Modifying output..

[Tashtego]

Is there a way to modify the output of the character sheet? I'd like to include the line of text that explains what my character's feats do, but instead, I just have the name of the feat. Can this be customised, perhaps, by simply hacking into a pre-existing XML file?

[Tashtego]

Oops, should be in d20 forum...

[Colen]

Moved to the d20 forum.

Currently there's no way to modify output like you suggest. How much information do you want? I could add an option to display the feat summary under the feat name, but that would make the feat list pretty long (since there'd be an extra 1-2 lines of text under each feat). Is that the sort of thing you're looking for?

We also have plans to let you output a special "cheat sheet" showing just a summary of all your feats, special abilities, etc.

[Tashtego]

I was thinking of just the one line of text that is the feat summary on the current sheet. However, the cheat sheet sounds like a good idea. Maybe you could do a 'design your own sheet' option down the track, and select which options go on the printed output?

[Colen]

Tashtego wrote:
>
>
> I was thinking of just the one line of text that is the feat summary on
> the current sheet.


I'll play with this and see if I can get something that looks reasonable.


> However, the cheat sheet sounds like a good idea.
> Maybe you could do a 'design your own sheet' option down the track, and
> select which options go on the printed output?


A "design your own" output sheet is absolutely something we've
considered - we just need to come up with a way to make them look good,
while being easy for users to create. It's definitely on our to-do list!


--
Colen McAlister, colen@wolflair.com
Chief Engineer, Lone Wolf Development

[rob]

At 01:30 PM 11/20/2007, you wrote:

*> However, the cheat sheet sounds like a good idea.
> Maybe you could do a 'design your own sheet' option down the track, and
> select which options go on the printed output?

A "design your own" output sheet is absolutely something we've
considered - we just need to come up with a way to make them look good,
while being easy for users to create. It's definitely on our to-do list!

Just to add my two bits on this....

We realize everybody wants to be able to customize character sheets exactly the way they want them. Heck, I've designed a few myself over the years. :-) The problem is that different users want control over different facets, so we ultimately need something that allows complete control. The problem is that a design tool typically needs to get progressively more complex to use as it provides more control. The net result is what we currently have for in-house use - a complex mechanism with a steep learning curve. That's not very useful to the majority of users, which is why we haven't released it to anyone yet. So we have to figure out what users find to be most important, then create a tool that is simpler to use and provides control over just the things that users find most important.

With that in mind, what ARE the things you want control over? Please keep in mind that the more control you want, the more complex the tool has to be in order to provide that. So please distinguish between "important" items and "would be nice" items. :-)

[Bomberg]

Originally Posted by rob

At 01:30 PM 11/20/2007, you wrote:
With that in mind, what ARE the things you want control over? Please keep in mind that the more control you want, the more complex the tool has to be in order to provide that. So please distinguish between "important" items and "would be nice" items. :-)

The company I work for (as a technical writer, not a software developer) makes image analysis software, where the automatic generation of reports is an important feature. It is handled via a Report Generator which allows you to design your own templates for output.

You start out with a clean sheet and put objects on it: containers for data, text, grafic elements, whatever. These objects can be position, resized, aligned and so on.

Now you can easily bind different things to the containers; you just drag&drop the thing you want from a list onto the container. After completing the template you load your data, trigger the report generator and the data of this specific data set is handed over to the generator and fed into the containers.

For a character sheet you either have data of a fixed size (attributes, saving throw bonuses,...) or lists of data (equipment, spells, available weapons,...) so you'd probably need two different mechanisms to fill the containers.

This way of working is rather intuitive - for me, at least 8) - and gives you near complete freedom for your design-your-own sheet.

To make it perfect, allow for filtering and sorting of the data within a container. We could have a list of combat-relevant feats under the combat block: make a container for the list of feats and filter it for combat relevant ones. This would of course necessitate an extension of the data, but hey! dreaming should be possible!

If you have questions about this stuff, feel free to contact me.

---
Huldvoll

Baron von Bomberg

[rob]

At 12:09 AM 11/23/2007, you wrote:

You start out with a clean sheet and put objects on it: containers for data, text, grafic elements, whatever. These objects can be position, resized, aligned and so on.

Now you can easily bind different things to the containers; you just drag&drop the thing you want from a list onto the container. After completing the template you load your data, trigger the report generator and the data of this specific data set is handed over to the generator and fed into the containers.

For a character sheet you either have data of a fixed size (attributes, saving throw bonuses,...) or lists of data (equipment, spells, available weapons,...) so you'd probably need two different mechanisms to fill the containers.

This way of working is rather intuitive - for me, at least [img]./modules/mdforum/images/smiles/icon_cool.gif[/img] - and gives you near complete freedom for your design-your-own sheet.

To make it perfect, allow for filtering and sorting of the data within a container. We could have a list of combat-relevant feats under the combat block: make a container for the list of feats and filter it for combat relevant ones. This would of course necessitate an extension of the data, but hey! dreaming should be possible! [img]./modules/mdforum/images/smiles/icon_biggrin.gif[/img]

What you're asking for represents many months of development time. Since there are only two of us here doing development, and one of us isn't even a full-time developer (I've got lots of business stuff to deal with, too), that's not something we'll be able to create any time soon. It's something we WANT to add and that we've already discussed, but there are too many things screaming for our time and attention that need to be done first. For example, tools to let folks create their own data files from scratch is something that lots of folks are asking for, so that's a critical piece. Plus the Campaign R&D stuff. Plus the data files for numerous game systems that people want. The list goes on and we have to juggle it all in pieces.

What we currently have is a purely script-based way of doing all that you describe above. The problem is that it has a steep learning curve, as opposed to the drag-and-drop UI that you suggest. What we need is something inbetween as a viable initial solution. Then we can work towards the ideal tool like you suggest on an iterative evolutionary basis.

Since we can't create the holy grail solution on the first go-round, the initial tool will be missing things you would ideally want. So the question becomes: What are the things that are MOST important? What things should we focus on FIRST?

[mamaloufing]

Originally Posted by Tashtego

I was thinking of just the one line of text that is the feat summary on the current sheet. However, the cheat sheet sounds like a good idea. Maybe you could do a 'design your own sheet' option down the track, and select which options go on the printed output?

This would solve a lot of problems and give us more flexibility without getting into big modifications of the character sheet. Can we do this soon? Please...

[rob]

At 12:53 PM 4/3/2008, you wrote:

Tashtego wrote:
I was thinking of just the one line of text that is the feat summary on the current sheet. However, the cheat sheet sounds like a good idea. Maybe you could do a 'design your own sheet' option down the track, and select which options go on the printed output?


This would solve a lot of problems and give us more flexibility without getting into big modifications of the character sheet. Can we do this soon? Please... [img]./modules/mdforum/images/smiles/icon_biggrin.gif[/img]

Can either of you give me a concrete example of what you've got in mind? That would make it much easier for me to assess what needs to be adjusted and how much effort is involved to accomplish it.

Thanks!!