sheet that looks right, OR switch to RTF and program in Macros in Word or Pagemaker to correctly 'format' the RTF file onto proper character sheets. All of this should've been done for me, at least to a STANDARD character sheet format and I wouldn't be having this conversation with you now. Instead, I am being forced to make changes because the default sheets are not standard when printed using default values. They look fine in a Browser screen but not so hot when printed out. I guess I'll have to see if I can get the export templates worked out to my satisfaction, so I won't say HD CAN'T make me happy, just that I'm not happy having to do all this work myself.



Also, having created some of my own 'Export Filters' for HC and 'Export Templates' for HD I know which of the 2 Id rather work with -- HD's way is far more standard and straightforward.


That would be your preference. Obviously, it's not mine. I was able to shoot HC character sheets to a Postscript printer file, open them in Illustrator and make killer changes to FINAL OUTPUT parameters that HD could only dream of. Since HD doesn't support standard printer output, and it's constant height table based, it makes doing this kind of precision conversion prohibitive at best.



I dont recall HC having a PDF feature. Do you mean HC handled page breaking, not PDFs well? If so, you do realize that this was bcs HC exports templates were hard ruled, yes? They didnt handle page breaking well; they didnt handle it at all. HC just ignored overruns. Thats not handling it well in my book.

Yes, I liked what you are calling 'hard ruled'. It was a perfect fusion of code and forms. I had only minor trouble with them out of the box. An hour of fixing the templates I normally used and I was getting publishing quality level printouts. I could fire off an EPS formatted sheet, drop it right into PageMaker and it looked gorgeous on the output side. I only had overrun (page break) problems on a couple of the templates and they were fairly easy to fix.



And when you say you could reformat the HTML, I suppose you mean for output, and yes you certainly could. However that would be an exercise in futility because each time the character changed you would have to do it again as the old file got overwrote. Instead, why wouldnt you just edit or make from scratch a template that you like? The Export Templates for HD are simple HTML. The App uses tags nested as comments <!--SomeHDTag--> among real HTML tags to process the export routine. Simple. Change it once, it applies to all characters.

As I said, I haven't dug into the guts of the filtering system, I had hoped to avoid it. I have larger projects (like my campaigns) that require all my HTML time right now. From what I can tell, HD uses XML as it's tag interface which isn't uncommon, but if I can't do all that editing from a standard HTML editor (I use GoLive and Frontpage) without having to dig into non-WYSIWYG formats, well, I will be less than happy. I don't mind coding a few lines here and there of Javascript, HTML or even XML, but if I have to gut something and start forcing things to the pixel level of control... grrr. I hope this isn't the case, but it goes back to my original point, direct to printer output would've solved this dilemma for me and given me time to work out my own filters.



Your perceptions on the matter basically dont jive whatsoever with the evidence of my own experience with HD; while its got its rough spots, the Exporting engine isnt really one of them IMO. YMMV obviously.....

I wasn't offering you any 'experience' with HD beyond initial perceptions and 'out of the box' functionality. There was nothing to 'jive' with. This whole thing (note the topic title) started with simple requests. All of them are valid. Nothing anyone has said has invalidated those initial requests. I'll reiterate them in case they've been forgotten in all this technical muck.


Direct printer output capability using standard Windows/Mac printer calls. (If they get adventurous, add in Linux/Unix)
A different or at least combined input screen (Stats, Powers, Skills- the big 3 would do)
Standard Advantages/Limitations (like Autofire) being in all 'Add Modifier' pop up windows no matter where the source comes from.


Simple enough I would think. As my "pretentious quote" below is frequently my target, I tend to over-do things. I feel HD should have had more standard features. It's got some nifty new ones that I really like, but it's short on what it's predicessors offered in some areas, and thus my comments.

Ugh, another War and Peace post. Sorry about that... :D

[ProfessorM@ss]

Dan,

I have to agree that a direct print function would be nice. And unlike some people seem to think, it doesn't need to be an either/or situation.

My suggestion? Move the Export Template function to a 'Save As' field. It's what most users are familiar with, and thus, make good UI development sense.

The Print function could simply go like so, code-wise:

Choose Export Template --> Load Templatized Character Into Memory --> Pass Through to Print Function (HTML or RTF)

Print functions are widely available in Java. The biggest difficulty would be programming different print functions, depending on the OS. But it surely isn't rocket science, and would bring the 2.0 application in-line with industry standard.

Just my two cents.

--->M@ss

[Simon]

Originally posted by ProfessorM@ss
Dan,

I have to agree that a direct print function would be nice. And unlike some people seem to think, it doesn't need to be an either/or situation.

My suggestion? Move the Export Template function to a 'Save As' field. It's what most users are familiar with, and thus, make good UI development sense.

The Print function could simply go like so, code-wise:

Choose Export Template --> Load Templatized Character Into Memory --> Pass Through to Print Function (HTML or RTF)

Print functions are widely available in Java. The biggest difficulty would be programming different print functions, depending on the OS. But it surely isn't rocket science, and would bring the 2.0 application in-line with industry standard.

Just my two cents.

--->M@ss
Let's end this now: There will not be a direct print functionality in HD.

I have made my position on this abundantly clear in the past. If you care to search through the boards, I'm sure you'll find several cases in which I elaborate on it.

The export functionality that HD uses is extremely flexible and works quite well, IMO (and that of others) and is the direction that I intend to continue to develop HD.

I have absolutely no intention of doing a direct print.

[Shaun Hendricks]

Originally posted by dsimon
I have absolutely no intention of changing off of the tabbed interface that HD uses.

I didn't ask it to be changed, I asked an input interface that was different from it to be added. If this is not possible (or very difficult) because of the design of the coding base, then I suppose the request didn't stand a chance. :)



The "virtual desktop" model that HC uses was a big thing about 10 years ago. The model failed. Very few people liked it. It sounds as if you are one of the few that did.


That would be a mistaken impression. I never said I liked it, but since I run at high screen resolutions I could at least see all the different sections of a character laid out on the screen at once. Personally, I found all the windows a little bit annoying.



The layout of HD is not going to change. If you don't like it, I'm sorry, but there's simply no way to please everybody....I'm pleasing the majority by doing things the way that I am, so that's the way that it's going to stay.

So the official HERO GAMES stance is that the majority of players like tab swapping over just browsing the screen and concentrating on building rather than interface manipulating. That's fine and all, but definitely put me in the minority of folks that would like to be able to see more than one conceptual 'group' on the screen at once while I'm editing. I tend to catch inefficiencies when I can see all the major groups at once. I don't like having to keep a 'virtual character sheet' in my head to do this, the game system is complex enough without having to do that. I don't mind the tabs for initial laydown of a character, but for fine tuning and build contemplation, I like to be able to edit and see effects in the other categories as I change things.



As for Autofire, I have no idea what you're talking about. Autofire is available (assuming you're using any of the builtin templates) on any Power whose target is not "Self Only". If you're looking to apply it to a Skill, then you're doing something that is far enough outside of the design of Autofire that you'll need to use a Custom Mod. Autofire was never intended or constructed to be applied to a Skill, Perk, or Talent. It is designed to be applied to targetted Powers.

Well, you at least put me on the right track of the problem. I had to switch the target away from "Self Only". Now, you could've detailed the example on page 20 and saved me that embarassment. I interpreted 'self only' as being a self initiated power in that instance, not as a 'can only be used on self' function for the target, then again, I don't see why an autofire couldn't be used on yourself (as a target) either. Maybe you can first-aid yourself hideously fast for an autofire healing application of a first aid kit you can buy off the shelf, I don't know, certainly in the vast variances of the concept world someone could think up something legitimate for it. Is that against the rules someplace? I'm not a rules lawyer so I wouldn't know. So I withdraw that request... and make another in it's place, on v2, please document the examples better. Thanks for your responses.

[Killer Shrike]

Originally posted by Shaun Hendricks
You apparently read what I said almost entirely wrong. Your accent on the wording I used is interesting. No accent was imparted; I just hit the quote button.


I said I wanted a direct too printer capability, which means output in PCL or Postscript formats since most printers support one or the other of these. I would still preview the character before printing. I said that I didn't LIKE HeroMaker's printing function, which was basically a dump, thus you might be able to infer that I didn't mean what you said I did at all. Shrug. Then say what you mean, rather than meaning what you said. When I mention your HeroMaker comment, I assumed when you said "interface" you meant the U/I of the app in general and was merely in disbelief that someone could prefer that antiquated model to modern day apps. If thats not what you meant sorry.

Input is input. Patently untrue. Input is graded both in its quality and in its organization.


What I meant by an 'editable preview mode' is that I'd like an input form that was akin to a character sheet and not the separate tabs which I don't like at all. Like I said, name an application that does this. A free form entry with contextual lookups that can deal with complex interdependencies, with business rule validation, formula checking, and rolling tallys? Formatted to look like a character sheet? Id love to see that....


Thus my comment about HeroMaker having the superior interface where it could do BOTH separate and combined entry interfaces. its been a Dogs Age since I last used HeroMaker, so refresh my memory--where did HEROMaker allow this again? Ill have to dig around but I doubt I even have the install for that anymore


HC has an advantage over HD because I can see more than one set of values on the screen at once, meaning skills, powers, talents and stats. I can't do this with HD, which forces me into a strict tab based access mode: the weakest of the three Hero based software packages. Ill agree with you about the usefulness of the HC model, I liked having everything tileable too. I particularly liked the ability to compare 2 characters on screen, and cut & paste between them. But, it was also very cluttered. The Tabbed interface is much more en vogue currently. I find it a bit constraining at times, but it does have the benefit of simplicity.


That was my point there. How difficult would it be to create a different entry form with access to the same variable call outs? I'm assuming this is all just Java call routines so changing the input layout shouldn't be a problem.
Its not a question of difficulty. Its a question of maintainability. You end up maintaining two applications wrapped together in one shell. Its bad design.


If all that is hard coded onto the individual pages then it would be ugly. Actually, though Im not crazy about it, it seems like apps are moving back to bound forms lately, at least from what Ive been seeing the last few months. Im not sure if thats the case here (I doubt it -- unless I miss my guess the app just reads XML snippets into lists), but nevertheless you have to have SOME task organization in an app.



