Speed chart app or program?

[Barbara A. Stone]

I am a long time Champions player and GM. I am looking for a software tool that will make setting up speed charts for combats easier. I don't really need anything else, but would be willing to spend a few bucks on software that would do more, as long as it has a speed chart set up.

[Simon]

You won't find that in the application's display...HD itself doesn't work like that -- you work on/edit a single character at a time.

 

What you're after would be part of a combat record export from the application (and relatively easy to accomplish). You'd need to either find a combat record export in the Downloads section of this site that looks like what you're after or create one/have one created.

[Barbara A. Stone]

I'm not quite sure I understand your answer. I am looking for a GMing tool that will take a list of names, speed and dex stats and spit out a speed chart to run a combat. It's not difficult to do manually, just tedious. I would have figured that somebody out there has written a program for that. I'm not a programmer myself. I will peruse the downloads section.

[Simon]

You posted a question in the HERO Designer forum - I was assuming you were asking a question about the functionality in HD.  It will do what you're looking for, but is designed for a LOT more.

[Barbara A. Stone]

Looking at the documentation for HD, I gather that some programming skill is required for its use. Or at least if one wishes to design custom exports. I can't imagine a time savings in punching in my players' characters and then designing a combat record and speed chart.

 

This all started as a desire to have a shiny little spreadsheet or app that would idiot proof a speed chart for a combat. Sighhhhh.

[bluesguy]

Barbara

 

Do you own a copy of Hero Designer?  If you do you can load the characters you created in Hero Designer and then use the Combat Record Export feature in HD to export combat information - names, speed, dex, etc to a file.  There is a 'template/export' format file that Tasha created here, which might meet your needs.

 

If you don't have Hero Designer then there isn't an option for you, as far as I know.

 

Shameless Plug:  If you want to get really fancy you can use Hero Designer (Simon's product) to create your characters and combine that with my product Hero Combat Manager, which lets you manage combat from an application.  HCM deals with all the bookkeeping for running Hero Combat. ?

[Simon]

4 hours ago, Barbara A. Stone said:

Looking at the documentation for HD, I gather that some programming skill is required for its use. Or at least if one wishes to design custom exports. I can't imagine a time savings in punching in my players' characters and then designing a combat record and speed chart.

 

This all started as a desire to have a shiny little spreadsheet or app that would idiot proof a speed chart for a combat. Sighhhhh.

No programming knowledge/skill is required to use HD.

 

If you want to create your own export formats (vs. using any of the myriad that are freely available or asking others on this forum to tweak one for you), you would need to know basic markup.....and that's about it.

 

Again, what you're looking for exists, but is a VERY small part of what HD will do for you.

[Barbara A. Stone]

Okay, I'll bite. Where are all these 'myriad export formats' to be found? (Edit: thank you @bluesguy for the reference)

 

To old fogies like me, basic markup IS programming. I've been gaming since the seventies, and the most advanced computer thing I do with it is make Excel spreadsheets for my PCs and NPCs.

 

@bluesguyI could buy HD. No big deal except that my players all use Excel or a simpler product of Hero's to make their characters. Been playing Champions/Hero since the eighties, love the system, have used it to make or play in fantasy, superhero, space, steampunk, spy, cyberpunk games. Not to be the jerk that comes on a forum and questions the use of a product...

 

But seriously, nicely, why HD?

[Simon]

The export formats are for use in HD...and can be found in the Downloads section of this site.

 

As far as why HD, it's really dependent on what you're after. HD will help you create fully rules-compliant characters (this is non-trivial...and dedicated pen-and-paper folks often find little rules and exceptions that they were never aware of)...and it generally takes the time and headache out of the character creation process.  It makes it easy to play with character designs, power write-ups, etc.  While it will help guide you through the process of creating rules-compliant characters, it will also let you go outside of that with various "custom" options where you just enter the points and display/writeup that you want. You'll find more information in the store entry for HD.

[Barbara A. Stone]

I understand that the export formats are for HD. 

 

Rules-compliant...that could be important for many gamers. I suspect there is significant rules creep in my game group, especially since we generally are still playing version 4 with excursions to 5 with GM approval only. (Note the shiny new icon, which is only *partly* because the new campaign I'm starting features dinosaurs)

 

 I actually have looked at what is on the store site. I wish there were more screenshots to show the interface in use.

