How do you organize your directories?

[Michael Hopcroft]

Having just re-downloaded a bunch of stuff and saved it to an external drive fro additional safekeeping, I'm now curious about something: How do most HD users organize their directories?

When HD starts looking for files, it initially points to My Documents. But I personally have never put anything there, prefering to use subdirectories within the HD program files directory. The way I have my directory organzied right now has the Datasets al combined into a directory, with each Dataset and significant subset in its own directory, organized by genre. Thus all the Champions stuff is in one directory, everything related to Star HERO in another, everything Fantasy HERO in another -- you get the idea.

Anything I change or alter would go into a different set of directories. Right now I have only one -- Characters. when I start to work on something from the Datasets, I immediately (if I can remember) save it as a new file in Characters. That way I have the original data unaltered, ready to use at all times.

How does everyone else do it?

[ghost-angel]

Character Packs are by genre.

I have two directories for Character Files and Exported Characters.
Inside the HD Folder I have Export Template & Package Deals - mostly for ones I've personally created.

Then I have Genre Folders elsewhere on the Flash drive divided by "Books" "Characters Packs" "Errata" "Other" all the Character Pack directors are renamed by SKU of Pack, for instance the Fantasy Hero Character Pack's directory is named 713_FH.

Inside the CPs I tend to leave files as the creator organized them unless they were completely whacked and everything is everywhere (haven't run into that yet).

[eternal_sage]

this is my directory setup on my compys (actually shared over my home net, but whatever)

HERO 5th
Settings PDF Library

PDF Library is where my pdf books are stored. only have the core book and maybe two more at the moment, but maybe someday i'll be able to get more. unders settings, each is broken up into:

base_doc pdfs HERO Designer Sheets

base_docs is for my working copy word documents, pdfs are the PDF copies of these work files, as i finish them, Sheets are my custom made character sheet for the setting.

inside HERO Designer, things vary by genre, but it boils down to:

Racial Packages Class Packages Cultural Packages Equipment Prefab Magic Prefabs Characters

the rules file for the game is located in the main HERO Designer directory. equipment is often broken up by type, as is magic. in a supers game there are only characters, so they are just split up by team. creatures (in the character directory) are divided into logical groups (undead, fae, etc), and then often further sub-divided by base CV and Def ranges.


yea, i'm a little OCD, but thats what happens when you do 3d graphics. you begin making these types of ridiciously complex directory structures, because when you have literally hundreds of files in 20 different formats, things get confusing.

each other game system is set up in a similar manner (without HERO Designer files, of course, altough i do have builder programs for some of them as well. they just aren't as good as HD!)

[Starwolf]

I have mine organized by file type...

Characters
NPCs & Creatures
Bases
Vehicles
Prefabs
Templates
Export Templates
Package Deals
Etc...

Then in my HD preferences, I set up HD to look at the appropriate directory by default.