BlindGuyNW

Hi there, Now that I have a more or less working copy of Hero Designer, I'm wondering how easy the source code is to modify. I'm not super familiar with Java programming, bu a lot of the changes to make the app accessible for the blind are fairly simple, such as making sure controls have proper labels which my screen reader can detect. As of now, the app is more accessible on Windows than on Mac, because the technique used to implement Java accessibility is a bit different. Anyhow, is there some kind of process for making official changes to HD, or can I jus buy the source code and modify it myself? I would love to use all the export templates and such available, but for now character creation is a bit annoying because of the way my screen readers interpret the controls. Thanks for any insight

That does look like a great start. Let me see what other info I can provide. The basic benefits are functional immortality, excepting something truly catastrophic, like being blown up with your starfighter. The thing provides immunity from disease, poisons, even aging—in the words of the character in question, it just treats old age like any other disease. It provides regeneration, able to bring you back from the brink of death within, say, a week, healing wounds within a matter of hours. It even restores things like pulled wisdom teeth, which suggests it could do the same for limbs and such, given time. The main downsides are that it requires energy to power it, and if you don't give it some, it will gradually begin to "eat," the host body for sustenance until it eventually kills both. he other main character has to feed his companion cans upon cans of soup, stew, etc, which it somehow can metabolize even while the host is otherwise unaware. The host in question also has superb reflexes and high-tech gear, but that isn't directly related to her symbiote as such.

As an experiment, I'm trying to stat up a character from one of my favorite David Weber novels, The Apocalypse Troll. She has a regeneration power which takes endurance and behaves quite a bit slower than the typical, "once per turn," speed of recoveries. It represents a symbiotic creature that might eventually kill her if she isn't properly fed/given nutrients, but which can basically bring her back from otherwise mortal wounds. I'm wondering how I might want to model this in Hero terms? Regeneration seems like the obvious choice, but I don't know how I feel about recovery going relatively quickly. Do you guys have any thoughts?

Here we go java 10 2018-03-20 Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment 18.3 (build 10+46) Java HotSpot(TM) 64-Bit Server VM 18.3 (build 10+46, mixed mode)

I've been trying to use Hero Designer on the latest version of Mac OS, and running into problems with Java. I get the following error when I try and run the program: java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: com/sun/java/swing/plaf/nimbus/NimbusLookAndFeel. Followed by a stack trace. This seems to be a problem with the latest Java version, but I can't pin down an exact cause. Has anyone else experienced this?

Thanks, this sounds like a good thing for me to Google. It probably won't solve some of the more general access issues, but a menu is a good starting place.

Not that easy, I'm afraid. Tables in particular often don't seem to copy and paste well out of PDF files. I don't just need the formatting to look right, I need some kind of markup to tell the program, "Hey, this is a table." I'll definitely look into contacting the company.

Hi, Thanks for this. The problem now is that Hero Designer itself presents major accessibility issues with my Mac screen reader. I realize it's supposed to be cross-platform, but for instance the menubar placement doesn't fit with what my program expects, and therefore I can't access menus reliably. This is a general OS X problem with Java apps. I realize Hero Designer is very popular around here, but it isn't working well for me at all. This also doesn't address the accessibility issues in the Hero PDFs themselves. Is it at all possible to obtain Hero books in an alternate format? Thanks much for your help.

Hi All, I'm a newbie to the Hero System, mostly intrigued by it as a contrast to more "light-weight," games, such as HeroQuest and Fate. I also happen to be totally blind, and thus depend primarily on my Mac and iOS devices for digesting rules and information in general. I was wondering if any alternative formats for the character sheet, for instance, exist? MS Excel on the Mac is not accessible at all, and Numbers seems to dislike some of the formulas in the 6E sheet I downloaded from the resources section. Hero Designer is not accessible either. PDF, in general, produces a sub-par accessibility experience, certainly on OS X. So I'm wondering how much work has been done to present the material in alternate formats? Something like a Word document would be ideal. I have a friend who has been willing to convert other RPG systems into formats I can handle, most recently GURPS, but Hero is large enough I'm hesitant to ask how much he'd charge. Any thoughts on this general topic would be appreciated. Thanks much for input