Tracked resources / spell / etc. count
 

Currently, it appears that a majority of tracked resources, spells, and abilities are tracked by showing "0" to mean "none used" and to tick up each time a resource is used (hit points being the key exception that I am thinking of).

I find the current way very counter-intuitive. Is it possible to track resources and spells in the opposite way - that is, such that it shows the number of each resource available?

I've been making that argument for years. Sadly, I'm afraid that it's a sunk cost that will never change.

This same topic came up in a similar thread a few years ago, with a nice explanation from ShadowChemosh. HL will always count up. :(
http://forums.wolflair.com/showthread.php?t=54526

Thanks for the replies. I don't understand why this discussion should be considered at an end? How do you think a good way to address this would be?

There are really only two ways to achieve what you want to do:
A) Complete rewrite of the HL tracker system and associated scripts, and modules.
B) Write up a mechanic that fakes this. It leaves the 1/50 actual trackers and just renames the associated items to look like its counting down, So, 1/50 becomes 49. Not sure if that can even work with spell slots but items should be doable.

A will never happen as it would require a massive rewrite of a program that is already in the process of being replaced. B could probably be done, not sure if it would be reliable or not, and not sure how many trackers you could get it to work with.

I find the current implementation as weird... but it's easy enough to set a 20 charge item to 20 on the tracker, and count down to zero.

Easy fix, unless you care about the wealth calculations (for gear) being exact.

If you use this method, you'll have to be careful not to use the many "rest" and "reset" buttons available. Using one of those will upset that method you're using.

I set my Barbarian's rage to 18/18 rounds and count down. I use 13 of those rounds with 5/18 remaining. Click "Night's Rest", the counter is set to 0/18. Now have to reset the counter to 18/18.

That is just one example of the many many counters within HL. Personally, it's too much work for little personal satisfaction. I'd be ecstatic if LW changes the counters within the program. Until then, I'll just roll with it.

It seems strange that such a change to the code would be a large architectural shift. I mean, surely the counters are represented with one or two data types within the code, and there are probably defined interfaces for modifying those data types. A change inside the data type that tells it to report (total-current) instead of (current) seems like a simple enough change. The "rest" functions would still set current to zero, but it would be reported as "50" (or whatever the total is) and the entire application stays the same.

Or maybe they don't (consistently) use those one or two data types that represent counters. Or maybe they break encapsulation and look at the data in the fields directly... (Even that is easy to fix — just change the name of the field and add a function to access it. Now the compiler will complain about every single location that used the field directly and a search-and-replace script can change them to function calls. A few hours with awk or perl or python should do it, and have the benefit of making the code more robust. It's a little trickier than this — I know because I've done this kind of thing — but it's not that tough.)

However, as pointed out by Minous, Hero Lab Classic is "already in the process of being replaced", so they'll never spend any time on it...

One of the things that I don't get is why the In Play tab doesn't have the used counters on the character sheet.

One sees the results of situational checks, such as Power Attack and such, but my poor Kinestist does not see what burn she has used, or the Temp HP that she has on the printed character sheet. Charges off wands, hits off the Brooch of Shielding, and so on. I have to create custom wands so I can take away the charges I use instead of keeping track of them in the In Play tab.

I doubt that putting it on the online version will change this, as it seems that the program on the server is about the same as this classic one.