Had you followed my link on the image from my Hero Designer, you'd see Autofire is NOT on my advantages list. It's there in powers but obviously missing on some other pages. I did follow the link, but it was devoid of context. I was simply pointing out that the Modifiers listings are conditional and Autofire does not show unless it is valid within the context of where you are calling it from.

[Killer Shrike]

RE: Sean: Im not going to go through point by point. Its serves no purpose. It sounds like you are happy with HC or HM. I would suggest you continue to use one or the other. Someone recently did a 5e template for HC, maybe you should look into that.

Better yet, since you are obviously such an expert on the matter, provide an alternative. I for one would take a look at what you had to offer.

Your experiences and comments on output bear no resemblence to the experiences Ive had as a professional programmer developing client only, client/server, server only, database driven, and web-based (basic HTML, scripted HTML, IIS apps, ASP, ASP.NET) applications over the last 6 years. Obviously your experience differs. Sitting here with the output from HD in my hand, perfectly formatted and quite attractive in its layout, I just cant see where you are coming from.


And BTW, you dont have to edit XML to get the Export Templates to work. As I mentioned, its simple HTML with specific comment tags serving duty as placeholders.

[Shaun Hendricks]

Originally posted by Killer Shrike
Like I said, name an application that does this. A free form entry with contextual lookups that can deal with complex interdependencies, with business rule validation, formula checking, and rolling tallys? Formatted to look like a character sheet? Id love to see that....

You're stuck on that bad mental picture again. I said I wanted something that let me edit as I might a character sheet. I used the 'preview' mode as something folks would understand in the context of Hero Designer. Obviously, I didn't do a good job in leaving that concept as short as I did and I'm sorry about that. As for applications that do that- any word processor/spreadsheet/database does this in a semi-organized output form. Most word processors have several view modes and can run complex macros underneath that could even calc out a Hero Character if you programmed it to. Now, I'm not saying I'm going to start VB coding Word so it can, and Dan has already said he isn't going to change the interface so I'm stuck with what I have.


its been a Dogs Age since I last used HeroMaker, so refresh my memory--where did HEROMaker allow this again? Ill have to dig around but I doubt I even have the install for that anymore

It was HeroMakers default interface. You had to click to go specifically to powers or skills or whatever. The default view showed Characteristics in the upper left box, skills first in the right hand box, followed by powers and you could edit from the windows. Disads were also there. It was quite handy. I was using HeroMaker up to the release of Hero Creator and still used HeroMaker for package builds because Hero Creator sucked at them. Hero Designer is MUCH better at that.



Ill agree with you about the usefulness of the HC model, I liked having everything tileable too. I particularly liked the ability to compare 2 characters on screen, and cut & paste between them. But, it was also very cluttered. The Tabbed interface is much more en vogue currently. I find it a bit constraining at times, but it does have the benefit of simplicity.


I'll agree with that completely. Just an annoyance to flip around all the time though.



Its not a question of difficulty. Its a question of maintainability. You end up maintaining two applications wrapped together in one shell. Its bad design.


Ummm, not really. It depends on the code design. If all the 'functions' are truely separate from the input forms like Microsofts Visual programming suites, then it's not hard to change how the input goes in. You can have 20 forms and all of them call the same functions, thus accuracy is maintained across all input types. My only Java experience was with VIsual J++ but I went back to Visual Basic because I was better at it and Java had some real oddity's in it's code about how it wanted to do things, as well as Microsoft shelving the product for the most part.



I did follow the link, but it was devoid of context. I was simply pointing out that the Modifiers listings are conditional and Autofire does not show unless it is valid within the context of where you are calling it from.

Sorry about that, I just wanted to show that it wasn't there. I didn't know it was context sensitive, and actually, I don't like that. A list should remain a list, regardless of the context, at least in my opinion. I should have the choice to bypass a rule, not have the software do it for me. Personally, I use a LOT of house rules, because I feel a character and power/skill/stat/ability needs to hold to the concept of it's form and function over the validity of a game system built for the least common denominator of a player that abuses things. I mean it could change the list modifiers to RED or something to connotate it's not 'usual' or 'look closely at this' but to drop it off entirely, well, it certainly made me look like an idiot. :p

[Nato]

Originally posted by dsimon


I have absolutely no intention of doing a direct print.

Will you at least work more on some kind of export templates that can handle page breaks for very long character sheets? I've yet to see any that handle this very well. Something that can print out a nice Dr. Destroyer sheet.

[Simon]

Originally posted by Nato
Will you at least work more on some kind of export templates that can handle page breaks for very long character sheets? I've yet to see any that handle this very well. Something that can print out a nice Dr. Destroyer sheet.
Any of the RTF Writers' Guidelines sheets do this nicely.

[Nato]

Any of the HTML based sheets yet? I would like to do one that looks more like the character sheet in the back of FRED. Like the default HTML character sheet - will it ever work with page breaks?

[Simon]

Originally posted by Nato
Any of the HTML based sheets yet? I would like to do one that looks more like the character sheet in the back of FRED. Like the default HTML character sheet - will it ever work with page breaks?
That's a tough one...I'm planning on doing some work for v2 that will hopefully give better flow control on heavily paged formats like that one. Basically, what it requires is the use of arbitrary "counters" so that you can guesstimate how much room you have on a page and whether to start a new one or not.

It's not so much the HTML format in that case as it is the basic layout and design. The policy used by HC of simply ignoring the overrun is not an option....I simply won't do that. Unfortunately, that makes things a bit more difficult ;)

[jlarke]

In my miniscule spare time, I've been looking to see what creating a PDF template would require. It looks like it could be almost possible, although I'd have to learn a lot more about PDF than I know now. However, getting images working could be tricky. If it turned out that a couple of extra tags would enable a PDF template to work, would you be willing to put the tags in a later version of HeroDesigner?

[Simon]

Originally posted by jlarke
In my miniscule spare time, I've been looking to see what creating a PDF template would require. It looks like it could be almost possible, although I'd have to learn a lot more about PDF than I know now. However, getting images working could be tricky. If it turned out that a couple of extra tags would enable a PDF template to work, would you be willing to put the tags in a later version of HeroDesigner?
Absolutely. I'm always willing to add in new export tags if folks need them. I may question the need of some....if I can see a way to accomplish what the designer is after with the existing tags....but I'll add in anything that is shown to be necessary.

I suspect that one thing you'll likely want for a PDF export is something like IMAGE_DATA, where the binary image data would be swapped in.....

[Urklore]

How about the ability to close a list or power framework into a folder or single line of text and then the ability to expnad it when you click on it. Makes the character sheet look more organized and easy to work with if you can close a list or framework that you are not working on. Sort of the way you can do with Prefabs and folders within folders.

[Simon]

Originally posted by Urklore
How about the ability to close a list or power framework into a folder or single line of text and then the ability to expnad it when you click on it. Makes the character sheet look more organized and easy to work with if you can close a list or framework that you are not working on. Sort of the way you can do with Prefabs and folders within folders.
Not going to happen.

[KarinsDad]

I don't know if you have this in HD already (test versions did not) or if someone already mentioned it, but I would like to see the ability to add multiple Linked and/or Partially Limited powers all in one Elemental slot since the rules allow for that.

Once that happens, I can port my current character into HD and will actually buy it. :D

[Simon]

Originally posted by KarinsDad
I don't know if you have this in HD already (test versions did not) or if someone already mentioned it, but I would like to see the ability to add multiple Linked and/or Partially Limited powers all in one Elemental slot since the rules allow for that.

Once that happens, I can port my current character into HD and will actually buy it. :D \
You've been able to do that since v1.0.

There is a construct called "Compound Power" that allows you to build complicated objects as a single entity. For example, you could build a 10d6 EB and a 6d6 Flash Linked to the EB as a Compound Power and then add that into a single slot in an EC. There is no limit to the number of items that you can place into a Compound Power and each item can have its own unique Modifiers. HD will calculate the points accordingly, based on the Advantages and Limitations of each part of the Compound Power.

Hope this helps...

[KarinsDad]

Originally posted by dsimon

You've been able to do that since v1.0.


Cool :cool:

[KarinsDad]

One thing I noticed when running the test version (long time ago) is that it was somewhat slow on older cpus (e.g. 450 Mhz and slower). For example, going up in a list could take a second.

So if this is still the case (do not know what improvements that you have made Dan), one possibility is to have a toggle to not do all of the recalculations on the entire character every time a change is made (e.g. bump up DEX, do not bother to recalculate all of the skills until later).

That way, the interface will be faster and the user can decide when to "recalculate his character". Just a thought for people who use much slower systems, probably not really necessary for the 2+ Ghz crowd.

[Simon]

Originally posted by KarinsDad
One thing I noticed when running the test version (long time ago) is that it was somewhat slow on older cpus (e.g. 450 Mhz and slower). For example, going up in a list could take a second.

So if this is still the case (do not know what improvements that you have made Dan), one possibility is to have a toggle to not do all of the recalculations on the entire character every time a change is made (e.g. bump up DEX, do not bother to recalculate all of the skills until later).

That way, the interface will be faster and the user can decide when to "recalculate his character". Just a thought for people who use much slower systems, probably not really necessary for the 2+ Ghz crowd.
There's still a performance hit when moving items around in the lists....depending largely on how big the list is.

One of the first things that I'm addressing in v2 is performance issues. There are several areas where I can make fairly substantial improvements and take much of the load off of the CPU.

The calculations have to take place...the system is too inter-dependent to do without them....but the "cost" of those calculations in terms of CPU cycles can be improved.

I'm also going to be looking at the treatment of the purchase lists themselves. I believe that I can get some rather nice improvements in performance by re-working the rendering mechanism for the lists....

[xanatos]

Another request: could you put a note (perhaps in the definition) of where the advantage/limitation/skill/power/talent is in the books? (for example [FRED p.???] or [FAQ] or [Bestiary p. ???] or [CKC]...)
There number of strange advantages/limitations is growing (I think). (an example? The Require Skill Roll has a limitation named "One/Two/Three levels of Luck required". Where is it from?)

