Hero Lab V3.1 Is Out!

[rob]

It's Alive!! Yes, the V3.1 release is finally available. This new update provides three major items:

1. Lots of new stuff for the Authoring Kit
2. Completed data files for Savage Worlds
3. Support for 4E

There are also an assortment of new features within V3.1 that you can take advantage of, plus a number of bug fixes. You'll find the details on these lesser items within the release notes that are in the "readme.txt" file installed with the product.

For those of you who have been waiting for the Savage Worlds files, thank you for your patience. These data files are looking really good based on our in-house testing. I'm sure there are issues that you'll uncover, though, so please post them on the newly created forum for Savage Worlds.

Our direct support for 4E is limited to all of the mechanics, with the Editor being a convenient tool for entering all the material. However, those of you who have a DDI subscription will be able to take advantage of something really slick that Colen put together. You'll be able to download the data off of DDI and migrate it into Hero Lab in automated fashion. I'll let Colen outline how all this works when he posts the details in a few hours, but it's truly painless! And the tool is released to the public domain, so users can adapt it if they want.

Lastly, this new release includes a host of new stuff that can be leveraged by data file authors. I'm in the process of getting it all documented, so stay tuned to the wiki. I'll be including a section on the wiki that details all the changes to the Kit, as well as another section that details all the refinements to the Skeleton data files. Look for all of this new material being fully documented this coming week.

I think that covers it. If you run into any problems with this release, please let us know and we'll do our best to get things fixed.

We'll be at a local Con this weekend, so our internet access will be limited, but we'll be plowing through questions here on the forum as best we can. I hope to have everything caught up on the forums by the end of Monday.

May the dice be with you...

[Colen]

D&D 4th Edition has now been added to the list of updates for Hero Lab, so you can hit the "Locate File" button and check for it now.

Our 4th edition example game system provides the core game mechanics, but includes no game content. You can either enter game content yourself using the integrated editor, or use our automated downloader program to download it from the D&D Companion web site.

For detailed instructions on using the D&DI downloader program, click the "View Manual" button on the Configure Hero form. Simply start the program, hit "1", and the freely-available content from D&D insider will be automatically downloaded for you. Once the program has finished, reload the 4th edition game system to see the new data.

If you have a D&D Insider account, you can perform a (slightly longer) download that pulls down all the available information by hitting "2" instead. This will take 15-30 minutes, but once it finishes, you'll have the complete 4th edition game system at your fingertips.

Happy gaming!

[Colen]

The downloader program we use for grabbing the D&DI data is open source, written in C++, and fully buildable using free tools (Microsoft Visual Studio Express). The D&DI Downloader program lives here:

http://code.google.com/p/ddidownloader/

You can look at the source code, or download a complete copy from Subversion and make whatever changes you like. Happy gaming! :)

[Colen]

Please post any 4e-related questions or comments in the new 4e forum:

http://forums.wolflair.com/forumdisplay.php?f=60