Non Hero Designer software?

[ghost-angel]

Since the main function of Hero Designer is to create and cost Hero Characters I believe the demo version to be sufficient to understand what the program is capable of.

As for the saving or "printing" issue.. Since the nature of HD is a non-static output (ie user editable in the extreme) providing that function in a demo would no sufficiently get across what it is capable of.

Asking nicely if someone could provide an example of said output would be, IMO, appropriate.

[mirage]

HD2 has formatting issues. Another way of saying that is: it requires far too much monkeying to get a decent character sheet printed. THe UI is circa 1998--like something you'd see from that time period. Using the app ought to be darn close to a no brainer. If it isn't, more reason to allow a user 30 days to use all the functions and decide whether to purchase.

Please elaborate what these printing issues are. Perhaps they will be corrected with HD3, but if people have problems with a piece of software and don't elaborate it probably won't get fixed or improved. Just saying "printing sucks", and isn't useful isn't being very helpful. Is it not customizable enough, too customizable, brain-dead set of defaults, wierd line wrapping, defaults not saveable from character to character.

Note, I haven't messed with HD since a very early Beta release, but there are reasons other than software engineering why I never bought it.

[KA.]

-snip-
The other school of thought is that people are basically honest, and that although a certain percentage of people will steal things if it is easy to do so, the people who steal would never have paid in any case, and that most of the people who buy things would buy them even if they could potentially steal them; furthermore, that one will have happier and more loyal customers if one treats them with respect, rather than assuming that they are all criminals and treating them as such.

Not really in reference to the software demo debate, but in general I must say I agree with this.

Where I live nearly all the gas stations are self-service.
I always pay cash for gas because I don't like using my debit card when I don't need to.
Some of the stations have no problem with this, they let you pump your gas, and then come inside to pay.
Other stations demand that you come inside and pay first, if you are not using a card.
I refuse to buy gas at those stations.
I know that I have to walk inside either way, but why would I patronize a business that is accusing me of being a thief before I have even come inside their store.

I am also seriously thinking about getting one of those pens that check for counterfeit bills, and using it every time a business gives me change.

After all, if they are going to accuse me of passing bad bills to them, why shouldn't I treat them the same way?

They handle way more cash than I do, so they have a better chance of having something counterfeit in their register, than I do in my wallet.

I know that it is not the fault of the cashier, but if the owners of businesses started noticing lengthy delays in the checkout line while everyone cross-checked each other, then this idiotic practice would be done away with.

The thing that really annoys me is, I have to be inconvenienced because there are people in the world that commit this kind of petty theft.

But, if they do catch someone actually stealing, they just let them out on probation, or don't jail them at all.

If it is really that big of a problem, why not work harder to keep the few people who do steal in jail, rather than annoying the crap out of the people who aren't doing anything wrong?

KA.

P.S. In fairness, even if I do steal a tank of gas, I can't magically reproduce that gas and give it away to everyone on the internet.
Software, on the other hand, is quite vulnerable to that sort of thing.
And a company the size of DOJ cannot afford to lose even a handful of potential sales.

[starblaze]

Just to help answer your original question, I don't there is any freeware/shareware stuff out there except for maybe one fantasy hero generator I might have found somewhere on the net, (can't remember where ).

Now for what it's worth prior to Hero Designer there were two other programs that you may still be able to buy.

One was a DOS program, one of the originals, HEROMAKER. It was a good fourth edition program for the time, but it suffered from printing problems. There apparently was a way around this but I could never figure out how.

The next one was a pretty good one IMHO, HeroCreator. This was a windows program that I believe was picked up by AlterEgo Software and was transformed into Metacreator. For a time I actually preferred this to Hero Designer but only when HD was in this developing stage and you had be online to be able to use it.

Since then I have had no real problems with HD except that being Java application the load up time can feel a little long. Particularly if you don't have more the 128K of memory.

[ChaosDrgn]

HeroMaker has gone the way of the Dodo. You might be able to find a copy if you can find the special edition copy of 4th Ed Champion's.

And to my knowlege, Bruce @ AlterEgo created HeroCreator/MetaCreator. He owned the base program and Hero Games liscenced(sp) him to make an add-on for Hero 4th.

AlterEgo Software has put up the 4th Edition templates as well as the 1.9.5 updates in order for the hero designer filter to work (though anything above it can read and use the files). So if you download the template and buy the current metacreator you can use the templates. At least I belive so, I haven't tried it and no real desire to.

[rjcurrie]

Please elaborate what these printing issues are. Perhaps they will be corrected with HD3, but if people have problems with a piece of software and don't elaborate it probably won't get fixed or improved. Just saying "printing sucks", and isn't useful isn't being very helpful. Is it not customizable enough, too customizable, brain-dead set of defaults, wierd line wrapping, defaults not saveable from character to character.