[xanatos]

Will you add the rules about STR Min for Weapons (STR Min does not add to damage, so if you have a sword with STR Min 18 and you have 18 STR you will do the basic damage of the sword, if you have 23 STR you will do +1DC etc.) Or perhaps they are already there.... I'll have to check.

[xanatos]

This is a little strange... The possibility of make a power/skill/talent "hidden", but only for printing and point calculation purpose (you could show it in italic on the screen, or light gray...). It's based on the way I create characters... I first add everything that could be connected to the character, and then I begin to trim it... But it's more a "work in progress"... I delete a skill, then I readd it, redelete it... With this feature I could add everything and then play with the "hide/unhide" and then I could leave the hidden powers on the sheet, as a remainder for how to upgrade the PC (or, for example, if I create a "template player", as options (so to make an example, if I create a Hydra, I could put the Fire-Breathing options as hidden powers, so that the standard Hydra is not Fire-Breathing but it's very easy to change it to Fire-Breathing)

[Simon]

Originally posted by xanatos
There number of strange advantages/limitations is growing (I think). (an example? The Require Skill Roll has a limitation named "One/Two/Three levels of Luck required". Where is it from?) [/B]
From the main definition of RSR in FREd.

[Simon]

Originally posted by xanatos
This is a little strange... The possibility of make a power/skill/talent "hidden", but only for printing and point calculation purpose (you could show it in italic on the screen, or light gray...). It's based on the way I create characters... I first add everything that could be connected to the character, and then I begin to trim it... But it's more a "work in progress"... I delete a skill, then I readd it, redelete it... With this feature I could add everything and then play with the "hide/unhide" and then I could leave the hidden powers on the sheet, as a remainder for how to upgrade the PC (or, for example, if I create a "template player", as options (so to make an example, if I create a Hydra, I could put the Fire-Breathing options as hidden powers, so that the standard Hydra is not Fire-Breathing but it's very easy to change it to Fire-Breathing)
Just use the equipment tab for this, if you want. You can enable the equipment tab on any template and then use an export template that does not export equipment and you're good to go.

[Simon]

Originally posted by xanatos
Will you add the rules about STR Min for Weapons (STR Min does not add to damage, so if you have a sword with STR Min 18 and you have 18 STR you will do the basic damage of the sword, if you have 23 STR you will do +1DC etc.) Or perhaps they are already there.... I'll have to check.
Since the attacks list what you've purchased (and not the total potential), this is not an issue. For example, HKA lists the damage purchased and the "(plus STR)" in parens.

[xanatos]

Since the attacks list what you've purchased (and not the total potential), this is not an issue. For example, HKA lists the damage purchased and the "(plus STR)" in parens.
I hadn't thought of this... Yes... It's true... So you could change this! :-) (hey... It's even in the Writer's Guideline that you have to write the total damage with STR)


Just use the equipment tab for this, if you want. You can enable the equipment tab on any template and then use an export template that does not export equipment and you're good to go.
Using the Equipment as a scrapbook is not a solution... In a Heroic Campaign I use the Equipment tab... I was thinking more like "I click with the right button and select Hide/UnHide". Much faster. Or you could add a scrapbook! :-)
There are many programs that are adding it! (even the multiple-clipboard of Word is something similar to a scrapbook)


From the main definition of RSR in FREd
There are more things under the sea that I can imagine! :-)
Still you could add page reference! :-)

[Simon]

Originally posted by xanatos
I hadn't thought of this... Yes... It's true... So you could change this! :-) (hey... It's even in the Writer's Guideline that you have to write the total damage with STR)

However, the WG says nothing about "split" values. Given the fact that HD allows for split values and STR that does not add into totals, the way that it is currently being done is the best solution and is the way it's going to remain. I have talked with Steve about it and he is in agreement.



Using the Equipment as a scrapbook is not a solution... In a Heroic Campaign I use the Equipment tab... I was thinking more like "I click with the right button and select Hide/UnHide". Much faster. Or you could add a scrapbook! :-)
There are many programs that are adding it! (even the multiple-clipboard of Word is something similar to a scrapbook)
I really don't see the value in this one and am not likely to include it.


There are more things under the sea that I can imagine! :-)
Still you could add page reference! :-)
I may go through and do some refs in the definitions....it's going to depend largely on time. Because the definitions are contained entirely in the template, this is something that anyone can do under the existing app. In general, I tend to concentrate on areas that require code changes/additions when working on the upgrades.....something that is just a template edit, I leave for other folks to take care of (in general), as there are other (often more important) things for me to be working on.

[Melchior777]

I'd like to see some more GM specific features, such as condensed reference sheets for PC's and NPC's. Perhaps some random NPC creation. Maybe even some Campaign creation sections.
Also, more skins would be great. Especially more colorful or thematic.

[DangerousDan]

I've got comments on a variety of sub-subjects. This is my first post. Up til now, I've exclusively used either plain text editors or spreadsheets to print up my characters, regardless of the game system being used. I had even written macros in Excel VisualBasic to add skills to the character sheet and modifiers to powers. Whenever I changed the value of a modifier, it automatically changed its name to match. But all that work was lost when my computer's power supply turned into an ozone generator. Only the case, one hard drive and the floppies survived. Most of my Champions characters and all of those custom macros are on a thoroughly fried hard drive. One of the GMs that I play with never liked my format at all anyway--so now it is time for HD.
I like the design of the tagging system for the export filters. I'm much more likely to get a printout in a format I like with them than a hard-coded output format. If I were to suggest anything in this area, it would be to add tags to make it possible to iterate the adders and modifiers for each power in order to increase the user's freedom to format the output.

Killing Attack, "does BODY" modifier :confused:
At least as recently as update 1.43, the modifier "does BODY" (+1) shows up in the list of common modifiers for HKA and RKA. I'm thinking that it doesn't belong there until the power has been modified to be AVLD or NND, because killing attacks normally do body. Is this a bug or a feature?

Graphics Formats
Regarding v2 feature #8, "Support for alternate graphics formats," you should look at PNG (portable network graphics), which is used fairly widely in the open source Linux community. This should be nearly free of legal hassles, and software packages (at least for C language) are freely available to handle the files. This makes additional sense since you already have a Linux version of HD. TIFF is another common format. I've seen more that one piece of software drop support for GIF files for reasons of legal hassle. A certain amount of paranoia is waranted.

Rule Bending
In another message, dsimon wrote, "The closest I may come to that is allow some of the "hard-coded" rules to be toggled on and off in a preferences screen."
I heartily approve.:cool:
There are some things that Steve wants to be fixed in place (and non-editable).
And no matter what he wants, some players will un-fix and edit them--if not in Hero Designer, definitely in the exported file.

MPH
The problems with MPH can get much worse. Some characters not only have primary and secondary values of movement and differing combat and non-combat movement rates, but two or more values of SPD as well, which multiplies the problem. I've got one character that can be any speed from 5 to 11. With running, swimming, leaping and teleportation movement modes, the complete list of MPH speeds would take up an enormous amount of space. The suggestion by Killer Shrike to add an MPH/KPH calculator is the best idea I've heard of.

Improved support for Everyman abilities
A simple but only partial solution could be to add a spinbox for the value of an Everyman skill. If somebody needs an 11- professional skill to be an Everyman skill, they could click the Everyman box and set the Everyman value to 2. Similarly, a GM could set up a template or prefab for his/her game with whatever values of everyman skill they desire.

[Simon]

Originally posted by DangerousDan

First off, thanks for the comments! I'll try to respond below:


I've got comments on a variety of sub-subjects. This is my first post. Up til now, I've exclusively used either plain text editors or spreadsheets to print up my characters, regardless of the game system being used. I had even written macros in Excel VisualBasic to add skills to the character sheet and modifiers to powers. Whenever I changed the value of a modifier, it automatically changed its name to match. But all that work was lost when my computer's power supply turned into an ozone generator. Only the case, one hard drive and the floppies survived. Most of my Champions characters and all of those custom macros are on a thoroughly fried hard drive.

Yuck. Sorry to hear about the problems.


One of the GMs that I play with never liked my format at all anyway--so now it is time for HD.
I like the design of the tagging system for the export filters. I'm much more likely to get a printout in a format I like with them than a hard-coded output format. If I were to suggest anything in this area, it would be to add tags to make it possible to iterate the adders and modifiers for each power in order to increase the user's freedom to format the output.


I'm looking to do precisely this, actually. I'm also hoping to work out a reasonably "clean" way to include a generic counter so that you can have better paging control.


Killing Attack, "does BODY" modifier :confused:
At least as recently as update 1.43, the modifier "does BODY" (+1) shows up in the list of common modifiers for HKA and RKA. I'm thinking that it doesn't belong there until the power has been modified to be AVLD or NND, because killing attacks normally do body. Is this a bug or a feature?
[/QUOTE}

Not really either. The modifier "intelligence" is in its infancy for v1. The decision was made to err on the side of caution and have modifiers available even if they didn't really make sense. I will be working on this for v2....altering the templates to include damage and defense types so that Modifiers can be more tightly keyed to the individual Powers.

[QUOTE]Graphics Formats
Regarding v2 feature #8, "Support for alternate graphics formats," you should look at PNG (portable network graphics), which is used fairly widely in the open source Linux community. This should be nearly free of legal hassles, and software packages (at least for C language) are freely available to handle the files. This makes additional sense since you already have a Linux version of HD. TIFF is another common format. I've seen more that one piece of software drop support for GIF files for reasons of legal hassle. A certain amount of paranoia is waranted.
GIF is the format that I'm mainly worried about. I'll add in as many as I can support in Java for v2.


Rule Bending
In another message, dsimon wrote, "The closest I may come to that is allow some of the "hard-coded" rules to be toggled on and off in a preferences screen."
I heartily approve.:cool:
There are some things that Steve wants to be fixed in place (and non-editable).
And no matter what he wants, some players will un-fix and edit them--if not in Hero Designer, definitely in the exported file.
I'll allow as much as I am able to be edited....but there will still be some hard coded rules in place.