[Simon]

First off, please note that HD only supports 5E on up.

 

For the screenshots, you can view the user documentation for HD: 

The UI is what would best be described as "utilitarian" (if you're being generous) -- that was never my focus (nor my strong suit)

 

 

[Barbara A. Stone]

Thanks, I did figure that it supported version 5 and up. I have looked over the documentation. Thanks for the info.

[bluesguy]

3 hours ago, Barbara A. Stone said:

@bluesguy

 

To old fogies like me, basic markup IS programming. I've been gaming since the seventies, and the most advanced computer thing I do with it is make Excel spreadsheets for my PCs and NPCs.

 

@bluesguyI could buy HD. No big deal except that my players all use Excel or a simpler product of Hero's to make their characters. Been playing Champions/Hero since the eighties, love the system, have used it to make or play in fantasy, superhero, space, steampunk, spy, cyberpunk games. Not to be the jerk that comes on a forum and questions the use of a product...

 

But seriously, nicely, why HD?

 

When I got back into tabletop RPG (I started in the late 70's and played Champions when it first came out) we would spend hours making sure our characters were correct.  This was all done with pencil and Xerox copies of the character sheets from the book.  No spreadsheet, just a calculator.  Lord that was a pain the butt.

 

I got back into gaming about 7 years ago, I didn't have any of my old material so I had to buy everything from scratch.  I just went 6e.  When I saw what HD could do when it came to creating rules compliant characters and it handled all the math for creating the characters, I was sold.  Also my players at that time didn't know anything about Hero character creation.  They came to me with concepts and I built the characters w/ HD and we would tweak them to get them just right.

 

Then I got to a point where I wanted something to help me manage combat, back to your original question.  I found the export I pointed you to, did a couple of quick modes and wrote a VBA macro in Excel to help manage the combat.  Let me say the VBA macro was discarded within 3 months and I then taught myself Java (I was a software engineer more than a decade ago) and started writing Hero Combat Manager.

 

So there is my answer.

 

[Barbara A. Stone]

@bluesguy and @Simon, you have convinced me to buy the HD (I had already bought combat manager before discovering that it is not a stand alone product, oops). It's really great to be able to chat with the developers. I appreciate your time and patience. It's a new program and I want to play with it, even if I probably won't rely on it. (also there's that whole we play mostly 4 with occasional bits of 5 issue).

 

I never learned to program. I don't really miss/need it except at moments like this. My BF IS a software engineer and we spent some time going over what I was hoping to find out there in the 'interwebs'. He apparently used to have an app (was there a Hero combat app for iOS years ago?) that would spit out a list out who goes when if you put in speeds and dexterities. He apparently could easily make a macro to do that. What I wanted was a table to enter names, speeds and dexterities and a speed chart graphic with names in the correct phases/dexterities.

 

See the attached. I found a download that had the chart with the red and blue colored names and took it and ran. With ten minutes to cut and paste it's easy to use. I am becoming super lazy and want it to be two minutes. 

 

BF is now thinking of writing a macro to do what I wanted. BF is awesome. 

Speed chart.xlsx

[Chris Goodwin]

HD does just that, with the Combat Record Export feature and the template that @bluesguy pointed you to.  You can load all of the characters you're planning to be in the combat, use the Combat Record Export, tell it in what order you want to display them (it defaults to DEX, high to low, I'm pretty sure -- don't have it in front of me), choose the template, and then it puts all the characters in order with their Phases on a nice chart just like always.  But, yeah, HD is 5th or 6th edition only, so it won't do you a lot of good with 4th unless you customize a lot.  

[Barbara A. Stone]

If only so y'all can say "I told you so", I will add that I bought HD and now wonder whyinhell I never did before. Still trying to figure out how to make it bigger on my screen, but damn it is a nice piece of software for making characters. Sigh. I have yet to try out combat records.

 

The new campaign (Dinosaurs! Atlantis! Woohoo!) is still in the works. If I lived closer to my players it probably would have started by now. It is probably better for the game that I really design out the world.

[Simon]

If making it “bigger on your screen” is a function of font size, look for a thread in this forum about HD on Windows high resolution screens - there’s a fix, but it’s a little cumbersome.