Note, I haven't messed with HD since a very early Beta release, but there are reasons other than software engineering why I never bought it.

There is no change in printing in HD3.

To be technical, HD doesn't print at all. It exports the character sheet to an another application where you can print it.

When you export a character sheet, you specify an export template which defines the format of the sheet and where all the various pieces of output from HD go on that sheet. Export templates are written in whatever markup language you wish to export to (for example, HTML, RTF, etc.) with special tags to represent when HD is to put its data.

You can also use the Preview feature which will automatically launch your system's default application for the extension associated with the export template. For example, if your export template is for a .htm file, your default browser will be launched with the character sheet open. You could then simply use the printing procedure for your browser to print the sheet. Similarly, if your export template is for a .rtf file (and .rtf is associated with Microsoft Word, selecting Preview will open Word with the character sheet displayed. Again, you would simply use Word's printing capability to print the sheet.

A variey of export templates (mainly user-written) are available for HD and Dan has added (and will likely continue to add) many export tags upon request by the writers of export templates. As has been mentioned before, if you lack the skills or knowledge to create an export template that fits your needs, there are many people in the HD forum who will happily create one for you if possible.

Now, why was printing handled this way? According to Dan, the reason is that Java has very limited printing capabilities ifself. I suspect that this means that in order to achieve satisfactory results on the various platforms for which HD is available, a separate application would need to be written for each platform that would perform the actual printing. This appliaction would then be launched by HD whenever you wanted to print. Which is essentially what happens when you sleect Preview, except that instead of launching an HD-specific application, it launches an appropriate application already on your system (such as Internet Explorer, Firefox, or Word). So, by using the method he did, Dan simply avoided reiventing the wheel.

[bblackmoor]

So, by using the method he did, Dan simply avoided reiventing the wheel.

I think he did the right thing. It makes Hero Designer very flexible. For example, it allowed me to make export templates for MediaWiki, making it very easy for my game group to post our campaign info online.

[mirage]

There is no change in printing in HD3.

To be technical, HD doesn't print at all. It exports the character sheet to an another application where you can print it.

...

Now, why was printing handled this way? According to Dan, the reason is that Java has very limited printing capabilities ifself. I suspect that this means that in order to achieve satisfactory results on the various platforms for which HD is available, a separate application would need to be written for each platform that would perform the actual printing. This appliaction would then be launched by HD whenever you wanted to print. Which is essentially what happens when you sleect Preview, except that instead of launching an HD-specific application, it launches an appropriate application already on your system (such as Internet Explorer, Firefox, or Word). So, by using the method he did, Dan simply avoided reiventing the wheel.

Thanks, that was very informative.

I can see why he does it that way, in fact its probably similar to the way I do my printing from java by calling lp; create a temp file, call lp with the filename as the argument, then delete the temp file.

I wonder if Sun has made improvements to the printing api in 1.5 . I doubt it since the most recent docs are for 1.4.2 .

[Simon]

Thanks, that was very informative.

I can see why he does it that way, in fact its probably similar to the way I do my printing from java by calling lp; create a temp file, call lp with the filename as the argument, then delete the temp file.

I wonder if Sun has made improvements to the printing api in 1.5 . I doubt it since the most recent docs are for 1.4.2 .

There have been quite a few improvements to the printing API.....but that's not why I did things the way that I did.

I could have created a fully-embedded print function within HD. But it wouldn't have been customizable. In order to allow for a customizable print function, you need to either require that all users learn a completly new "API" (namely, something that can be parsed into the Java Printing API) or you rely on Java's internal renderers for known formats (such as HTML) -- and those internal renderers are never going to be as good as the native system renderers (like Firefox or IE). Since one of the chief concerns that everyone was expressing during the initial development of HD was that the output be customizable by the user, I chose to go with an external/export process.

It's worked out rather well, IMO.

[mudpyr8]

I appreciate the level of control HD output has given me. There are plenty of folks on these boards that have created numerous export templates. I've attached one of my favorite formats for review and as demonstration that your options are pretty limitless. I can't wait to see what new tags are supported in HD3 (maybe a start/stop tag that only does evens/odds so I can create a balanced two column format....).

As for marketing, I assume that conciously or not part of the marketing for HD is this forum. There are plenty of testimonials and people willing to discuss its strengths and weaknesses before you buy. The software is detailed enough I would find it hard to believe you would discover any details about the software using a limited demo - the userbase is much better for that kind of info anyway.

[Deejmeister]

Where I live nearly all the gas stations are self-service.
I always pay cash for gas because I don't like using my debit card when I don't need to.
Some of the stations have no problem with this, they let you pump your gas, and then come inside to pay.
Other stations demand that you come inside and pay first, if you are not using a card.
I refuse to buy gas at those stations.
I know that I have to walk inside either way, but why would I patronize a business that is accusing me of being a thief before I have even come inside their store.