{B]MPH
The problems with MPH can get much worse. Some characters not only have primary and secondary values of movement and differing combat and non-combat movement rates, but two or more values of SPD as well, which multiplies the problem. I've got one character that can be any speed from 5 to 11. With running, swimming, leaping and teleportation movement modes, the complete list of MPH speeds would take up an enormous amount of space. The suggestion by Killer Shrike to add an MPH/KPH calculator is the best idea I've heard of.[/B]
Agreed. That's almost certainly the route that I'll be going.


Improved support for Everyman abilities
A simple but only partial solution could be to add a spinbox for the value of an Everyman skill. If somebody needs an 11- professional skill to be an Everyman skill, they could click the Everyman box and set the Everyman value to 2. Similarly, a GM could set up a template or prefab for his/her game with whatever values of everyman skill they desire.
The problem here is that this is not how Everyman abilities are supposed to work. If you have an Everyman Skill that you want to make a full 11- Skill, you have to pay full points for it (per FREd). That's why Everyman is fixed in value now. For some Skills such as Language and TF, it may make sense, but that's essentially what you have already with Custom Adder. It just strikes me as redundant (and potentially confusing/misleading) to add in a second "Everyman Adder" that does exactly the same thing.

[DangerousDan]

Yuck. Sorry to hear about the problems.
Yeah-- If you ever put your own computer together, the power supply is the LAST thing you want to scrimp on. It is the only thing that can destroy the rest of your computer. Now, back on topic.


The suggestion by Killer Shrike to add an MPH/KPH calculator is the best idea I've heard of.
Agreed. That's almost certainly the route that I'll be going.
While reading your reply, it occured to me that a user-editable field for each characteristic and movement mode, exactly like the field currently available for every framework or power would be an excellent place to paste results of such calculations. Unless I've overlooked something, HD currently fills in a Notes field for several characteristics and some modes of movement, but the fields aren't user-editable until export.


The problem here is that this is not how Everyman abilities are supposed to work. If you have an Everyman Skill that you want to make a full 11- Skill, you have to pay full points for it (per FREd). That's why Everyman is fixed in value now. For some Skills such as Language and TF, it may make sense, but that's essentially what you have already with Custom Adder. It just strikes me as redundant (and potentially confusing/misleading) to add in a second "Everyman Adder" that does exactly the same thing.
I didn't mean to suggest adding a second "Everyman Adder", only a variable value (with a default value of -1) to the existing one. Your comment about how Everyman abilities are supposed to work, however, indicates that this probably isn't going to happen. Well, the Custom Adder can still be abused for this purpose, and it isn't that difficult to use.



I'm thinking that it doesn't belong there until the power has been modified to be AVLD or NND, because killing attacks normally do body. Is this a bug or a feature? Not really either. The modifier "intelligence" is in its infancy for v1. The decision was made to err on the side of caution and have modifiers available even if they didn't really make sense. I will be working on this for v2....altering the templates to include damage and defense types so that Modifiers can be more tightly keyed to the individual Powers.
So for now, we simply ignore the "does BODY" until the addition of AVLD or NND makes it appropriate. No problem.

[RPMiller]

Originally posted by DangerousDan
While reading your reply, it occured to me that a user-editable field for each characteristic and movement mode, exactly like the field currently available for every framework or power would be an excellent place to paste results of such calculations. Unless I've overlooked something, HD currently fills in a Notes field for several characteristics and some modes of movement, but the fields aren't user-editable until export. This actually reminded me of something I keep forgetting to mention. When building characters with Characteristics bought as powers the notation is listed under the characteristics with a symbol reference and then the Limitations/Advantages etc., but it seems to only be if there is two possible values for that Characteristic i.e. Focus of some sort. Perhaps something like this could be added as well?
As an example refer to just about any of the power armored characters in CKC.

[Dragonfly]

Hey Dan:

If possible, I'd like to see editable skill and characteristic roll formulas. I use 7 + CHAR/3, and currently have no way to do that in HD.

Thanks for listening!

Best,

Dragonfly

[Simon]

Originally posted by Dragonfly
Hey Dan:

If possible, I'd like to see editable skill and characteristic roll formulas. I use 7 + CHAR/3, and currently have no way to do that in HD.

Thanks for listening!

Best,

Dragonfly
You already have that ability...it's been there since day 1.

Read over the section on editing templates in the documentation.

[Dragonfly]

Originally posted by dsimon
You already have that ability...it's been there since day 1.

Read over the section on editing templates in the documentation.

I'm sorry, but I'm completely confused. We had the following discussion a few months ago:

http://www.herogames.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=1203

I'm not trying to be difficult. I'm just honestly confused. I went over the documentation for DAYS and could't figure it out. Maybe it's my inherent computer stupidity (which admitedly is there), but I'm even more confused now because of our previous conversation. :(

Best,

Dragonfly

[Simon]

Originally posted by Dragonfly
I'm sorry, but I'm completely confused. We had the following discussion a few months ago:

http://www.herogames.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=1203

I'm not trying to be difficult. I'm just honestly confused. I went over the documentation for DAYS and could't figure it out. Maybe it's my inherent computer stupidity (which admitedly is there), but I'm even more confused now because of our previous conversation. :(

Best,

Dragonfly
Oops...sorry. Misread that as being a request to edit the cost/base of the characteristics.

The response I gave before pretty much sums it up, though: this is going to be a very low priority as it is well outside of the rules of the Hero System and the templates really have no current functionality or format for defining generic formulas like that.

[Dragonfly]

Okay, thanks Dan. The world makes sense again. :)
I appreciate the quick reply.

Best,

Dragonfly

[tiger]

In V2 will edited templetes have to change for each update like V1

I have a disadvantage I added in. I like it to appear in the list so I have to edit each templete when a new update is released.

I kindof have it down to a copule minute job, but was just curious

[Simon]

Originally posted by tiger
In V2 will edited templetes have to change for each update like V1

I have a disadvantage I added in. I like it to appear in the list so I have to edit each templete when a new update is released.

I kindof have it down to a copule minute job, but was just curious
The template structure for v2 is going to change, allowing the templates to become "hierarchical". Each template will be able to define a parent template. Then they just define the "additions" and "deletions" from that parent.

This will have several effects:

1. It will make changing templates MUCH faster, assuming they are based off of the same parent.

2. It will allow changes to be made to the parent without requiring changes to the "child templates" that depend on the parent.

The only exception to (2) would be if one of the items which is re-defined in your sub-template need to be changed (due to an error). In this case, your sub-template would continue to override the change/correction to the parent template and you would need to edit the sub-template in order to get the change to take affect. Changes like this should be extremely rare, however.

[tiger]

Originally posted by dsimon
The only exception to (2) would be if one of the items which is re-defined in your sub-template need to be changed (due to an error). In this case, your sub-template would continue to override the change/correction to the parent template and you would need to edit the sub-template in order to get the change to take affect. Changes like this should be extremely rare, however.


I hope your have a nice PDF explaining what you just said :D

[zornwil]

Originally posted by dsimon
The template structure for v2 is going to change, allowing the templates to become "hierarchical". Each template will be able to define a parent template. Then they just define the "additions" and "deletions" from that parent.

This will have several effects:

1. It will make changing templates MUCH faster, assuming they are based off of the same parent.

2. It will allow changes to be made to the parent without requiring changes to the "child templates" that depend on the parent.

The only exception to (2) would be if one of the items which is re-defined in your sub-template need to be changed (due to an error). In this case, your sub-template would continue to override the change/correction to the parent template and you would need to edit the sub-template in order to get the change to take affect. Changes like this should be extremely rare, however.

Dan, I just wanted to emphasize my escitement over this development. It will represent an improvement over "that other character generation system" in this respect and will bring me one step closer to actually using HD for creating NPCs. I don't know for sure if I will in v2 (it will also depend a lot on performance), but it will help a lot. Of course I'll buy v2 anyway as several of my players use it. Despite the fact they shouldn't.... :D :rolleyes: (please don't get mad, I'm really joking)

[xanatos]

What about changing the interface? You could use an Internet Explorer like interface (each Character you are editing has his own main window with its tabs). So it would be clearer which characters you are editing... Or you could add an explorer-like (like the Start bar) bar in your program with the list of the open characters.

[Talon]

Two things I've come up with from FH playtesting:

1) Cutting and pasting Modifiers. It would be an incredible timesaver to be able to put a set of Limitations on the clipboard and apply them to powers as they are created.

2) Keyboard shortcuts for copy/cut/paste.

[RPMiller]

Originally posted by Geoff Speare
Two things I've come up with from FH playtesting:

1) Cutting and pasting Modifiers. It would be an incredible timesaver to be able to put a set of Limitations on the clipboard and apply them to powers as they are created.

2) Keyboard shortcuts for copy/cut/paste. Not sure about number 1, but number two is CTRL+X, CTRL+C, CTRL+V just like everywhere else in Windoze is it not?

[rjcurrie]

I suspect Geoff may be referring to Hero Designer's Cut, Paste, and Copy features available from the Edit menu on the character sheet sub-tab.

[RPMiller]

Originally posted by rjcurrie
I suspect Geoff may be referring to Hero Designer's Cut, Paste, and Copy features available from the Edit menu on the character sheet sub-tab. Ah... of course. Silly me. Thank you rj for correcting me.

[Vondy]

Originally posted by dsimon
<b>AGAIN</b>...this is not going to happen. I don't care that MetaCreator did it. MetaCreator did lots of things that are simply not allowed under the Hero System. I am not trying to replicate MetaCreator. I am trying to make a Hero System chargen that follows the rules of the Hero System.

There will not be a toggle to "turn off the cost" for Powers.

Please stop asking for it. The answer won't change.

If you want Powers that don't cost points, then purchase them on the Equipment tab.

Dan,

I see where your coming from, especially from a design perspective. I think the issue they are experiencing, however, is a layout issue, as opposed to a functional issue.

I think, therefore, that its possible for you to leave the functionality entirely unchanged and throw them a bone at the same time, if you'll permit the use of the term.

Here's my idea:

Allow the user to customize the name of the equipment tag for display or printing purposes. They could call it anything they want (i.e. "spell list", "cosmic vpp powers", "beatrice", etc) without changing any functionality or rules related issues at all.

