Multi-Form and the Connected Templates thing and one other thing...

[Count Zero]

The thread confused me. What are inherited templates and such... what exactly does that do. Can you give a more specific example and how do you set it up.

Is this how you do Multi-Form? If not is there a way for you to connect the two characters or do you just make them as two separate files and know they are part of the multi-form power of the character. I am just trying to get a good idea of the full abilities of the character.

Finally, I wanted to make a Microsoft Word export file. Is that possible with MS Word. Also what is fully involved of that. Can someone who is an amateur really do that? Are there any tutorials on exports. Can you just make the Word Document and then add in the code to get it to input the data into the file appropriately? Just trying to get a full idea of what this involves.

Jonathan

[Dr. Anomaly]

Well, it's late, I'm up, and I hope Dan doesn't mind my answering this.

No, the templates and inheritances have nothing to do with Multiform. When you create a character using Hero Designer, you start with a template. This tells you how much various Characteristics cost and things like that. For the most part you use the standard templates that come with it...Normal, Heroic, or Superheroic.

Some people want/need to design their own custom templates because they want a standard starting point for nonhuman races or things like that. The concept of 'inheritance' is a programming term. I'll give an example to illustrate:

Suppose you are designing a template for the Galactic Guard, the peacekeeping force in your star-spanning game. The Galactic Guard all have certain standardized training/equipment. You design a custom template that reflects these standards that any member of the Galactic Guard will have. You then decide to create templates for various types of Galactic Guard -- Scout, Pilot, Sniper. Each one of those templates needs their own standardized bits and all the standardized bits from the basic Galactic Guard template (they are all Galactic Guardsmen, after all).

You could just copy all the custom stuff from the Galactic Guards template into the Scout template, the Pilot template, and Sniper template, then add to each one the standardized stuff specific to that particular subcategory of Galactic Guard.

The problem comes in when you decide to change something that's in the basic Galactic Guard template...now you have to track down all the other templates that you copied that information into, and change all of them as well. It'd be easy to miss one, or to copy/change the information incorrectly in one of them...end result is that all these templates that are supposed to have the same information, don't. It's a big mess.

But what if for the Scout, Pilot, and Sniper templates, instead of copying the stuff from the Galactic Guard template, you could just tell them "when you get loaded in, load the stuff from the Galactic Guard template as part of you", then put in just the things specific to Scouts in the Scout template, things specific to the Pilots in the Pilot template and so on. If you need to change something in the basic Galactic Guard template, just change it there...and whenever one of the other "child" templates gets used, it'll get the updated/changed info from the "parent" template (the Galactic Guard template). This is called inheritance...the other templates inherit all of the variables/information/changes from a parent template, then add their own unique bits to it. This prevents a lot of problems and mess, and keeps you from having to reinvent the wheel each time (make each new template that uses old information have to contain the information itself).

Sometimes (though rarely) it's desirable to have something inherit from more than one "parent." The problem comes in when each parent says the same thing, but differently. It's like a father saying "Sure you can stay up until midnight" while Mom says "You need to be in bed by 10:00." How do you know which one you're supposed to do, when each is telling you something different (10 o'clock, midnight) about the same thing (when to go to bed)? With a program, that's a major problem, because a program can't decide for itself which it would rather do, and it needs to decide the same way each time a conflict like this comes up, or you can't get dependable, predictable behavior...and that's bad when it comes to applications like Hero Designer.

What Dan did was set up a way someone making a custom template can have it inherit from several "ancestors", and set up a standardized way for it to resolve conflicts. In the "bedtime" example, this would be like the kid always doing the last thing they were told...if Dad said stay up first and later Mom said go to bed, they'd go to bed.

For the most part, you won't need to worry about this if you don't want to write your own custom templates, and most users won't. Dan is doing a favor (a BIG favor) for those of us who feel the need to create our own custom templates.

About the MS Word thing, I don't know; I've never messed with exporting to anything other than HTML, so I don't know how Hero Designer interacts with MS Word. Sorry.

[Simon]

Inherited templates have nothing to do with multiform. They are better phrased as "template hierarchy". Each template is able to "inherit" its definitions from other templates. What this means is that if you want to create a custom template that charges 2 points per point of STR, but is otherwise identical to the Superheroic template that is built into the app, you can simply have your template extend the Superheroic template, inheriting all of its definitions. All that you would need to include in your new template is what you want to change (in this case, STR). The documentation does an excellent job of explaining how this works.

Once you've gone through the documentation, you should also check out the "New Feature" thread on multiple inheritance. That will be coming up in the next update and will allow a template to inherit its definitions from more than one "parent" -- something which should please any Republican users.

As for "connecting" a Multiform to the base character, a stapler works well. Seriously, there is no programmatic connection. You make both characters as normal.

On MS Word, you'll need to know their .doc format. It is possible....and if memory serves, Microsoft recently opened up their .doc format. It strikes me that this may be a LOT more than you're up for, however....

[Simon]

Oops. Missed Dr. Anomaly's post.

One clarification on what he discussed: The main purpose in life for templates is to define the rules by which HD operates. How much things cost, how they're structured, how they display, etc.

What DA is talking about with "starting points" and packages for characters is a reasonably new functionality that allows you to save character information and campaign rules into a template and then start a new character from that point.

Look at the "Save As Template..." and "New Character from Template..." functionality for this. They are rather extremely useful items for exactly the functionality that DA is talking about.

Actually creating a custom template is a bit different as it entails altering the rules of the system. The documentation does a fantastic job of explaining this....largely because I did not write it

[bcholmes]

Originally posted by Count Zero
Finally, I wanted to make a Microsoft Word export file. Is that possible with MS Word. Also what is fully involved of that. Can someone who is an amateur really do that?

Generally, I'd say "no" you can't do that easily, although you can create an export template for an HTML file that's compatible with word. I have one that I use for printing purposes.

[Aroooo]

There are some RTF export templates that Word will easily open. I have not played around much with them, but the export template code looks more complex than the HTML templates.

Aroooo

[Count Zero]

All of this sounds really interesting. The templates can be quite useful. I will have to look at the documentation and try and figure it out. Of course the hard part seems getting them to connect together. It sounds like that takes some coding experience of some form... will have to look at it better.

Jonathan

[Simon]

Originally posted by Count Zero
All of this sounds really interesting. The templates can be quite useful. I will have to look at the documentation and try and figure it out. Of course the hard part seems getting them to connect together. It sounds like that takes some coding experience of some form... will have to look at it better.

Jonathan

Actually, that's the easiest part. All that requires is the "extends" attribute at the top of the file. For example:

<TEMPLATE extends="A.hdt, B.hdt">

Will create a template that extends "A" and "B" templates.

The harder part (though really not that difficult) is customizing the rules in your template, if you want to override any of the built in rules.

[Dr. Anomaly]

Originally posted by Simon
Oops. Missed Dr. Anomaly's post.

One clarification on what he discussed: The main purpose in life for templates is to define the rules by which HD operates. How much things cost, how they're structured, how they display, etc.

No problem, Dan.

I used the more Skill-oriented example because I thought it might be easier for a layman to understand, that's all. Your clarification works in nicely, though. Thanks!

[archermoo]

Originally posted by bcholmes
Generally, I'd say "no" you can't do that easily, although you can create an export template for an HTML file that's compatible with word. I have one that I use for printing purposes.

Just as a note, you can save Word2003 documents as .xml files, allowing you to create a Word export template if you so desire.