Sorry if I'm shattering a dearly held illusion KA, but someday soon you won't have a choice as all gas stations will be pay first. The reason is simple economics: far more people steal gas from pump first stations than get irate about having to pay first. A pump first station is taking a financial loss for the dubious benefit of placating a minority of thier customers. Over the years, I have worked at a number of gas stations that started as pump first and switched to pre-pay. In all cases, there were a few angry customers took thier business elsewere, but the majority "got over it". As more stations switch over, more customers will accept the practice, and the less effective boycotts will be.

I am also seriously thinking about getting one of those pens that check for counterfeit bills, and using it every time a business gives me change.

After all, if they are going to accuse me of passing bad bills to them, why shouldn't I treat them the same way?

They handle way more cash than I do, so they have a better chance of having something counterfeit in their register, than I do in my wallet.

I know that it is not the fault of the cashier, but if the owners of businesses started noticing lengthy delays in the checkout line while everyone cross-checked each other, then this idiotic practice would be done away with.

Again, you seem to be more concearned with not feeling insulted than with the fact that by not checking for counterfeit bills, the store would be losing money. Your irritation should be reserved for the people who pass counterfeit bills which necessitates these precautions.

The thing that really annoys me is, I have to be inconvenienced because there are people in the world that commit this kind of petty theft.

But, if they do catch someone actually stealing, they just let them out on probation, or don't jail them at all.

If it is really that big of a problem, why not work harder to keep the few people who do steal in jail, rather than annoying the crap out of the people who aren't doing anything wrong?

Last I checked, it was the police and D.A. who prosecuted criminals, not gas station clerks...

[John Desmarais]

I think he did the right thing. It makes Hero Designer very flexible. For example, it allowed me to make export templates for MediaWiki, making it very easy for my game group to post our campaign info online.

And, for what it's worth, he's not the only person to go this route. Ever use PC Gen? (It's a rather popular character generator for D20/D&D). Also written in Java, and handles printing in much the same way - creting output files based on templats that can than be printed via another app (such as a web browser or a word proccessor).

It's one of those traits that annoyed me when I first started using the program, but now I don't really even notice or think about anymore - and there are some neat things you can do output-wise with it (as others have mentioned).

[archermoo]

Not really in reference to the software demo debate, but in general I must say I agree with this.

Where I live nearly all the gas stations are self-service.
I always pay cash for gas because I don't like using my debit card when I don't need to.
Some of the stations have no problem with this, they let you pump your gas, and then come inside to pay.
Other stations demand that you come inside and pay first, if you are not using a card.
I refuse to buy gas at those stations.
I know that I have to walk inside either way, but why would I patronize a business that is accusing me of being a thief before I have even come inside their store.

I am also seriously thinking about getting one of those pens that check for counterfeit bills, and using it every time a business gives me change.

After all, if they are going to accuse me of passing bad bills to them, why shouldn't I treat them the same way?

They handle way more cash than I do, so they have a better chance of having something counterfeit in their register, than I do in my wallet.

I know that it is not the fault of the cashier, but if the owners of businesses started noticing lengthy delays in the checkout line while everyone cross-checked each other, then this idiotic practice would be done away with.

The thing that really annoys me is, I have to be inconvenienced because there are people in the world that commit this kind of petty theft.

But, if they do catch someone actually stealing, they just let them out on probation, or don't jail them at all.

If it is really that big of a problem, why not work harder to keep the few people who do steal in jail, rather than annoying the crap out of the people who aren't doing anything wrong?

KA.

P.S. In fairness, even if I do steal a tank of gas, I can't magically reproduce that gas and give it away to everyone on the internet.
Software, on the other hand, is quite vulnerable to that sort of thing.
And a company the size of DOJ cannot afford to lose even a handful of potential sales.

I have a question for you. Does your grocery store let you load your groceries into your car before you pay for them? And I assume that you don't patronize fast food resteraunts, since they force you to pay before they will give you food.

Personally I'm not overly interested in doing business with gas stations that allow people to fill their tanks before paying. I'm not interested in paying higher prices for gas to cover the additional losses those stations take with their unsound business practices.

[bblackmoor]

Does your grocery store let you load your groceries into your car before you pay for them?

When's the last time you were asked to pay first before being served at a restaurant (a real restaurant, not a fast-food joint)? There's a straw man for every occassion, and you aren't proving anything useful by trying to find something to argue about. Try sticking to the topic.

[ChaosDrgn]

When's the last time you were asked to pay first before being served at a restaurant (a real restaurant, not a fast-food joint)?

Several Buffet places make you pay before you sit down.