They'd be happy - and they'd also be implementing the solution you keep repeating to them...

I think this would work because equipment isn't really a part of the character anyways. Its just a list of "stuff" the character has access to, so really, just being able to customize what you call the list of "stuff" fixes the perceived problem.

Anyways, thats just my 2 cents.

[Urklore]

I just thought of something that would be a tremendous boon for HD2. How about under the notes area for Strength you list the lifting capacity. I know it would be great to see this on the online sheet when you are making your character and also a great game aid when you are playing your character. Especially for brick types.

[RPMiller]

Originally posted by Urklore
I just thought of something that would be a tremendous boon for HD2. How about under the notes area for Strength you list the lifting capacity. I know it would be great to see this on the online sheet when you are making your character and also a great game aid when you are playing your character. Especially for brick types. Am I imagining things? I thought that was already listed? Which templates are you using?

[Simon]

Originally posted by Durnin
Am I imagining things? I thought that was already listed? Which templates are you using?
There is an export tag for it (&lt;!--STR_LIFT--&gt;)...has been for a while now.....

[Urklore]

My bad, I am trying to read the rest of the manual now. So you can export the max Lift option in a template. Can you set up a template where it lists the value on the online char sheet?

[Urklore]

I apologize for being such a neophyte. How do you get it so HD displays your carrying cap for STR under the additional notes? Anyone have a template for this already?

[RPMiller]

Originally posted by Urklore
I apologize for being such a neophyte. How do you get it so HD displays your carrying cap for STR under the additional notes? Anyone have a template for this already? There are several very nice templates on the Free Stuff page, that you can get to by clicking the link above and following the links to Hero Designer --> Export Templates.

[Kristopher]

Maybe I missed it...

Is there a .txt or .rtf export that doesn't leave anything out? In other words, has to have all the background info, the charts, the notes and names for the powers and lists, etc.

Also, back in the paleolithic, HeroMaker would print the martial arts maneuvers right under the normal combat maneuvers list, with everything adjusted for that particular character's stats. That would be a nice feature.

[Simon]

Originally posted by Kristopher
Maybe I missed it...

Is there a .txt or .rtf export that doesn't leave anything out? In other words, has to have all the background info, the charts, the notes and names for the powers and lists, etc.

Also, back in the paleolithic, HeroMaker would print the martial arts maneuvers right under the normal combat maneuvers list, with everything adjusted for that particular character's stats. That would be a nice feature.
For v1, the character's STR is not totaled into the MA maneuvers effects.

I will be re-working the martial arts section quite heavily for v2 and will be looking into addressing this issue as best I can. The main problem is with the various totalling options on STR, HA damage, extra DCs, etc.

[Kristopher]

BTW, the paleolithic was a comment on how long ago HM came out, not on what HD does or doesn't have.

Anyway, the two things I'd really like to see are faster response time and a mouse pointer that doesn't disappear.

I've tried HD on three different systems to make sure it's not a unique issue, and on all three, the program starts up very slowly (as in several minutes between hitting the executable and the program being usable) and lags a lot (as in up to 10 seconds between clicking on something and the result occuring). This includes a 1.4 GHz system with 512MB of DDR.

The mouse pointer disappears a lot on all three systems, as well. Often, I have to click around blindly until I hit something, or tap on the TAB key, for the pointer to be visible.

I don't want this to sound like I hate the program. I just think that if you're working on a newer version, you should know that these problems do exist.

Thanks,
Kristopher

[Simon]

Originally posted by Kristopher
BTW, the paleolithic was a comment on how long ago HM came out, not on what HD does or doesn't have.

Anyway, the two things I'd really like to see are faster response time and a mouse pointer that doesn't disappear.

I've tried HD on three different systems to make sure it's not a unique issue, and on all three, the program starts up very slowly (as in several minutes between hitting the executable and the program being usable) and lags a lot (as in up to 10 seconds between clicking on something and the result occuring). This includes a 1.4 GHz system with 512MB of DDR.

The mouse pointer disappears a lot on all three systems, as well. Often, I have to click around blindly until I hit something, or tap on the TAB key, for the pointer to be visible.

I don't want this to sound like I hate the program. I just think that if you're working on a newer version, you should know that these problems do exist.

Thanks,
Kristopher
Speed and performance is the first thing that I'm working on for v2. I've made some HUGE improvements in the way that the purchase lists function which will have a general affect on the entire app.

The startup times that you're reporting, however, don't sound right. Make sure that you don't have a large number of characters open when you shut down HD. Particularly characters which use different templates. Each of those characters will be automatically reopened when you start HD, forcing it to load in each of the templates along the way.

As for the mouse thing, this is actually the first that I've heard of it. It sounds like a weird system issue....the onlyt hing that I do with the mouse in the app is to change it from the default cursor to the "wait cursor" (hourglass on most systems) for operations which I know will take some time (loading a template, etc.).

[Urklore]

Characters that use different templates? Are you telling me in HD you can have 1 character file which includes multiple characters (such as their base, vehicle, etc)? I don't remember reading that.

[Simon]

Originally posted by Urklore
Characters that use different templates? Are you telling me in HD you can have 1 character file which includes multiple characters (such as their base, vehicle, etc)? I don't remember reading that.
No...that wouldn't make any sense at all.

I'm talking about having multiple characters open, each of them using different templates.

I'm currently testing out the new hierarchical template structure and am pleased to say that it seems to be working just fine.

Folks that are looking to customize templates or create their own will be quite pleased with the results, I think.....it's no longer necessary to copy all 8000 lines of the original template; you just include those abilities that you want to alter from the template that you are extending.

Much easier to read and maintain.

[Kristopher]

Originally posted by dsimon
Speed and performance is the first thing that I'm working on for v2. I've made some HUGE improvements in the way that the purchase lists function which will have a general affect on the entire app.

The startup times that you're reporting, however, don't sound right. Make sure that you don't have a large number of characters open when you shut down HD. Particularly characters which use different templates. Each of those characters will be automatically reopened when you start HD, forcing it to load in each of the templates along the way.

As for the mouse thing, this is actually the first that I've heard of it. It sounds like a weird system issue....the onlyt hing that I do with the mouse in the app is to change it from the default cursor to the "wait cursor" (hourglass on most systems) for operations which I know will take some time (loading a template, etc.).

The load time issue was present on all three machines I've tried even at the first load. It was so long that I thought something was wrong (which is why I tried it on other machines).

The mouse issue is also present on all three machines.

[Urklore]

Is there an ability in v2 to have just one file which included multiple characters? So you could have your hero's base, vehicle, followers, etc all in one hdc file as opposed to needing one for each.

[Simon]

Originally posted by Urklore
Is there an ability in v2 to have just one file which included multiple characters? So you could have your hero's base, vehicle, followers, etc all in one hdc file as opposed to needing one for each.
I don't have any plans for that right now, though I am considering a "resource package" which would serve a different purpose: to join the character file, image file (if applicable), template (if applicable), rules set (if applicable), and export template (if applicable) into one file.

It would be much like the 'Package Character Files" functionality currently available, but with a few more files/features added in.

[ritter]

How about the ability to sort a list using a drap and drop method?

[Kristopher]

Originally posted by ritter
How about the ability to sort a list using a drap and drop method?

That would be a great upgrade.

Something in another thread brings a question to mind...

Is v2 going to be available as an upgrade package for those of us who've been slogging along on v1, or will everyone who wants it have to buy an entirely new program at full price?

[Simon]

Originally posted by Kristopher
That would be a great upgrade.

Something in another thread brings a question to mind...

Is v2 going to be available as an upgrade package for those of us who've been slogging along on v1, or will everyone who wants it have to buy an entirely new program at full price?
As has been stated before, yes, there will be an upgrade version as well as a full version. And no, I don't have any idea on the prices (or the price differences) at this point.

As for the drag and drop, it's a very low priority right now....there's a number of other features that I will be working in first (though it's certainly a possibility to be included, all depending on time).

[Kristopher]

Sorry I missed the previous statements about the upgrade, I've only been on the forums a couple of weeks now. Thanks for the answer.

[TheEmerged]

I apologize if this has been mentioned and I simply missed it due to the size of the thread.

My #1 request has to do with a house rule -- Mental Defense as an attribute instead of a power. At the least, could there be an option/flag to display the "free" MD points (from EGO) even if the character hasn't purchased additional MD?

Thank you for your time.

[Simon]

Originally posted by TheEmerged
I apologize if this has been mentioned and I simply missed it due to the size of the thread.

My #1 request has to do with a house rule -- Mental Defense as an attribute instead of a power. At the least, could there be an option/flag to display the "free" MD points (from EGO) even if the character hasn't purchased additional MD?

Thank you for your time.
You can create a "Mental Defense" characteristic in the current version by using a custom template.

v2 will add some functionality into this procedure in addition to making the custom template functionality much easier.

[TheEmerged]

Originally posted by dsimon
You can create a "Mental Defense" characteristic in the current version by using a custom template.

v2 will add some functionality into this procedure in addition to making the custom template functionality much easier.

Oh. Silly me, then, guess I'd better start reading up on template construction...

Thanks again for the time.

[Dr.Device]

I second the earlier request for a TYPE export tag. This would be very useful for a couple of projects I'm working on.

I would also like to see a RESERVE tag for multi-powers and variable power pools.

[Simon]

Originally posted by Dr.Device
I second the earlier request for a TYPE export tag. This would be very useful for a couple of projects I'm working on.

I would also like to see a RESERVE tag for multi-powers and variable power pools.
I'll be providing numerous new export tags with v2....anything that's not there (but which can logically be handled by the model-structure) can be added in easily enough after the fact (in an update)

[MarkusDark]

Just went through and closed all 9 characters I apparently had opened in the program, even after closing it down and reopening it. Perhaps a 'close all' button just to clear the work surface?

[Simon]

Originally posted by MarkusDark
Just went through and closed all 9 characters I apparently had opened in the program, even after closing it down and reopening it. Perhaps a 'close all' button just to clear the work surface?
I already have a setting in the app prefs for v2 which addresses this.

