Hi everyone,
For everyone writing their own data files, I'd like to flag a feature that one of our new developers added in the last Hero Lab release - "Set User Identifier" in the editor. Using this feature will reduce the number of errors people get when using your data files, and increase the chances they will continue to work properly in the future.
Background
When you're creating your own data files, we recommend that you add a two or three character "user identifier" to the unique ids of all your content, based on your name, forum username, or some other unique characteristic. For example, if a user named Danny Butterman adds a feat named "Smash", rather than making the unique id "fSmash", he should use "fDBSmash" instead.
If Danny's friend, Nick Angel, adds his own feat named Smash, Nick's version would have the unique id "fNASmash". That means that Nick and Danny can use each others data files without a problem. If they had both been using the id "fSmash" for their feats, Hero Lab wouldn't have been able to load both sets of data files at the same time, and would report errors if they had tried.
Using a 2 or 3 character user identifier like this also means that if we add new content to Pathfinder with the same name as something you've created, you're unlikely to have a collision. We saw this recently with the new Swashbuckler playtest class, where people with a user-created version of the class ran into problems because it used the same unique ids as the new, "official" version. Those people then couldn't load their custom data files until the files had been updated to deal with the new, official, Swashbuckler.
New Feature in Hero Lab
To help you remember to use the User Identifier in Hero Lab, the editor now allows you to set it up automatically. In the editor, go to the Tools menu and choose Set User Identifier, and enter the 2-3 character user identifier you've chosen ("DB" for Danny, "NA" for nick, or maybe "DHP" for someone creating data files for the products of a company named Doom House Publishing).
Whenever you create a new thing, Hero Lab will then automatically add the user identifier to the unique id of the thing. That means you don't have to remember to add it yourself - it'll be set up automatically for you, and all you have to do is fill in the rest of the id.
Hope this helps! Remember, using a user identifier makes it less likely your data files will run into problems in future, so we highly recommend that you use one for all the Hero Lab content you create.
For everyone writing their own data files, I'd like to flag a feature that one of our new developers added in the last Hero Lab release - "Set User Identifier" in the editor. Using this feature will reduce the number of errors people get when using your data files, and increase the chances they will continue to work properly in the future.
Background
When you're creating your own data files, we recommend that you add a two or three character "user identifier" to the unique ids of all your content, based on your name, forum username, or some other unique characteristic. For example, if a user named Danny Butterman adds a feat named "Smash", rather than making the unique id "fSmash", he should use "fDBSmash" instead.
If Danny's friend, Nick Angel, adds his own feat named Smash, Nick's version would have the unique id "fNASmash". That means that Nick and Danny can use each others data files without a problem. If they had both been using the id "fSmash" for their feats, Hero Lab wouldn't have been able to load both sets of data files at the same time, and would report errors if they had tried.
Using a 2 or 3 character user identifier like this also means that if we add new content to Pathfinder with the same name as something you've created, you're unlikely to have a collision. We saw this recently with the new Swashbuckler playtest class, where people with a user-created version of the class ran into problems because it used the same unique ids as the new, "official" version. Those people then couldn't load their custom data files until the files had been updated to deal with the new, official, Swashbuckler.
New Feature in Hero Lab
To help you remember to use the User Identifier in Hero Lab, the editor now allows you to set it up automatically. In the editor, go to the Tools menu and choose Set User Identifier, and enter the 2-3 character user identifier you've chosen ("DB" for Danny, "NA" for nick, or maybe "DHP" for someone creating data files for the products of a company named Doom House Publishing).
Whenever you create a new thing, Hero Lab will then automatically add the user identifier to the unique id of the thing. That means you don't have to remember to add it yourself - it'll be set up automatically for you, and all you have to do is fill in the rest of the id.
Hope this helps! Remember, using a user identifier makes it less likely your data files will run into problems in future, so we highly recommend that you use one for all the Hero Lab content you create.
The 10 characters we allow right now let everything be translated into a 64-bit integer that we treat as a unique id - this allows us to do some extremely fast comparisons because it's just an integer. Expanding that breaks a lot of assumptions in Hero Lab, so it would be a major chunk of work to do that we don't have time on the schedule for right now.