[SteamDoc]

I apologize if this was already mentioned. I’m at work (where one of my tasks is message board moderation…) and I don’t have time to read all the posts in the thread. I also apologize if I’m just missing this in the software, as I’m new to HD.

Is it possible to have the software keep track of the points spent to date in a VPP? A sub-total someplace on the powers tab would be very useful.

Thanks.

And thanks for such a handy piece of software.

[Simon]

Originally posted by SteamDoc
I apologize if this was already mentioned. I’m at work (where one of my tasks is message board moderation…) and I don’t have time to read all the posts in the thread. I also apologize if I’m just missing this in the software, as I’m new to HD.

Is it possible to have the software keep track of the points spent to date in a VPP? A sub-total someplace on the powers tab would be very useful.

Thanks.

And thanks for such a handy piece of software.
Due to the nature of VPPs, that concept doesn't apply.

Any Powers added to a VPP are considered "example" powers. They are not meant to represent the current configuration of the VPP. A VPP can have as many examples as the user wants....the only limitation is that any given example Power must be able to "fit" in the VPP (point-wise).

[SteamDoc]

That makes sense. But for those of us trying to create the final version for play that day, well... it's a good thing that Windows comes with a calculator. :)

I'll play around with the software more tonight, but it just seems to me that at some point the player has to decide what's in his pool right now and needs to know that the final cost isn't greater than the pool. Yes, it's simple math, but I'm a simple guy. :)

[Talon]

A great feature would be a VPP "equipment set" window, where you could create custom configurations of a VPP, save them, and print them out to ease play. However, that's a bit out there in terms of feature requests.

A slightly less crazy request might be an export template that just outputs VPPs and their powers, formatted so that the Active and Real costs are easily visible. I don't think that requires much beyond what's currently in v1 other than maybe an ONLY_VPP tag or some such.

[Talon]

Had another feature idea.

Right now, HD assumes that each character will have one export template attached to it. You can change what template that is, but it takes a few clicks. I'm guessing that with v2, there will be a lot more specialized templates (equipment-only, party summary, etc.) Some way to attach multiple templates to a character and quickly access each from the menu would be a great UI addition.

[Simon]

Originally posted by Geoff Speare
Had another feature idea.

Right now, HD assumes that each character will have one export template attached to it. You can change what template that is, but it takes a few clicks. I'm guessing that with v2, there will be a lot more specialized templates (equipment-only, party summary, etc.) Some way to attach multiple templates to a character and quickly access each from the menu would be a great UI addition.
I see very little benefit in going through a list of templates and assigning a list to select from versus just selecting from the initial list to begin with.

If you want to change the template in either case, you'd need to go through the same steps. The only difference would be that the list of available templates would be limited (in your case) to the list that you had defined for the character. That would be potentially confusing for the user and does not save on much time.

There will be some additional functionality surrounding the export template selection: the ability to specify what directory you want to store export templates in, the ability to specify a "default" template for all characters, etc.

[Victor]

It may have been mentioned already, but it would be very nice to have a more intuitive/automated way of creating Partially Limited Advantages.

Currently, it seems there's the option of A) creating a Compound Power and adding a Naked Advantage, specifying the active points used by the advantage to be limited, or B) faking it with Custom Adders/Modifiers.

In both cases, all the math is left to the user rather than the program, so every time the base power is bought up, the user has to remember to recalculate the relevant fields. Not a major obstacle, but annoying.

Additionally, the contents of a compound power can't be easily cut and pasted, so if this PLA is to be applied to multiple powers (or god forbid, a list or framework), it gets REALLY cumbersome to recreate the PLA for each power.

A PLA created by the Compound Power/Naked Advantage method cannot be applied to a power which is already a compund power (e.g., a rifle with a scope), as such behavior is not supported (not to mention that it would be really ugly to look at in the current format).

If there's already a better way of doing it, I can't seem to find it in the program or the docs, so feel free to slap me down in that case.

Ok, so now to try to be constructive about it...

If all modifiers can't be allowed to have a modifier list of their own (for aesthetics, or whatever reason), perhaps a special type of modifier could be created that does. I'd prefer the general approach myself, but would happily accept the latter.

[Agent X]

I have a friend who bought Hero Designer. His computer more than meets stated requirements but he can't use it. He gave it to me since he can't use it. I have a very nice set-up and it is still incredibly slow. Please do something about this.

It also would be nice, as I am sure you have heard, for the program to be a little more flexible for house rules.

[megaplayboy]

don't know if these have been mentioned previously:

1. the equipment multiplier(x2 for 5 points) should be a checkbox option somewhere in the equipment or powers tab.
2. buying multiple followers should have the same mechanic as summon and duplication(i.e., a x2 clickable tab)
3. add limited conscious control as an option to NCC...

[Simon]

Originally posted by megaplayboy
don't know if these have been mentioned previously:

1. the equipment multiplier(x2 for 5 points) should be a checkbox option somewhere in the equipment or powers tab.
2. buying multiple followers should have the same mechanic as summon and duplication(i.e., a x2 clickable tab)
3. add limited conscious control as an option to NCC...
1) Quite likely.

2) Followers has a specific place to indicate the number of followers....the points are calculated accordingly from there.

3) NCC is written up exactly the way it is in FREd. There is the full NCC (-2) and then an option for "Only effects cannot be controlled" (-1).

[megaplayboy]

Originally posted by dsimon
1) Quite likely.

2) Followers has a specific place to indicate the number of followers....the points are calculated accordingly from there.

3) NCC is written up exactly the way it is in FREd. There is the full NCC (-2) and then an option for "Only effects cannot be controlled" (-1).
1&3. Cool.
2. True, and this is unlikely to come up very often, but the upper limit for followers is much lower than for duplication or summon--the latter two range up to 2 billion or so, and followers caps off around 99,999...galactic emperors and dimensional overlords sometimes have a LOT of followers:D

[Agent X]

I've just read through the first few pages and I'm trying to understand something but it really is eluding me. I am the customer. I want a character generator. I want it to suit my needs whenever possible. The company that designs the character generator doesn't want to suit my needs whenever possible?

This business about having some things that are unalterable by the user concerns me. I don't have the faintest notion what a "chargen" is and I don't really care. I know that I play with a group whose core is the same 5 guys as it was 10 years ago. We have our own ideas about the game and we would like to use them. I don't have any clue why Steve Long or anyone else at DOJ thinks they need to "enforce" rules for us. What possible benefit comes to DOJ from that?

This makes me really wonder about purchasing V.2, mostly because I'm not sure my needs will be met, and partially out of the principle that buying the product may indicate I am willing to be dictated to as to what house rules are okay and not okay in the game.

[Simon]

Originally posted by Agent X
I've just read through the first few pages and I'm trying to understand something but it really is eluding me. I am the customer. I want a character generator. I want it to suit my needs whenever possible. The company that designs the character generator doesn't want to suit my needs whenever possible?

This business about having some things that are unalterable by the user concerns me. I don't have the faintest notion what a "chargen" is and I don't really care. I know that I play with a group whose core is the same 5 guys as it was 10 years ago. We have our own ideas about the game and we would like to use them. I don't have any clue why Steve Long or anyone else at DOJ thinks they need to "enforce" rules for us. What possible benefit comes to DOJ from that?

This makes me really wonder about purchasing V.2, mostly because I'm not sure my needs will be met, and partially out of the principle that buying the product may indicate I am willing to be dictated to as to what house rules are okay and not okay in the game.
You may want to keep reading, then.

The primary goal of HD has always been to implement the myriad rules and regulations of the Hero System. And yes, there are a LOT of them. More than most folks realize.

That will continue to be the goal moving forward. It is not a generic chargen (character generator). It is not meant to be, It is meant to be a chargen for the Hero System, to create "legal" characters under the rules of the system.

That said, even in v1, you have a rather large amount of flexibility in the things that you can change. There are a lot of rules that you can alter, turn off, workaround, or ignore. There are also a lot of rules that you cannot. Many of them specifically stated by Steve as being required.

One of the main objectives that I'm working on for v2 is to increase this functionality....to make it easier to alter certain rules. And to make rules that were previously "hard coded" configurable by the user.

Will everything be editable? No. If you don't like that concept, sorry....HD probably isn't for you. Your allusions to "the customer is always right" are incorrect. There are plenty of folks that <i>like</i> the fact that HD enforces the rules. They don't have to worry about them because of that. If you're not interested in any sort of rules enforcement, then I'd suggest pencil and paper for creating characters. Or a good excel spreadsheet if you don't like the math.

[Agent X]

Originally posted by dsimon
You may want to keep reading, then.

The primary goal of HD has always been to implement the myriad rules and regulations of the Hero System. And yes, there are a LOT of them. More than most folks realize.

That will continue to be the goal moving forward. It is not a generic chargen (character generator). It is not meant to be, It is meant to be a chargen for the Hero System, to create "legal" characters under the rules of the system.

That said, even in v1, you have a rather large amount of flexibility in the things that you can change. There are a lot of rules that you can alter, turn off, workaround, or ignore. There are also a lot of rules that you cannot. Many of them specifically stated by Steve as being required.

One of the main objectives that I'm working on for v2 is to increase this functionality....to make it easier to alter certain rules. And to make rules that were previously "hard coded" configurable by the user.

Will everything be editable? No. If you don't like that concept, sorry....HD probably isn't for you. Your allusions to "the customer is always right" are incorrect. There are plenty of folks that <i>like</i> the fact that HD enforces the rules. They don't have to worry about them because of that. If you're not interested in any sort of rules enforcement, then I'd suggest pencil and paper for creating characters. Or a good excel spreadsheet if you don't like the math. I'll keep reading but you put me off a little with your statement about the "customer is always right." I think there is a happy medium between the program "suggesting" the rule and enforcing the rule. I've used a different Hero Games character generator before and found that I had more freedom. I like many of the new features with Hero Designer but I will go to something else if DOJ feels it is important to "push" me too hard to play the game their way.

I still can't get over that, "The primary goal of HD has always been to implement the myriad rules and regulations of the Hero System." I'm sorry but the customer's primary goal is to buy software that makes it easier for them to build the characters they want to build.

[Stray Cat]

It would seem to me that HD's primary goal is NOT the same as more than a few of its customers'.

What grabs me here is that the HERO System has always appealed to me because of its flexible nature. Now the sanctioned software is much more INflexible. I realize that this is out of your hands, dsimon. But I advise you to be more tactful in administering edicts to the customer. I found your attitude in your reply to Agent X condescending and demeaning. Ther phrase "I can't do that." is frowned on in most retail venues. "I won't do that." is intolerable.

I applaud your efforts to make v2 more limber than this version. But this line in the sand that "DOJ" has drawn seems like something unnecessary. Perhaps if I could hear the rationale behind it, it might make some sense. Agent X's point was valid. Where is the benefit to "DOJ?"

I'll bet that Agent X is not looking for complete flexibility, and neither am I. Paper and pencil DO work fine for that. But I would like to see the degree of flexibility that existed in formerly-sanctioned software.

My gaming group includes 5 regulars and a couple others at this time. Of that group only 3 frequent these boards. The point being that there are more potential users than "DOJ" is hearing from. With that said, plenty of people are ahollerin for more rules flexibility rather than rules-flexing on this thread.

The danger that customers will break the system's rules without software enforcement is moot. People can break the rules with the software now in workarounds and twistings. The people who break the rules intentionally will always be able to. I have never heard of someone purchasing a chargen because it would allow him or her to break the rules. That signals the misplaced goal of HD. People DO purchase chargens to generate characters that fit into their campaign (with its attendant house rules). That signals the proper focus of any chargen.

Does "DOJ" have that little faith in the gamemasters of the world that they must enforce the rules for them? After reading FReD, Chapter 6 "Changing the System," that doesn't seem to match. In fact, HD seems out of kilter in with the intent of the game system as a whole.

Right now I have a wait-and-see attitude. The glimmer of hope is the comment that v2 will be more rules-flexible.

Cat

[Simon]

I have answered this many times before. Look over my previous responses if you're curious on the rationale.

[Killer Shrike]

The customer is not always right. Thats obviously ludicrous. If I were always right, Id got into a car dealership and insist on all the options I want (regardless of whether they are things the manufacture offers for that make and model). Or go to a retail off-the-rack clothes store and insist on a personal tailor to hand measure and stitch my clothes for me.

Hero Games does not present a generic multi-purpose piece of software that can be configured to apply most HERO Games rules (but can also be savagely hacked). It sells a piece of software designed to apply HERO Games rules from the ground up and to prevent hacked characters.

The customer has the right to buy what is presented or move along. The only impact this has on the seller is that if too many do this they go out of business. So, if you dont like what is presented, then move along. We can all agree that Dan's a bit gruff and is definitiely not "sales associate" material. Thats because he's a developer. This is why most places there are several layers of "people skill" folks between the client and the developers, because developers tend to be straight-shooting, no-bs, hardened realists not accustomed to sugarcoating.

You dont start out that way, but with each new "feature request", each new creeping expansion of scope, each bout of back seat programming (usually by people that are doing good to check thier email without blowing the place up), each deadline that gets slipped because some jagoff exec changed his mind about 'the vision' of the project -- again, each new last minute addition the client wants that invalidates 3 weeks of code....drives you inexorably to a hard first line of defense -- "NO". You want to be nice to people, but if you give one guy what he wants you have to do it for the next guy and so on. Some requests make sense, but others interfere with core functionality, or run counter to the logical flow of the app, or clutter up an otherwise clean model with needless fluff.


I personally like the enforcement aspect. I didnt at first; I was very leary of it. But once I started using the app, I realized that its rarely even an issue. Customization allowed by the rules but not HD is the real bugaboo there more so than adding house rules IMO, and v2 seems to be addressing that.

The enforcement aspect of the software also teaches players newer to the system better rules enforcement, so its also useful as a learning aid. Version 2 takes this further (so far) by applying better Modifier Intelligence, extending it cover the power-type specific Modifiers and generally improving the filtering of non-applicable modifiers.


As an aside, out of curiosity what are some of these house rules that you are looking to work into HD v1? If you post them there is a good chance someone can figure out a way to model them (unless they specifically violate a hard rule applied by the system), and even then with Custom Powers and Modifiers and such like it might be circumnavigatable.

;)

[Dr. Anomaly]

Killer Shrike makes some very good points. We should also remember that Dan's customer is Steve Long / Darren Watts / DOJ Games, not us. Dan writes what DOJ Games wants; the fact that he gives us any input at ALL is rare in the industry and speaks well of both Dan AND DOJ Games.

And lest it be overlooked amongst the flying fur, Dan's customer service in response to bug fixes is so far ahead of ANY other that I've even HEARD OF, let alone experienced, that I can't really compare it. Calling it "orders of magnitude better" probably comes close, but doesn't do it true justice.

By the way, Dan, have you considered putting a "mods only" Sticky thread at the top where you list all the features you've decided to try and implement in v2, as well as those you are considering? Reading through 15 pages of posts (many of which are NOT suggestions but discussion) to make sure you're not duplicating a request makes it all too easy to miss something.

Come to think of it, in that same Sticky post, you should probably list those things you will NOT be adding, despite what people may think would be good reasons.

The reason I mention doing this is I have a request and I couldn't find where this specific thing had been mentioned (though some similar ones have). In any case, my request:

You've already added the option to the current v1 program to NOT display the Active Points for a Skill, etc. This is a real boon.

Would it be possible to add some global functionality to that? That is, could you make a switch so the default is "Do NOT Show Active Point Costs" instead of showing them by default? As it is now, I have to make sure to uncheck that box for each individual Skill.

Perhaps making the global switch broken up by type, since most of us DO want Active Points for Powers, and many DON'T want them for Skills:

Active Point Display Defaults
Skills On/Off
Talents On/Off
Perks On/Off
Powers On/Off

And let us choose "On" or "Off" for each category as a global default, though of course we could manually turn it on or off for a given Skill/Power/Perk/etc.

[Simon]

Originally posted by Dr. Anomaly
...

You've already added the option to the current v1 program to NOT display the Active Points for a Skill, etc. This is a real boon.

Would it be possible to add some global functionality to that? That is, could you make a switch so the default is "Do NOT Show Active Point Costs" instead of showing them by default? As it is now, I have to make sure to uncheck that box for each individual Skill.

Perhaps making the global switch broken up by type, since most of us DO want Active Points for Powers, and many DON'T want them for Skills:

Active Point Display Defaults
Skills On/Off
Talents On/Off
Perks On/Off
Powers On/Off

And let us choose "On" or "Off" for each category as a global default, though of course we could manually turn it on or off for a given Skill/Power/Perk/etc.
I'm way ahead of you....sorta.

I've got the general "display Active Points (by default)" put into the new App Prefs screen already. The idea to have that by type-specific isn't bad....it'll mainly depend on time before the release of v2. It's certainly possible....

[Kristopher]

You may have covered this already, but...

In the old HeroMaker, it was possible to put Limitations on Advantages -- such as an attack that was only Armor Piercing vs defenses of a certain SFX. The limit was on the Advantage, not the Power.

Was that kosher under 4thEd rules?

Is that kosher under FRED rules?

Is this a possible feature for Hero Designer 2.0?

Thanks much.

[Simon]

Originally posted by Kristopher
You may have covered this already, but...

In the old HeroMaker, it was possible to put Limitations on Advantages -- such as an attack that was only Armor Piercing vs defenses of a certain SFX. The limit was on the Advantage, not the Power.

Was that kosher under 4thEd rules?

Is that kosher under FRED rules?

Is this a possible feature for Hero Designer 2.0?

Thanks much.
I have no plans to do that at this time, though it may be implemented in the future.

It's mainly a matter of finding a "clean" way to implement it in the interface....one which doesn't complicate the process of purchasing Modifiers. This is an extremely rare occurrence....one which is almost never needed....so I'm very reluctant to complicate matters in general in order to accomodate it.

I'd recommend using a Custom Modifier for now (instead of purchasing Armor Piercing, purchase a Custom Mod and call is "Armor Piercing (only against powers of specific FX)"....set the value to whatever you and your GM feel is appropriate.

Alternately, you can use a Naked Modifier. If you're looking to limit an Advantage, then the math works out identically.

[Immortaldreamer]

I admit to being REALLY excited about v2, as it looks like it will address virtually everything I had reservations about in v1 (well, except I still don't know if it's gonna support a Language Chart, but I can dream. :) )

Which leads into the next thought. Some lucky people have gotten to betatest v2, but the rest of us are in the dark. Dan, would you be willing to (or let some of your betatesters do so, if you're too busy...) post some screenshots of the new cool things? The customizable rules bit you mentioned above, for example, I'm hella curious about.

And on a related note...any updates to a target release for v2? I have money just dying to zoom out to Hero the instant I hear I can download this beast. :)

[Simon]

Originally posted by Immortaldreamer
I admit to being REALLY excited about v2, as it looks like it will address virtually everything I had reservations about in v1 (well, except I still don't know if it's gonna support a Language Chart, but I can dream. :) )

Which leads into the next thought. Some lucky people have gotten to betatest v2, but the rest of us are in the dark. Dan, would you be willing to (or let some of your betatesters do so, if you're too busy...) post some screenshots of the new cool things? The customizable rules bit you mentioned above, for example, I'm hella curious about.

And on a related note...any updates to a target release for v2? I have money just dying to zoom out to Hero the instant I hear I can download this beast. :)
I'd rather not release any screenshots at this point....primarily because things are still very much in a state of flux on v2. It's in the early stages of development, with a lot of work left to do. Releasing a screen shot at this point would show a "work in progress" type of thing....which many take to be a sign of what the final product will look like, no matter how many times you tell them that it is still preliminary.

I have no problems with any of the testers chiming in on what they see or what they think (good or bad) about v2. They're free to post whatever they like in that regard.

As work progresses and v2 nears its actual "beta" we'll see about getting some screen shots and/or a public demo up and running.

Oh...and I'm currently planning on having the Language Similiarity Chart implemented as an optional rule.

[Talon]

Beta looks good so far...performance is seriously sweet compared to v1. Definitely a huge step forward.

[RPMiller]

Dan is really doing an incredible job with v2. He has really been listening and implementing as much as he can, and as Geoff mentioned the performance has actually gone way up even with all the new bells and whistles. IMHO, people will be very pleased with this new version whether they upgrade or are first time users.

[Dr. Anomaly]

My only gripe is that I missed the opportunity to become a beta test! :(

EDIT: Beta test*er* , I meant beta test*er*!! I, myself, am already a beta-test model! Or at least, that's what it feels like...

[Simon]

Originally posted by Dr. Anomaly
My only gripe is that I missed the opportunity to become a beta test! :(
There will be more as we get closer to a release....

[Dr. Anomaly]

I'll try to make it on the list next time then! :)

[Citizen Keen]

Well, after 48 hours of tinkering, I'm enjoying myself with HD. I got on to add my thoughts, and saw that Immortal Dreamer already got most of what I want to say.

I agree with everybody on this list (including DSimon's replies), especially with Immortal Dreamer's post. Not too interested in an autoupdate feature or anything - focus on what counts, as far as I'm concerned.

However, two areas concern me:

Lists - I want lists within lists within lists. I'd like List Separators on the left, without them showing up on the right (I like to sort my lists on the left, but hate those little empty tags on the right). I'd like collapsible lists - I'd like to have a list of "Everyman Skills" and "Green Beret Skills" on the left, without having to look at them all the time - they're package deals, I know what's in them.

More Package Deal support. I'd like to be able to include characteristics and so forth in a package deal, and have all my tabs listed together in a Package. PreFabs are a start, but I'd like to be able to create package deal, with Skills and Characteristics and Powers and Perks and Disads, and save it in one list in one file. Then, I could click on a little list or something, and it would apply it to the character, all of it at once. Make my character a Dwarf or a Green Beret, poof. His STR goes up by X, his INT goes down by Y, he gets local police powers and teleportation and a code of honor; all applied to the character as they are at the moment I click the button. I can then lower the STR or raise the Y or whatever, but it does it all in one click.

Oh yeah, and a wee bit better performance would be GREATLY appreciated. I know nothing about coding, but I figure there has to be a away to increase the programs speed.

One last thing, and not about the program. Would it be possible to get an "update" CD, for half price or something? It would require version 1.whatever, otherwise nothing, but would give you the program. I just bought HD, and am less than thrilled about shelling out another $40 in December.

Love the program. A lot.

-cK

[Citizen Keen]

Make "Set Template" editable. Or, have a "Recently used Templates" list, so that if I want all my non SuperHeroes to have to pay two points for each point of strength, I don't have to manually load each template.

[Simon]

Originally posted by Citizen Keen
Lists - I want lists within lists within lists. I'd like List Separators on the left, without them showing up on the right (I like to sort my lists on the left, but hate those little empty tags on the right). I'd like collapsible lists - I'd like to have a list of "Everyman Skills" and "Green Beret Skills" on the left, without having to look at them all the time - they're package deals, I know what's in them.
There will not be lists within lists....though I am hoping to add in the ability to put separators within Lists.

I also will not be doing "collapsible" lists. The purchase list is made to look like the printout (at least like _a_ printout) and, as such, will display everything.


More Package Deal support. I'd like to be able to include characteristics and so forth in a package deal, and have all my tabs listed together in a Package. PreFabs are a start, but I'd like to be able to create package deal, with Skills and Characteristics and Powers and Perks and Disads, and save it in one list in one file. Then, I could click on a little list or something, and it would apply it to the character, all of it at once. Make my character a Dwarf or a Green Beret, poof. His STR goes up by X, his INT goes down by Y, he gets local police powers and teleportation and a code of honor; all applied to the character as they are at the moment I click the button. I can then lower the STR or raise the Y or whatever, but it does it all in one click.
You can do what you're looking for now....just create a base "character" file for each race....the same way you would create a template. The base character file would contain everything that all dwarves (for example) would always have (starting characteristics, etc). Your players would load up that file as a starting point when working on a character. Between prefabs, character files, and custom templates, you can do pretty much anything that you need along these lines.


Oh yeah, and a wee bit better performance would be GREATLY appreciated. I know nothing about coding, but I figure there has to be a away to increase the programs speed.
Already done.


One last thing, and not about the program. Would it be possible to get an "update" CD, for half price or something? It would require version 1.whatever, otherwise nothing, but would give you the program. I just bought HD, and am less than thrilled about shelling out another $40 in December.
They will be releasing both a full version and an update....and no, I'm not sure on the pricing of either.

[Simon]

Originally posted by Citizen Keen
Make "Set Template" editable. Or, have a "Recently used Templates" list, so that if I want all my non SuperHeroes to have to pay two points for each point of strength, I don't have to manually load each template.
Templates will be fairly different in v2....though I may implement the "recently used" list....

[Citizen Keen]

I hadn't thought of making a saved character as a starting point for all characters, and it sounds good.

However, the idea of having to create a saved character for an Incompetent Normal Dwarf, a Standard Normal Dwarf, a Skilled Normal Dwarf, and so on, followed by a Incompetent Normal Elf, and so on, not to mention the problems when we add in different kinds of Dwarves.

I just think that, because the idea of Package Deals is to make aspects of HERO a little more "point and click", just add water, that HERO Designer should support that philosophy. Just click a button and add a Package Deal to whatever character you've got. The saved character template fails that test because, while being a Dwarf is usually decided in the beginning of character generation, I may not decide to make them a Green Beret until halfway in.

I just think it would be a well-liked feature, and can't imagine it would be that hard to implement. But, if you disagree, I'll support that and keep my mouth shut. I like HD1.47, so I'm confident I'll like v2.

[Simon]

Originally posted by Citizen Keen
I hadn't thought of making a saved character as a starting point for all characters, and it sounds good.

However, the idea of having to create a saved character for an Incompetent Normal Dwarf, a Standard Normal Dwarf, a Skilled Normal Dwarf, and so on, followed by a Incompetent Normal Elf, and so on, not to mention the problems when we add in different kinds of Dwarves.

I just think that, because the idea of Package Deals is to make aspects of HERO a little more "point and click", just add water, that HERO Designer should support that philosophy. Just click a button and add a Package Deal to whatever character you've got. The saved character template fails that test because, while being a Dwarf is usually decided in the beginning of character generation, I may not decide to make them a Green Beret until halfway in.

I just think it would be a well-liked feature, and can't imagine it would be that hard to implement. But, if you disagree, I'll support that and keep my mouth shut. I like HD1.47, so I'm confident I'll like v2.
We're talking about the same thing. If you would have to make a separate character file for a Normal Dwarf and Standard Normal Dwarf and so on, then you would also need to make a separate package for them.

If, however, they're the same except for the template being used, then you just need one character file, and then the player/user would select the template they want to use when building the character.

There is no functional difference between this and a "package deal".

[Citizen Keen]

Oh, wow. Ok, this stems from my ignorance of the program. Wow, cool. Thanks.

Quick question (so I don't have to start a new thread) - if I have a Dwarf character saved off the default Standard Normal Template, and say Dwarves have a 14 STR, costing 4 Points. I load my custom template, which has STR costing 2 points a piece. Does my STR go down to 12 (to maintain the 4 point cost) or does the cost go up to 8?

Thanks so much in advance. I guess Packages are about as supported as I can hope for right now.

[Citizen Keen]

How Backward compatible is v2 going to be?

[RPMiller]

Originally posted by Citizen Keen
How Backward compatible is v2 going to be? So far I have been able to open characters made in previous versions no problem. As a test I tried opening a character saved in v2 with version 1.46, and barring a template error was able to open it as well.

[Simon]

Originally posted by Citizen Keen
Oh, wow. Ok, this stems from my ignorance of the program. Wow, cool. Thanks.

Quick question (so I don't have to start a new thread) - if I have a Dwarf character saved off the default Standard Normal Template, and say Dwarves have a 14 STR, costing 4 Points. I load my custom template, which has STR costing 2 points a piece. Does my STR go down to 12 (to maintain the 4 point cost) or does the cost go up to 8?

Thanks so much in advance. I guess Packages are about as supported as I can hope for right now.
The cost goes up to 8.

[Simon]

Originally posted by Citizen Keen
How Backward compatible is v2 going to be?
I'm working on complete forwards and backwards compatibility. I want for v2 to be able to open v1 characters, use v1 templates, etc.

v1 opening v2 characters should work _fairly_ well....there will likely be some issues with the new template structure and naming, but that should be surmountable. v2 Templates will not work in v1. And there will be export templates that contain entirely new structures which v1 will not recognize.

Basically, there should be full backwards compatibility and as much forwards compatibility as I am able to work in.

[Fitz]

I can't recall whether this has been addressed or not, but wil v.2 have any sort of display support for sectional defences? It would be useful to be able to use export tags to show the DEF for individual hit locations.

[Simon]

Originally posted by Fitz
I can't recall whether this has been addressed or not, but wil v.2 have any sort of display support for sectional defences? It would be useful to be able to use export tags to show the DEF for individual hit locations.
Probably not right away, though it's something that could show up in an update...

[Locnar]

Forgive me if this has been covered. HD won't let you sell back more than one figured characteristic. This probably falls under the "enforcing the rules" doctrine. Unfortunately, it's common to sell back end and stun when making automatons. It still won't let me do it in the automaton template. Is there a way to do it that I'm missing?


--Locnar

[Simon]

Originally posted by Locnar
Forgive me if this has been covered. HD won't let you sell back more than one figured characteristic. This probably falls under the "enforcing the rules" doctrine. Unfortunately, it's common to sell back end and stun when making automatons. It still won't let me do it in the automaton template. Is there a way to do it that I'm missing?


--Locnar
It is a rule (not being able to sell back more than one figured characteristic).

However, if you purchase "Takes No STUN" on an Automaton, the STUN Characteristic is removed from the character (it is meaningless), so you don't need to sell it back. And no, you do not get points back for the STUN which you would have had from your primary characteristics. The character has no STUN characteristic....there is nothing to be sold back.

[Locnar]

Thanks!

Still thinking in a 4th Ed way sometimes. :rolleyes:


Locnar